You Know What I've Never Seen?

I've seen some pretty stunning technical documentation. I've seen technical documentation that is stunning only because of the fact that it doesn't exist. I've seen countless Employee Handbooks. I've seen extremely good maps of where to flee an office in the event the coffee maker explodes.

I have never, ever, ever, seen "This Year's" holiday calendar.

I've seen 2003's in 2004 and 2005.

I've seen 2001's in 2003.

No one ever seems to have one for the current year. It is almost like people hang on to old ones to remember the good schedules or to somehow validate to anyone who will pay attention exactly how long they have been with the company.

This year, I saw 2006's and figured December 31st was a holiday.

It is not.

On Friday I overheard my manager discussing working on Monday and I immediately decided that my having heard it counted as eavesdropping. As I will not be a party to that kind of unethical behaviour I decided to completely ignore what I had learned (For instance, that today is not a holiday). Besides, he was talking really loud into a speaker phone anyway.

But then at 4pm as he glided out he stopped at the desk where I was just beginning hours 11 and 12 at work and said, "See you Monday!"

"Monday?" I asked, still feeling a little guilty about being within thirty feet of his earlier speaker phone conversation.

"Oh, yes," he nodded solemnly.

"I guess I looked at an old holiday calendar." Now that I'd been addressed directly there was no pretending.

"I guess you did," he agreed, "Is that a problem?"

"I'll be here," I answered brightly,"I just won't be doing anything."

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

I laughed too, but then stopped and said, in as grave a voice as I know how to produce, "Seriously, John. I won't be doing anything."

He seemed to experience a discomfort which I suspected would hang over him all weekend and I knew I had nailed the delivery.

Anyway, the point is this: I'm at work. I'm not working. My manager knows about this and my badge still works so I have to assume that he is okay with it.

I'm going to take a nap, now.

Playing Our Strengths

I've mentioned before that my wife Shana and I each have our strengths and abilities and skills which we have, through unspoken understanding, translated into defined roles in our relationship. This has worked well -- With the glaring deficiency in the "Kills Spiders" checkbox next to each of our names. An empty checkbox which my next door neighbor "Doesn't want to hear about" at "2:30 in the morning" or he'll "call the cops". We kid like that, but the man has large and deadly shoes.

So. Shana got a new and more awesome job, which is good. And she is scheduled to start attending that job pretty soon.

When she told her current employer, they were distressed and agreed to reduce her hours.

When I asked Shana if the new job was to be defined as "replacement" or "additional", she confirmed my suspicions that a reduction in hours at her current job would not do the trick.

So she went back to her current (let's call it "less awesome" for clarity) job and again let them know that she had accepted a position with another, separate, distinct employer and that she would be starting work at another place soon.

So her "less awesome" but still nice employer set her schedule around her two days off at the "more awesome" new job.

But Shana doesn't want to work seven days a week. Who could blame her?

It was after this third resignation attempt that I realized that I'd been remiss in my responsibilities. One of my skills, a skill which we have used a lot as part of our relationship, was not being called upon. And the results of this oversight were a disastrous 90 hour work week. 

Shana is the one who balances the checkbook, organizes our lives, prevents me from blowing the complete balance of our checking account on magic beans.

I'm not capable of doing any of those things.

What I do, and do remarkably well, is recall mountains of pop culture trivia and quit my job.

I had no idea the latter was even a skill that one needed to have, so natural has it always come to me.

Since I came to this realization, I've realized that there may be a market for this skill outside amusing anecdotes. Maybe I could give "Demotivational Speeches" and help people move on with their careers with class, grace, and style. Or in a way which creates an amusing story to tell friends.

If anyone is looking for a new and exciting way to quit a job, let me know. Chances are I've done it. The key to a good quit, dear readers, is knowing your audience, anticipating and compensating for potential responses, and being always aware of the local regulations on the safe disposal of various fluids and waste materials and just skirting those regulations.

I've posted resignation letters on corporate intranet sites. I've highlighted portions of an offer letter and slipped it into my weekly reports just to see if a manager ever reads those things (he didn't). I've listened to an unreasonable "Conditions of Employment" speech and left my badge in the chair and not gone back. Once, I told an employer that they didn't seem happy and that I wasn't happy and that I'd decided we should see other people.

Does anyone else need help with this?

What are the chances that my "How to Quit Your Job: If You Are Going To Burn That Bridge, Make Sure They Can See the Flames From Space" speaking tour would be a success? 

Insert Obligatory Top 10 List Here

I looked around a bit and it seems like there is some law which dictates that if a person has a blog, at the end of December they are required to have some kind of "Top 10" list about the soon-to-be-ending year.

Tech advances and disappointments are covered already. As are Top comic book events, advances in computer gaming, and productivity (and anti-productivity) hacks.

What's left? Me!

I present the (approximately) Top 10 posts on Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng for 2007, in no particular order and subject to suggestions/revisions/deletions/hostile-profanity-laden-hate-mail.

• In January I got a new mouse.
• Later that same month I became a ninja.
• Daylight Saving Time.
• I asserted my value to an employer.
• I worked on my justification skills.
• We went over a text-free Texas.
• I "endorsed" Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day.
• El Santo
• I updated my Monster.com listing
• I may have overreacted to something.
• We became Jewish and there was (eventually) bloodshed.
• Gypsies
• I flowcharted "Oh, snap!"
• I discovered my own weird racism.
• There was big time sports talk.
• Pancakes = Policy
• Andrew Moore won the big slogan contest
• There was talk of the end times and Canada.
• Travel
• Underwear

Okay. That's nowhere near ten, but I was having a good time.

Making Friends

I mean, what was I supposed to say?

I was headed to the elevators with a co-worker and we passed one of the salespeople. She was wearing what can only be described as "Superhero Boots". They were long, red, glossy and sporting a giant buckle. There may have been a white star on them somewhere, or my mind filled in that detail from the store of comic book source material it indexes.

Of course, even though I'd never met this woman, the only thing I could say was, "Awesome! Superhero boots!"

She glowered. Not an about-to-vanquish-evil glower, though. More of an I-hate-IT-people glower. Believe me, I can identify that glower from a mile away.

My co-worker made a choked sound, as though he'd found a bone in his peanut butter instead of the expected creamy milk chocolate, and hurled himself into the elevator. I followed him, because while I'd obviously somehow personally offended this woman I needed to know how. Mostly so I could use that information for evil justice later. 

As the elevator doors slid closed, my co-worker almost fell over laughing.

"Awesome! Superhero boots!" is cute, maybe. Not particularly clever given the glaringly obvious shiny red material I with which I was presented, but one works with what one is given. It certainly didn't merit incapacitating laughter, as far as I could tell.

"What?" I asked,"Those were clearly superhero boots. I know superhero boots. My wife has a pair in black. More anti-superhero, I suppose, but whatever gets the job done, right?"

He explained.

"About six months ago we were having some issues with one of her clients. Everyone was working double shifts to deliver on what she had promised and she sent an email from where ever it was she was on vacation. It came in tagged by her BlackBerry." His laughter was just starting to subside as we walked into the little store downstairs,"It was all about pulling together and making things right and playing as a team and all anyone who read it could think of was," and again he started laughing,"The Justice League cartoon series."

Dear readers, what are the freaking chances?

"Anyway, in order to relieve some stress, we ran to several stores and put together a "Welcome Back From Vacation" gift basket containing Justice League comics, Wonder Woman underwear, a Superman lunch box, and a notebook with Batman on it and a bunch of pens and pencils and left it on her desk. She was so angry she tried to have us all fired."

So anyway. My conviction is this: If you wear superhero boots, you have to want people to notice your superhero boots. At the very least you should expect it. I can't help not seeing the mines laid around the office six months ago if they aren't marked off in the employee handbook. If I see superhero boots, I'm calling them superhero boots. If someone turns up in a big fuzzy pink elephant costume, I'm calling it a big fuzzy pink elephant costume.

Unless they are holding a rifle.

Or I'm the only one seeing the big fuzzy pink elephant costume.

In either of those cases I'm not saying anything. I'll just go home early and take some zinc.

In other news, I got an email yesterday and something seems to need some clarification.

I was asked how I could go and celebrate Christmas and be Jewish. The idea was put forth that it is like attending a birthday party for someone I don't know. Snap!

Well, hey. My family gets together once a year. If it were "Rains Fire From The Sky Day", I'd still make every effort to get there to see them.

And to further clarify, if there are gifts it is a bit more like crashing the birthday party of someone I don't know, getting a little drunk, and robbing his house.

A New Tradition

As I mentioned earlier, we went to Opelousas, Louisiana to meet up with the family for the holidays. As I'd also predicted, things ran a little differently.

My fully-uniformed law enforcement officer brother-in-law (he says "Deputy") showed up and (for fun, maybe) administered field sobriety tests to everyone in the living room. I passed after one drink, but he told me if I had another I would be filled with P-H-A-I-L.

I had two more.

I learned that, when in uniform, my brother-in-law is a total hard ass. He got upset when my mom refused to put her drink down for the test and became further agitated when I let her lean on me for the balance and coordination portion.

I called him a Fascist and suggested he just showed up to crack hippie skulls. He did not disagree.

Heel to toe nine steps forward and heel to toe nine steps back is less fun than my own variation, which was a leftward sideways walk (alternate the following foot behind and in front of the leading foot for a few steps bringing the feet together between cycles and then clap) in a delightful roadside Hora.

The official position of Law Enforcement on Hora-based field sobriety tests is that (while fun) they are not too informative. It doesn't help that the dance becomes easier the more one drinks.

We woke up on Tuesday morning and Gwynyth watched her cousins open gifts with maturity and only a little jealousy.

"It's okay, Gwynyth," I consoled her. "They get gifts on Christmas morning and we get total control of the Entertainment Industry."

She nodded, but asked why her cousin got tickets to Hannah Montana.

I thought for a moment in this glaring hole in my "Complete Control of the Entertainment Industry" consolation before suggesting that perhaps the Cajun Dome would be filled with frogs on the day of the show. Lafayette is only a few miles from Rayne, Louisiana and Rayne, Louisiana is the "Frog Capitol of the World" according to all the signs.

Profanity Generation

This week our IT Director has been in town. With any new workplace, there is always an initial period where limits are established and boundaries tested.

So I bet our local server guy $5 that I could make the IT Director curse.

"You'll know when I do it, and there will be profanity from him within the first sentence."

Our local server guy, having worked with me a few weeks, refused the bet but agreed to laugh long and loud at whatever happened.

We had a "Corporate Town Hall" meeting on Thursday morning. I've attended a lot of these over the years. Basically, they all boil down to this: Revenue is up, and that's good. However, costs are also up so don't expect your bonus to be any better than last year. There is talk of new customers and emerging markets and grateful sentiments about long hours and hard work -- With the empty promise that employee quality of life will be a key focus in the coming fiscal year.

This meeting was no different. I could have recycled a half a dozen Power Point presentations and changed the company names. I only caught part of the meeting however, since someone always has to miss these to provide the illusion that computer work is constant.

Anyway, I went to lunch with our IT Director and the local Sysadmin.

We discussed drumming and old jobs and a bit of current work stuff before piling back into the rental car to head back to the office. We talked about network architecture and Active Directory structure and policies both Corporate and Technologically Enforced.

"I'm still confused," I started,"You'll have to forgive me. I know the faces of the executives and I know the names, but I haven't managed to put them together exactly. But I heard two of them discussing your 2008 Single Sign-On project. What technology did you decide on for that?"

Invoking the "Single Sign-On" project is all but taboo among most of the IT set. It is often called "a" project, when it is, in fact, many many projects lumped together under a shared deadline.

There was silence for a second as the IT Director turned red.

I though (for a moment) that I'd failed.

Then he seemed to explode.

"They are talking out their ass!"

Before I could even turn around to remind the Sysadmin that I would have won $5 he had already collapsed into laughter.

And, after that and before we could explain he continued to sputter profanity so creative that I was tempted to take notes, though none of it would ever be published on Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng (Think of the children!).

That said, it was impressive to the point of awesome. Physiological impossibilities were described in such vivid and vigorous detail that it almost hurt to come clean about the "project" I had made up.

Choice bits may be made available by email request.

Apparently the boundaries with my IT Director come somewhere after making him curse a lot.

Because It Has Been A While

I haven't talked much about work lately.

This is largely because I'm still kind of finding my way around.

To sum it up though, I work at a software company. This company produces one suite of software. A lot of the development of this software is done on the other side of my cubicle partition, while the rest is done by a team working the global reverse shift in Hyderabad.

There is also a sales department, whose efforts ensure that everyone gets paid. They have further made promises to customers which mean that this one suite of software is coded using no fewer than three separate coding languages and (due to support agreements made in smoke-filled pool halls) supported and patched nearly constantly in every version deployed across the planet.

The office I work in is in a newer building. The elevators have little televisions in them and the voice of Optimus Prime announces the floor and direction of travel. "Seventh Floor". "Going Down".

The kitchen has a coffee grinder and a nice thermal carafe coffee maker. The developers seem to always drink the last bit and wander off, leaving me to grind and brew a fresh pot and plot their eventual doom.

We have a similar office in Connecticut where all of Management hangs out. This leaves the Houston office feeling a bit like 11th grade English with a substitute teacher. There are constant questions of where the authority is, though I suspect no one wants them answered.

By contrast the Hyderabad office is less nice. The developers working there are very good at their jobs and their presence in our off-hours ensures that the customers will always have a prompt response. As I have been made to understand, the single toilet in that building is cracked along the top and has been for several years. This means that water shoots out the top during the rainy season. During the dry season the toilet is flushed using a bucket of well water and a ladle.

I did not ask if they have a nicer coffee set up than we do.