Another week, another boss

It appears the new boss really is the corporate hexagon, not just in wanting weekly written reports: we had a meeting of all the teams he supervises, to 'let the teams get to know each other' on Thursday .. of course, I just dialed in, and as almost none of the team members said anything (or got much chance to, to be honest), it didn't actually advance that cause at all. Possibly it worked better for all the people sitting in the same room in Albuquerque.

The most alarming thing about the meeting was probably the new boss(es) both urging how important meetings are, and how we should be having more of them to "get things organised". This bodes very ill - in my experience, meetings are what you do instead of getting things organised, or done, and are an excuse to bloat customer expenses, avoid responsibility, and provide the illusion of performance & management for managers who don't understand what they're managing.

In fact, I would have to say that 95% of all meetings, and 99% of those running more than 30 minutes, are a complete waste of time, from my experience. Typically when something is achieved, the meeting is dominated by exchanges between 2 or 3 people at most, and should have been limited to those people. The others are then included as a CYA manouevre, so they can't claim not to have been told about whatever it is (except of course they fell asleep or mentally wandered off, not being involved, and didnt actually take it in).

If I sound somewhat exercised over the whole topic, well, it's a plague I've been fighting all my working life, and it seems to be insidiously spreading - and the prospect of a boss who wants lots of meetings just makes my blood run cold. The last year has been a real blessing in that regard, my last boss wanted to be involved with all the emails, so she never needed weekly briefings as to where we are up to, on any topic, and didn't do meetings for the most part, just one on one phone calls. The only meeting she did was a fortnightly chinwag for the DBA's - primarily so we could sort out any confusions or issues between us, which was about all that was needed.

Oh well, other than doing my nut over new managers, had a pretty quiet weekend. Cat went to lunch yesterday with our nextdoor neighbour, Holly, & afterwards to dinner-theatre (Well matinee I suppose) - very indifferent, so I was happy to have missed it. Afterwards we went around a few of the open homes (the lunch thing ran late so we didn't have much time to see many)

- a cheap one very close to here, done up to the dernier cris of fashion, & will doubtless sell in days because of that
- a slightly more expensive one, obviously been given a very quick one-over by the current owners (lick of paint on the walls primarily): Cat thought it had potential, but it seemed boxey & in need of major fixing with layout, and the back yard was small, and horribly overlooked
- another in the same price range, nicely done & not needing work, with a great landscaped back yard with tons of privacy, and a great deck. The bedrooms were a bit small (hard to see one as a wargames room), but otherwise the only drawback Cat saw was that it was too well done, nothing left needing to be done to it (I dont see this as a drawback, personally! But Cat would really want a bargain fixer-upper that she could remodel to her heart's content).

Oh, and my right calf has been swollen for the last few days, with sharp pains running up it - I think it's just cellulitis again, as it's diminishing of its' own accord, but I'm planning to see a doctor about it tomorrow: never hurts to double-check in case it's PAD or something of that ilk, plus I haven't seen any doctor in six months, so it's kinda due anyway.