Braindumps

I just got home.  No, I didn't go somewhere else in between.  I was going to go shopping so I could buy corn starch so I could make turkey gravy and heat up sliced turkey in the gravy and pour it all over mashed potatoes, but all I want to do now is crawl up into a ball and go to sleep.  But I can't.  I have to get dressed into "street" clothes and go pick up the girls for dinner.  And drink lots and lots of water.  Y'all know I can talk, but this goes beyond that.  Oy. . .

On the plus side, after lunch (yes, they bought me lunch!), I spoke with the actual manager and he made it clear he thought, based on prelim stuff, that he wanted me to meet with the rest of the team.  I really thought he was joking when he told the guy who was coordinating the whole thing, "So, you have Erik booked for the whole afternoon, right?  Erik, I hope you like talking about yourself."

At any rate, this job looks interesting, an entry point into cell phones without having to come in at the entry level, and Agere wasn't the worst place to work for in the past, and if I get an offer, I won't be the first new old guy on the team who's never done anything they're going to be doing.  3 of the people I interviewed with started within the last month and their backgrounds had nothing to do with cell phones, the processor that Agere is using in their chipsets, or necessarily DSP programming.  One guy was 5 years (!) out of the work force after getting laid off and becoming a stay-at-home dad.  So far, my best prospect yet!  Fingers are crossed, people. . . ;-)

. . .with Agere Systems this morning.  Wish me luck!

So, I had an interview this morning.  In Bethlehem.  First interview I've had close to "home" in a while.  I say "home" because home as a concept is starting to have a different meaning again.  More on that in another post, if I feel up to it.

Suffice it to say, I'm starting to get a little bit desperate.  This job has a max salary cap of about 9-10% less than I was making at my base salary at K&S.  I actually lied on my application and lowered my final salary by about $6K.  And, the final sign of desperation:  I dyed my hair, at the suggestion of my mother and the counsel (and aid) of others, all of whom agree that I probably need to look a little bit younger at the moment.  deceptiverose helped me pick out a color and did the dyeing part.  Most of the grey either took the dye or now looks like light brown highlights.  I really have to keep up on the shaving now, as there's a huge patch of grey and white in my facial hair and it doesn't match my head.  I don't recognize myself half the time, though I think most people who know me don't notice.  deceptiverose's mother didn't notice right away.  The girls surely haven't noticed, or said anything.  And the ex, is either completely clueless or hasn't said a thing.  Since she likes to subtly mock me to my face and try to embarrass me publicly when we're around each other, I'm thinking she hasn't noticed.

Oy. . .  So, we're having lunch seminars twice a week on design patterns, OOA/OOD and UML.  Right now, we're focusing on design patterns. . .  Anyway, one manager keeps asking for examples of how we would use each pattern in our current product.  The manager running these seminars has told the presenters to avoid that.  Why, you ask?  Because every time we have one of these seminar type things and someone uses the current product/codeset as an example, everyone has an opinion on how it's just the wrong way to do it and things devolve into an argument. 

So, now we have managers arguing over the presentations about how the presentations should be handled and what examples they should contain.  So, we trade petty arguing by developers with petty arguing by managers, and that's better somehow. . . *shrugs*  Whatever. . .

Why do I keep coming back to this place?  I mean, I like some of the people, but there are a few, here and there, that really suck.  Fortunately, a good number of them have been fired, laid off, or quit of their own accord recently.

Eh, don't mind me, I got an attack of CBS this morning, so, of course I don't want to be here. . .

So, it's been a while since I posted anything of substance since I've been running around like a loon.  Now, while I'm waiting for something to print, I get to finally say something.

So, to prevent long-windedness on my part to play catch up to cause problems for other people, I present to you a cut:

( Probably insane amount of stuff. . . )

Okay, I've applied to a landlord and put in a deposit.  I'll have to pay the rest of the first month's rent and the security deposit when I sign the lease, but he's letting me move in a week early for free!  Yay.  Soon, I'll be close to all the action I want to be close to and still have the same basic commute to work.  I have been hunting and hunting and hunting and no one, and I mean no one, has been calling me back.  This guy, being the only one, seems to get my vote.  So, the place is 700 sq ft., 2 bedrooms.  Anyone with any spare furniture out there?  ;-)

Also, I got my car fixed!  Again!  Yeah, it's been weird stuff. . .  There was a nail or something in the one tire.  Would occasionaly go soft.  Fix-a-flat took care of it for a while, then it started doing it again.  Took it to get looked at, they patched it, took the nail out, things have been good since November.  Last week, it started acting up.  Pumped it up, went good for two days, then soft.  Pumped it up again, made it to work.  More fix-a-flat, made it from work to home, no problem.  Let some air out, pumped it up again, looked good this morning.  Was driving fine until I was nearing the turnpike and I could just feel it go.  It's a weird feeling, knowing I could feel the subtle changes in control on a straightaway as rear tire deflated to about 15 psi.  2-hour wait at the mall while Pep-Boys found the time to look at it and I'm back on the road again, driving like a fiend. . .  A driving fiend. . . :-)

So, today has been a good day, even if I'm at work for the 7th day in a row. . .  :-|

As a Director of Software Engineering, if you are handed employee evaluations by your managers, what do you do?  Do you read through them quickly, if at all, and sign them, explaining to your managers that you trust their opinions? Or, do you spend significant amounts of time reading over each one and finding a way to add negative commentary to every review and knock everyone down one peg on the overall scale?

Let me give you a hint, the right answer isn't the second one.  I'll also give you another hint that the second one is exactly what my director did.  My manager was so freaked out yesterday, nay, embarrased to hand me my review because it had nothing to do with what he actually thinks about my performance.  He actually thanked me for signing it as he really thought I was going to tear into him (I do have a tendency to be vocal when I'm being treated poorly or I think that something is just plain bullshit).  It's not his fault he's spineless.  It's not his fault he got put into this position in the first place.  It's not even his fault for being the worst manager I have ever worked for, and that includes the guy that wrote my review in pencil, had me sign it, gave me a copy of it and then rewrote it.

Oh well. . .  Gotta eat. . .

EDIT: And I do mean every review by the way. . . I've heard back from several people who got the same word back from their managers. Our Director is trying to motivate us this way, and this is also a way of expressing his extremely high expectations of us.

I'm working on a particularly nasty feature which sticks it in and breaks it off every other day.  My ass is sore just from the workload and now I'm getting shit on by my boss every other day too.  I need metaphorical paper towls and Preparation-H and I can't get no relief!  Make this day end!

So, I went to a time-waster today. . .  Oops. . .  That's not positive thinking!  Let me restart:

So, I went to a meeting today.  The first 35-40 minutes of which was a recap of a 1-hour meeting I went to on Friday.  Then the remaining 20 or so minutes was a whole bunch of people blathering cuz they never get to be heard any other time and they feel important when they talk at meetings when they could sum everything up in a fucking e-mail to our manager.  Anyway, we get to me and the feature that I'm working on.  This one's a bear because as I have to replace a fundamental data structure that gets used, touched, manipulated, fucked hard against a counter and even cuddled softly sometimes by many, many files in our application.  Worse yet, there are 3 or 4 classes and structures that do the same fucking thing as the one I'm tryin to replace, so I'm slowly removing them and replacing them all with my new class.  So, I haven't put in a commit date for some of the tasks yet and so my manager wants to know why I'm still working on it when it says I should be done by 11/07/2005 in our tracking system (11/7 being the commit and completion date of one of the tasks, and the latest date I put into the system), and he wants to know an actual commit date.  I say that's hard to estimate because I just ran into a new wrinkle.  He says if it's too much work I should ask for help.  I say I would rather not have help because I'll be spending more time on training helpers on how to make the mods than actually getting the work done and it will push out the feature even more.  He says I should work harder and work more hours then.

What?

Work harder and more hours?  How?  I'm putting in 2-3 hours extra 2 days a week.  I've taken to coming in on weekends when I don't have the girls.  I've given up my plans of taking time off between Christmas and New Year's other than the allotted holiday time.  I was even thinking about  going in on the 2nd if I've got nothing to do.  I've even changed my schedule so that I don't meet with my therapist until after the new year and then every other week instead of weekly.  What else can I do?

So, I wasted 65 fucking minutes in the meeting, then there's the normal 30 minute post-meeting anti-productivity window and now I'm still so pissed and demotivated I want to go home and play GTA:San Andreas all night 'til I pass out and not go in tomorrow.