Explosive Logorrhea

I am officially ahead of schedule. I met with Dick today to finally get his crap recorded correctly. I mean, just because I left him a voicemail, told him face-to-face to call me, sent him an email, and repeated all of that - well, that's no reason to contact me. Finally one of the guys in charge of this little exercise said that maybe Dick should call me. And then he did. We spent a couple hours working on all the numbers and got it in the best shape we can with the info we have. We didn't figure there was much more we could do at this point - and it may be weeks or months before we can real nail some things down - so we headed over to the The Man. Dick and I laid out the numbers for all the people in the room and they were more or less satisfied with them. At least as a first pass. After that was done, I asked them point blank "Now, I'm out next week. As far as I know, I don't have any action items that I can take care of before I head out." We discussed it for a bit and, sure enough, there wasn't anything I really needed to take care of. Sure, there's a couple of things I might could do - but if I don't, there's no real problem. They're pretty much optional.

I have a meeting tomorrow morning to review my document for Project One. That's the document that includes the diagram that Pippi went and screwed around with. My one, original copy that was stashed in my working directory. I had to invite her to the meeting. If she says anything about the diagram, then I might ... seriously loose my cool. I've got this little statistical survey I like to keep up on in situations like this "I wonder how many violent blows from a blunt object it would take until (1) that person is unconscious, (2) that person is dead, and (3) that person's skull is a puddle of jelly." I'm using a 95% confidence interval and a mostly linear regression. You know, maybe I should put up the Excel sheet with the plots and the data and the macros.

I'm doing so well on scheduled work, I may actually get to take off early tomorrow. It would mean I have to skip the crappy meeting I have at 2:00. This is the meeting where The Boss is going to tell us all about the annual charity drive. It's United Way. It's always United Way. I don't give to the United Way - and not just because I'm kind of an a-hole. No, UW doesn't actually do any charity work. The only thing UW does is cut a check to the people that actually do the work. Naturally, they take a cut of the money for doing so. Oh, and they do a lot of charity drives. So if you want to give to a charity and you have one in mind, I think you're better off giving directly to that charity instead of having UW take its cut. Yeah, I've heard their arguments about why it's better to go through them and I don't buy it. Anyway, I think I can ditch.

The week of hell is ... not so bad. Surprisingly. I was pretty well expecting to get screwed and end up working a sixty-hour week or something. I put in a couple of long days but then I got to come home on time today. In fact, I think I might even be ahead of the schedule I set for myself. Which is good because I'm going to be way behind real soon now. I'm taking next week off and I'm sure that's going to have an impact.

First off, there's that document on Project One. Well, OK, there's two documents on Project One, but I didn't feel like working on the other one. The first document, the one I've actually written things for, has gone through a couple of iterations. On the first draft, I asked everyone who would care how much detail they wanted in it. I didn't really care what the answer was, I just wanted to be sure I wasn't going to waste too much time writing a five-hundred page document when they only wanted five pages. I made the first draft, we had a meeting, I did exactly what everyone agreed needed to be done, and got a boatload of complaints. "Oh, that's not enough detail." "We want the next level down." "Put more stuff in there." So I've been working on doing the next level of detail. The downside is that each level increases the workload exponentially. For the first level, it's two or three pages. For the second level, which is where the first draft was, it's about 10 to 15 pages. For the third level, it's up in the thirties. I don't think I'm going to let them ask about the fourth level. The answer will have to be "Ummm ... no." I scheduled another review for Friday to go over it again. I seriously want to tie this off. If nothing else, I need to get a review in before I'm gone for a week and the long weekend for the Fourth. Because if we go to that without a review, it'll drag on for an extra month since no-one will remember a damned thing about what we were doing or why.

Next was getting things together for Project Two. That's the thing in October. We wrote up a boatload of questions that our crew are going to be asking next week. As I reviewed the presentation (several of us went over it to be sure everything important was in there), I thought to two or three other things that were like, "Oh, yeah, and if this part isn't handled right, well, we're screwed. I don't think we'll get arrested or shot or anything ... but we should probably ask just to be sure." So we had a little talk about that. I'm personally invested in the whole "no arrests or bullet wounds" requirement. That's one of those "non-negotiable" items in my book.

Finally, there was good old Project Three. I was supposed to figure out how much money and time it would take to do some work. OK, the first step is find out what work needs to be done. Then figure out how much of it there really is. Then figure out how we would try to do it. Then figure out how many people we had to do it. And then I could figure out how much time and money that would all take. Turns out - a lot. But I don't have to be done with it for awhile. So I'm technically ahead. But Dick, from a number of meetings over the last week or two, needs some help putting his stuff into the right format. That means I'm doing one and half times, minimum, of what I should be doing. I'm going to go show my numbers to the Man tomorrow - but I haven't heard from Dick. I tried to get ahold of him today and he ... ducked out or something. Dick.

Just two more days until I get some time off. That'll be nice. Maybe the temp will say below 100 (including the heat index). A week without 8:00 am or 4:00 pm meetings. Nobody calling me asking if I can throw something together in an hour that should take a day. Nobody asking me if something is done yet. Nobody saying crazy shit like "Remember all those iron-clad assumptions we told you to take to the bank and that would never change? Guess what?"

The other day I was in a meeting with Pippi (yes, she's still around). She's working on something related to my document for Project One. She gave a presentation about what her plan was for moving forward. Thing is, she's been working on this for months and hadn't actually moved forward. I made my first draft of my document and, near as I can tell, the only forward progress I've seen is stuff she's copied out of my document (which is fine because it's general stuff and we all need to be on the same page with this).

Anyway, she had a slide that had my diagram on it. It's a good diagram. She had months to make her own diagram, which I would have used, but she didn't. Now she has to use mine. Of course, she'll still piss and moan about certain details of the diagram but she didn't make it. So the diagram is up there and everyone in the meeting have a good conversation about the consequences of the diagram. No problem. Then I noticed there was a slight difference on what she had put on the screen compared to my last version of the diagram. She had made a change.

I recalled that she asked where that diagram was located on the network last week. I told her it was in my working directory, then told her the specific path, but that it hadn't really been "published" yet. It's in my working directory meaning "I'm still working on it." I see the diagram on the projector and a question occurs to me: Being as the diagram up there is clearly the same Visio drawing I used and not some "cartoonish" version of it, did Pippi screw with my original version or did she make a copy of it?

Tuesday I was working on my document, closing a few things out, and I remembered to check on the diagram. I open my one and only copy in my working directory ... and the bitch had changed it. You don't go into someone's working directory and start fucking around with files. I found this while there was a meeting in the same room, which Pippi was attending. I had to sit there and seriously calm myself down. Mostly because I had no other idea what all else she had done to it and now I had to go check everything over. So there's an hour of my life I'll never get back. I was too, um, blinded by rage to think clearly at the time, but I should work on protecting those files. Make them read only, change the security access provisions, perhaps some sort of pop-up that if anyone tries to access my working files then it will shout "DO NOT FUCK WITH ANOTHER MAN'S FILES!"

I put in eleven hours today. Or so. I left just long enough to run down the street and grab a sandwich. Other than that, it was meetings, work, talking to people about work, then working, another meeting or two, and - finally - some end-of-the-day work. Tomorrow looks to be about the same. On one hand I did get the October trip today ... sort of. I mean, I'm in the "leadership" chain but my responsibilities are somewhat nebulous. It's another one of the things where I'm not supposed to do technical work. We haven't named any staff - well, certainly not nearly what we need. There's two of us right now. We'll need something like eight to ten. We have a ton of questions for the customer. For some of the questions, if the answer is "no" or "probably not" or "it doesn't work like that" well then, we can't go play. We may end up scrubbing the whole damned thing anyway. Honestly, I think I'm OK with that. If it's something we must do, then I want to (one of) the one(s) in charge. But if we don't have to go, I'm perfectly fine with staying the hell home and not putting myself and my team through hell to pull yet another rabbit right out of our asses. I'm pretty sure I know how this is going to go down.

Also, it was hotter than Hell today. When I came home, the outdoor thermometer was reading just under 100 ... with about 80% humidity. That's a lot of damned humidity at that temp. We had a citronella candle sitting outside on the patio table. We've had quite a few visitors over the last few weeks, so I picked up one of those big three-wick citronella pots at the Home Depot. It worked pretty well - not 100%, but helped keep those little annoying bastards away. So the candle pot was sitting out all day and it got hot enough to melt the damned thing. The wicks are buried under a sheet of wax (can't even see them anymore) and the wax started running out the bottom of the pot thing. The best part is that tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter. Painfully bright sunshine all day long. Dewpoint pushing 80. Humidity enough to suck the breath out of your lungs through our skin (an unpleasant sensation, to say the least). Today I almost started sweating just walking to my car. I'll grant that I could lose a couple of pounds, but I don't usually starting dripping with sweat from a five minute walk across the parking lot. Unless, of course, the parking lot is hot enough that the asphalt becomes a sort of black lava pit of death.

A couple of days ago, it started getting pretty warm up here with a good bit of humidity. Of course, back then it was only in the mid-80s. That first day though, I kind of liked it. After the bitterly cold winter we had, it was kind of nice to be a little warmer than comfortable. For a day. The second day I was already bitching about it. But that first day was nice.

This week is going to suuuuuck. Maybe even suh-diddly- uck. Here's how it is:

We heard that there's going to be another trip around October or so. It will be very similar to the trip I went on in March. Except for the fact that October will be an even bigger goat-roping exercise. We've got a certain amount of work to do and not nearly enough time to do it. Being I have some experience with this sort of thing, I asked if I could be in charge of this one. I sort of ended up with the last one but it wasn't what you might called a planned thing. I thought it would go a lot smoother this time if I just took it over from the start. I talked with the appropriate people to get the ball rolling on that. Thing is, I've got this other program that's just getting started (that's the one where I had to go talk to Dick). The Boss is worried about how much time I may have to commit to the other program so he wants to be sure I have plenty to time to devote to the right things.

I didn't know what my assignment(s) would be for the other program and neither did The Boss. We had a meeting Friday afternoon where all that would be laid out. So ... I got screwed. Well, technically, everybody got screwed and I was neither more nor less screwed than anyone else. It's another thing where we've got to put together a lot of stuff in a really short amount of time. And by "really short" I mean like "two weeks, tops". Of course, I'm taking next week off, so it really means I've got to get to the first marker by the end of the week. Now, it's probably only a day or two's worth of real work - but the trick is I need to get ahold of the right people. They have to give me info (after they work it out) so that I can get that data integrated into my work. Lord only knows how long that will actually take.

Here's where it gets fun though: I've got a couple of documents that I'm supposed to be putting together for my Primary Program. I offered The Boss a bet that if I could get both of those documents closed out by the end of this week, then I would get to be in charge of the October trip. He wasn't in a betting mood, but he did say that closing those guys out would go a long ways towards convincing everyone I can handle the workload. Of course, this whole conversation took place before my meeting on Friday so neither of us knew just what was going down - hence the whole "gambling" aspect. Thus, if I really want the October trip, then I really need to close out those two documents and do right by the other program.

I've already told Sue that I'll be working late pretty much every day this week. Which worked out fine because she's on the later shift most days this week too. Could turn in to one of those fifty or sixty hour weeks. After that, it's still going to be be hectic, but not near like this week. Oh, and pretty much the rest of the summer is going to be rough. Fall might be a little better - but probably not. Even if I don't get the lead on the October trip, there's still a real chance I'm going to be supporting it and probably have to get my ass on a plane.

So here's what the guy did the other day that pissed me off. Let's call him Dick (If I change my mind on him later, I'll upgrade him to "Richard" ... but he's "Dick" for now.). Anyway, a program manager I know and another guy I worked with are trying to land some new business. I got called in because the thing they're trying to do just so happens to be one of my areas of expertise (No, it's not "going blind with rage at the slightest provocation" ... that's more of my hobby, really. I mean, I'm pretty good at it, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go pro.). Dick is there with the other two guys, so there's four of us in the meeting. Dick is kind of an expert on a related area of technology. Fair enough, I think, we can use him on this. We start talking about what it is we're trying to do, laying out the broad strokes in our goals. Dick gets up to the white board and starts drawing boxes and laying out the general architecture. So far so good.

Then Dick starts writing down functions that we have to perform. He makes some nominal separation about where those functions will live. We all pretty much agree - it's early enough in the process that there's no point in getting too tied up in the details. Anyway, one of the functions he writes down is the one particular thing that I know quite a lot about and about which he doesn't know jack. During the part where we were taking some guesses at how long it would take to do all this, he points to The Function and says "I have no idea how long this will take." OK, no problem. He's never done it before and really knows nothing about it. I tell him I'm familiar with it (and explain how I know this so he knows I'm not totally blowing smoke) and that it's not that big of a deal. He goes on talking. Never really acknowledges I'm even in the room.

A little later, maybe a half-hour or so, we circle back to the "estimating work" part of the conversation and, once more, he says he doesn't know how much work it'll take to do The Function. This time I get up, walk to the white board, and draw a simple box diagram showing how the damned thing works. I point to each box, give a one or two sentence description of what's contained in it, and then a rough estimate on what it takes. Dick was quiet while I talked and wrote then he got up and went blithely on. Pretty much ignoring me again.

Twenty minutes later it happened again. Dick says he doesn't have the slightest clue what The Function will take to finish. Now, bear in mind that my little diagram, with explanation, is still on the board not a foot from where he's pointing. So I decided that they just didn't want to hear what I had to say. The worst part of it is, I know he's going to fuck it up. Not only that, I know of at least three places he'll fuck it up and have to learn the hard way. There may be more - sort of depends on how many times he decides that home-brew shit is better than, say, looking up the answer in the book (Yeah, the book I have on my desk. The book I told him I have. The book I told him I have and that he should read because it has all those things in there.).

I talked to The Boss about this. Seems Dick is from the other part (half?) of the company and there's some sort of institutionalized pissing contest between his side and mine. I don't know if he has taken up that banner and decided that he doesn't need any help from some dirty engineer from the other side or if he's just a plain old Dick. Could be a mix. There seems to be a good chance I'm gonna have to throw down with Dick. At the very least, I need to talk to the two guys I know, who were the ones who brought Dick in on this but probably on someone else's recommendation, and see what their take on it is. We have a couple more meetings on Friday. We'll see if he's still Dick or if I can upgrade him to Richard. My bet is he's still a Dick.

Yeah, sorry about that. Been a little busy and totally blew off blogging for the last couple of days.

Sunday afternoon we had a couple of people over for dinner. I grilled. Burgers and brats. I hate brats, but I grilled 'em anyway. Last batch I did up didn't seem to cook quite all the way through. I mean, I left them on the grill until they popped and figured that was a pretty good indication of doneness. But no. So this time I left them bastards on there until they popped, turned black on all sides, and confessed to several infractions of the Geneva convention. They were sure as hell done this time. Actually, the people that ate them said they were good. I don't know ... 'cause I hate brats. Anyway, they hung around until about 8:00. After that we had to clean up and stuff, so I punked out on the blog.

Monday I thought was going to be a normal - possibly even quiet - day at work. It wasn't. In fact, I didn't get home until almost 6:00. Bear in mind that I only have abou ta 10 minute drive home, so I was pretty much at work the entire time. I had a meeting at 4:00 (I didn't get the invite until mid-morning Monday). It dragged on and on for almost two hours. There was no really reason for that to happen. The meeting started out well enough. We started talking about this new effort so there was a lot of basic questions. As we go on, there's a guy there who's supposed ot know something. I'm not so sure of that anymore. I'm fairly certain that working with him is going to piss me off. I may go into detail later if that turns out to be true.

Plus you add in the cold medicine I've had to take (Sue as well) in the evenings and not only did I not have time, I was stoned. On Tylenol Night-Time Cold & sinus. Wonderful - miracle! - drug that.

Today was the last day of class. We actually got done early - around noon. It was way too early to just knock off, so I headed back to the office. For the most part, the day went OK. Well, except for the problem with a sinus infection. I felt the back of my throat starting to get wacky, like it usually does right before I get really for-reals dog sick. Knowing that the following morning was my last day of class (and being as I totally punked out on the last class I was signed up for), I decided to be proactive. Two big shots of Tylenol Cold & Sinus and then, well, it was time for some sleep. I did manage to wake up this morning (even on time!) and headed over to class. I choked down a couple of Day-Quil before I headed out. All day long, I felt like a junkie that's been pulled over by the cops. "Come on, just hold your shit together a little longer ..." I made it through class without the whole "Do you need to pee in a cup for HR?" question. I figured today had a slightly higher chance of that being as (1) there were many many managers in the class with me and (2) we were actually in the same building as HR.

When I made it back to my desk this afternoon, I didn't find too much crap waiting on me. I had managed to stay on top of my email through class - either before class or over lunch break. I didn't have to field too many emails from home. The downside is that The Boss asked me to write up a summary of the class and tool when it was over. I was supposed to send it to him, His Boss, and all the three or four people who worked for His Boss. I ended up spending an hour writing the damned thing. First I had to compress a three-day class into a page or so email. Second, I had to have two sections so that people that didn't care about the details (I'm guessing that would be most of the people on the "To:" list) could read the "Executive Summary" and skip the crap they didn't care about. But I also didn't want to miss any of the big items. Things like "Oh, by the way, if we decide to use this ... uh, all the computers catch fire and explode" or something like that. Put more work into that email and I'm not really expecting most people to read it. Awesome.

Well, I've already taken another big dose of night-time cold meds, so I'm gonna go pass out now. I think I've got this thing whipped, but I've still got to ride out the last bit of it.