News: A New Whiteboard Jungle!

I just started a new job, so let's celebrate the workplace!

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News: Even More Random Stupid

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• Why I always freeze to death in an office when I dress for the actual weather. The building at my last entertainment-industry job was kept cold enough for storing meat (which was apropos, considering how they treated the IT people), which struck me as particularly at odds with the fact that Hollywood was touting how green it was. If they'd turned the thermostat up a few degrees, they could have reduced their energy consumption quite a bit. (Also, if they gave bus passes instead of a car allowance to VPs and above, they could have done even more in that direction, but... wait, you think I'm calling them hypocrites? Hollywood? Never!) For men who insist on wearing suits in the summer, they should revert to the Southern gentlemanly practice of wearing linen. Surely some big agro-business is trying to engineer wrinkle-resistant linen?
• Instead of inventing machines to do physical labor for us, maybe we should be inventing machines to think for us...
  

Kitty's response to the stupid:

Knittin' Crap: The Lump of Angry Coal

I keep retelling this story, so I figured I'd record it for once and for all and point people to the post.

So, at some point, I kept wondering who let the 12-year-old onto the SA IRC channel at work. Seriously. To express my, um, approval rating for the 12-year-old, whom we shall call "JE," I made a lump of coal. As the 12-year-old was at corp HQ and I was in some belittled satellite office, I asked my sr. director if he would deliver something to "JE" and handed him the lump of coal. And he promptly said, "Oh, cool, it's an Angry Bird!" "Huh?" Now, he was only recently my sr. director, so I was not yet at the stage where I felt comfortable to lecture him on how, if I had meant to make an Angry Bird, there would be no confusion whatsoever over whether it was an Angry Bird or a lump of coal. (Most people have enough sense never to get to that stage. I'm not one of those people.) So I made a mental note...

...and a few months later, presented the sr. director with what is undeniably an Angry Bird rip-off. He put it on his desk and was apparently so attached that the first time I resigned, the first question out of his mouth was whether I was going to take the bird with me or not. (I'm not there anymore, but I'm pretty sure the bird is.)

Back to the 12-year-old. At the request of someone-who-shall-remain-nameless-because-he-turned-out-to-be-a-misplacer-of-my-uber-puppets, I made a "JE" finger puppet:

Word of the Day

fingerpuppet-worthy (adj.): Meriting receipt of my masterful custom finger puppets.

Example: Why would I want to work at a place where my co-irkers are not fingerpuppet-worthy?

News: Whiteboard Jungle Warfare

• How to weaponize office supplies
• Now, supposedly "ninja" is not as recession-proof a position as I would have thought, which boggles my mind, because I've tried to find ninjas-for-hire to deal with recalcitrant developers.
• A field guide to office nemeses

News: Sisyphus in the Whiteboard Jungle

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• Ever wake up SCREAMING because of your boss?
• This was how I felt when I was on 24-hour on-call rotations and someone woke me up for something stupid, or better yet, another group's problem.
  

Whiteboard Jungle: SPECIAL Annual Reviews

Yes, it's that time of year again in my whiteboard jungle, employee reviews. The process actually starts in December when we all panic and write our self-review the day they're due, only to find out they gave us an extension. (They're using a new online app this year that will apparently let them lock us out if we haven't submitted on time.) We're also supposed to submit the peer reviews that were requested from us. I had 9 this year. 9. I'm pretty sure that, even if I know 9 people at work, I definitely do not like 9 of them. Self-review is hard for me. I was brought up not to brag about myself, besides which I thought my awesomeness was self-evident! Um, right. Anyway, I decided this whole process would be so much simpler if they would adopt the Fallout SPECIAL stats system, which runs on a scale of 1-10. Then my self-review would end up looking something like this:

• Strength - N/A Only relevant when I need to kick someone's ass for being, well, an ass. Unfortunately, the person whose ass needs kicking always seems to be in a different office location, rendering this moot.
• Perception - 9. Unfortunately, a high score here feels like a curse, because it means I seem to notice brokenness that either eluded other people or that they were better at ignoring. Sadly, the person who finds the brokenness often seems to end up being the person who gets the "privilege" of fixing it.
• Endurance - 3. The st00p1d has worn me down.
• Charisma - 10! Of course!
• Intelligence - 9. Of course, I still work here, so I'm probably overstating.
• Agility - 6. This would be higher, except I often seem to end up getting hit in the face by the brokenness.
• Luck - 0. (I mentioned that this was on the scale of 1-10, right?)

Now we have to wait 2 months for the results. My boss asked what he could do to keep us from worrying about it. I suggested BevMo gift cards.

News: Ethernet Vines in the Whiteboard Jungle

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  If the people in that office walk anything like the people in my business complex drive, they're going to need a stop sign... and a traffic camera... and a crossing guard...
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  These should be standard issue for network engineers....
• ... especially if their network cabling looks like this:
  
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Misc: Ongoing Experiments

• Spoon is still on a diet. Spoon is still fat. Need to tweak the parameters of that experiment, probably.
• I made a blanket for the cats to lie on when on the couch so they wouldn't steal my blanket. I used the same yarn (leftover). It seems to be working. Of course, I put the blanket in their designated area, but maybe once I'm sure they're adequately attached, I'll start moving it to new and exciting places.
• I got one of those faux-perpetual-motion drinking birds for my boss. We'll see if his boss can tell the difference in their output.
• The ongoing experiment that was my 13-year-old, massively-lo-def CRT TV has ended with the TV's descent into catatonia. (Power on, a red light starts blinking and won't stop, and no picture. I left it unplugged for several days and no change.) So now I've begun the HD flat screen TV experiment!

Other: Possessed Baked Goods!

We ate lunch near Porto's today, so afterward we walked over and got some baked goods. Porto's is a very popular LA-area bakery with a couple locations. Little did we know (and maybe it's just a Halloween promotion!), their baked goods are possessed...

Timeline of events:

• Approximately 1:30PM: My boss raves about the potato balls.
• Approximately 3PM: My boss says the potato balls had kicked his ass.
• 5:13PM: I announce on our IRC channel that the mango empanada on my desk is calling my name.
• 5:14PM: My boss tells me empanadas can't talk
• 5:14PM: I reply, "but potato balls can kick your ass? huh?"
• 5:14PM: He replies, yes.
• 5:30PM: We ask Samir if he ate his cupcake. He said he had tried to save it, but he ate it hours ago because "it was staring at me."

Possessed, I tell you...

News: Mauled in the Whiteboard Jungle

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  Unfortunately, I got stuck in the position of having multiple de facto job titles on this list, and all of a sudden... where the hell did all the coffee breaks go, man?
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  Oh, please, god, let this be real. Oh, please, god, let this be real. Oh, please, god...
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  Crap, I almost had a chance to send this a month ago... Must re-resign.

News: Customer Disservice

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  Too bad that whack is backordered at the supplier.
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  When don't I feel this way?

Other: Happy Bastille Day!

We had to memorize the first verse of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, written during the French Revolution. (Yes, it even predates our own unsingable American national anthem.) Over two decades later, it's still burned into my brain. So, when I finally get to France, I can still ask where the toilet is (although whether I'll comprehend the answer is another issue) and I'll be able to impress the local populace by butchering their national anthem.

On that note, I give you Henri:



I've watched several subtitled French films, but the narration of this one makes me think of "Alphaville," an Orwellian film by Jean-Luc Godard about a city whose emotionless inhabitants are ruled by a computer named Alpha 60. At work we've embarked on Project Alpha, but to me, it will always be Project Alphaville.

People should not ask 'why', but only say 'because.'

-Alpha 60

Whiteboard Jungle: The Clean Underwear Server Rule

Yesterday, I came to realize that the Clean Underwear Rule (you know, always wear clean underwear in case you're in an accident, which really makes no sense, because they probably wouldn't be all that pristine after an accident) needs an edit: always wear clean underwear and always configure all your servers in a clean, maintainable way, because if you're in an accident (or get fired/laid off/transferred/abducted by aliens/etc.), the person who ends up getting blessed with the responsibility of migrating those servers to a new location won't be faced with an undocumented, nuclear-fallout-zone, steaming-pile-of-horse-shit setup and thus will be saved from coming to the inevitable conclusion that you're either lazy, incompetent, or an idiot, or maybe even all three.

And if that person who gets to clean up your mess just happens to be me (and it's always me), you will be saved from worrying that she will also strongly consider making a voodoo doll dedicated to you.

News: Braaaaiiiiiinssssss

Thought for the day: Stupidity must be contagious because teh st00p1d I've been dealing with has been killing my brain cells. Well, if not directly, then because it's driven me to drink more.

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  see more Monday Through Friday
  Actually, I have 9:30-noon blocked off.
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  see more Monday Through Friday
  We all know just how much I loooooooooove Apple, right? But that's not my MacBook. Yet.
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  see more epicfails
  me == Credible She-Hulk
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  see more Monday Through Friday
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  Unfortunately, this is me.

All of which leads to...


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... except with the kittens as co-irkers.

Whiteboard Jungle: The Offer

Last week at work, I masqueraded as an event planner, making arrangements for the local presence of the corporate hacking event. Dammit, Jim, I'm an engineer, not an event planner! And, because I had misread the on-call calendar, I was also on-call. Oh, and my damn work Mac didn't shut down gracefully one night, so when I got a page at 7AM the next morning, it refused to configure the network properly because something had gotten corrupted, so I couldn't use the VPN system and had to get it reimaged. Oh, and I forgot my RSA token the next night. I was also pretty sleep deprived by the end of the week, and generally less warm'n'fuzzy than normal. Yeah, who would have thought that possible?

Saturday, I sent this email to my group:

In appreciation of putting up with me in the chaos of event prep stuff, I am making the following offer: I will make each of you a Star Trek finger puppet of your choice. Please note the following:

1. You can choose any character from Star Trek (The Original Series only). If you ask for Jean-Luc Picard, I will take that as an opt-out. If you ask for the Zoe Saldana version of Uhura, I will take that as an opt-out. If you ask for Princess Leia in the metal bikini, I will pretend you don't even exist. (The anonymous Red Shirt is a valid option.) If you're not sure if it's a ST:TOS valid character, check imdb.com or ask someone you trust with your shameful secret.

2. You will get your finger puppet when you get it. Unless [my manager] is going to give me a week where my only Sprint task is knitting them, they'll have to jostle for time along with everything else. Asking if your puppet is done yet will get it moved to the bottom of the list. Asking more than once will be considered, you guessed it, an opt-out.

Request #2: Geordi LaForge. face->palm

News: WTF Fridays!

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  see more Monday Through Friday
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  see more Monday Through Friday
  Actually, I probably peak on Thursdays, so I can flake off on Friday. Uh, if my manager reads this, I was totally joking. No, really.
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  Totally true. Especially on Thursdays, when I'm actually doing work.
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  Totally true. Especially on Thursdays, when I'm actually doing work, or at least trying to, and, excuse me, you opened a security bug against my servers, setting a deadline when, what's this, you haven't even released the patch yet? Excuse me?

Knittin' Crap: Away Mission, Day 5

My sr. officer director did not return as scheduled yesterday with the Red Shirt, or even report in send an email. This means I will also be without a surrogate target on my own away mission trip to HQ next week. As it's currently a disaster zone major pollen locus up there, I'm a goner.

Knittin' Crap: Away Mission, Day 2

The sr. officer director did send a short communication email after my last report post, giving no indication of distress. However, we are still analyzing the message for an encoded update in case he was forced to send it under duress. One officer group manager has postulated that the sr. officer director may be part Romulan, in which case we will have to re-evaluate our interpretation of his messages.

Knittin' Crap: Away Mission, Day 1

Red Shirt #1 and my sr. officer director have been gone over 24 hours now, with no communication. This can mean one of only two things: Red Shirt #1 is already a casualty but hasn't been placed on the casualty rolls because my superior has been taken captive in meetings all day, or they're under fire, um, in really crappy meetings but can't call for help because communications are jammed the damn office wifi is crapping out. Again.