Explosive Logorrhea

First day working for New Boss went fine. I mean, I've been doing the job for six months now and I've got a rhythm down so it's not like I didn't know what it was going to be like. I started giving crap to some of the guys about they had to be nice to me because I'm the new guy. Again, same group of people and same job for the last six months - but today I'm the new guy.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I'm the fourth person Old Boss has lost in the last month (maybe month-and-a-half, I'm not certain). The first guy split to move to Arizona because he has family back that way. The second guy left because he'd been working with one of the "highly technical, academic-based, not-for-production" groups and he really liked it (technically I think his last day is this week or next, but he turned in his papers some time ago). The third person hasn't been happy on that group for some time (still at entry level after six years and is one of the best people in the company at her job). I was the fourth. I heard today that there's some buzz that Old Boss has some serious issues in his group. When you have a "mass exodus" like that, it tends to get people to asking questions about what the problem is. People like all the other bosses in the area and his boss. I'm wondering if there will be some other "interviews" for me down the road.

How about something ... well, kinda funny? A bunch of very painful animated GIFs. People falling, crashing into things, a dude hitting a landmine (or something) with a sledgehammer. Don't worry - no blood, just a crapload of embarrassment.

Apparently I was a little pissy Saturday night. I was bombing around on the laptop and Sue was watching TV. She was flipping around during a commercial and stopped on Animal Planet. Being in a pissy mood for unknown reasons I said "Can we not watch Animal Planet? I hate every fucking show on there." Sue said "Okaaaaaaaaaaaay." I asked what that was about. She said "Well, you have never said you didn't like Animal Planet and the words just kind of shocked me." I said "... Well, OK. Yeah, I don't know why but Animal Planet pisses me off every time I've ever seen anything on there. Also, I'm apparently pissy tonight." After that, I decided to take my frustration / pissiness out on the cable company.

I went to their website and wrote a bitchy email about commercials. See, on our HD channels are quieter than our normal channels - but the commercials are twice as loud. So you turn the volume up to actually hear the show and then the commercials come on and it blasts you out. I said something about "Can you people not balance your audio feed?" and "Why should I have to choose between hearing the show I'm actually paying for versus having my ears bleed because the commercials are rattling the windows?" I got a reply back today where some cable minion said they're not allowed to meddle with whatever they get in on the feed and it all meets federal guidelines. I'm thinking I'll start a dialog with him over how he should fix their problems - 'cause I'm sure he's the exact right guy to get the job done and certainly not some random dude who got the shit job of responding to the website complaints.

Tomorrow is my first day with New Boss. I have a standing Monday morning meeting that I run where we go over status and any news. So that's where I'll make the official announcement that I came over to the other side. I'm actually looking forward to it. Hell, I've even been thinking about what joke I'll use ("As of today, I now work for New Boss. To anyone looking forward to getting rid of me, I'm sorry but you'll have to do it the old fashioned way and frame me for murder. ... Yeah, I'm old school"). Makes me think I made the right decision. Either that or I just look forward to change. "Oh hey, we've got a new policy that starts every day with thirty minutes of calisthenics in the parking lot followed by a punch to the throat? Can't wait to get started!"

Other than that, it's been a pretty quiet weekend. Though it did finally get above freezing for a few days. Hell, I can even see more lawn than snow out back now. That's the key date for the spring thaw. It actually came on pretty sudden. Two weeks ago it was cold as ... uh, Iowa in winter. Last week wasn't too bad - we got up near 40 a couple of days but it was below freezing every night. This weekend though it was well above freezing the whole time, even at night, and was pushing 50 during the day. The forecast is calling for it to be above freezing all this week, except for tonight, along with a good chance of rain over the next couple of days. I mean, it is Monday so we've got to have some precipitation - but it's not snow! It'll be cloudy, nasty, swampy, slushy, and wet - but not slick. I'm even thinking about not wearing my big winter coat tomorrow. I have to give that due consideration though because once I put the winter coat away, that's it. I don't go back to the closet. Once in, once out.

It was another day with many many many meetings. Unfortunately, I had some other things to attend to as well but I didn't have any time to deal with it. I've been arguing with the Pharmacy since last week and I'm seriously getting to the point where shit needs to get squared away. That's not the kind of thing I could really put off and I couldn't wait until after work. I was able to call in to most of my meetings instead of actually going to them. The upside of that was that I could multi-task throughout the meetings. But ... uh, that didn't work too great.

I can handle doing two things at once pretty well. That's two real things, not trivial things like tying your shoes or cleaning your desk - real things that require some thought. Three things at once and I'm starting to get in over my head. Four things is right out.

From 2:30 - 5:00 I was on a phone call where we were reviewing slides. Part of that meeting was actually seeing the slides so I had the presentation up on my screen. One of the women I worked with sent me an IM during the meeting asking a couple of quick questions. Since the questions were follow-ups to a task she was doing for me, I figured I'd better answer. Then the phone rang. I had called my doc's nurse earlier for help on the Pharmacy situation. She called back to let me know what she had worked out with them and what the doc had said. Again, I figured I'd better answer it. Then the second line on my phone rang and it was Sue - who was actually at the Pharmacy to pick up my meds. So I'm listening to one teleconference, watching a slide presentation, IM'ing a lady at work, talking the nurse on my cell phone, and Sue's calling me at my desk phone - simultaneously.

I said "Aw, fuck!" The only issue with that is ... I have no idea which phone was active. So I either told a room full of program leadership "Aw, fuck!" or I told my doc's nurse "Aw, fuck!". Which means tomorrow I have to ask some odd and possibly embarrassing questions. "Hey New Boss. So, yeah, yesterday. When I was on that teleconference and you were on the other end. Did, uh ... did I happen to say something like 'Aw, fuck!'? ... Why? Oh, no reason." And if he says no, then I have to call the nurse and apologize for randomly shouting cuss words at her in the middle of a conversation. Too bad she's not treating me for Tourette's Syndrome.

My official transfer date, from Old Boss to New Boss, will be first thing Monday morning. The paperwork went through quite a bit faster than I was expecting. I'm also allowed to go public with it at work since we're just waiting out the clock now. I'm torn on that though. I could go ahead and let people know because, honestly, I'm about to bust with keeping my mouth shut. On the other hand, I could wait until the regular meeting Monday morning and just drop a bomb on everyone all at once. I think that would be damned entertaining. To me at least. I mean, it doesn't take a lot to impress me. Anyway, I'm still trying to decide which way to go on it. I'd say there's a good 70% to 80% chance that I won't be able to hold out until Monday.

There's a movement afoot to name the next SI prefix as "hella". So you've got mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta, yotta, and hella. One hellawatt would be 10^27 watts. That's a helluva lot of watts. The other prefixes are all some obscure Greek or Latin thing and they're all based on words that mean, basically, "really big". But "hella" would be a modern all-American prefix. I'd love to see a serious technical article talking about hellagrams or hellajoules. I'd love to buy a hard drive that held a hellabyte. The only downside to this for me is that I think the movement started on Facebook. Sure, it was a real scientist that started it but still - Facebook.

New Boss, Old Boss, and their boss had a meeting specifically about me this afternoon. I had an unrelated meeting with New Boss right before that and he mentioned it to me. I looked up Old Boss's calendar and it said something about "addressing the Kyle situation". Which I thought was totally awesome. When it was over, the deal was settled. We have to put the paperwork through yet but that's just a formality. It shouldn't take too long for that to get squared away. The important thing I got out of it is that Old Boss isn't going to make any static over this. I'm still missing some details, like if I'll still have to put in some time on Old Boss's programs (I suspect "yes" but don't know what the numbers will be), but I think we can get on the same page. Or, for all I know, they've already made the deals and I just haven't heard the details yet. So we'll see how that all works out.

Friday, when we got home, there was a message from the power company saying that parts of town would be without power around 5:30 Monday morning. You know, just a heads up. They didn't specifically say that we would be without power. Or that our neighborhood would have an outage. We inferred that we'd have an "interruption in service" because they actually called us to give us a heads up. I would like to meet the asshole who decided that having a ten minute outage Monday morning was a good idea. Should we do this on a Saturday when most/many people can sleep in and it doesn't matter if the alarm clock is all screwed up? Nah. Should they do it later in the week when people are back in the routine of getting up to go to work or school? Nope. Should they do it in the early afternoon when most people aren't even home and don't care? No way. No - we'll cut power to half the freakin' city right before everyone's alarm clock is going to go off. Awesome idea guys. Tell you what, maybe next time I'll swing over to your house and punch you in the balls first thing Monday morning. Deal?

And nothing much happened today. Old Boss was in meeting with customers all day so he wasn't even around. I'm expecting more ... things to happen tomorrow. Old Boss, New Boss, and their boss (they both have the same boss) are all supposed to be in the office tomorrow. They'll probably get together in various combinations (Ooh - math problem. If there are three people total and you must have at least two to have a conversation, how many possible combinations are there? The answer is four: AB, AC, BC, ABC. I just can't leave a math problem unsolved.). There's a slight chance I'll get dragged into some of those conversations (Follow-up question: What if there are four people? Answer: 11; AB, AC, BC, ABC, AD, BD, CD, ABD, ACD, BCD, ABCD. Final exam: What's the general form for this formula given n total people and at least two are necessary for a conversation?). Regardless of how it goes down, I'm real curious to see what happens. There's still a chance I could get screwed but I don't think that'll happen. I mean, unless Boss's Boss comes up with some reasoning from way out in left field.

I did get in quite the long conversation with the pharmacy late this afternoon. The company just changed providers - or, at least, the way things are done. I was expecting there would be problems. I had a refill we needed to pick up. Sue said she could stop on the way home and get it because she usually gets out before me. By 4:00 I had a voicemail from her at my desk saying there was an issue. I called her back and she told me that the pharmacy wanted $800 for this refill and that she didn't get it. I said that was the right call because it should have been more like $50 and not eight hundred freakin' dollars! After I got the details from her, I called the pharmacy to get the story and they told me the same thing Sue did. So I called the new prescription folks.

I don't know what the dude's problem was but the guy that answered the phone sounded kind of retarded. Turns out, yep - he's retarded. We talked for a good little bit and he screwed up a couple of things. For instance, he told me my maximum yearly out-of-pocket was just over $32,000. I said that sounded a mite high and he said something about that's what the computer was telling him.

Next up on the list was HR. I told the lady the story and she actually laughed when I got to the part about $32,000 because it was just ridiculous. She called the prescription people and conference called us all together. I told my story a third time to the new (non-retarded) prescription lady. The first thing she wanted to look into was the $32,000 because, I assume, that was the most ridiculous. Turns out, the retard from early was, in fact, reading the wrong line. That's how much prescription coverage I've consumed in total. I'm not real sure how you get those confused but the retard figured it out. Once that was solved the lady then looked to the $800 issue. That one she couldn't help with. Basically she said it was flat-out $800. By the time we were done it was nearly 5:00 and my doc had already split for the day. He was the next one to call to have the "Is there a cheaper generic drug as a replacement?" conversation. I left a message and will certainly be following up on this tomorrow. But, I mean, it's not like I've got to drop thirty-two grand - so that's something.

By the way, the if there are n people and at least two are necessary for a conversation, then there are [(2^n) - n - 1] possible combinations.

So I quit my job today. Sort of. One of them anyway. You know, if everything gets sorted out. Soooo, not really "quitting" then. But it's a snappy opening.

I went to talk to The Boss yesterday about the staffing issue. I felt we had a deal that I would come over to Big Important Program in mid-March part-time then come over full-time in April. Then I heard, not from The Boss, that the plan was instead to draft me full-time starting next Monday. I figured it was worth a chat to find out what was going on and to voice my concern over the plan. He and I talked for maybe 10 minutes. What didn't dawn on me until 10 minutes after I left was that he and I were seeing things differently. Where I thought we had a deal in place and, barring any unusual circumstances, that's the way it would be he was acting more like I was making a request and he'd see what he could do to fulfill it.

This morning I had a regularly scheduled meeting with The Boss and we talked about the staffing thing again. No - I wasn't going to let it go. Anyway, I told him it occurred to me that I saw it as a deal and he saw it as a request. He said that didn't sound too far off. A bit more chatting and it came down to him saying that I was still going to get pulled to BIP on Monday. Probably. He hadn't really been involved too much but it was likely. I said I'd still like to stick to original deal and that I still did think of it as an agreement between us. I didn't get dramatic or anything.

I thought about it off and on all day. Then, of course, I started thinking about all the slights - real or imagined - over the last three years. I then reined it in and thought that I should get a handle on it. What it came down to is that The Boss and I have different personalities. I think I'm limited in how good a score I can get in my reviews because what he sees as a deficiency I see as a core piece of who I am and am not going to change. We have come to an impasse.

I went to talk to New Boss and said I was thinking of transferring to his group. More talking. He said he'd be glad to have me move over. Then we talked about how to break it to (he would become) Old Boss. I didn't want to cause a lot of drama or make my life harder in the long run so it was important to handle it right ... or at least well enough. When I went to talk to Old Boss I said that New Boss has a position open that I think would be better for my career given where I want to be in a few years. I did not start a fight or use it as an excuse to bring up every minor slight. I just said I was doing it to advance my career.

Old Boss and New Boss have to talk it out and they both have to go talk to their boss. There's plenty of chance for things to change. Not to mention the fact that there is plenty of opportunity for things to screwed up. But I think it'll all get sorted out.