Writing In Twilight

Mostly it's just trying to make sure that everything is cleared off my HD, including passwords and apps and suchlike, and saying goodbye to people.

I came in at 8am this morning, I plan to be gone after lunch. Must talk to the woman doing my exit interview to check if we can get it done before lunch.

(The woman doing my exit interview is my previous line manager, before they shuffled everything around earlier this year and then I got to get told of my redundancy over the phone through a manager who'd never met me in person. Clusterfuck, much?

And that's not even counting that to tell me that a redundancy might be on my horizon (they hadn't actually made me redundant at the time), they arranged an appointment for 10am Monday morning and told me HR, my line manager, and his line manager would be there, and that I could bring a support person. They arranged this appointment at 10am Friday morning, leaving me 72 hours - including the weekend - to stew.

They're fucking lucky that I don't have anxiety, or I'd have been a mess by Monday. As it was, I contemplated the worst case scenarios, then stressed a little here and there over the weekend, but didn't let it bother me.

So, in conclusion: clusterfuck.)

I'm not sorry to leave the company; it used to be a good little company to work for, before it got bought out by a big Australian tech conglomerate, and then that got bought out by a big US tech-and-business conglomerate, and...wouldn't you know it, this is the company that gave me my first redundancy when they bought out the little company that I worked for from age 18 to age 24! Colour me surprised.

Anyway, mostly, I am scrubbing things from my laptop, and working out how to not only clear but erase my browser history in the shortest time possible. Oh, and must delete my Dropbox connection.

moment of greatest tech hilarity in this morass: Being told by the system that my password is about to expire - YESTERDAY.

One day to go and they want me to change my password? AHAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, no, I didn't bother, and I seem to be okay and in the system right now, so...

I will be sorry to leave the people - there are some really good people here. It's a good place to work. Ah well, my job being what it is, I'm sure I'll encounter them in the future here, there, and everywhere...

It's not wrong to prep.

If all the panic is wrong, then sure, prepping for all the things that might happen (and are more likely to happen to people without money, without power, without hegemonic advantage) will have been a lot of effort for nothing.

If the panic turns out to be justified, on the other hand, then at least there'll be plans in place, and after the initial emotional and mental shutdown of "this can't be happening" then there'll be rescue frameworks in place (or the knowledge of how to get the hell out of dodge).

--

I'm rather intrigued by the response to my sedoretu series.

The two pairings I expected to do best - Maria/Steve (for which I'm known) and Steve/Bucky (which is popular) - are way behind the usual hit-to-kudos ratio, as is the Natasha&Steve story (another popular interaction/pairing). Meanwhile, Maria/Natasha is par for the course, and the Maria&Bucky story is going great guns!

I don't think many people are reading all the stories - sedoretu fics are not for people who want to see their OTP do happily ever after.

Come to think of it, if people are reading all the way through, then they probably kudos at the end of the existing set of stories, which would be Maria&Bucky...

--

Tooth is still causing discomfort. I have a new mouthgard which helps at night, but whatever is wrong with the tooth is not getting better.

--

Work has me doing piecemeal right now; they don't have a steady client, so I'm working with a lot of support stuff...

Headaches. I mean, it's not even 48 hours after I got the implant out, but headaches at the right temple.

( stuff )

*sigh*

--

( we're back in fandom limbo )

--

( work )

Ugh. Life.

In IT - particularly in areas like mine: financial systems applications - there's this constant push for new technologies, new developments. And with these new tech comes a steep learning curve. Which a lot of guys love and push for and really want to get into.

( work expectations, kind of ranty )

Day 4: so, not only did I discover a key function isn't working properly for half my data, but we also found out that we're missing a key field in the incoming file that we need to read the database.

Well, DANG.

So now I have to put together an email stating why I failed to complete the work in the time allotted (because nitpicker guy came to me on Monday with a bunch of purely cosmetic changes which took up half my day - this after I noted that this would probably not be completed in the days I had left a week ago and more).

I'll do a couple of hours tonight, see if I can make any headway in the coding, but the testing on the second interface is going to be a mess - inbound interfaces always are.

In 36 hours, I shall have left my house for the airport, heading for Vietnam. Between then and now, I have a program to complete, a post-mortem to write, a work hand-over to orchestrate, two bags to pack, 1000km to travel, seven little gifts to make, and maybe sneak a couple of hours of sleep in there...

Better get started...

...ugh. Apparently I am severely in arrears on the days of Annual Leave I'm allowed to take, thanks to a series of disconnected systems that didn't notify us of the issue back when it happened in 2013.

As a result, I'm going to have to take Leave Without Pay for the upcoming holiday.

My sister: Can't you just cancel the holiday?
Me: Frankly, cancelling the holiday isn't worth the money it would save.

This is not stress that I need right now. NOT NEEDED.

2016, why you suck so badly?

Today looks like it's going to be crazycakes on several fronts.

( Tuesdays, like Mondays when you've had Mondays off, only worse: health ick )

Work is just...painful. I wish I had something brainless and 'could do it in my sleep' right now, because trying to get my head around object-oriented programming classes with everything else going on is so many shades of awful.

Also, due to the tooth issues, I've lost about 3kg in the last month and my appetite is variable. At the worst of it, I didn't feel like eating at all and only made myself eat something because I knew my body needed it. At best, I had two meals a day. Partly because I didn't feel like cooking, partly because I couldn't face chewing.

I bought breakfast this morning - an omelette - and while I know it tastes delicious, I've had half a coffee this morning and I'm kind of full.

On the plus side, I did have those 3kg to lose, which is better than if I didn't. However "not enjoying food" is, in my mind, a bad way to be losing weight. And not at all fun. I like enjoying my food.

...what kind of Finance department needs "Financial Year" translated to "Year From - Year To"?

*throws mental hands in the air while making the change*

Also, this is the first look they've taken at this report. In over six months. And the only reason they're looking at it because I'm leaving on Friday and the other coder in the office is going to be part-time at best.

Such is the state of this client.

...and we've just found a table that's been created to store data, but we're not accessing it at any point, so far as I can tell...

Today, I finished off the modifications to the two programs my colleague was originally assigned. He had two weeks in which to do this work, and got half the modifications done on one program in that time.

I took it over full-time last Friday, although I pretty much started working on it on the Monday before that.

There'll be further modifications once the users take a look at the results, but at least I got it to "this is what the requirements were; I have completed this".

And it's one more thing off my plate.

Now if we can only get out of the "user acceptance testing" which the testers see as the opportunity to "perfect the system"...

This is the testing which never ends, it goes on and on my friend...

--

Still haven't done anything on the Pacific Rim Secret Santa. Maybe tomorrow night...

We had two programs to adjust; in two weeks, he adjusted half of one program.

I got it working and over the line, just today. Now I'm working on the second program and discover he hasn't done any changes to it...

Also: getting these two programs working has happened in between other work I've been doing for the client - while transferring files and answering questions and trying to work out scenarios and where files are going.

...what on earth was he doing for those two weeks?!?