Get it, don't or quit

This was my husbands boss' statement to her staff concerning the 45% increase in benefits cost for the coming year. It's all employee paid with no contribution from the company.

It was followed up with... "solve your problem, simply spend less".

Ya... this coming from someone married to a doctor and 'childfree'.

If this economy wasn't so sucky he'd be working somewhere else me thinks...

Cautiously Optomistic...

Yesterday we met with Arianna's nutritionist and received many accolades on our work with her - she's doing great. We didn't weigh her at her first visit 2 weeks ago but did weigh her today using the weight from the GI office from 3 weeks ago. She's lost 12 ounces. Hmm... I know different scales can have different weights but 12 ounces seems like a lot. I won't worry until the next appointment and just be happy she eats everything now.

Shawn has 4 interviews this week and next. First one was this morning. We've got our fingers crossed that at least one pans out!

Our cruise is 7 weeks away. Hopefully Shawn has a new job by then so we can actually enjoy it...

I hope either way I can enjoy it. I'm feeling like I got hit by a car, had my stomach ripped out and put back in, my head slammed into a vice for hours a day, my nose stuffed with cotton and my tongue scrapped with a brillo pad - all at once. I feel so ill I just want to sleep the next 7 weeks away... I can't concentrate at work cause I feel like such crap. I forgot how much this part of pregnancy sucks. Oh well...

oh the irony...

In my office we all have this cartoon printed and hung on the walls of our cubicles (click to make it bigger so you can read it)...
oh the irony...

10 dirty little secrets you should know about working in IT

I am eerily famililiar with this list...

10.) The pay in IT is good compared to many other professions, but since they pay you well, they often think they own you

Although the pay for IT professionals is not as great as it was before the dot-com flameout and the IT backlash in 2001-2002, IT workers still make very good money compared to many other professions (at least the ones that require only an associate's or bachelor's degree). And there is every reason to believe that IT pros will continue to be in demand in the coming decades, as technology continues to play a growing role in business and society. However, because IT professionals can be so expensive, some companies treat IT pros like they own them. If you have to answer a tech call at 9:00 PM because someone is working late, you hear, "That's just part of the job." If you need to work six hours on a Saturday to deploy a software update to avoid downtime during business hours, you get, "There's no comp time for that since you're on salary. That's why we pay you the big bucks!"

9.) It will be your fault when users make silly errors

Some users will angrily snap at you when they are frustrated. They will yell, "What's wrong with this thing?" or "This computer is NOT working!" or (my personal favorite), "What did you do to the computers?" In fact, the problem is that they accidentally deleted the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop, or unplugged the mouse from the back of the computer with their foot, or spilled their coffee on the keyboard.

8.) You will go from goat to hero and back again multiple times within any given day

When you miraculously fix something that had been keeping multiple employees from being able to work for the past 10 minutes - and they don't realize how simple the fix really was - you will become the hero of the moment and everyone's favorite employee. But they will conveniently forget about your hero anointment a few hours later when they have trouble printing because of a network slowdown - you will be enemy No. 1 at that moment. But if you show users a handy little Microsoft Outlook trick before the end of the day, you'll soon return to hero status.

7.) Certifications won't always help you become a better technologist, but they can help you land a better job or a pay raise

Headhunters and human resources departments love IT certifications. They make it easy to match up job candidates with job openings. They also make it easy for HR to screen candidates. You'll hear a lot of veteran IT pros whine about techies who were hired based on certifications but who don't have the experience to effectively do the job. They are often right. That has happened in plenty of places. But the fact is that certifications open up your career options. They show that you are organized and ambitious and have a desire to educate yourself and expand your skills. If you are an experienced IT pro and have certifications to match your experience, you will find yourself to be extremely marketable. Tech certifications are simply a way to prove your baseline knowledge and to market yourself as a professional. However, most of them are not a good indicator of how good you will be at the job.

6.) Your nontechnical co-workers will use you as personal tech support for their home PCs

Your co-workers (in addition to your friends, family, and neighbors) will view you as their personal tech support department for their home PCs and home networks. They will e-mail you, call you, and/or stop by your office to talk about how to deal with the virus that took over their home PC or the wireless router that stopped working after the last power outage and to ask you how to put their photos and videos on the Web so their grandparents in Iowa can view them. Some of them might even ask you if they can bring their home PC to the office for you to fix it. The polite ones will offer to pay you, but some of them will just hope or expect you can help them for free. Helping these folks can be very rewarding, but you have to be careful about where to draw the line and know when to decline. For help, take a look at TechRepublic's free download "Ten ways to decline a request for free tech support."

5.) Vendors and consultants will take all the credit when things work well and will blame you when things go wrong

Working with IT consultants is an important part of the job and can be one of the more challenging things to manage. Consultants bring niche expertise to help you deploy specialized systems, and when everything works right, it's a great partnership. But you have to be careful. When things go wrong, some consultants will try to push the blame off on you by arguing that their solution works great everywhere else so it must be a problem with the local IT infrastructure. Conversely, when a project is wildly successful, there are consultants who will try to take all of the credit and ignore the substantial work you did to customize and implement the solution for your company.

4.) You'll spend far more time babysitting old technologies than implementing new ones

One of the most attractive things about working in IT is the idea that we'll get to play with the latest cutting edge technologies. However, that's not usually the case in most IT jobs. The truth is that IT professionals typically spend far more time maintaining, babysitting, and nursing established technologies than implementing new ones. Even IT consultants, who work with more of the latest and greatest technologies, still tend to work primarily with established, proven solutions rather than the real cutting edge stuff.

3.) Veteran IT professionals are often the biggest roadblock to implementing new technologies

A lot of companies could implement more cutting edge stuff than they do. There are plenty of times when upgrading or replacing software or infrastructure can potentially save money and/or increase productivity and profitability. However, it's often the case that one of the largest roadblocks to migrating to new technologies is not budget constraints or management objections; it's the veteran techies in the IT department. Once they have something up and running, they are reluctant to change it. This can be a good thing because their jobs depend on keeping the infrastructure stable, but they also use that as an excuse to not spend the time to learn new things or stretch themselves in new directions. They get lazy, complacent, and self-satisfied.

2.) Some IT professionals deploy technologies that do more to consolidate their own power than to help the business

Another subtle but blameworthy thing that some IT professionals do is select and implement technologies based on how well those technologies make the business dependent on the IT pros to run them, rather than which ones are truly best for the business itself. For example, IT pros might select a solution that requires specialized skills to maintain instead of a more turnkey solution. Or an IT manager might have more of a Linux/UNIX background and so chooses a Linux-based solution over a Windows solution, even though the Windows solution is a better business decision (or, vice versa, a Windows admin might bypass a Linux-based appliance, for example). There are often excuses and justifications given for this type of behavior, but most of them are disingenuous.

1.) IT pros frequently use jargon to confuse nontechnical business managers and hide the fact that they screwed up

All IT pros - even the very best - screw things up once in a while. This is a profession where a lot is at stake and the systems that are being managed are complex and often difficult to integrate. However, not all IT pros are good at admitting when they make a mistake. Many of them take advantage of the fact that business managers (and even some high-level technical managers) don't have a good understanding of technology, and so the techies will use jargon to confuse them (and cover up the truth) when explaining why a problem or an outage occurred. For example, to tell a business manager why a financial application went down for three hours, the techie might say, "We had a blue screen of death on the SQL Server that runs that app. Damn Microsoft!" What the techie would fail to mention was that the BSOD was caused by a driver update he applied to the server without first testing it on a staging machine.

Bon voyage!

So they're off... again. How fair is this?

Shawn and Arianna are off to see his family for our annual 'Thanksgiving week in Kentucky' tonight. They'll drive 16 hours while I stay home... again. There is a discrepency in my vacation time at work and I don't have enough time for this trip, I guess. I wouldn't have enough time accrued by the time our cruise comes around if I took this week anyway...

I'm disappointed. I really enjoy staying with his family (the food, outstanding!) and especially seeing his mother, whom I adore. It would normally be the week of Thanksgiving but his mothers new job couldn't grant her that week, so she took the week before instead.

Shawn is surprising her - she still thinks he'll arrive the day she leaves to go back to CA. She'll be so thrilled to see Ari again and I know everyone will have a great time. Shawn's cousin David's wife Sheila just had a little girl this week (gosh, we better call and find out how she's doing!) and I've already packed the camera (no, not my new one! I'll be buried with it!) for him to take lots of pictures. Arianna will get to play with her cousins Abby(2), Brenden(3) and Alyssa(4.5) - which I'm sure she'll love. But most of all she'll be spoiled rotten by her grandma. I wish I could be there to see the expression on my mother in laws face when she sees Arianna :(.

So what will I be doing while they're gone this time? Not a scrapbooking marathon! I have a crop to go to tomorrow night but I have everything all set for that - an album on my great aunt and uncles 50th wedding anniversary.

I'm going to be tearing apart my bedroom and kitchen!

My father and brother arrive early tomorrow morning so we can tear down a wall in my kitchen to put in a pantry - we have NO space at all to store food, I've been hiding it in cabinets with the dishes and storing it in the extra bedroom we have. They anticipate it taking most of the day on Saturday (hopefully before my crop starts!) and I'll spend all day Sunday spackling to cover joists and screw holes... then the rest of the week will be spent painting. Our bedroom is purple... dark purple sponge paint and we didn't paint it that way. It's nasty. I'm going to paint it a sort of tropical yellow/orange to make it more inviting and brighter. The kitchen is going to be painted a muted yellow and I'm going to take down the hideous ivy wall paper running on one wall.

I'm ambitious - hope I can finish it before they get home next Sunday!

How anti-climactic...

Today, at work, I finished a project I've worked on for the last 3 years.

I was begining to really hate this program, it seemed like I was doing the same thing in many different areas only each time was just different enough to mean I had to write the code over again. But today I finished the last part.

One of my coworkers left last Friday for a new job and the two of us had worked very closely on this project and now that she is gone I was the only one left working on it - and now thats it's done, its so anti-climactic.

I feel like I need to have a party or something... but instead I'll just get another project, which is just as good, I suppose.

Things that make you go 'hmm...'

2,157,120How Many Germs Live On Your Keyboard?

Unit Testing

I've embarked on a new journey at work and it has me kind of excited.

I spend alot of time 'debugging' and re-writing code that our testers find problems with - mostly stuff that I've spent alot of time on previously. Stuff that I didn't test thoroughly enough and its mostly due to the fact that I don't really know how to test outside of integration testing. I'm not alone in this 'problem' though - lots of programmers are like that.

So, after much discussion with all the programmers, we're implementing Unit Testing w/ NUnit.

Today I spent 3 hours unit testing one of my importers. 2 of those hours was spent trying to figure out why .NET's minimum date is: 01/01/0001 (aka January 1, 1 AD) yet SQL Server which stores the data I'm trying to read has a minimum date of: 01/01/1753 (um, random year??). So I had to write some code that would check that the date was greater than 1/1/1753. Yet, like any good programmer, I tried to do this without having to re-write too much of what was already existing.

Big mistake. 2 hours later I'm cursing and throwing my headphones on my desk and walking out to get some air.

Yes, I finished it. Yes, I stayed 45 minutes later at work as I wasn't going to leave without this VERY simple task being completed.

My review is coming up... I'm sure this will be on it. sigh

When you can't understand...

I used to work at Rhode Island hospital (part of which is pictured here). I was the executive secretary to the Vice President of Facilities Management, the Director of Master Planning, and the Director of Emergency Preparedness.

I hated being a secretary because I felt the job, although important, wasn't valued and I wanted a job where I felt valued and had my 'place'. I did, however, love my job. I loved the atmosphere and all the great work I got to do. My days were varied and at times I had some really fun things to do.

For the VP I got to take notes at lots of fun meetings. Don't think meetings can be fun? How about a meeting at 5 AM on a Saturday that entails a controlled shut down of the hospital power plant in order to test the back up system the power company provides? Yes, it was a Saturday but boy was it fun!

For the Director of Emergency Preparedness I got to be the 'secretary' at the Disaster Drills. I manned the 'control center'. All of the department heads would report to the control center (usually a conference room in the children's hospital) and I got to tell them what to do. I had to be the contact person for the National Guard, state health department and emergency services. It was so much fun to feel valued like that.

I learned more about the problems associated with power outages and emergencies through these two roles. In my state I am never more than 7 minutes away from a hospital - thats pretty impressive. In the event of a power outage a typical ventilator has only 20 minutes of battery power. In the event of a power outage much of the psychiatric wing would be compromised as the door locks are on the main power grid. All very interesting stuff.

For the Director of Master Planning (who I did most of my work for) I would go to meetings to take notes and go to fancy dinners with the corporations donating money. I would show 'VIPs' around the campus and handled lots of very important meeting requests with said VIPs. I loved so much about my job.

The things I didn't like about it included that our office was set up in an odd way so that the finance manager was my supervisor although I didn't do any direct work for her. She was on a power trip and was constantly up my ass. I don't like to use fowl language but she deserves that connection. She made many of my days miserable and on more than one account I would scream "I'm quitting!"

My boss, the director of master planning, was taking a job as an executive at a NY city hospital. I knew things would get bad when she left so I planned to quit shortly afterwards and go back to school full time to finish my degree - which is how I'm a computer programmer now.

I did a lot of work with all the members of the department. My friend Brenda, an architectural drafter and I had the pleasure of being mentors for a high school student who would be an intern at our department for half a year. We had a lot of fun with Steven, the student, and learned alot about ourselves in the process. I actually saw Steven after I finished school and started my current job. He was in his senior year, was accepted to University of Miami for architecture, currently doing an internship at a large architectural firm. I was happy to see him do so well.

Joanne and I worked together as secretaries for the department. We had a ball together, she is so funny! When I left she got my job and all its responsibilities, and she does great.

There were several project managers in our department (and engineers and architects and drafters and carpenters and electricians etc. It was a BIG department). I got along very well with all the project managers. Cindy was the lead project manager and worked very closely with my boss Claudia (director of master planning). We would frequently go to dinners/meetings/celebrations for work, together so I got to know them well. At the present time Cindy is sailing the lower Caribbean on her sail boat. Her husband and herself decided to quit their jobs, sell their house and sail on their boat for the foreseeable future. Her blog is here: http://www.sailblogs.com/member/tashmoo/?show=fulltoc

Yesterday morning one of the project managers, Bob Barton, fell off the APC building (the white building in the above picture). Its a 12-story drop and it took them 4 hours to identify his body as his employee ID badge and wallet were not on him. He had just returned from vacation and Joanne told me that they had lunch together on Tuesday and everything seemed to be good for him. I don't know if they will every know what happened to cause his death.

I can't believe this happened. I would venture back to the facilities building whenever Arianna had an appointment at the hospital to see everyone and Bob was always the first one to come running to say hello and ask how everything was. He was a very genuine guy and I feel so badly for his wife and daughter (who is my age).

I only hope they have collections of mismatched, bright socks in heaven. I used to give him such a hard time about his funky socks, yet it gave him personality. This world needs more personality and unfortunately this one is gone.

Is my code retarded?

From: Jennifer
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 16:09
To: Office Mate 1, Office Mate 2
Subject: Does source code have feelings?

I think this is hilarious… the answer would be… um, no.

I was having lunch the other day with a longtime member of the open source community, when i happen to mention, "well, it isn't like source code has feelings. it doesn't care how it gets used, modified or cloned. it's just code." Um, yeah, talk about awkward moments.

It wasn't necessary an "open mouth insert foot," moment, but more of a "whoa, i've never really thought about it that way before..." Over here at the keyboard, the jury is still out whether source code has feelings, but it makes for such an interesting lunch time conversation.

Oddly enough, I'm brought back to the Seaseme Street skit with the muppets playing in a rock band as objects moved along a conveyor-like belt. If the object was a living thing, like a plant or a frog, they band would play, "It's alive, na na na na...." and if the object were an inanimate thing, like a rock or a phone, it would play "Not alive, na na na na..." Maybe someone will find this clip somewhere on the web... I think Freakonomics also calls this particular skit leaving a lasting impression on young children...

The best analogy that i've been able to come up with is one of a teddy bear or a similar stuff animal. Does that stuff animal really have feelings? Or is it because we have such strong emotions connected to it that the stuff animal has feelings vicariously of us? Maybe that's why letting go of code you've written is so tough. It's hard to give your teddy bear or to someone else, hoping they'll appreciate and take care of it as much as you did when you wrote the code / received the bear or sentimental object.

Or maybe trying to figure out how shared and open source works within Microsoft and Visual Studio has finally caused me to lose my mind =)

What do you think?

---

From: Office Mate 1
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 8:37 AM
To: Jennifer; Office Mate 2
Subject: RE: Does source code have feelings?

Do you care if someone else takes over a piece of code you wrote?

That was my baby.

---

From: Jennifer
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 8:42 AM
To: Office Mate 2; Office Mate 1
Subject: RE: Does source code have feelings?

Agreed… that’s why that entry sticks with me today.

Of course, if they ‘fix it’ and it works even better… well then I’m not so attached to it.

---

From: Office Mate 2
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 8:40 AM
To: Jennifer; Office Mate 1
Subject: RE: Does source code have feelings?

HAHA TRUE

---

From: Jennifer
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 8:51 AM
To: Office Mate 2, Office Mate 1
Subject: RE: Does source code have feelings?

An analogy for that…

You have your ‘baby’ (aka. code) , its so cute to you, you love it. But in reality, your baby is not like the other babies, its really kinda retarded.

Because your baby is retarded social services comes in and takes them away (aka. code gets re-written). Ya, that’s the detachment I’m talking about … its ‘fixed’.

I should have my babies taken away a lot… guess I’m a bad mom.

---

From: Office Mate 1
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 8:53 AM
To: Jennifer; Office Mate 2
Subject: RE: Does source code have feelings?

Jen are you saying that your code is retarded?

---

Quite possibly the funniest exchange to happen in this office in at least a week.

Ya, ok, I guess you had to be there... or be a geek. Either one.

I'm modeling!

No, not that kind!

Pretty scary looking huh?

Monday morning, my first day back to full time work, my boss brought me into his office and told me he had a new project for me.

This new project is massive - but could net our company a lot of new clients. I was very excited by what I heard!

He invited the CTO in and they proceeded to tell me about the database I would connect to and some background on the data. They gave me a database schema and the data dictionary. I was to create the database model (such as this picture) and create an initial design for the main page.

I spent all day yesterday entering in the tables (80 of them) and their fields in Microsucks Visio. By the end of the day I entered a little over half of them and realized I hadn't tried to add relationships yet (the lines between the boxes, as shown in the picture). Well, low and behold, I did it all wrong! I entered all the tables as views instead of entities - and as such I couldn't create relationships. Ugh, a whole entire days work down the tubes. I ended up working for about 6 hours last night.

Today I finished the model, showed it to my coworkers who critiqued it for me and I just finished adding their suggestions - its done! Until my boss gets back, of course. So tomorrow I can work on the design for the main page and hopefully have everything done by Friday when my boss and the CTO get back from their client meetings.

What was most interesting about the meeting on Monday was that my boss kept on talking about productivity. We're trying to hire another programmer and its not going too well, they can't find anyone they feel is qualified enough. My boss kept talking about 'picking up the slack' and being more productive, like I'm sleeping on the job or something - at one point he turned to the CTO and asked him if he wanted to comment (almost like he was asking him to add to his productive points). I was slightly insulted by his insinuations. Hopefully its just that he doesn't see how much work I've actually been completing while only part time. So in a way, I feel like this project is a test. I have a lot to do and I have to bring work home again tonight. I don't like bringing work home because I don't get paid for it and frankly, I like to spend that time with Arianna.

Hopefully tonight and tomorrow go better.

I'm boring now

Well...

I managed to finish all of my classes and graduate. Still can't believe I'm done. It'll settle in soon I suppose.

To celebrate I took some time off from life. I worked Monday - Wednesday last week but did lunch with the folks at the hospital I used to work at on Wednesday, it was a good time catching up with all of them.

Thursday was 'cat' day. I took Trina to the groomer in the morning. It was quite the experience:

Katrina is a great cat (when she's not messing on my furnitue ;) ), very loving and lots of fun. She's also very fat! I've had her on restrictive diet food but nothing seems to be helping her lose weight. She's also VERY active for a cat as large as her. But due to her size (a friend asked me last week if she was pregnant!), she has a hard time cleaning 'her nether' regions. I've been cleaning them with baby wipes as much as I can - but she smells!

So I decided to take her to a referred dog/cat grooming place. I should have known!

Stepping inside the waiting area (if thats what you want to call it) there were no seats and no place to put cat carriers, so she went on the floor - looking very confused and nervously at meowmy as the big dogs came in and out. I filled out paperwork and waited for 'the cat groomer' to come out to the waiting area.

let me tell you - I've rescued cats in quieter places than this place! I hope they have the cats in another area of this large building because all you could hear was dogs barking and water running! Not the place for a pretty kitty like my Trina Bina.

I was about to walk away with her when the cat lady mentioned she also has many knots in her fur in her hind quarter area and they may need to be cut out. Well, I'm not going to be the one doing that - I have a hard enough time cutting her nails. So I know its good for her to get cleaned up. They're going to shave her hind area so that the litter box contents don't stick to her like they have been - this is a good thing. No more smelly Trina Bina.

But I'm sick with guilt and worry at leaving her there! They said I can pick her up at 3 PM!!!!!!! My poor baby is going to be in this noisy converted garage with lots of doggies barking ALL DAY!

She's going to have to have this done again in a few months, but there is NO WAY on God's green earth I'm bringin her there again - and I will drive ANYWHERE to keep her from being traumatized like I know she is right now!

Can anyone recommend a good cat only, cat friendly groomer in the eastern CT, RI or central/eastern MA area?

What's better than this? TiSan goes to the vet this afternoon too. Just what I need - both my cats hating me! :(

Follow Up:

Got a great lunchtime treat - was able to pick Trina up at noon. Brought TiSan to the vet, and now I won't see him for another 2 days. When the two of them finally see each other they'll hiss for sure - they both smell wierd now!

Katrina did great at the groomers! She was a perfect little lady they told me. When I went to pick up the place was dead quiet with no cars in the parking lot - apparantly it was the morning rush that caused the commotion. It had been pretty quiet for a few hours.

They were able to get all the knots out of her fur and shave her hind quarters and gave her a bath with something that smells wonderful! They even put a cute little green scarf on her! She was a good girl.

I asked the vet if he knew of any groomers, and they don't. But they did mention they thought there was a travelling groomer in the area that works out of an RV. I'll look into that for next time.

TiSan did great at the vet. I have an appointment for him on the 28th, he'll get some blood work to see if he'll be ok for anestesia for a dental. I"m sure he'll be fine, but it sure was nerve racking getting him into the carrier and to the vet. I hate seeing him so distressed!

Friday I spent at Jumptown with Belinda - got in 3 great jumps. Saturday was supposed to be crappy, but the afternoon turned out to be pleasantly nice despite what the weather guys had said. I swear, no one can be as wrong as the weatherman and still have a job!!!! I would have been jumping if I knew the weather was going to be nice!!!

Instead I met up with my friend Neha from High School. I haven't seen her in many years and she just started her medicine internship at a hospital in central MA - not far from Jumptown actually. We went to an Indian restaurant and had some really great food - I'll definitely try them again. I left her place about 8:30 and drove directly to Darius' house for a 'tea party' ;) with Belinda and him. Got to meet his friend from out of town too - seems like a really great guy, he wants to learn how to skydive too - which is why it was great that we decided to drive up to Jumptown on Sunday and see if we couldn't get some jumps in...

which we didn't... of course.


But on the way home Belinda and I stopped at Cold Stone ice cream shop - that was a very different experience. I'm sure I'd try it again sometime with Shawn, I bet he'd love it.

Got home and got some much needed housework out of the way. Can't wait to get the house back in order. IT's going to be great to have my nights free from school work responsabilities!

Today was my first day of full time work (taking a break from it now ;)).
I'm a grown up - wow... this is what it feels like...