The agony of the bureaucrat
This hit my inbox this afternoon:
As announced in a recent [employee newsletter], the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which requires employers such as [DullGrayCorporation International] to report each employee’s ethnicity and race, has changed the way this data is collected. Up until now, human resources staff made a visual identification; [wait, you were just EYEBALLING us?!] now, employees may self-identify [that’s better. I want to be a Balinese princess].
Self-identification is voluntary [whew!]. Refusal to provide this information will not result in any adverse treatment. However, [DullGrayCorporation International] is subject to certain governmental recordkeeping and reporting requirements for the administration of civil rights laws and regulations [I get it. Fewer WASPs, more wogs, please]. In the event an employee chooses not to self-identify, human resources will make a visual identification [will there be a lineup?].
Information that is provided will be kept confidential and will only be used in accordance with the provisions of applicable laws, executive orders and regulations, including those that require the information to be summarized and reported to the federal government for civil rights enforcement. When reported, data will not identify any specific individual.
If you wish to self-identify your race and ethnicity, please complete your selection by [coupla weeks].
And, no, I’m not going to self-identify as something exotic just to screw with them. My lifestyle of afterhours sloth and profligacy is dependent on this crummy job, thenk yew.
I actually feel for HR on this one. They try to recruit ethnics, they really do. This is a research and engineering firm — women and black people aren’t exactly drawn to engineering careers. I was going to say “minorities,” but of course the Research Division is the United Fricking Nations up in there. We need an Affirmative Action program just to squeeze a few white American guys into the labs.
At one time, our building had a single person of color, a female secretary. She finally begged the Art Department to leave her alone. We were using her in so many corporate photo shoots, we were wearing her down.
June 29, 2007 — 4:15 pm
Comments: 16
Slack
I am in such shit.
My work skills were forged in the crucible of short, white-hot deadlines with enormous scary monsters behind them. Magazine work. Support material for speeches. High profile (at least in my little corner of cubicleland), fast turnaround…but, frankly, not all that intellectually demanding. This is my productive place.
Now I’ve drawn one that rests on all my weaknesses. Long and open ended (pff, I’ll do it tomorrow), much coding and script-writing (what, I can’t watch television?!), just me and the client with no third-party oversight (they don’t call me ‘weasel’ for my silky brown pelt). In addition, the client is that potent combination of important and stupid.
I’ve kicked this one down the road for a year, and now it’s back and it’s madder’n hell. I’ve promised to deliver a module a week until August. It’s Tuesday, and so far I have managed to write the email promising to deliver a module a week until August.
I am in such shit.
I’ve pulled off bigger miracles, but just in case, I’m hauling my fantasy weapon out of mothballs — an illness. I’ve never had one. Not a big one. Everyone is allowed one big sick per career, right? I need something big enough to chase the work away, but not likely to result in fraud charges if it isn’t quite true.
So a car accident or cancer is right out. I need debilitating but not newsworthy.
I’m thinking some kind of intestinal trouble. Because, let’s face it, the last thing your boss wants to hear about is your colon.
Blood in the stools? Irritable bowel syndrome? I’m open to suggestions here.
June 19, 2007 — 5:24 pm
Comments: 22
Londinium or bust
What does the “or bust” construction mean, exactly? “If I do not reach my intended destination, I will physically explode in some way”? I don’t know. I’ve never known. Forget I said it.
I had hoped work would be a leisurely stretch before my holiday, but some stupid piece of shit job blew up in my face this morning and I chased it the rest of the day. Oh, well. A quick note before I retire, then.
Most Boston-to-London flights are overnighters, arriving right in the teeth of the London morning commute. That sort of flight is easier to catch on the Boston end, but hell on the London end. I don’t sleep well on planes; I showed up punchy and fizzy and spent the whole first day hoping that more than usually tactless things don’t come out of my mouth. Tactlessness is, as you might imagine, a problem for me.
Finally, we found a flight that leaves in the morning and arrives at Heathrow around nine at night. Perfect — just enough time to drive home, settle in, drink a bottle of fizz, eat a meal (toad in the hole. My favorite!) and fall into a deep, weaselicious dream.
But the Boston end? Not so nice.
Still, I prefer to front-load my pain. Who was it said that drunkenness would be moral if you could endure the hangover first? It wasn’t me, but I fundamentally agree: payment first. Then pleasure.
My flight leaves at nine. Not bad. But I have to get a bus to the airport, per their schedule. And I have to get a cab to the bus. And the cab company won’t let me pre-book because it’s a short trip, but they won’t guarantee me a cab because I don’t pre-book. (Yes, I have friends. I wouldn’t dream of waking them in the wee hours to drive me, which is partly why they’re still my friends. Despite that whole tactlessness thing).
So here’s how it goes down: alarm goes off at three in the morning. I get dressed, pack my toothbrush and call a cab for 4:30. The cats begin acting especially cute but very sad, the knowing little bastards, so me and my luggage move out onto the lawn to wait. The cab is late. It is always late. They didn’t take my number, so there’s no way I can know if the cabby is lost and I’m screwed. This is — this ALWAYS is — the low point of the day. I treat myself to a dram of stomach acid. And possibly half a milligram of Xanax.
The cab arrives and drives the short hop to the bus station. (A cab ride all the way in to Logan would add several hundred bucks to the round trip. I could do it, but it would hurt). The bus station is dark. There’s usually a moon. And a pair of young lovers, or a very old lady, or scruffy college students, or all of these things waiting for the Logan bus. It feels poetical. I miss my stupid cats.
The bus ride into Boston is dark but sparkly. I feel like That Girl. I take a lot of artsy, blurry photos out the window. The line at the ticket counter…well, this isn’t Christmas, so maybe not so bad this time. I’m starting to enjoy myself, but I miss my stupid cats.
I saunter around the Gate 33 area. Have a nasty cup of Starbucks airport blend. Borrow a cup of electricity from Massport to charge up all my shit, if I can find an empty outlet. Start to get excited. Miss stupid cats.
The flight East is magic: you fly into the planet’s rotation. The flight is six hours, but the clock says twelve. So the whole day is compressed into cartoon time. They feed us a lot; keeps us quiet. So we go from the rosy fingers of dawn to the scarlet imprint of twilight in less time than it takes to work the morning shift.
Get me! I’m a jet setter!
Miss my stupid cats already.
This is going to be great!
May 14, 2007 — 6:45 pm
Comments: 7
Nertz to you
No, not you…them. You know. Them.
I’m sitting in the lobby of the building next door, soaking up a lovely five-bar wifi signal. I haven’t been over here for ages, but I used to work in this building. So half the people walking by are, like, “hey, Weasel! Where you been?”
“Oh, you know. Over there somewhere. I’m here to steal your wifi.”
“Great! Help yourself.”
And I might, too. I got a new laptop battery for my birthday, which untethers me considerable. O, I have slipped the surly bonds of cubicle.
Yeah. Some time in the recent past, I had a birthday. I’m not going to tell you exactly when. It’s not that I don’t trust you — gosh, you guys are the bestest minions a weasel ever had. Only, I’m one of those paranoid types. Date of birth, mother’s maiden name…brrr. Kryptonite. I believe there’s a bot out there right this minute crawling the web, one measly singularity shy of stitching it all together; sweasel.com plus alt.support.pee-shy plus the Class of ’78 High School Reunion Committee plus my recent credit card records equals…well, I don’t know, exactly. I’m not in a hurry to find out.
The battery came from a place that reconditions them on the cheap. I’m very pleased. They promise substantially longer battery life than a manufacturer’s original battery at about a third of the cost. The instructions recommend completely charging and discharging a new battery at least five times to get it up to the full charge. I’m on cycle #3 at the moment, and currently getting about three hours a go.
Have you ever opened up a laptop battery? Inside, there are…well, batteries. Like regular old rechargeable batteries, taped together in sequence. How the manufacturers have the gall to charge upwards of a Franklin for that is anybody’s guess. I suspect what these guys do is crack open the case and replace those batteries with newer ones of higher spec. You can send them your old one to refill at a very low cost, or buy the whole thing for a bit more. I opted for the latter, so I can use the new battery when I actually need battery power, and use my crappy old one as emergency backup when I’m plugged into the AC. That constant trickle charge is apparently the battery slayer.
Well, I’m babbling. Gosh, it feels grand.
May 7, 2007 — 12:52 pm
Comments: 14
Several wifi technical issues and a naked transsexual porn star
It’s Mayday. The communists are communicating, the socialists are socializing.
Nope. No idea what that means. I woke up with it running through my head, thinking, “I say, Weasel! How droll!”
Today was neither as unpleasant as yesterday nor as productive as I hoped. I’m still +1 on the rodent offsets, but the night is young. I got my re-imaged machine back but, as I remembered, that external Linksys USB wifi dealie is the shits. It couldn’t get a decent signal in the stairwell looking out the window at the building next door. (When I used it at home, it couldn’t consistently hold a signal when placed directly on top of the router).
There was, however, a tantalizingly strong signal coming from right inside the building. Wide open. I emailed around to see if anybody knew what it was. Finally, I plucked up the courage and connected to it. Up came the company logo and login. Also a scary “business purposes only” warning. Huh. So they’re providing us with wifi now.
So! I’ve got a PCMCIA card I can try in the business laptop. Or I can give it another go with my ThinkPad (which I have this evening rescued from the clammy embrace of Linus Torvalds. I like Linux, but I’ve never gotten the damn thing working right). Problem with both of those options is…where does the antenna go? No smartassery from you in the back. Finally, I can try to jack into the provided wifi signal using some kind of tunneling software so they can’t see what I’m up to.
My technical problems are boring. But then, so is not being able to surf the internet.
Meanwhile, this here feller is Buck Angel, the Man with a Pussy, currently the world’s only (incomplete) female-to-male transsexual pornstar. No, I don’t remember how I got here, but it’s dark and I’m all by myself and I’m cold and scared. Can somebody come pick me up? I want to go home now.
Sometimes the internet makes me feel like crying.
May 1, 2007 — 5:05 pm
Comments: 11
Bad day, defined
Okay, compared to this guy (man, that croc is an evil looking bastard, isn’t he? Photo via NZ Herald), my day was a dawdle. But I had to deliver the coup de grâce to an injured squirrel on my morning commute, and that’s never an auspicious sign. How come road-injured squirrels always lie in one spot jerking and flipping out like that wounded Daryl Hannah replicant thing in Blade Runner? Horrible.
I dug out the old work laptop I use to test programs, plugged in the wifi dingus…and discovered I don’t have admin privileges on that machine. So I put it on the network and called the Helpdesk. It hasn’t been on the company net in a couple of years, so it’s all screwed up for updates. Turns out, that model was “retired” a while back and I was supposed to turn it in. I thought for a moment it was going to get confiscated, but someone dutifully picked it up for a re-image. I should have it back tomorrow.
Somehow making IS complicit in the circumvention of their own rules pleases me.
I wrote the above sentence about forty five minutes ago, then Damien came in and laid a large, fine woodrat at my feet. Pity it wasn’t dead. It jumped up, shrieked, ran across my feet and disappeared under the radiator in the livingroom. We could see it dashing back and forth underneath, the perfect cat-tease. Every time Damien hooked a paw in its direction, it would let out another squeak. Rodents don’t squeak like squeak toys. They squeak like forks raked across dinner plates. You hear it with your molars.
I held a cardboard box against the radiator with my knees, got a bamboo back-scratcher in one hand, an empty paper towel roll in the other, and tried to spook it toward captivity and ultimate freedom. But it was not to be. It leapt over my backscratcher and holed up under a big armchair, behind a pile of old comics. It’s quiet now.
Damien is curled up in front of the chair, placid as the Buddha. Fuck it. I’m going to drink. I’m not offing two adorable rodents today. Death is going to have to sort itself out this time. I just wish it wouldn’t do that whole “red in tooth and claw” thing on the wall-to-wall carpets.
April 30, 2007 — 5:56 pm
Comments: 11
A weasel in the wires
Today I sat at my desk and wrote a screed (in notepad!) about how the forces of goof-offery always triumph over the armies of bossage. Then I realized I should probably actually triumph before I do the happy predator dance on the corpse of my enemy. That’s what you call discretion. I don’t have much of it; please savor this small sample.
That Buffalo long-range wifi adapter McGoo found is the best idea I’ve seen. Unfortunately, it’s vaporware. Everybody’s talking about it, nobody’s selling it.
Somebody on eBay is selling a “wardriving” kit, which is a Buffalo long-range PCMCIA wifi card and external antenna. Looks good, but getting on for $75. That would be fine if I were sure it would work. I can afford to spend that kind of money, but I can’t afford to waste that kind of money.
I know my own laptop’s wifi falls about twenty feet short of the signal. But I’ve got a work laptop and a PCMCIA wifi card I bought for my last rig, so putting those two things together is the next step before I start spending money.
So if those of you who blog don’t see quite so many weasel tracks in your usage logs lately, it’s not for want of trying. I’m a-coming. Or, as Hillary would say, “yo yo yo, me am ain’t not noways tarrrrrrd, y’awl.” Now it’s Friday and time for happy beverages!
April 27, 2007 — 5:36 pm
Comments: 21
Damn! Blast! Fie! Piffle!
My boss informed me, casual-like, that a new, strict directive on work-time websurfing is about to be handed down. They sent him the draft a few weeks ago.
Oh dear. I am ever so annoyed.
Does this mean an end to daytime websurfing? Will I actually have to buckle down and do my job?
Pff! Please. If they wanted me to do my job, they’d make my work more interesting. Some days, it’s like they don’t even care if I’m entertained. So, you know, if they’re not even going to try to compete with the internet, what do they expect from me? I’m not made of stone!
Still, I’d better stay off their crummy, poopy, stinky, lousy servers. The building next door has a wide open wifi signal. If my office were twenty feet closer, I could nick a signal on my laptop, no problem. I sometimes wander out into the stairwell and check my personal mail at lunch that way. I could try to get a job in the department on the other side of the building, but that’s Training. Training people have cooties. Big giant ones.
So, anybody know anything about wifi reception boosting? Obviously, I can’t do much about boosting the signal. And I have a lot of unusual things in my office, but I think a parabolic antenna might get noticed. I don’t have a clear line of sight to the other building, anyway.
C’mon…think. Otherwise, you’re only going to hear from me on my own time. You know: the Not Sober hours. And I’m a sloppy, boring drunk.
April 26, 2007 — 4:42 pm
Comments: 26
Friday, April 20
Yes, that’s right. Another Contentless Friday! Hooray!
It was a mixed bag of a day. On the one hand — field trip! I got to go to the place that made the kiosk I’m building that multimedia dingus for. On the other hand, my dingus didn’t work. And they were supposed to crate the whole thing up and ship it to the venue today.
Not my fault. The hooj wide-screen monitor they bought for the occasion refuses to run at any resolution above 1024×768, though the manual says it’ll go to 1360×768 (which is what the dingus is designed for). So it does what a 16×9 monitor does when it gets 4×3 content: it stretches it horribly. And then slices off the bottom.
But it makes no difference whose fault it is, I gotta fix it. And the clock, she am ticking.
So I built a little test thing for the kiosk guy to use as a diagnostic and emailed it. Then I got worried — it was an .exe file and spam filters often block those. So I wrote a follow up message. Which bounced. So I wrote another from a different address. Which bounced. So now I’m pretty sure my IP is on the naughty list. Phoned him, he’s out. Rrrr.
On the other hand — Friday! And it’s going to be a gorgeous weekend! And I own a convertible! So, on sober reflection, work can smooch weasel butt.
April 20, 2007 — 3:26 pm
Comments: 13
It doth suck and, verily, doth it blow
Today’s the day I had to show my current multimedia dingus to the client. It’s basically a little interactive thing that asks a question, stores the answer, shows a video, and gives some feedback, times ten. Easy, right?
Then the artistic genius building the kiosk decided he wants it to run vertically. Like, portrait. Computers do not do this, says I. Well — says he — I’ve never done it before, either, but I think you build it sideways and we’ll physically rotate the monitor. Oh, and no touchscreen — we’re tucking the computer out of sight and giving you three hardwired buttons. Three whole buttons. This’ll be packed with interactive functionality.
Um. Monitor #2 will rotate (I have three monitors — worship me), but you can’t design rotated. Up/down arrows become side-to-side arrows, the mouse is all over the joint. I can rotate the monitor to run the application, but I have to design it sideways and crane. Fabulous.
I had to bribe the video guys to use their +3 Video Editing mojo to rotate all my .avi files for me. My primitive video stuff doesn’t have a “make it sideways” spell. I’ve been excreting building supplies over this for a week.
So today I pitch it to the client — no, the client, the client’s boss, and the client’s boss’ boss. The latter is a woman whose name strikes fear in the hearts of cubiclemonkeys everywhere. Say it aloud and hear the gentle pitter-pat of ass-cheeks clenching. She isn’t a cruel woman. She’s that potent combination of stupid and powerful. This is cubiclemonkey kryptonite.
They gather in my office. I rotate the monitor for them, and in so doing somehow hit a button that kills the signal. It goes black. I have a feeling now is a really bad time to figure out what all those little buttons at the bottom of the monitor do. Time rubberbands while I punch buttons and sweat, though it might’ve been kinder if I hadn’t gotten it working eventually.
I love working for a research and engineering company. I love learning about geeky, science-ish things. But there’s no getting around it: engineers hate subtlety. I designed an interface of duotoned photographs: all muted blue and dusty red. Earthy variations on our corporate colors, with a nice, bangy video window in front.
“My eye goes right to the video window in the middle”
“Excellent! That’s just what I intended.”
“But I can’t really see the photos in the background that well.”
“Excellent! That’s just what I intended.”
“Change it!”
“Okey-doke!”
They discuss among themselves what color goes best with red and blue. Something nice and bright. Orange? Yellow? And then one of them leans forward says, “you know those web sites where there’s text and it’s on this sort of lozenge thing and it’s tumbling over and over — can we have one of those animations?” Something inside of me rolled over, pulled the covers over its head and cried itself to sleep.
I had originally promised them a bunch of functionality, but I presumed I had a full keyboard to work with. Now I have three buttons: “yes” “no” and “reset.”
So they’re all like, “can we skip to specific scenarios?”
And I’m like, “no. I have three buttons, and they’re totally spoken for.”
“Can we have a demo mode?”
“No, I only have three buttons.”
“Can we have a help screen?”
“I have three buttons.”
“Can we have fast forward?”
“Yes, sure, if you can fast forward with your mind.”
Thank you, Ace, for planting that dangerously insubordinate snark in my brain.
It got back to me later that they were, on the whole, pleased. I mean, I’m going to have to rape and pillage my own design, but I’ve been professionally outraging my artistic sensibilities for decades. I’m getting good at it.
And, anyhow, it’s Friday. Like I give a rat’s ass about anything on Friday.
March 30, 2007 — 10:02 am
Comments: 14