Well, a charming Christmas present - our management have screwed the pooch, and we are not included in the final round of bidding for the contract I'm working on, so the job will evaporate in May. There's a vague promise that 'some of us' might be moved to other contracts, but honestly that just feels like a feeble figleaf to hide their ineptness.
Oh well, at least I've got a few months to find somewhere else - not a great prospect for a 53 year old IT specialist though, I suspect this will get ugly.
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Monday, December 12, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Meet the new world, same as the old world
From the inimitable Eric Blair*:
When I first saw unemployed men at close quarters, the thing that horrified and amazed me was to find that many of them were ashamed of being unemployed. I was very ignorant, but not so ignorant as to imagine that when the loss of foreign markets pushes two million men out of work, those two million are any more to blame than the people who draw blanks in the Calcutta Sweep. But at that time nobody cared to admit that unemployment was inevitable, because this meant admitting that it would probably continue. The middle classes were still talking about ‘lazy idle loafers on the dole’ and saying that ‘these men could all find work if they wanted to’, and naturally these opinions percolated to the working class themselves. I remember the shock of astonishment it gave me, when I first
mingled with tramps and beggars, to find that a fair proportion, perhaps a quarter, of these beings whom I had been taught to regard as cynical parasites, were decent young miners and cotton-workers gazing at their destiny with the same sort of dumb amazement as an animal in a trap.
*aka George Orwell of course
When I first saw unemployed men at close quarters, the thing that horrified and amazed me was to find that many of them were ashamed of being unemployed. I was very ignorant, but not so ignorant as to imagine that when the loss of foreign markets pushes two million men out of work, those two million are any more to blame than the people who draw blanks in the Calcutta Sweep. But at that time nobody cared to admit that unemployment was inevitable, because this meant admitting that it would probably continue. The middle classes were still talking about ‘lazy idle loafers on the dole’ and saying that ‘these men could all find work if they wanted to’, and naturally these opinions percolated to the working class themselves. I remember the shock of astonishment it gave me, when I first
mingled with tramps and beggars, to find that a fair proportion, perhaps a quarter, of these beings whom I had been taught to regard as cynical parasites, were decent young miners and cotton-workers gazing at their destiny with the same sort of dumb amazement as an animal in a trap.
*aka George Orwell of course
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
Thank you, John
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
Thank you, John
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tougher than that
Well, great news and bad news.
First, the great news, despite medical predictions and all expectations, my mother seems to have recovered from her operation: her kidneys have revived and resumed function, her lungs seem clearer, she's conscious and speaking. Not sure how her heart is, but this seems to be immensely hopeful!
Apparently the Thompsons are even tougher than I thought.
I'd write more about it, but my heart is too full of relief and joy.
The not so good news, my wife got fired last Friday (last thing in the afternoon of course, have to get the whole day's labour from her first). This is more than a little unexpected, as her employer seemed to have a high regard for her, before he got hospitalised with his own serious complications (pneumonia, kidney failure & other stuff).
But apparently his substitute, untrained and insecure, felt threatened by her competence and training and talent, and insisted on her dismissal because 'he couldn't get along with her'. As far as I can tell, that mostly consisted of a complete inability to delegate any work to her or anyone else, and to self-manage by constant flirtation with the edge of disaster and putting himself under unnecessary pressure (the old Hero syndrome I've seen so much of in the IT industry, basically).
We also found today that her previous wages cheque had been bounced for lack of funds. She got to the bank and cashed it directly today, so it's apparently cashflow, not malice, but a fairly good sign that the business is deteriorating rapidly - the october accounts weren't even sent out til the end of November, so the cashflow problem is just going to snowball unless someone starts actually managing the business.
Karmic revenge doesn't normally operate that quickly :)
First, the great news, despite medical predictions and all expectations, my mother seems to have recovered from her operation: her kidneys have revived and resumed function, her lungs seem clearer, she's conscious and speaking. Not sure how her heart is, but this seems to be immensely hopeful!
Apparently the Thompsons are even tougher than I thought.
I'd write more about it, but my heart is too full of relief and joy.
The not so good news, my wife got fired last Friday (last thing in the afternoon of course, have to get the whole day's labour from her first). This is more than a little unexpected, as her employer seemed to have a high regard for her, before he got hospitalised with his own serious complications (pneumonia, kidney failure & other stuff).
But apparently his substitute, untrained and insecure, felt threatened by her competence and training and talent, and insisted on her dismissal because 'he couldn't get along with her'. As far as I can tell, that mostly consisted of a complete inability to delegate any work to her or anyone else, and to self-manage by constant flirtation with the edge of disaster and putting himself under unnecessary pressure (the old Hero syndrome I've seen so much of in the IT industry, basically).
We also found today that her previous wages cheque had been bounced for lack of funds. She got to the bank and cashed it directly today, so it's apparently cashflow, not malice, but a fairly good sign that the business is deteriorating rapidly - the october accounts weren't even sent out til the end of November, so the cashflow problem is just going to snowball unless someone starts actually managing the business.
Karmic revenge doesn't normally operate that quickly :)
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Business sucks
but small business sucks more, something I get periodic reminders of.
From Cat, of course, who gets the visceral reminders.
At her current job, her employer was hospitalised for pneumonia a month ago (plus kidney failure and other complications that havent been communicated), and is having a very shakey, slow recuperation - being an elderly (well older than me anyway!) diabetic smoker who doesn't keep up with his medication and regularly ODs on sugar, this probably isn't exactly astonishing, but it looks like he won't be up to daily appearances at the shop til maybe Valentines Day.
The problem with that is, he doesn't have a 2ic, and hasn't trained anyone to take over several of the more important bits of the job - like, ordering supplies, a fairly critical feature for floristry!, and sending out billing for regular contracts etc*. Worse than that, he has more-or-less delegated his authority to run the place to -two- people, one of his florists and the, umm, I'm not quite sure what her job is but I'd call her floor-manager.
One of the results of that is that things fall between the cracks regularly, but that is tolerable. More or less tolerable anyway.
The bigger problem is that neither is temperamentally suitable to manage - the floor manager is a wind-up merchant, someone who is perpetually agitated and tries to spread that agitation to everyone she works with, and is apparently feeling severely threatened by Cat (with her furrin experience an' book-larnin' an' stuff I guess). The senior florist, on the other hand, seems to only be able to work on the threshold of perpetual crisis - he puts off everything until the last minute, so is always putting himself under maximal pressure.
Of course, if he cocks up anything, what could be a minor & correctable hiccup turns into epic disaster, usually with knock-on effects on several other projects/items. I've worked with project managers like this, myself - briefly! - and I recall the enormous frustration and stress it generates.
How long Cat will last like this, I don't know. Possibly she will last til the owner returns, but it seems unlikely. She is talking about starting her own business: she perceives a market opening in the largest mall in the city, which has no floristry on offer, and if she can drum up some government grants for startup money, I think she'll try to arrange to get a stall or cart there to explore that.
-------------------------
*to be fair part of that problem is that he had to fire his bookkeeper for being crooked (and also enormously annoying), and hadn't found a replacement when he got laid low ... but he hadn't exactly made it a priority either.
From Cat, of course, who gets the visceral reminders.
At her current job, her employer was hospitalised for pneumonia a month ago (plus kidney failure and other complications that havent been communicated), and is having a very shakey, slow recuperation - being an elderly (well older than me anyway!) diabetic smoker who doesn't keep up with his medication and regularly ODs on sugar, this probably isn't exactly astonishing, but it looks like he won't be up to daily appearances at the shop til maybe Valentines Day.
The problem with that is, he doesn't have a 2ic, and hasn't trained anyone to take over several of the more important bits of the job - like, ordering supplies, a fairly critical feature for floristry!, and sending out billing for regular contracts etc*. Worse than that, he has more-or-less delegated his authority to run the place to -two- people, one of his florists and the, umm, I'm not quite sure what her job is but I'd call her floor-manager.
One of the results of that is that things fall between the cracks regularly, but that is tolerable. More or less tolerable anyway.
The bigger problem is that neither is temperamentally suitable to manage - the floor manager is a wind-up merchant, someone who is perpetually agitated and tries to spread that agitation to everyone she works with, and is apparently feeling severely threatened by Cat (with her furrin experience an' book-larnin' an' stuff I guess). The senior florist, on the other hand, seems to only be able to work on the threshold of perpetual crisis - he puts off everything until the last minute, so is always putting himself under maximal pressure.
Of course, if he cocks up anything, what could be a minor & correctable hiccup turns into epic disaster, usually with knock-on effects on several other projects/items. I've worked with project managers like this, myself - briefly! - and I recall the enormous frustration and stress it generates.
How long Cat will last like this, I don't know. Possibly she will last til the owner returns, but it seems unlikely. She is talking about starting her own business: she perceives a market opening in the largest mall in the city, which has no floristry on offer, and if she can drum up some government grants for startup money, I think she'll try to arrange to get a stall or cart there to explore that.
-------------------------
*to be fair part of that problem is that he had to fire his bookkeeper for being crooked (and also enormously annoying), and hadn't found a replacement when he got laid low ... but he hadn't exactly made it a priority either.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Well things are a bit busy here, as the other fulltime DBA ('S') is off in Florida this week, looking after his mother & father, after his Dad had a (mild) heart attack. I'm not sure what constitutes a mild heart attack - any nonfatal one? - but it can't be fun. So I'm trying to cover his work as well, making things a bit busier than usual.
Plus people seem to be having an attack of the stupids this week, as I keep getting calls referred to our team that have nothing to do with us - in some cases, wildly wide of the mark in fact. I suspect we're treated as a bit of a dumping ground for puzzle calls.
Which is nothing very new: it's always been the case that if an error or problem doesn't have a clearly identified home, everyone usually starts by blaming (a) the database, (b) the network, and (c) security, before actually thinking what might be the actual root cause. I don't mind a certain amount of this, but it seems to be getting a bit out of hand on this contract.
One thing I found both amusing and alarming, is that with the advent of our new boss a couple of months ago, the amount of stuff we are having to deal with has risen sharply, primarily because he is visibly not up to the job and has no real understanding of what we are doing, and no willingness to learn it.
He has decided that we need a 'Team Lead' to coordinate the three (or 2.5) of us, and approached the other DBA to get him to take this on. As this is unremunerated and unrewarded, I suggested he politely (or not) decline it, but as S is a lot younger and less cynical than me, he accepted it, and is now regretting it. Naturally what this has meant is that our boss has shoved all the responsibilities and reporting for our section onto S, increasing his workload.
He didn't approach me on this, which is probably wise - I'm not sure if he correctly assessed my attitude to the idea, or just prefers not to deal with me as foreign, old & cynical, or some other issue. This doesn't concern me greatly, I must say. Even if the role were official and remunerated, I wouldn't have been interested - I've been a manager a few times now, and I know that (a) I'm pretty crap at parts of it, and (b) I hate all of the role, it's not what interests me or what I enjoy in the least.
What does disturb me is that now I have (a) an unofficial Team Lead with no real authority or review, (b) A Site manager - the boss I'm referring to above - who is essentially uninterested, and (c) a Line manager in New Orleans, who is utterly and completely detached and almost unaware of my existence. The latter manager was originally instituted as an 'emergency' measure when they dismissed the New Orleans DBA manager, and drafted this guy in, as he was already manager of the Data Warehouse team, a closely related field.
In some ways I can see his problem - he's gotten a geopgraphically dispersed team* of 16 or 18 dumped in his lap, when he's already managing about a dozen direct reports (how big his overall existing team was, I dont know). This is asking an awful lot of anyone to manage. But my company, or his boss, need a firm kick up the arse about this, as it's been going on for almost 18 months, and essentially means the DBA group are completely unmanaged.
In that time, I have heard from him twice - once to remind me to put in an overdue timesheet, and once at annual review, which brought a whole new meaning to the word farce - as he has literally NO idea what I'm doing, or any of the details of my client, or indeed of my existence really, all he could do was parrot what the site manager had written. What the point of that was, other than to tick boxes for the HR department, really noone could say. None, of course.
I have no real expectation this will change in the next year, though - while our company pays loud and frequent lipservice to the notions of ethical behaviour and appropriate management, it has never shown any least sign of actual actions to back that up (having gone through the ethics process several times, I can attest to this at some and bitter length).
OH well, back to work
*using 'team' in a completely spurious fashion of course - we are in several locations, we are working on different contracts, we are performing some different functions, we never meet, we don't even share any work or techniques. How this makes a team is a mystery.
Plus people seem to be having an attack of the stupids this week, as I keep getting calls referred to our team that have nothing to do with us - in some cases, wildly wide of the mark in fact. I suspect we're treated as a bit of a dumping ground for puzzle calls.
Which is nothing very new: it's always been the case that if an error or problem doesn't have a clearly identified home, everyone usually starts by blaming (a) the database, (b) the network, and (c) security, before actually thinking what might be the actual root cause. I don't mind a certain amount of this, but it seems to be getting a bit out of hand on this contract.
One thing I found both amusing and alarming, is that with the advent of our new boss a couple of months ago, the amount of stuff we are having to deal with has risen sharply, primarily because he is visibly not up to the job and has no real understanding of what we are doing, and no willingness to learn it.
He has decided that we need a 'Team Lead' to coordinate the three (or 2.5) of us, and approached the other DBA to get him to take this on. As this is unremunerated and unrewarded, I suggested he politely (or not) decline it, but as S is a lot younger and less cynical than me, he accepted it, and is now regretting it. Naturally what this has meant is that our boss has shoved all the responsibilities and reporting for our section onto S, increasing his workload.
He didn't approach me on this, which is probably wise - I'm not sure if he correctly assessed my attitude to the idea, or just prefers not to deal with me as foreign, old & cynical, or some other issue. This doesn't concern me greatly, I must say. Even if the role were official and remunerated, I wouldn't have been interested - I've been a manager a few times now, and I know that (a) I'm pretty crap at parts of it, and (b) I hate all of the role, it's not what interests me or what I enjoy in the least.
What does disturb me is that now I have (a) an unofficial Team Lead with no real authority or review, (b) A Site manager - the boss I'm referring to above - who is essentially uninterested, and (c) a Line manager in New Orleans, who is utterly and completely detached and almost unaware of my existence. The latter manager was originally instituted as an 'emergency' measure when they dismissed the New Orleans DBA manager, and drafted this guy in, as he was already manager of the Data Warehouse team, a closely related field.
In some ways I can see his problem - he's gotten a geopgraphically dispersed team* of 16 or 18 dumped in his lap, when he's already managing about a dozen direct reports (how big his overall existing team was, I dont know). This is asking an awful lot of anyone to manage. But my company, or his boss, need a firm kick up the arse about this, as it's been going on for almost 18 months, and essentially means the DBA group are completely unmanaged.
In that time, I have heard from him twice - once to remind me to put in an overdue timesheet, and once at annual review, which brought a whole new meaning to the word farce - as he has literally NO idea what I'm doing, or any of the details of my client, or indeed of my existence really, all he could do was parrot what the site manager had written. What the point of that was, other than to tick boxes for the HR department, really noone could say. None, of course.
I have no real expectation this will change in the next year, though - while our company pays loud and frequent lipservice to the notions of ethical behaviour and appropriate management, it has never shown any least sign of actual actions to back that up (having gone through the ethics process several times, I can attest to this at some and bitter length).
OH well, back to work
*using 'team' in a completely spurious fashion of course - we are in several locations, we are working on different contracts, we are performing some different functions, we never meet, we don't even share any work or techniques. How this makes a team is a mystery.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Gearing up
Well probably not much from me this week - we're furiously packing & getting ready to move on Friday. We moved the last of the toy soldiers last night (hurrah!) - I wanted to handle all those myself for obvious reasons - and that feels like a large incubus to be rid of. The books are all packed and ready to go, the kitchen is mostly packed, the CDs & stuff are done, but it still feels like there is a ton to pack. Plus cleaning, although Cat has hired 2 of her friends to help do the cleanup, which I think is a good investment, given our lack of energy, time, and knees.
The new place is getting worked on this week, with the carpets being lifted, and the hardwood floors sanded & refinished with polyurethane, & I'm looking forward to seeing the result of that. We went and bought track lighting for the lounge - which is becoming my games room - as it has no lighting at all, just powerpoints. I guess it was lit with floor lamps previously, but it seems a very odd approach to me.
Mind you, I've noticed that all the houses I've seen in the US so far seem to be poorly lit: our current house has a massive lounge (well, 30x14 roughly) with a single light point down one end. Even with a couple of multi-bulb lamps in it, it feels dim and dingy at night. Not my idea of good living at all. I suppose this arose from the 70s when it was a way of economising on energy & cutting expenses, but it seems a needless pennypinching approach to me: simply turning off lights that you dont currently need will save more (and only having one TV would save twenty times as much energy of course).
Oh well, and today of course I'm trying to get ahead at work, to avoid being called in while I'm off doing the moving thing (as from tomorrow, through to Monday). Impossible really, but I can bash heads a bit to get ahead.
The new place is getting worked on this week, with the carpets being lifted, and the hardwood floors sanded & refinished with polyurethane, & I'm looking forward to seeing the result of that. We went and bought track lighting for the lounge - which is becoming my games room - as it has no lighting at all, just powerpoints. I guess it was lit with floor lamps previously, but it seems a very odd approach to me.
Mind you, I've noticed that all the houses I've seen in the US so far seem to be poorly lit: our current house has a massive lounge (well, 30x14 roughly) with a single light point down one end. Even with a couple of multi-bulb lamps in it, it feels dim and dingy at night. Not my idea of good living at all. I suppose this arose from the 70s when it was a way of economising on energy & cutting expenses, but it seems a needless pennypinching approach to me: simply turning off lights that you dont currently need will save more (and only having one TV would save twenty times as much energy of course).
Oh well, and today of course I'm trying to get ahead at work, to avoid being called in while I'm off doing the moving thing (as from tomorrow, through to Monday). Impossible really, but I can bash heads a bit to get ahead.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
A quick frenzy
Of course, today it has to be busy, with ridiculous meetings about reviewing an 'Incident' that everyone agrees we handled correctly (noone could answer why we were having the meeting, other than 'It's policy requirement'), and reviewing Naming Standards and Procedures - now there's a real barn-burner of an issue - after commissioning a consultancy to review our standards and report on them.
That latter wouldn't have been too bad, except the consultancy appears to have done a complete hack job, ignoring our current standards and just producing a 'standard template' that they recommend to everyone: and the standard template is (no surprise) absolute bollocks in various parts, and violates both company policy and (where it obtains) the Sarbanes-Oxley legal requirements (which is another piece of purblind idiocy produced by Congress, but that's neither here nor there at the moment).
Anyway, between that and the actual productive work, plus trying to ensure everything is ready for closing on our new house, it's totally manic today, so no great rant (silence in the cheap seats!!)
Hopefully will have a little more leisure to write tomorrow afternoon, after the closing.
That latter wouldn't have been too bad, except the consultancy appears to have done a complete hack job, ignoring our current standards and just producing a 'standard template' that they recommend to everyone: and the standard template is (no surprise) absolute bollocks in various parts, and violates both company policy and (where it obtains) the Sarbanes-Oxley legal requirements (which is another piece of purblind idiocy produced by Congress, but that's neither here nor there at the moment).
Anyway, between that and the actual productive work, plus trying to ensure everything is ready for closing on our new house, it's totally manic today, so no great rant (silence in the cheap seats!!)
Hopefully will have a little more leisure to write tomorrow afternoon, after the closing.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Catchup day
oops, cut off in mid-stride: a few emergencies erupted yesterday, and I thought I'd better hit publish as it didnt look like I'd get time to get to it.
As I was going to say before I so rudely interrupted myself :) - our moving day is set for Friday 9th, so we've got about a week after settlement day (30th) to have some people go in, repaint the bedroom, lift the carpets in the hall & 2 bedrooms and polish the hardwood floors underneath them, and fix some minor things we want changed (toilet needing reseating, electrical outlets needing upgrading, new shower head, picayune stuff but nice to get sorted out - and nice to own the house so we can, without having to ask permission!)
And it looks like another mad day today: had to spend a couple of hours last night fixing some headaches, and now in addition to the tidyup and paperwork (well, electronic, but it comes to the same thing), I need to chase up why this occurred (fortunately not my problem) and whether we caught it in time (definitely a potential problem). Oh well.
Cat applied for a couple of floristry jobs - one of which she didn't hear back from, oddly, as the woman seemed to be terrifically interested in all the new techniques she could offer: but she may have priced herself out of that one, or the woman may have reconsidered in light of the economic weather. The other she was offered but turned down, partly for the poor pay rate (not much over minimum wage) but mostly because 90% of the work would be funeral work as the shop is owned by a big funeral home chain - and unlike England the funeral work here is amazingly dull and unimaginative, very simple and repetitive and hardly better than production-line floristry.
However, the proprietor shop she's been working unpaid at for the last few months - which is definitely one of the 2 or 3 elite floristry places in the city - heard about her looking, and has offered her a parttime position, which is what she wanted. She won't be starting until mid-October, after we're moved in, which is definitely a Good Thing, as she has a lot of projects she want to get done by then.
Other than that, I am still feeling fantastic, released from the Dopey Prison of apnea. It's just, well, like dawn after nightfall, feeling so much more alert, and having energy to actually do things. Not a huge amount of energy, but anything is good: I've been able to increase the amount of daily exercise I'm getting, and cut down a bit on meal sizes, which is paying dividends in losing weight (slowly, but anything is good). Even the pestilentially annoying psoriasis seems to be clearing up (except for a particularly annoying patch on my scalp, under my hair, which seems to be resistant to everything: I'm considering napalm, or perhaps a mohawk, to expose it to the sunlight).
Oh, and my nose has started working, at least intermittently. After decades of not really smelling anything much at all, of a sudden I can - sometimes anyway - detect quite subtle small smells, which is wonderful .... sometimes! Of course most of that will be down to not smoking any more (wow, nearly 5 years since I stopped now), but blowing lots of warm wet air up my nose has done wonders to clear the congestion as well.
It has also definitely improved my humour - both my general mood, and my capacity to hang on to my temper and not fly off the handle. Probably hasn't improved my terrible puns and jokes though! In fact, it may have made them, well, more numerous if not worse in quality.
As I was going to say before I so rudely interrupted myself :) - our moving day is set for Friday 9th, so we've got about a week after settlement day (30th) to have some people go in, repaint the bedroom, lift the carpets in the hall & 2 bedrooms and polish the hardwood floors underneath them, and fix some minor things we want changed (toilet needing reseating, electrical outlets needing upgrading, new shower head, picayune stuff but nice to get sorted out - and nice to own the house so we can, without having to ask permission!)
And it looks like another mad day today: had to spend a couple of hours last night fixing some headaches, and now in addition to the tidyup and paperwork (well, electronic, but it comes to the same thing), I need to chase up why this occurred (fortunately not my problem) and whether we caught it in time (definitely a potential problem). Oh well.
Cat applied for a couple of floristry jobs - one of which she didn't hear back from, oddly, as the woman seemed to be terrifically interested in all the new techniques she could offer: but she may have priced herself out of that one, or the woman may have reconsidered in light of the economic weather. The other she was offered but turned down, partly for the poor pay rate (not much over minimum wage) but mostly because 90% of the work would be funeral work as the shop is owned by a big funeral home chain - and unlike England the funeral work here is amazingly dull and unimaginative, very simple and repetitive and hardly better than production-line floristry.
However, the proprietor shop she's been working unpaid at for the last few months - which is definitely one of the 2 or 3 elite floristry places in the city - heard about her looking, and has offered her a parttime position, which is what she wanted. She won't be starting until mid-October, after we're moved in, which is definitely a Good Thing, as she has a lot of projects she want to get done by then.
Other than that, I am still feeling fantastic, released from the Dopey Prison of apnea. It's just, well, like dawn after nightfall, feeling so much more alert, and having energy to actually do things. Not a huge amount of energy, but anything is good: I've been able to increase the amount of daily exercise I'm getting, and cut down a bit on meal sizes, which is paying dividends in losing weight (slowly, but anything is good). Even the pestilentially annoying psoriasis seems to be clearing up (except for a particularly annoying patch on my scalp, under my hair, which seems to be resistant to everything: I'm considering napalm, or perhaps a mohawk, to expose it to the sunlight).
Oh, and my nose has started working, at least intermittently. After decades of not really smelling anything much at all, of a sudden I can - sometimes anyway - detect quite subtle small smells, which is wonderful .... sometimes! Of course most of that will be down to not smoking any more (wow, nearly 5 years since I stopped now), but blowing lots of warm wet air up my nose has done wonders to clear the congestion as well.
It has also definitely improved my humour - both my general mood, and my capacity to hang on to my temper and not fly off the handle. Probably hasn't improved my terrible puns and jokes though! In fact, it may have made them, well, more numerous if not worse in quality.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Wrong again
Wow ... actually, apparently Hell is just having a phone. Or at least yesterday was devoted to phone-hell. I was working from home yesterday, partly in order to intermittently make calls in the morning to resolve various issues about our new house & other things: arranging a mover to give us a quote, setting up a handyman to do various bits of work, arranging for Cat & the handyman to have access to the house next week, calling IRS, calling Arkansas Tax Department, calling my doctors office to try and get a blood sample organised (four times, without success). This last was in fact my prime reason for working from home, I was aiming to go & get the bloodtest in the afternoon, not that it worked out, for some odd reason.
Aaaanyway, after all that, I got sucked into a pointless teleconference with some clients, some developers, and other IT staff, for 120 minutes, of which I was needed for maybe 2 minutes. Apparently the project manager feels a lot more important and valuable by sucking in any and all people who might be even peripherally involved into one titanic meeting, rather than several smaller (and shorter!) meetings that might be more efficient for everyone involved (except the project manager, naturally). Oh joy. And I have 4 more of these titanic meetings scheduled for the next 5 days (plus one that I declined for a time conflict).
Immediately after that, I had to join my regular pre-Change meeting to review changes scheduled for Thursday, which trundled on for half an hour. About five minutes after that, I got phoned up by two of our company's middle-managers (not my boss, others on his level more or less), and quizzed about technical details on a proposed project - however, the proposal had changed since I'd last seen it, and they didn't bother communicating that to me until halfway through the meeting, to endless confusion. They also seemed to expect me to read their minds about their intentions and desires.
The whole thing also raised a tricky ethical question about whether to provide what the client wants (i.e. makes us look good now), or what is actually in the best interests of the client longterm but appears initially less beneficial. Of course the logical thing would be to demonstrate this, but that is seen as undoable, for reasons not explained to me.
I deliberately punted* on providing a recommendation, as I didnt want anything to do with suggesting anything unethical, or anything contrary to our company's interests (or at least, the -managers- best interests, in terms of looking good: after all, by the time the longterm issues are apparent, they will be long-gone, and possibly our company will be as well).
After all that, my poor phone ear was buzzing and red.
Oh, and the work we want the handyman to do (as I dont think I've talked about that before), we want the master bedroom repainted, the hallway carpets lifted and the underlying hardwood floors repolished, and a few minor things (replacing antiquated power fittings in a couple of spots, securing & replacing a couple of other bits). We've deliberately left 10 days between the time we take possession, and our moving day, so that there is unoccupied time available for him to do the work: and we were fortunate enough to get a personal recommendation for this guy, from a woman at work who has just bought a house & had him do similar work for her.
*Heh, American sporting metaphor! Just meaning, to put off, to push away and defer - from gridiron, where a team will punt the ball in order to force the opposition further away from their goalline.
Aaaanyway, after all that, I got sucked into a pointless teleconference with some clients, some developers, and other IT staff, for 120 minutes, of which I was needed for maybe 2 minutes. Apparently the project manager feels a lot more important and valuable by sucking in any and all people who might be even peripherally involved into one titanic meeting, rather than several smaller (and shorter!) meetings that might be more efficient for everyone involved (except the project manager, naturally). Oh joy. And I have 4 more of these titanic meetings scheduled for the next 5 days (plus one that I declined for a time conflict).
Immediately after that, I had to join my regular pre-Change meeting to review changes scheduled for Thursday, which trundled on for half an hour. About five minutes after that, I got phoned up by two of our company's middle-managers (not my boss, others on his level more or less), and quizzed about technical details on a proposed project - however, the proposal had changed since I'd last seen it, and they didn't bother communicating that to me until halfway through the meeting, to endless confusion. They also seemed to expect me to read their minds about their intentions and desires.
The whole thing also raised a tricky ethical question about whether to provide what the client wants (i.e. makes us look good now), or what is actually in the best interests of the client longterm but appears initially less beneficial. Of course the logical thing would be to demonstrate this, but that is seen as undoable, for reasons not explained to me.
I deliberately punted* on providing a recommendation, as I didnt want anything to do with suggesting anything unethical, or anything contrary to our company's interests (or at least, the -managers- best interests, in terms of looking good: after all, by the time the longterm issues are apparent, they will be long-gone, and possibly our company will be as well).
After all that, my poor phone ear was buzzing and red.
Oh, and the work we want the handyman to do (as I dont think I've talked about that before), we want the master bedroom repainted, the hallway carpets lifted and the underlying hardwood floors repolished, and a few minor things (replacing antiquated power fittings in a couple of spots, securing & replacing a couple of other bits). We've deliberately left 10 days between the time we take possession, and our moving day, so that there is unoccupied time available for him to do the work: and we were fortunate enough to get a personal recommendation for this guy, from a woman at work who has just bought a house & had him do similar work for her.
*Heh, American sporting metaphor! Just meaning, to put off, to push away and defer - from gridiron, where a team will punt the ball in order to force the opposition further away from their goalline.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Egalitarianism
There was one incident that occurred during our house-hunt, that struck both Cat and I as a bit odd. We were in a car with a real-estate agent, Mike, who was driving, and Cat said she needed some more cigarettes & bottled water, so he stopped at a supermarket enroute our destination. Cat hopped out when he stopped, and went off to get what she needed, without a second thought - and Mike was flabbergasted. He had naturally assumed that, as clients, we would expect him to do the fetch & carry - and I suspect also to pay for it out of his pocket, tho I didnt ask.
It rather made me think about the whole way deferrence and superiority are treated here. In the UK, social deferrence was definitely structured around both class, rank and money, but primarily around class. I think Cat experienced this much more, and worse, than I did, as floristry is regarded there as a working-class profession, so all florists get treated as such (with perhaps a tiny minority of floral boutique designers who get treated as 'artistes'). Of course, shop-owners are pretty much the definition of bourgeousie, so are middle-class, and get to treat the serfs like scum if they so desire - and quite a few DO so desire, in fact for some I would have observed it is their primary cause for emerging from the cave they're pleased to call a bed, every morning.
As a result, Cat - who noone could ever accuse of lacking backbone or spirit - had an endless headache with employment, and got fired or encouraged to move on, many times: a total lack of respect for the despicable, plus the common Kiwi attitude of brutal egalitarianism, guaranteed that this would be a frequent outcome. Funnily enough, the two bosses (both women) who treated her well, she is still on close terms with, and did freelance work for even after moving on to other positions.
Which is not to say she had no fault in the matter, having her own authority-figure issues, but these were - to my eyes - enormously multiplied by the strict class/hierarchic (and patriarchal) attitudes that seemed to be universal.
I'd have to add, I had my own problems with these attitudes. Of course, being an IT worker and therefore something approaching a professional (now there's a subject to get me foaming and gibbering, but another day, another day), I was slotted into the comfy middle-class cardigan, but still supposed to show proper deference to those above - and to treat those below me with the appropriate panache and disdain. After all, how else do you know where you are, if you can't rain your contempt downwards?
Funnily enough, none of the janitors, secretaries or food-workers objected to being treated as just people - and til I gave up smoking, they were the bulk of the people I knew at that worksite (after that, working life got a lot lonelier). However, I know I made enemies through most of our company's hierarchy because - when they made their annual trip down to see us and assure us we'd get treated as 'part of the company' from now on - I would always ask pointed comments about contracts, performance of sales staff, the necessity of so many layers of management, and (especially) about the financial figures in the finance reports they presented so proudly.
Of course, they couldn't answer these - some because there was no acceptable answer, but in the case of finances, usually because they didnt actually understand the figures or what they actually showed. Often enough, neither did I, I know - but that's why I was asking: and sometimes the figures were such an obvious flimflam, I was trying to pry out some reason for why they were lying so badly.
I managed to mostly avoid the customers' management hierarchy, which is probably a good thing, but I am told I did create some annoyance, simply by not observing the proper protocol towards the CFO and CEO while in an elevator - what I did wrong, lord only knows, and could I care? Doubtless I just failed to kowtow to the right degree, or spoke to them offhandedly: as I couldn't pick either out of a police line-up anyway, I can't really say.
Aaaanyway, having wandered off on a massive tangent, what I started off on was, here in the USA I had thought they would be much more egalitarian (well, the whole race mess aside), and they are ... sort of. What gets deferrence here seems to be wealth and custom, that is, if you're paying someone it seems that you're meant to treat them as inferiors. I suppose this is the flipside of the supposed great service that is available in the US (and often, it really is).
Naturally, as good honest kiwis, we still tend to (or try to) treat everyone as our equals. I think we (all us kiwis) have tended to expect the same treatment back, and if that means the waitress doesn't jump when we snap our fingers, or the server looks us in the eye and calls us mate, or the food is a bit slower than we might want, well, that's just part of our culture.
It seems to cause real shock and surprise here, tho - for instance, both the estate agents we dealt with commented on how easy we were to work with, and what a pleasure it was: and at our favoured diners, we are now instantly recognised & treated as warmly as friends.
Up til now, it hasn't caused either of us problems at work - Cat hasn't been working, and as I'm working essentially as a team of one, there's noone much to offend except my site manager, and she was a gem. How this turns out now, as Cat is gearing up to start, and I've got a new site manager who is vastly more bureaucratic, and seems to lack even the simplest understanding of what the job is, well, I guess we'll just have to suck it and see.
It's still a badge I wear with pride, though, and I think it is something, paradoxically, that makes kiwis a touch better than other people :)
It rather made me think about the whole way deferrence and superiority are treated here. In the UK, social deferrence was definitely structured around both class, rank and money, but primarily around class. I think Cat experienced this much more, and worse, than I did, as floristry is regarded there as a working-class profession, so all florists get treated as such (with perhaps a tiny minority of floral boutique designers who get treated as 'artistes'). Of course, shop-owners are pretty much the definition of bourgeousie, so are middle-class, and get to treat the serfs like scum if they so desire - and quite a few DO so desire, in fact for some I would have observed it is their primary cause for emerging from the cave they're pleased to call a bed, every morning.
As a result, Cat - who noone could ever accuse of lacking backbone or spirit - had an endless headache with employment, and got fired or encouraged to move on, many times: a total lack of respect for the despicable, plus the common Kiwi attitude of brutal egalitarianism, guaranteed that this would be a frequent outcome. Funnily enough, the two bosses (both women) who treated her well, she is still on close terms with, and did freelance work for even after moving on to other positions.
Which is not to say she had no fault in the matter, having her own authority-figure issues, but these were - to my eyes - enormously multiplied by the strict class/hierarchic (and patriarchal) attitudes that seemed to be universal.
I'd have to add, I had my own problems with these attitudes. Of course, being an IT worker and therefore something approaching a professional (now there's a subject to get me foaming and gibbering, but another day, another day), I was slotted into the comfy middle-class cardigan, but still supposed to show proper deference to those above - and to treat those below me with the appropriate panache and disdain. After all, how else do you know where you are, if you can't rain your contempt downwards?
Funnily enough, none of the janitors, secretaries or food-workers objected to being treated as just people - and til I gave up smoking, they were the bulk of the people I knew at that worksite (after that, working life got a lot lonelier). However, I know I made enemies through most of our company's hierarchy because - when they made their annual trip down to see us and assure us we'd get treated as 'part of the company' from now on - I would always ask pointed comments about contracts, performance of sales staff, the necessity of so many layers of management, and (especially) about the financial figures in the finance reports they presented so proudly.
Of course, they couldn't answer these - some because there was no acceptable answer, but in the case of finances, usually because they didnt actually understand the figures or what they actually showed. Often enough, neither did I, I know - but that's why I was asking: and sometimes the figures were such an obvious flimflam, I was trying to pry out some reason for why they were lying so badly.
I managed to mostly avoid the customers' management hierarchy, which is probably a good thing, but I am told I did create some annoyance, simply by not observing the proper protocol towards the CFO and CEO while in an elevator - what I did wrong, lord only knows, and could I care? Doubtless I just failed to kowtow to the right degree, or spoke to them offhandedly: as I couldn't pick either out of a police line-up anyway, I can't really say.
Aaaanyway, having wandered off on a massive tangent, what I started off on was, here in the USA I had thought they would be much more egalitarian (well, the whole race mess aside), and they are ... sort of. What gets deferrence here seems to be wealth and custom, that is, if you're paying someone it seems that you're meant to treat them as inferiors. I suppose this is the flipside of the supposed great service that is available in the US (and often, it really is).
Naturally, as good honest kiwis, we still tend to (or try to) treat everyone as our equals. I think we (all us kiwis) have tended to expect the same treatment back, and if that means the waitress doesn't jump when we snap our fingers, or the server looks us in the eye and calls us mate, or the food is a bit slower than we might want, well, that's just part of our culture.
It seems to cause real shock and surprise here, tho - for instance, both the estate agents we dealt with commented on how easy we were to work with, and what a pleasure it was: and at our favoured diners, we are now instantly recognised & treated as warmly as friends.
Up til now, it hasn't caused either of us problems at work - Cat hasn't been working, and as I'm working essentially as a team of one, there's noone much to offend except my site manager, and she was a gem. How this turns out now, as Cat is gearing up to start, and I've got a new site manager who is vastly more bureaucratic, and seems to lack even the simplest understanding of what the job is, well, I guess we'll just have to suck it and see.
It's still a badge I wear with pride, though, and I think it is something, paradoxically, that makes kiwis a touch better than other people :)
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Meeting hell
Jesus, what is wrong with these people?
I send an email asking a simple question that should only need a one word answer, and he wants a half-hour meeting instead? I don't CARE how his application typically uses (or 'leverages' in his peculiar gibberish) Development & Quality Assurance environments, it's not my concern: I'm only paid to deal with Production environment, and wasting half an hour of my life listening to him expound on how marvellously clever his application is to be able to test things in a development enviroment before they are deployed to production** is not going to enhance my management of his database, or my ability to do my job.
And, in fact, seeing he accidentally stumbles out the answer I was looking for, near the end of his invitation - i.e. that they are going to handle data loading through application-specific interfaces, and I don't need to be involved in the data loading at all - I don't need to talk to him at all, it's just another friggin' database after all.
OK, end of rant - now to play nice with the client (or in this case, the dickhead the client is paying to install his application), write a polite reply & let him waste my time: it's paid for anyway, so how much can it matter. I wouldn't go off pop about this, except this is the fifth instance of this behavior in the last week, from various self-important software developers: and even that might be tolerable, except my new boss has introduced semi-daily morning meetings to review our status.
I say semi-daily because they are only scheduled for Monday, Wednesday and Friday: apparently if something goes wrong with our systems on a Tuesday or a Thursday he doesn't need to know. However, because they involve all the company's teams working on this contract - something over 40 people in all - simply getting everyone present or dialled in to the meeting, and giving the OK, is taking nearly half an hour - and god forbid if there should actually be problems to discuss.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
On an entirely different subject, we went back to look at the Humpty Dumpty house yesterday, with estate agent and builder in tow. Just as well, as a closer examination revealed many many more faults and problems than I had spotted on first inspection (although I think I can fairly claim to be a bit rattled & less than attentive then, for obvious reasons).
The plumbing would appear to need to be entirely replaced, along with almost all the downstairs walls and beams, and some of the joists where moisture has gotten in, on top of the deck & rear room needing to be entirely ripped down & redone, and on and on. What Rob (yes we had Bob the Builder :) said was, if you're paying more than $60-$70k, you're paying too much.
So, so much for that. We'll start looking more closely at some finished places that just need redecorating, now.
I send an email asking a simple question that should only need a one word answer, and he wants a half-hour meeting instead? I don't CARE how his application typically uses (or 'leverages' in his peculiar gibberish) Development & Quality Assurance environments, it's not my concern: I'm only paid to deal with Production environment, and wasting half an hour of my life listening to him expound on how marvellously clever his application is to be able to test things in a development enviroment before they are deployed to production** is not going to enhance my management of his database, or my ability to do my job.
And, in fact, seeing he accidentally stumbles out the answer I was looking for, near the end of his invitation - i.e. that they are going to handle data loading through application-specific interfaces, and I don't need to be involved in the data loading at all - I don't need to talk to him at all, it's just another friggin' database after all.
OK, end of rant - now to play nice with the client (or in this case, the dickhead the client is paying to install his application), write a polite reply & let him waste my time: it's paid for anyway, so how much can it matter. I wouldn't go off pop about this, except this is the fifth instance of this behavior in the last week, from various self-important software developers: and even that might be tolerable, except my new boss has introduced semi-daily morning meetings to review our status.
I say semi-daily because they are only scheduled for Monday, Wednesday and Friday: apparently if something goes wrong with our systems on a Tuesday or a Thursday he doesn't need to know. However, because they involve all the company's teams working on this contract - something over 40 people in all - simply getting everyone present or dialled in to the meeting, and giving the OK, is taking nearly half an hour - and god forbid if there should actually be problems to discuss.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
On an entirely different subject, we went back to look at the Humpty Dumpty house yesterday, with estate agent and builder in tow. Just as well, as a closer examination revealed many many more faults and problems than I had spotted on first inspection (although I think I can fairly claim to be a bit rattled & less than attentive then, for obvious reasons).
The plumbing would appear to need to be entirely replaced, along with almost all the downstairs walls and beams, and some of the joists where moisture has gotten in, on top of the deck & rear room needing to be entirely ripped down & redone, and on and on. What Rob (yes we had Bob the Builder :) said was, if you're paying more than $60-$70k, you're paying too much.
So, so much for that. We'll start looking more closely at some finished places that just need redecorating, now.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Job hunt
Another very busy day it seems: I guess the increase in meetings and paperwork guarantee a lot more of these than before, even if it is just so much make-work. Oh well, if they want to pay me to shift the hole from one side of the yard to the other, that's their prerogative. (I'm joking of course - tell me to do anything with a shovel and you're likely to have an emergency visit to a proctologist).
Cat is doing her unpaid work at the florist's place today, getting some more experience with American floristry, which is apparently quite strange and different from European floristry. Normally she'd do this on Friday, but we're planning to have that day devoted to house views. She's also applied for her first paid job here, which has her hyperventilating a bit: the whole experience of American employment seems incredibly fraught and treacherous, being so unregulated and leaving the employees so unprotected.
Still, I'm very glad that she's been able to start applying for jobs: that's a big hurdle to jump. Once she lands a job, I must see about union coverage for florists - although on past experience it will be dross (to be polite). Even in England, there was no coverage until you'd been at an employer for 12 months, which, given the heavy turnover with florist shops, almost noone was ever eligible.
With all the political brouhaha about the appalling american health system, it looks like one (at least) of the major terrors about employment here (health insurance & coverage) might be alleviated. Then all we need is a Labour Department with any teeth or method of enforcing the existing labor and industrial laws, and some regulators able to enforce the environmental laws, and things will be a bit less scarey :)
Of course, whether anything gets passed about that, it's still up in the air very much: I think it's likely, but by no means certain. Hmm, more on that another time, I need to pay attention to this meeting it seems.
Cat is doing her unpaid work at the florist's place today, getting some more experience with American floristry, which is apparently quite strange and different from European floristry. Normally she'd do this on Friday, but we're planning to have that day devoted to house views. She's also applied for her first paid job here, which has her hyperventilating a bit: the whole experience of American employment seems incredibly fraught and treacherous, being so unregulated and leaving the employees so unprotected.
Still, I'm very glad that she's been able to start applying for jobs: that's a big hurdle to jump. Once she lands a job, I must see about union coverage for florists - although on past experience it will be dross (to be polite). Even in England, there was no coverage until you'd been at an employer for 12 months, which, given the heavy turnover with florist shops, almost noone was ever eligible.
With all the political brouhaha about the appalling american health system, it looks like one (at least) of the major terrors about employment here (health insurance & coverage) might be alleviated. Then all we need is a Labour Department with any teeth or method of enforcing the existing labor and industrial laws, and some regulators able to enforce the environmental laws, and things will be a bit less scarey :)
Of course, whether anything gets passed about that, it's still up in the air very much: I think it's likely, but by no means certain. Hmm, more on that another time, I need to pay attention to this meeting it seems.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
As expected
Wow, what a day - almost lunchtime & I've barely had a moment to take a breath. Not that I'm getting much useful done, just meetings, meetings, meetings: one to sub for the client boss we more or less work for (or at least aim to please), one with some developers who have (they thought) been doing the DBA support work on a server*, and one with the monitoring guys (at last! after only 5 months of trying).
*And I have to say, if they thought they were doing DBA work on these databases, they've really had their thumbs up their posterior fundaments, because I've been doing it all, including noticing, oh, when they were about to run out of friggin' disk space and other minor items like that.
Never mind - lunchtime is also taken up, Cat has arranged for a viewing of the Grand Old Lady I mentioned yesterday, so we can see how much of a disaster - or otherwise - the interior is: lord knows the exterior needs a ton of work, aside from the (brand new) roof.
Then another BS 'team meeting' with the new boss and all the teams - of course, I'll be on the phone for this meeting as it's down in New Mexico, so I'm sure it will be deep and meaningful.
I'm starting to get really bothered about the new boss, in fact: I've asked him 3 times whether he wants to receive some reports his predecessor got automatically, without reply: and sent him my weekly report yesterday, with a couple of comments asking for feedback as to level of detail & specificity, stuff like that, and ... nada; not even acknowledgement.
I was fine for the last 12 months, having a line manager in N'awlins that never communicated with me at all (except for once when my timesheet was late), as at least the site manager was giving me guidance and, yanno, managing me: but having both of them playing the deaf&dumb game is extremely unpleasant. It's not as though I don't feel isolated and ignored already (god knows my first couple of months here rammed that home firmly), I really dont need more alienating behaviour.
Oh well, after that off to see the mortgage broker to fill in the paperwork & hand over all the bumph needed to back up the verbal OK he gave us last week.
& now to dash off for a sub, so I dont go crazy with low blood sugars.
Update
Well, been to see the Old Lady, and man is she a wreck inside. Would need complete eletrical refit (followed by relining the whole place), both bathrooms & kitchen completely redone, new ceilings, refinished floors, in fact almost everything: plus, as it's in the Old Historical District (I forget the name of it), it all is strictly limited as to what you can do with it, as it has to be kept closely in theme with the whole Victorian thing, which will hike the price further.
Oh well, it always looked like a bit of a pipe dream, at least we didn't dismiss it immediately but explored the possibility.
*And I have to say, if they thought they were doing DBA work on these databases, they've really had their thumbs up their posterior fundaments, because I've been doing it all, including noticing, oh, when they were about to run out of friggin' disk space and other minor items like that.
Never mind - lunchtime is also taken up, Cat has arranged for a viewing of the Grand Old Lady I mentioned yesterday, so we can see how much of a disaster - or otherwise - the interior is: lord knows the exterior needs a ton of work, aside from the (brand new) roof.
Then another BS 'team meeting' with the new boss and all the teams - of course, I'll be on the phone for this meeting as it's down in New Mexico, so I'm sure it will be deep and meaningful.
I'm starting to get really bothered about the new boss, in fact: I've asked him 3 times whether he wants to receive some reports his predecessor got automatically, without reply: and sent him my weekly report yesterday, with a couple of comments asking for feedback as to level of detail & specificity, stuff like that, and ... nada; not even acknowledgement.
I was fine for the last 12 months, having a line manager in N'awlins that never communicated with me at all (except for once when my timesheet was late), as at least the site manager was giving me guidance and, yanno, managing me: but having both of them playing the deaf&dumb game is extremely unpleasant. It's not as though I don't feel isolated and ignored already (god knows my first couple of months here rammed that home firmly), I really dont need more alienating behaviour.
Oh well, after that off to see the mortgage broker to fill in the paperwork & hand over all the bumph needed to back up the verbal OK he gave us last week.
& now to dash off for a sub, so I dont go crazy with low blood sugars.
Update
Well, been to see the Old Lady, and man is she a wreck inside. Would need complete eletrical refit (followed by relining the whole place), both bathrooms & kitchen completely redone, new ceilings, refinished floors, in fact almost everything: plus, as it's in the Old Historical District (I forget the name of it), it all is strictly limited as to what you can do with it, as it has to be kept closely in theme with the whole Victorian thing, which will hike the price further.
Oh well, it always looked like a bit of a pipe dream, at least we didn't dismiss it immediately but explored the possibility.
Monday, July 27, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Change is Good
Too tired yesterday
And been too busy today - the trouble with taking a holiday is the work that piles up in your absence. On top of that, new site manager, with no understanding of what we do or how it's managed. That would be fairly predictable, but the new one seems sadly addicted to form-filling, and meetings: the first communique I had from him was a weekly report that is to be filled out & sent in every Monday, so he can see what we're doing.
Given that my work is not really susceptible to being divided into weekly chunks, and I don't have projects with weekly milestones, I can see that I'll be expending some of my creative energies on this every week, to try and fit in.
Also, and to my extreme dismay, this includes a section on 'Business Opportunities' or somesuch, which, well .... that ain't me. If I see something that we could extend into, I will pass it onto my boss, but given the type of maintenance role I'm in, plus being located 500 miles from the users I deal with, the idea that I could come up with weekly or monthly business openings is just silly: plus, I ain't a salesman, and I ain't about to start being one, and any attempts to press me into that role is going to lead to a brief but forceful reply of simple Anglo-Saxon*, followed by a decided deterioration in interpersonal relations (probably from both sides).
And when I was mostly caught up with the emails (at least), I get sucked into an hour long teleconference (well, for me - 90% of the teams were there face to face), featuring endless somnolence inducing promulgations and declarations by our new site bosses (2 of them). It all made sense, but both displayed a talent for using 20 words where 3 would have done: and apparently this is going to be a regular feature (weekly no doubt), in order to familiarise the teams with each other.
Which might be fine for those who are face to face, but I have no idea even who 90% of the participants were (i.e. all those that didn't speak, and about half of those that did as well), so I didn't perceive any actual familiarisation going on: I suppose that is just meant to be part of the warm fuzzies we get by getting consulted by our bosses.
Wow, that was all fairly victriolic - I have to chalk that up to a combination of disappointment at losing a really great (and informal) boss, and bitter past experiences (many many experiences) of bosses who don't know how to manage people, just paper.
Cat appears to have gone into shock over actually getting our Green Cards ?! - I'm not sure why, but the prospect of actually having to get a job at this point seems to be seriously freaking her out: I guess because she hadn't really identified what she wants to do now - she has a fairly serious longterm aim of setting up her own business in the interstices between floristry, home decoration, and botanical art (I think that's the best description anyway), but how to get there from here, and whether Little Rock is the right Here, is yet to be determined.
I daresay she'll come up with something, tho: it's too important to her goals, for her to remain stuck for long.
* or not, there seems to be vigorous debate over the point
And been too busy today - the trouble with taking a holiday is the work that piles up in your absence. On top of that, new site manager, with no understanding of what we do or how it's managed. That would be fairly predictable, but the new one seems sadly addicted to form-filling, and meetings: the first communique I had from him was a weekly report that is to be filled out & sent in every Monday, so he can see what we're doing.
Given that my work is not really susceptible to being divided into weekly chunks, and I don't have projects with weekly milestones, I can see that I'll be expending some of my creative energies on this every week, to try and fit in.
Also, and to my extreme dismay, this includes a section on 'Business Opportunities' or somesuch, which, well .... that ain't me. If I see something that we could extend into, I will pass it onto my boss, but given the type of maintenance role I'm in, plus being located 500 miles from the users I deal with, the idea that I could come up with weekly or monthly business openings is just silly: plus, I ain't a salesman, and I ain't about to start being one, and any attempts to press me into that role is going to lead to a brief but forceful reply of simple Anglo-Saxon*, followed by a decided deterioration in interpersonal relations (probably from both sides).
And when I was mostly caught up with the emails (at least), I get sucked into an hour long teleconference (well, for me - 90% of the teams were there face to face), featuring endless somnolence inducing promulgations and declarations by our new site bosses (2 of them). It all made sense, but both displayed a talent for using 20 words where 3 would have done: and apparently this is going to be a regular feature (weekly no doubt), in order to familiarise the teams with each other.
Which might be fine for those who are face to face, but I have no idea even who 90% of the participants were (i.e. all those that didn't speak, and about half of those that did as well), so I didn't perceive any actual familiarisation going on: I suppose that is just meant to be part of the warm fuzzies we get by getting consulted by our bosses.
Wow, that was all fairly victriolic - I have to chalk that up to a combination of disappointment at losing a really great (and informal) boss, and bitter past experiences (many many experiences) of bosses who don't know how to manage people, just paper.
Cat appears to have gone into shock over actually getting our Green Cards ?! - I'm not sure why, but the prospect of actually having to get a job at this point seems to be seriously freaking her out: I guess because she hadn't really identified what she wants to do now - she has a fairly serious longterm aim of setting up her own business in the interstices between floristry, home decoration, and botanical art (I think that's the best description anyway), but how to get there from here, and whether Little Rock is the right Here, is yet to be determined.
I daresay she'll come up with something, tho: it's too important to her goals, for her to remain stuck for long.
* or not, there seems to be vigorous debate over the point
Friday, July 3, 2009
Slipped
Damn, missed a day - oh well, that's how it goes. Thursday is my busiest day, as that is the day that the Change Committee approves or disapproves changes to the Production systems - and my job is limited to the production systems, not development or QA. As a result, Thursday is usually frenzied with applying the changes once they are approved.
On top of that, everyone has Friday off, so I got a ton of requests for people wanting things done before they took their 4th of July holiday.
Plus, to add a real cherry to the cake, our client is spinning off a subsidiary into a separate entity, and some genius decided that this should be timed for the 4th of July weekend, so last night I was up til 1 a.m. making backups of databases so they could be handed over to the new entity (so they get a copy of the relevant records/history to start with). Oh well, nice to be busy for a change, in all honesty: and I should get time off to make up for it at some later stage.
And for some good news, I got to talk to Jeanne last night - they've moved her to a ward, from intensive care (a good sign), so mobile phones & landlines are allowed. She sounded pretty weak, and a bit confused at times, but it was wonderful to hear her voice.
And she reminded me that I hadn't really written or talked about Obama, yet - and I should, at some greater length than this, but I have to say: we were immensely proud when he was elected, and we pretty much still feel that way. Of course, we did damnall to help except buy some bumper stickers, but without voting rights, we were limited - I did phone the Democratic Party HQ a couple of times and left voicemail, asking them if they wanted volunteers or assistance, but never got a reply .... eh, in Arkansas I guess being a Democrat is a bit of a hopeless endeavour.
We've still got our bumper stickers on the car, and it's funny, you see a very few others in Little Rock, and it's a bit like, oh, being a Porsche owner* - you recognise eachother as being part of a special tribe, and smile and wave at eachother reflexively. Mostly, tho, everyone here seems to be apolitical, or vehemently, insanely (and very loudly) anti-Obama: several times I've had to endure cafe patrons berating their companions (from several tables away, on occasion) about how he's a crazy Muslim, stupid, cowardly, socialist, oh you name it ... they won't stop at any smear, the crueller and more vicious, the better.
Anyway, that's a rant for another time, now I have to break into my day off, and go do some more work - of course it turns out there were things that got forgotten to be authorised, for last nights' change, so now the poor schmucks on the ground have to cover for poor project management. Well, that's a one-note song that has been sung for at least the last century - are there any really good project managers in the world?
*No, I'm not kidding, Porsche owners really think of themselves like that. Pretentious snobs, yes, but tribal pretentious snobs ... not just sad owners of "ass-engined Nazi bathtubs", in one of my favourite quotes (from PJ O'Rourke, "Ferrari refutes the downfall of the West")
On top of that, everyone has Friday off, so I got a ton of requests for people wanting things done before they took their 4th of July holiday.
Plus, to add a real cherry to the cake, our client is spinning off a subsidiary into a separate entity, and some genius decided that this should be timed for the 4th of July weekend, so last night I was up til 1 a.m. making backups of databases so they could be handed over to the new entity (so they get a copy of the relevant records/history to start with). Oh well, nice to be busy for a change, in all honesty: and I should get time off to make up for it at some later stage.
And for some good news, I got to talk to Jeanne last night - they've moved her to a ward, from intensive care (a good sign), so mobile phones & landlines are allowed. She sounded pretty weak, and a bit confused at times, but it was wonderful to hear her voice.
And she reminded me that I hadn't really written or talked about Obama, yet - and I should, at some greater length than this, but I have to say: we were immensely proud when he was elected, and we pretty much still feel that way. Of course, we did damnall to help except buy some bumper stickers, but without voting rights, we were limited - I did phone the Democratic Party HQ a couple of times and left voicemail, asking them if they wanted volunteers or assistance, but never got a reply .... eh, in Arkansas I guess being a Democrat is a bit of a hopeless endeavour.
We've still got our bumper stickers on the car, and it's funny, you see a very few others in Little Rock, and it's a bit like, oh, being a Porsche owner* - you recognise eachother as being part of a special tribe, and smile and wave at eachother reflexively. Mostly, tho, everyone here seems to be apolitical, or vehemently, insanely (and very loudly) anti-Obama: several times I've had to endure cafe patrons berating their companions (from several tables away, on occasion) about how he's a crazy Muslim, stupid, cowardly, socialist, oh you name it ... they won't stop at any smear, the crueller and more vicious, the better.
Anyway, that's a rant for another time, now I have to break into my day off, and go do some more work - of course it turns out there were things that got forgotten to be authorised, for last nights' change, so now the poor schmucks on the ground have to cover for poor project management. Well, that's a one-note song that has been sung for at least the last century - are there any really good project managers in the world?
*No, I'm not kidding, Porsche owners really think of themselves like that. Pretentious snobs, yes, but tribal pretentious snobs ... not just sad owners of "ass-engined Nazi bathtubs", in one of my favourite quotes (from PJ O'Rourke, "Ferrari refutes the downfall of the West")
Monday, June 22, 2009
Hands
Well, I had something of a shock on Friday afternoon. I'd better preface this a bit:
We had an announcement from the company a while ago that it was intended to off-shore a proportion of the US jobs to our Indian subcompany, in order to reduce the cost of support, and offer cheaper contracts*: however, it was stipulated that this replacement would be done by natural wastage (i.e. people resigning or moving), and there would not be lay-offs made to cause this.
As part of taking on Indian contractors & getting them up to speed, we had a contractor join us: he came over to the US for a couple of weeks on-the-spot training, then went back to India, where he is working Indian hours (i.e. from midnight-ish onwards, on our clock). As we didn't have anything like enough work to justify another team member, we were told this would just be a small part of what he is handling, & it was implied he would work on other contracts. This seemed a good idea, as it meant we had someone who could handle out-of-hours emergency calls without one of us getting dragged out of bed at 4 a.m.
However, on Friday, one of our DBA's was laid off, officially for 'financial considerations', and the Indian contractor moved into that slot.
On one hand, this seems like an egregious violation of the company's policy, and, if not illegal, certainly unethical on the face of it.
On the other hand, we all know the person being replaced has been recalcitrant and unwilling to cooperate or share knowledge, or really be helpful to newer team members or the team manager, so you have to wonder how real the so-called financial considerations are, or whether it's just a polite way of avoiding the truth: someone simply no longer willing to do the job.
On the third hand, do I really want to trust working for a company that would do this (although it is true, I have no idea whether the person concerned may have had warning(s) about this beforehand)?
On the fourth hand, who am I kidding? Trust? Trust any employer in this market? It's not New Zealand, there's no presumption of fair play here, and people would just look at you as though you grew a 2nd head if you talked otherwise.
Well, something to mull over I guess. I haven't said (& wouldn't suggest), but it seems to me the guy concerned could appeal to our company's Ethics Committee about this, and have a good chance of having his appeal upheld - assuming that the company actually says what it means about its' Ethics which ... well, let me only say, it turned out to be incredibly flexible when I relied on it in the UK.
We had an announcement from the company a while ago that it was intended to off-shore a proportion of the US jobs to our Indian subcompany, in order to reduce the cost of support, and offer cheaper contracts*: however, it was stipulated that this replacement would be done by natural wastage (i.e. people resigning or moving), and there would not be lay-offs made to cause this.
As part of taking on Indian contractors & getting them up to speed, we had a contractor join us: he came over to the US for a couple of weeks on-the-spot training, then went back to India, where he is working Indian hours (i.e. from midnight-ish onwards, on our clock). As we didn't have anything like enough work to justify another team member, we were told this would just be a small part of what he is handling, & it was implied he would work on other contracts. This seemed a good idea, as it meant we had someone who could handle out-of-hours emergency calls without one of us getting dragged out of bed at 4 a.m.
However, on Friday, one of our DBA's was laid off, officially for 'financial considerations', and the Indian contractor moved into that slot.
On one hand, this seems like an egregious violation of the company's policy, and, if not illegal, certainly unethical on the face of it.
On the other hand, we all know the person being replaced has been recalcitrant and unwilling to cooperate or share knowledge, or really be helpful to newer team members or the team manager, so you have to wonder how real the so-called financial considerations are, or whether it's just a polite way of avoiding the truth: someone simply no longer willing to do the job.
On the third hand, do I really want to trust working for a company that would do this (although it is true, I have no idea whether the person concerned may have had warning(s) about this beforehand)?
On the fourth hand, who am I kidding? Trust? Trust any employer in this market? It's not New Zealand, there's no presumption of fair play here, and people would just look at you as though you grew a 2nd head if you talked otherwise.
Well, something to mull over I guess. I haven't said (& wouldn't suggest), but it seems to me the guy concerned could appeal to our company's Ethics Committee about this, and have a good chance of having his appeal upheld - assuming that the company actually says what it means about its' Ethics which ... well, let me only say, it turned out to be incredibly flexible when I relied on it in the UK.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Tuesdayitis
Well, not so much to say today - yesterday got wrapped up again in a continuation of the problem from Sunday, so for once a busy busy day (altho not as bad as poor S, who got back from holiday yesterday, joined me on the problem, and then got stuck with it til 1 a.m this morning, when it finally got fixed .... not actually our problem of course, but everyone always points at the database first, whenever anything goes wrong: this is like a law of nature, in NZ, the UK and here, because it's big and identifiable, and it's the endpoint of most systems, so a natural target).
I still have quite a few problems with the systems here - the Texas ones in particular - as they belonged to a (now-defunct) firm that has been bought out more than once, before winding up as part of our current client: as a result they are exceptionally old and cranky by IT standards. The worst of it, tho, is that when they got set up, whoever did it followed none of the standard procedures and layouts, and did some frankly, really weird things in the setup.
As a result, whenever I have to troubleshoot, it's always an adventure trying to find out where everything is - I am gradually getting it all documented for my own purposes - the previous DBAs did have it documented in a fashion, but I've had endless grief trying to find this and understand it when in an emergency.
The usual IT stuff, grumble grumble moan about your predecessors and the network group :)
On the bright side, the TV repair guy is due today - it will be nice to have this reliable again. For the last 3 weeks, we can watch about 90 minutes' worth of TV before it gets 'warm' and then starts giving everything a neon-green overlay. After that, you can carry on watching, but it's pretty damn surreal. It's sorta OK for stuff that isn't too visual & depends more on the talking (like most news & news analysis, things on the history channels, stuff like that), but most drama & comedies are just ... too strange.
Mind you, I caught the last half of 2001: a Space Oddyssey, and it made more sense than before :)
Cat is going through her phone book, advising everyone of her new mobile phone number, as we got around to dumping our AT&T phones & picked up new ones from a company that doesn't charge us a daily $1 just to have the phone service. Which reminds me, I must email y'all with our mobile numbers, and the new landline number as well (just trying to cut AT&T out of my life as much as possible, which brings a smile to my face all in itself).
We're also trying to come to grips with the medical insurance/ medical bills system here, which is just horrible. I mean, we have what is called good coverage, courtesy of my employment contract, but the simplest of things, like trying to match bills against insurance claims & trying to find out what we need to pay, is just an endless paperchase, with numerous complicated phone calls to the insurance company. Oh well, welcome to Capitalism in the worst way - free enterprise it definitely aint.
Enough griping for one day, I'll get back to work!
I still have quite a few problems with the systems here - the Texas ones in particular - as they belonged to a (now-defunct) firm that has been bought out more than once, before winding up as part of our current client: as a result they are exceptionally old and cranky by IT standards. The worst of it, tho, is that when they got set up, whoever did it followed none of the standard procedures and layouts, and did some frankly, really weird things in the setup.
As a result, whenever I have to troubleshoot, it's always an adventure trying to find out where everything is - I am gradually getting it all documented for my own purposes - the previous DBAs did have it documented in a fashion, but I've had endless grief trying to find this and understand it when in an emergency.
The usual IT stuff, grumble grumble moan about your predecessors and the network group :)
On the bright side, the TV repair guy is due today - it will be nice to have this reliable again. For the last 3 weeks, we can watch about 90 minutes' worth of TV before it gets 'warm' and then starts giving everything a neon-green overlay. After that, you can carry on watching, but it's pretty damn surreal. It's sorta OK for stuff that isn't too visual & depends more on the talking (like most news & news analysis, things on the history channels, stuff like that), but most drama & comedies are just ... too strange.
Mind you, I caught the last half of 2001: a Space Oddyssey, and it made more sense than before :)
Cat is going through her phone book, advising everyone of her new mobile phone number, as we got around to dumping our AT&T phones & picked up new ones from a company that doesn't charge us a daily $1 just to have the phone service. Which reminds me, I must email y'all with our mobile numbers, and the new landline number as well (just trying to cut AT&T out of my life as much as possible, which brings a smile to my face all in itself).
We're also trying to come to grips with the medical insurance/ medical bills system here, which is just horrible. I mean, we have what is called good coverage, courtesy of my employment contract, but the simplest of things, like trying to match bills against insurance claims & trying to find out what we need to pay, is just an endless paperchase, with numerous complicated phone calls to the insurance company. Oh well, welcome to Capitalism in the worst way - free enterprise it definitely aint.
Enough griping for one day, I'll get back to work!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Bit of a bust
Although that title is a bit misleading: Friday certainly went well, we went out to a new place - well, new to us - Acadia, which is located up in Hillcrest (one of the posh bits of town, occupying one of the hills). The restaurant is quite lovely, with a series of outdoor decks spilling down the side of the building, woven amongst several trees, with the whole decorated with fairy lights all over. The inside looked pretty impressive, but we - of course - chose to sit outside.
And we had been granted a great night for it, neither too hot&sticky, nor rainy - the rain threatened a few times, but never actually delivered. I don't know how busy it usually is (when I first spotted it 12 months ago, it was packed out), but on Friday they managed to fill all the outside tables (6 or 7), but there was noone seated inside (I guess at least 12 tables), so I guess they are hurting as much as any restaurant.
Amazingly, the restaurant actually lived up to the location, for once - so many restaurants with spectacular locations or views seem to use those as an excuse to be ordinary, or worse. Here the service was impeccable, and the food both interesting and delicious. I had possibly the best Caesar salad I've ever tasted, and a nicely-done breast of duck on the strangest casserole I've ever encountered - more like shredded potato with bacon and mushroom, quite delicious. Cat's scallops were also, she said, delicious (I declined the offer of a taste, feeling about shellfish as I do).
We also had several glasses of dessert wine with our meal (having long abandoned any pretensions to 'good taste' in wine, and all that wine-bluff stuff, we now just drink what we like, and the hell with developing our palates). Of course, this wasn't actually the wisest of choices, as I wound up paying for it the next day.
Sadly, in my case it seems high-sugar alcoholic drinks exact a disproportionate revenge the next day, so I spent most of Saturday feeling quite hungover and ill. Mind you, as Cat got me DVDs of The Sopranos, I could just sit & watch some of those and vege out, which kinda fitted in with my capabilities for the day.
Sunday, unfortunately, I got a phone call at 8 a.m. for work, and had to spend the day in a mixture of working, and waiting for others to fix things so I could do another step. This staggered on until 6:15 p.m., in a most frustrating fashion. If I could have just done my bit, it would only have amounted to a couple of hours of actual work, but of course, things don't work like that.
We did get out at one point to look at an Open Home nearby - someone had gone the extra mile and delivered flyers in all the letterboxes inviting people to come and see it, and find out about 100% financing and 'buying the house at less than market price'. I have to say, wow - what a con job. The couple had obviously bought the place to do a quick flip - tidy it up, give it a quickie facelift, and then sell it for a profit. Talk about bad timing for that manouevre!
The job that they had done was so obviously a completely superifical one, done to the lowest standards - a nasty mid-brown mushroom paint job, the cheapest of carpets, missing handles, and so on. Not that there weren't some nice points to the house, but overall a fairly cramped 3 bedroom house with a nice lounge & no dining room. Then there was the price - $181,000. At that point I just about laughed out loud, as it is so completely unreasonable in the current market. For less than this ($179k), I saw a -very- nicely finished 4 bedroom place with office, playroom and large fully-landscaped & fenced yard, in a nicer part of town ... and that was 2 months ago, so if it's still on the market it's price will have fallen.
I mean, seriously, house prices are just in free-fall all over the US. I'm quite happy to hold off buying for another six months, as I think they'll just keep falling for at least that long. Around then, we can start looking at foreclosures, as these are usually so much cheaper: true, the banks can be harder to negotiate with than private owners, but they are also not emotionally invested, and once the property has been on the market for a while as a foreclosure, you can use the same sort of pressure on the bank - i.e. show them how much they are losing each month it doesn't sell, as a persuasion to cut the price for a certain sale. Or so the theory goes, anyway ...
Oh well, on the brighter side, the 2nd series of True Blood has just started on TV, so we were agog to see that. We were riveted by the first series, so much so that we went and bought all the books the series is loosely based on, and devoured them in short order. I have to say, the books are actually less substantial & thoroughly thought-out than the TV series (which is already deviating a fair distance from the underlying source). Of course, the TV series is made by the brilliant Alan Ball (of Six Foot Under fame), which is why I gave it a look in the first place, & it's not surprising that it is rife with so many levels of meaning and subtext.
And we had been granted a great night for it, neither too hot&sticky, nor rainy - the rain threatened a few times, but never actually delivered. I don't know how busy it usually is (when I first spotted it 12 months ago, it was packed out), but on Friday they managed to fill all the outside tables (6 or 7), but there was noone seated inside (I guess at least 12 tables), so I guess they are hurting as much as any restaurant.
Amazingly, the restaurant actually lived up to the location, for once - so many restaurants with spectacular locations or views seem to use those as an excuse to be ordinary, or worse. Here the service was impeccable, and the food both interesting and delicious. I had possibly the best Caesar salad I've ever tasted, and a nicely-done breast of duck on the strangest casserole I've ever encountered - more like shredded potato with bacon and mushroom, quite delicious. Cat's scallops were also, she said, delicious (I declined the offer of a taste, feeling about shellfish as I do).
We also had several glasses of dessert wine with our meal (having long abandoned any pretensions to 'good taste' in wine, and all that wine-bluff stuff, we now just drink what we like, and the hell with developing our palates). Of course, this wasn't actually the wisest of choices, as I wound up paying for it the next day.
Sadly, in my case it seems high-sugar alcoholic drinks exact a disproportionate revenge the next day, so I spent most of Saturday feeling quite hungover and ill. Mind you, as Cat got me DVDs of The Sopranos, I could just sit & watch some of those and vege out, which kinda fitted in with my capabilities for the day.
Sunday, unfortunately, I got a phone call at 8 a.m. for work, and had to spend the day in a mixture of working, and waiting for others to fix things so I could do another step. This staggered on until 6:15 p.m., in a most frustrating fashion. If I could have just done my bit, it would only have amounted to a couple of hours of actual work, but of course, things don't work like that.
We did get out at one point to look at an Open Home nearby - someone had gone the extra mile and delivered flyers in all the letterboxes inviting people to come and see it, and find out about 100% financing and 'buying the house at less than market price'. I have to say, wow - what a con job. The couple had obviously bought the place to do a quick flip - tidy it up, give it a quickie facelift, and then sell it for a profit. Talk about bad timing for that manouevre!
The job that they had done was so obviously a completely superifical one, done to the lowest standards - a nasty mid-brown mushroom paint job, the cheapest of carpets, missing handles, and so on. Not that there weren't some nice points to the house, but overall a fairly cramped 3 bedroom house with a nice lounge & no dining room. Then there was the price - $181,000. At that point I just about laughed out loud, as it is so completely unreasonable in the current market. For less than this ($179k), I saw a -very- nicely finished 4 bedroom place with office, playroom and large fully-landscaped & fenced yard, in a nicer part of town ... and that was 2 months ago, so if it's still on the market it's price will have fallen.
I mean, seriously, house prices are just in free-fall all over the US. I'm quite happy to hold off buying for another six months, as I think they'll just keep falling for at least that long. Around then, we can start looking at foreclosures, as these are usually so much cheaper: true, the banks can be harder to negotiate with than private owners, but they are also not emotionally invested, and once the property has been on the market for a while as a foreclosure, you can use the same sort of pressure on the bank - i.e. show them how much they are losing each month it doesn't sell, as a persuasion to cut the price for a certain sale. Or so the theory goes, anyway ...
Oh well, on the brighter side, the 2nd series of True Blood has just started on TV, so we were agog to see that. We were riveted by the first series, so much so that we went and bought all the books the series is loosely based on, and devoured them in short order. I have to say, the books are actually less substantial & thoroughly thought-out than the TV series (which is already deviating a fair distance from the underlying source). Of course, the TV series is made by the brilliant Alan Ball (of Six Foot Under fame), which is why I gave it a look in the first place, & it's not surprising that it is rife with so many levels of meaning and subtext.
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