September 3, 2008
My kingdom for power and internet
All the way home just to learn to survive. No power in our neighborhood, no ETA on getting any. I drove up to Zotz on the rumor of AC and wifi and found it to be true. So did dozens of other people.
When I get home, I get to rig up a security system for my alleyway out of rope and cans so that nobody tries to steal my generator. I get to figure out if my generator works and figure out how to protect it from both rain and rising water while keeping it properly ventilated. Check all my batteries and flashlights. Clean all the backyard plants and furniture out of my kitchen so that I can store all my dry goods, canned peaches, and tuna. Get the rest of my windows unstuck so that I can get some air inside. And then get my ass inside for the dusk to dawn curfew so that I don't get tagged by the po-pos, who seem to be really disappointed that they didn't get a Katrina-style looter war and are all keyed up to invent one. Will take cold shower and then read by LED lantern light until my meds kick in and knock me out. In the morning, I go search for more ice and do the whole thing over again.
Work says I'm free to burn the rest of my vacation time (yay! vacation! not!) during the recovery and then I get myself back to work or I stop getting paid. So if power and internet aren't more easily available by Sunday, I have to leave for Austin in order to keep my job. Assuming I can find enough gas to get there, and places to stay when I get there.
I'm home but I'm still in exile. The immense downside of telecommuting. Where I am, it's one of the largest natural disasters in US history. Where the job is, it's Wednesday. The two halves of my split personality are too far apart this week.
Haven't seen my kids in almost two weeks. I suppose three or four more weeks is neither here nor there. Daddies are expendable. Daddies' jobs are not.
Bloody weather.
I'm out. Back to the hotbox. The land off the grid. Text me if you need me, not sure if I'm up for the twitter noise tonight.
Posted by ray at 3:52 PM | Comments (4)
June 18, 2008
It's getting late is a permanent state
My semi-annual emergency-customer-feature alpha-release behind-schedule Sunday-night-code-freeze self-pitying why-don't-somebody-please-destroy-the-tech-industry so-that-I-can-be-a-fireman musical self-pity exhaustion headache blues post.
Not available on YouTube.
We move so fast today
Nothing stands in our way
We're free to act
And forced to pay
Have power over people
Understand the subtlety of body language
One up in every situation
The dumb magician
Sees behind the scenes
The strings attached to all things
This gets me that
The dumb magician
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
He might say if you were to hear him speak
That the secret of revenge is to turn the other cheek
You go away and think about it all week
Dumb magician
We move so fast today
Nothing stands in our way
We're free to act
And forced to pay
Try so hard to get your foot in the door
Get what you ask for and nothing more
It's getting late is a permanent state
The dumb magician
Sees behind the scenes
The strings attached to all things
This gets me that
The dumb magician
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up...
Last time I felt this bad about my job was mid-August 2005, but I was soon distracted.
Posted by ray at 8:15 PM | Comments (5)
February 19, 2008
Me neither, H
When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothin' ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up
How do you move in a world of fog
That's always changing things
Makes me wish that I could be a dog
When I see the price that you pay
I don't wanna grow up
I don't ever wanna be that way
I don't wanna grow up
Seems like folks turn into things
That they'd never want
The only thing to live for
Is today
I'm gonna put a hole in my TV set
I don't wanna grow up
Open up the medicine chest
And I don't wanna grow up
I don't wnna have to shout it out
I don't want my hair to fall out
I don't wanna be filled with doubt
I don't wanna be a good boy scout
I don't wanna have to learn to count
I don't wanna have the biggest amount
I don't wanna grow up
Well when I see my parents fight
I don't wanna grow up
They all go out and drinking all night
And I don't wanna grow up
I'd rather stay here in my room
Nothin' out there but sad and gloom
I don't wanna live in a big old Tomb
On Grand Street
When I see the 5 o'clock news
I don't wanna grow up
Comb their hair and shine their shoes
I don't wanna grow up
Stay around in my old hometown
I don't wanna put no money down
I don't wanna get me a big old loan
Work them fingers to the bone
I don't wanna float a broom
Fall in and get married then boom
How the hell did I get here so soon
I don't wanna grow up
Posted by ray at 11:39 PM | Comments (3)
February 12, 2008
I tell you the truth but you don't believe me
Back in the day I used to think this song was about being an amphetamine addict and proud of it. Lately, though, I think it's about being an over-employed full-time/sometimes single parent wannabe rescue hero biting off more than I can handle and not knowing how to say "enough".
Either way, the feedback helps keep me awake when the bugs absolutely positively must be fixed by morning for me to save face.
Bring me an 8-ball, some valium and a pint of Jameson and I'll be your special friend.
The sun comes up another day begins
And I don't even worry about the state I'm in
Head so heavy and I'm looking thin
But when the sun goes down I'm gonna start again
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
You never understand me
You never understand me, yeah, uh-huh
Posted by ray at 11:26 PM | Comments (8)
November 12, 2007
Impostor syndrome
Holy fuck. Who is this woman, and what has she been doing looking around inside my skull all this time?
Case in point: On a recent evening, Columbia University held a well-attended workshop for young academics who feel like frauds.These were duly vetted, highly successful scholars who nonetheless live in creeping fear of being found out. Exposed. Sent packing.
If that sounds familiar, you may have the impostor syndrome. In psychological terms, that's a cognitive distortion that prevents a person from internalizing any sense of accomplishment.
"It's like we have this trick scale," says Valerie Young, a traveling expert on the syndrome who gave the workshop at Columbia. Here's how that scale works: Self-doubt and negative feedback weigh heavily on the mind, but praise barely registers. You attribute your failures to a stable, inner core of ineptness. Meanwhile, you discount your successes as accidental or, worse, as just so many confidence jobs. Every positive is a false positive.
[Via Ms. HX, of course, who is so much less of a fraud than me it isn't even funny.]
Posted by ray at 2:43 PM | Comments (2)
September 25, 2007
The downside of telecommuting
The church a block away from here always plays a lovely tune on their church bell speakers at noon. You can hear it all over the neighborhood; it reminds me of when I was a kid, living only a block away from St. Andrews in Algiers, hearing their church bells every day. It's so cute and quaint and comforting..
Except for today.
They're playing goddamn "Kumbayah".
Posted by ray at 11:41 AM | Comments (7)
December 21, 2006
Code Monkey not crazy, just proud
Posted by ray at 10:11 AM | Comments (15)
September 7, 2006
Deprived
I always enjoy first sitting down in the morning and checking a few of my favorite web sites to see what's transpired while I was sleeping.
But when I was up so late working the night before and then up so early in the morning that there is no news because I haven't actually been asleep more than a few hours, I feel deprived. Damn. In the entire globe of news and blogging, not a dang thing happened since I went to bed.
And when that happens two or three days in a row, I want to gnaw my own arm off to escape the keyboard shackles, and go back to bed.
I'm off to take the kids to school and get a 50-gallon drum of coffee. Y'all go make some news and post some shit before I get back, 'kay?
Posted by ray at 7:19 AM | Comments (5)
August 18, 2006
The East
I woke up with a craving. I've been OD'ing on po-boys since I got back in town. Parasol's, Parkway Bakery, Guy's, Ye Olde College Inn, Monica's...all are tired of me darkening their doorstep every damn day.
I needed something different.
I needed a bánh mì.
Ever since I first got introduced to these Vietnamese po-boys last year, I've been in love with them. Pork, onions, cilantro, daikon, carrots, and raw jalapenos, on good French bread; it is something to behold.
Based on recommendations from the New Orleans LJ community, I headed out to to the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East, to Dong Phuong Bakery on Chef Menteur Highway. I brought my camera, since it's been a while since I've done any food porn, and since I'd passed through N.O. East a few times and wanted to try to capture some of the images out there. 'Cause it ain't pretty.
Dong Phuong reopened last month, and it's all new and shiny and sparkly clean. I got the #5, Vietnamese pork bánh mì, to go. $2.38, plus tax. I wanted to buy everything in sight, the cookies were to die for, but I resisted. Snapped a few pictures, thanked the lovely bakery ladies, and headed out to see the neighborhood.
Most of N.O. East is very unlike the other flooded parts of New Orleans. Built on landfill since the 60's, it's much more like the typical suburban sprawl you see in any other city. Cookie cutter developments, apartment complexes, and strip malls for days.
And unlike the older parts of the city where residents and business owners are saying "fuck you" to Katrina and fighting the good fight, in N.O. East, it looks like the businesses, the chain stores and strip malls and department stores and apartment managers, are all saying "fuck you" to New Orleans. Nothing is open. The only signs of life are a few mom-and-pop places like Dong Phuong, and single family homes in Village De L'Est. Everywhere else, the old school stench of Katrina refrigerators and mold and garbage prevail.
I took some pictures of an apartment complex on Chef Highway, and the apartment manager chased me down. He claimed to be worried about looters, but I got the sense that he didn't like the idea of somebody taking pictures of the pitiful state of his property one year after the storm. Only partially gutted, still with refrigerators lined up in the parking lot, surrounded by chain link fences so that nobody can have access. I wonder if former residents are allowed access.
I found an absolutely huge FEMA trailer camp in the Vietnamese neighborhood on Dwyer Road. Again, I got lots of attention from the rent-a-cop doing security. In the city a certain amount of disaster tourism is the norm, but out here, in the very farthest reaches of civilization before you hit the lake, the level of paranoia seems very high. Strangers taking pictures are an unusual and unwelcome occurrence.
Once again I thought I might be able to capture the scope of the desolate landscape, and once again, after taking a few pictures, I got frustrated and gave up. It's so hard to explain. It feels worse even than a lot of the City. You can get a sense of the size of it if you drive east on I-10, from the high rise to 510, and stay in the right lane so that you can go slow enough to look around. Mile after mile after mile of suburb and apartment building and commercial development, all with dark empty windows looking out over overgrown lots. I can't get it on film. You just have to see it.
I doubled back to Lake Forest Mall, where no businesses in the neighborhood are open. The mall parking lot entrances have all been blocked by piles of rubble to keep out looters and squatters. The nearby office buildings are damaged, blighted, and abandoned.
Many have said before that the Lower Ninth Ward reminds them of Hiroshima. Out here in the East, it feels different. It feels like Chernobyl.
I sat at the entrance to the mall, in my car with the AC running and the radio on, and I ate my bánh mì. It was fucking good.
I finished my sandwich, and then it started to rain. I crumpled up the sandwich wrappers and tossed them on the seat next to me, and navigated my way past the debris and the broken traffic lights back onto I-10, back to where I live in the Isle of Denial, back to my telecommuting job for a company based in Austin, a city where everything works, where everything is open and where the most stressful thing anyone can imagine is wondering whether we'll ship this software release on time.
I live and work in one world, and a completely different world is right down the road. And honestly, I don't know which one is the normal one and which one is the surreal one. I just don't know any more.
Posted by ray at 8:36 PM | Comments (13)
May 26, 2006
Walkin'
...And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in and say "Shrink, I'm leavin' here today, yes, I'm goin' back home to stay, yes, I'm walkin' to New Orleans."And walk out.
You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both queer and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin' a bar of "Walkin' to New Orleans" and walking out. They may think it's an organization.
And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin' a bar of "Walkin' to New Orleans" and walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement.
And that's what it is, the Walkin' to New Orleans Anti-Hurricree Sippiana Blues Movement, and all you got to do to join in is sing it the next time it comes around on the piano...
Gina has taken a job as Director of Architecture at a New Orleans company heavily involved in the rebuilding of the education infrastructure. She's also made the team as a new skater on the Big Easy Rollergirls.
Cassidy got into Lusher. Liam got into Audubon.
My current company will let me work long-distance for as long as I want.
And we're signing a lease on an apartment Uptown.
Meaning I am officially joining Mark and Ashley in the ranks of ex-pats who are crazy enough and homesick enough and optimistic enough to want to move back to New Orleans after Katrina, despite Katrina, because of Katrina, when we didn't even live there before Katrina.
That makes three, which like the song say, means it's an organization. Anybody wanna make it a movement?
See y'all in mid-July.
Posted by ray at 5:08 PM | Comments (17)
May 15, 2006
Monday absenteeism
Years after leaving all the booze and worse things behind, it's weird how certain things can still give me twinges of guilt about them, even when I've done nothing wrong.
Like every once in a while, I'll wake up with a headache, and my first thought will be, "Shit, how much did I drink last night, and where did I leave the car?", and it'll take me a few minutes before I remember, "Wait, I don't drink any more. I just have a headache. Cool!" I'm like George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life jumping around yelling "My mouth's bleeding! My mouth's bleeding! What do you know about that?" It's just a headache, and gee whillikers I didn't do anything to deserve it. It just happened.
Then there is the Monday stomach virus. Somewhat amongst drinkers, and even more so amongst abusers of the wakey-wakey class of drugs, Monday is hell day, the day you're most likely to call in sick to work because there's no way you can get yourself into any kind of condition to be seen by the normies. And the best thing to call in sick with on those days is the "stomach virus/food poisoning" gambit. If you just say "I'm home sick", somebody wants to know, "Aw, is it that head cold going around? Do you have that cough?" and you end up having to do too much explaining.
But if you say "stomach virus", you shut down all further inquiry. That alone conveys more than anybody wants to know. It's "OK, get better, see you tomorrow".
Besides, in the tech business, it's not like Monday absenteeism actually gets you out of anything. If you miss a day of work, the whole schedule doesn't shift one day to accomodate. They're gonna take it out of your hide late nights and weekends as it is.
So here it is. Monday. I haven't had a drink in years. I haven't had anything worse than a drink in well over a decade. And I've got an honest-to-God incapacitating "Sweet Jesus what the hell did I EAT?!" stomach virus. Have lost five pounds since yesterday morning. I can use a stopwatch to time how long a glass of Gatorade makes the complete journey.
And it's hard for me to not feel just the slightest bit guilty. I'm just conditioned. I'm at home feeling like shit on a Monday, and part of me still wants me to think it's my fault, that some sin of mine brought me to this terrible fate.
I'm living on Gatorade and Saltines.
When what I really want is Amburgers and Woot Beer.
Posted by ray at 11:33 AM | Comments (9)
May 7, 2006
Paralyzed
My life is like this right now.
Work. School. Kids. Housing. Moving. Staying.
By the end of May there will likely be clarity, but right now there is nothing but fog and nothing I can do but wait for it to dissipate. And I can't blog about any of it until it is decided because there are personal and business risks involved with doing so.
I. Fucking. Hate. This.
Posted by ray at 9:53 PM | Comments (4)
December 9, 2005
Tulane implodes; abandons engineering, keeps football
I heard this on the radio last night but thought I had heard wrong. I knew that most Tulane students were expected to return, so I thought they would be able to carry on reasonably close to normal after some adjustment. But another blogger I know who works there said this was coming, and she was right.
The T-P article is here.
Despite attracting 85 percent of its Hurricane Katrina-scattered students back to campus in January, Tulane on Thursday announced an unprecedented restructuring of one of the nation's most prestigious universities, including layoffs, cuts or consolidations in colleges and academic programs, and the elimination of eight sports as the institution grapples with $200 million in storm-related losses....
About 230 faculty members will be laid off, 50 at the Uptown campus and 180 at the medical school. Those faculty cuts represent almost 4 percent of Tulane's pre-Katrina work force of about 6,000 people, said Yvette Jones, the university's interim chief operating officer. The university previously laid off 243 support workers -- those it deemed least essential to operations in the next 12 to 18 months -- as well as hundreds of part-time instructors and other workers.
...
-- All engineering majors except biomedical engineering and chemical engineering will be eliminated. Students in discontinued programs will be allowed to continue if they can finish by May 2007.
So much for me trying to re-enter academia as a way to get back to New Orleans. The radio report last night said that they permanently eliminated the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments.
They kept football and baseball, though. Thank god. Where would we be without the Green Wave? (Yes, that was unnecessarily snarky. Fuck you.)
Posted by ray at 10:27 AM | Comments (3)
December 8, 2005
Snow day!
We get a full-blown schools-closed snow day in Austin like once every two or three years. All it takes are enough icy bridges to shut down the freeways.
So I would have told the biggest Red Sox geek in the house about Mirabelli when he woke up this morning, but he's already up at the golf course using a plastic bin lid as a sled.
Meanwhile, on the "oh that's so precious" front:
We have lots of trees on our lot, which means we have lots of squirrels, which means that our dog Beezus spends a lot of her time going nuts trying to catch one. Sometimes it's cute, sometimes when she's got one treed in the back yard and starts barking when she's supposed to just be having her 7:00am pee, it's annoying. But we always joked, of course, that if she ever caught one she wouldn't know what to do with it.
Well, today Beezus finally got her squirrel:
She didn't actually catch it. She found it dead. Frozen stiff. And she didn't tear it up like a plush toy or a chewie. She gently picked it up in her mouth, carried it over and laid it down on the ground in front of Gina. Then nuzzled it a little and looked up at her as if to say "Please, can you make it go?" And then she nuzzled it some more.
Posted by ray at 11:16 AM | Comments (6)
November 7, 2005
I'm going home
On Saturday Gina and I are leaving for a quick four-day visit to New Orleans.
Since she's redesigning Mark's house, she needs to take a look at the site and also meet the contractor in person. She also wants to chat up a couple of architecture firms there just to scope things out. There is also a town hall meeting next Monday sponsored by Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission and the Urban Land Institute, which may be a good place to make connections and figure out if it's remotely possible for her to help in the rebuilding.
I'm going in my capacity as navigator, bodyguard, and restaurant tour guide. Assuming I don't just cry the whole time.
We're staying Saturday night at brother Bill's house in Baton Rouge, then heading into New Orleans for two nights, staying Uptown on Napoleon in an apartment owned by the woman whose bed-and-breakfast we stayed at for Mardi Gras a few years back. She's got a few of her properties back online, although more of them still need lots of work.
I'll take lots of pictures for y'all. Hopefully some happy ones, although I fear a lot of the other kind too.
Posted by ray at 8:03 PM | Comments (4)
November 2, 2005
FEMA is clueless
This morning Gina got a frantic call from FEMA, telling her they were faxing her paperwork and she needs to start right away and can she be in Orlando by Monday to start training. All very excited and rushed and needing immediate response.
And Gina said, "Well, wait a minute. I haven't even seen a job description or an offer or anything yet."
They were surprised by that, so they gave her the number of the person to call about the offer.
Jayzus, what clueless dorks.
Now, I had seen job ads from a year or so ago for FEMA Mitigation Architects to work out of DC offices for 85-110 K annual salary with full government employee benefits.
But that's not what they're doing for Katrina. No, for Katrina, the salary is half that, with no benefits. For architects with 10-20 years experience. You get called up for a month, you stay the complete month, you don't get to leave the job region to visit home, you work seven days a week with no overtime, and at the end of the month they might either require you to stay another month or terminate your employment and possibly call you back two or three months later with little notice.
And I'm thinking, the only architects who would want to work under those conditions are ones who are unemployable in their home job market, who have no job prospects and no business of their own to run. In other words, the last people you'd want to have to work with under those kinds of conditions. The last people you'd want to be in charge of rebuilding a major metropolitan area.
Needless to say, Gina turned them down. It would be way too hard on the kids for not enough in return, and all to work for an organization as badly run as FEMA.
Somewhere out there, there might be a way for small businesses to get rebuilding contracts, but apparently you need to be sucking Halliburton's dick to be privy to the bid information.
People are getting beaucoup rich off this rebuilding, but it's not the small businesses and it's not the people who want to get in there and do the right thing for the city. It's the usual suspects, the cronies and the carpetbaggers.
So we sit in Austin, and we wonder what to do. Can't move back...no place to live and no schools, even if we could find jobs in our chosen fields. But they desperately want people to move back. It's a bitch of a chicken-and-egg problem.
Posted by ray at 8:58 PM | Comments (2)
October 4, 2005
Considering New Orleans again
Much to my surprise, Gina is pretty gung-ho about the possibility of moving back to New Orleans for a year or two. She's driven partly by professional interest ("the architecture there is just too juicy"), partly I think by wanting a change, partly (and she won't say so, but I'm guessing) because maybe she thinks this is the lever that will finally pry me out of the software business.
So it's not a serious thing, yet, but not necessarily a complete fantasy either. My brother has connections in town which he can work to help me find me a job. Gina is trying to get on either with FEMA or through other architect contacts. I have high school friends I can talk to about which Orleans Parish schools are still viable (the Algiers schools were a bright spot when I was a kid), or whether private school is the way to go. At least until high school, when I know the kids can go to Franklin, my alma mater.
So Gina keeps looking up rental properties, both Uptown and in my childhood neighborhood of Algiers. Unfortunately, rental rates in the non-flooded areas have doubled since Katrina, making it just about as expensive as Austin for renters. And I don't think buying right off the bat is a good idea because the market there is going to be absolutely psycho for a few years.
It's a very weird time. Many monumental choices. Karl probably remembers 12 years ago when Gina and I just up and decided overnight to move from the Bay Area back to Texas. But now there are kids. You don't just up and do things when there are kids involved. But neither should the kids be an excuse for inaction, for stagnation.
I just don't know.
Posted by ray at 9:21 AM | Comments (6)
September 16, 2005
Demolition, opportunity, and hope
I'm at 90% now, healthwise. Being held back from the shelter by Gina, since she rightly points out that if I go down there again without a rock-solid immune system, I'll have a relapse and then I'll be sick for ACL, which would break Cassidy's heart since we have been planning this father-daughter rock-fest weekend for a year.
Work, believe it or not, has eased up a little.
Bill and Mark are back at the Metairie house this week. The water has receded, but there is a fast-growing field of mold extending about a foot above the high water mark. They spent yesterday ripping out sheetrock trying to get a jump on some demolition contractors that are going to pull apart the ground floor to see if the house needs to be razed or if they can just redo the bottom story. Mold is bad, though.
Austin CERT sent us all an email about a hiring frenzy that FEMA is going through, looking for temporary employees with expertise in a variety of fields, including architecture and historic preservation. Gina went ahead and sent them an application. We're thinking creatively right now...if the money and travel reimbursement are enough to make months away from the family worthwhile, then this would satisfy Gina's urge to get in there and contribute to the rebuilding while at the same time giving her a lay of the land and a feel for whether moving back there is a good idea for the family. Meanwhile, I wait for people to start posting actual job ads at places like Tulane and Loyola. A relaxing instructor position in a Comp Sci department almost sounds like a vacation right now.
I found a great blog of a guy who rode out the storm in New Orleans, with lots of pictures of areas where the damage isn't bad at all. Major areas of the city are close to perfectly habitable. The idea that the whole city is a wasteland that the nation should consider abandoning defies the reality on the ground.
Seriously, to all residents of Orleans and Jefferson Parishes whose zip codes have been selected... You are really not going to notice a difference from when you evacuated... other than no crime, roadblocks, soldiers with machine guns walking around, and having to go to the Convention Center (Orleans Parish only) for maybe a week until the Winn-Dixie's are open; everything physically is almost normal. The only thing we're missing is people, the community.Seriously again, large parts of Jeff Parish are already back online. The streets are clean, the neighborhoods safe and everything is under control. Heck you can even go buy a car now if you want. Orleans is NOT far behind.
Moreover, despite the losses, there are still some MAJOR misconceptions about what has happened down here. I drove throughout Uptown and the Garden District again today, and then I ventured my furthest downriver to date. I hit the CBD, Marigny and the French Quarter. In all areas, yet again I was shocked by the lack of damage and looting. I expected rampant lawlessness and trashing of buildings. The L.A. riots were probably much worse. The real looting happened on Canal St. and at several bars - seeking cash from the video poker machines. I can't say it enough, it is not what I understood as portrayed by the national media.
Click through to Gulfsails to see heartening pictures of the Marigny and Commander's Palace and other bright spots.
Posted by ray at 9:12 AM | Comments (1)
August 31, 2005
Bereavement Leave
Jette is like me. Another Austin-based New Orleans ex-pat tracking her scattered refugee family members while she tries to focus on her job.
They don't give you bereavement leave at work when a city dies.
They should. They really should.
I am getting understanding from my boss and my co-workers today, at least. The software release marches on and I'm in the critical path, but at least I'm getting some love.
Posted by ray at 4:20 PM | Comments (1)
August 26, 2005
Moving day
My bimonthly week of hell at work is over, leaving me weak and now sporting a throat infection to enjoy all weekend, until Monday when some other crisis that can only be fixed by Ray rears its ugly head.
I'm going to spend the weekend in bed, mostly, and will pass the time reading real books and restoring blog entries to the beloved Moronosphere. It's good to be home.
You can quit reading my temporary digs at the blogspot, I won't be updating there any more.
In sporting news, Liam's Little League draft is over and he will spend the fall season playing for.....the Red Sox! Rawk! We've already got fan gear!
Carry on talking amongst yourselves...
Posted by ray at 6:45 PM | Comments (1)
August 11, 2005
I love this town
Those of you who sent me love and halibut during my hour of darkness, I thank you.
This last entry is not a hallucination brought on by 36 hours of sleep deprivation. It's the God's honest truth.
I was sent home by my manager and instructed to sleep. On the way, I stopped in at Waterloo Records to pick up a few CDs (Gastr Del Sol, Mogwai, Sleater-Kinney, for those keeping track), and then wandered back behind the record store to Amy's Ice Cream.
And while I'm standing there waiting for my cherry shake, I look to my left and right behind me in line, waiting to order his ice cream, is Roky Erickson. Yes, THAT Roky Erickson.
I will sleep tonight, and I will dream of demons. Not software. Demons.
Posted by ray at 8:51 PM | Comments (0)
Sunrise, Sunset...
Yesterday morning I saw coworkers arrive, and then in the evening I saw them go home again. And then in the morning I saw them arrive again, and now I'm watching them go home again.
When an all-nighter extends into a second all-dayer and then your manager starts coming around taking orders for dinner...you give up hope.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.
Posted by ray at 5:24 PM | Comments (1)
The Bug Count Also Rises
If you've been in the software biz for more than 6 or 8 years or so, you've already seen this, but if not, enjoy. I like to reread this during those brief lulls between builds, in the weeks when the bugs are infinite and the sleep can be counted in minutes rather than hours.
In the fall of that year the rains fell as usual and washed the leaves of the dust and dripped from the leaves onto the ground. The shuttles drove through the rainy streets and took the people to meetings, then later brought them back, their tires spraying the mist into the air. Many days he stood for a long time and watched the rain and the shuttles and drank his double-tall mochas. With the mochas he was strong.Hernando who worked down the hall and who was large with microbrews came to him and told him that the ship day was upon them but the bugs were not yet out. The bugs which were always there even when you were in Cafes late at night sipping a Redhook or a double-tall mocha and you thought you were safe but they were there and although Enrico kept the floor swept clean and the mochas were hot the bugs were there and they ate at you.
When Hernando told him this he asked how many bugs.
"The RAID is huge with bugs," Hernando said. "The bugs are infinite."
"Why do you ask me? You know I cannot do this thing anymore with the bugs."
"Once you were great with the bugs," Hernando said. "No one was greater," he said again. "Even Prado."
"Prado? What of Prado? Let Prado fix the bugs."
Hernando shrugged. "Prado is finished. He was gored by three Sev2's on Chicago. All he does now is drink herb tea and play with his screensavers."
"Herb tea?"
"It is true, my friend." Hernando shrugged again.
Later he went to his office and sat in the dark for a long time. Then he sent e-mail to Michaels.
Michaels came to him while he was sipping a mocha. They sat silently for awhile, then he asked Michaels, "I need you to triage for me."
Michaels looked down. "I don't do that anymore," he said.
"This is different. The bugs are enormous. There are an infinity of bugs."
"I'm finished with that," Michaels said again. "I just want to live quietly."
"Have you heard Prado is finished? He was badly gored. Now he can only drink herb tea."
"Herb tea?" Michaels said.
"It is true," he said sorrowfully.
Michaels stood up. "Then I will do it, my friend," he said formally. "I will do it for Prado, who was once great with the bugs. I will do it for the time we filled Prado's office with bouncy balls, and for the time Prado wore his nerf weapons in the marketing hall and slew all of them with no fear and only a great joy at the combat. I will do it for all the pizza we ate and the bottles of Coke we drank."
Together they walked slowly back, knowing it would be good. As they walked the rain dripped softly from the leaves, and the shuttles carried the bodies back from the meetings.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivs 2.5 License. Please feel free to copy, distribute, display, and perform The Bug Count Also Rises. We request that you include a link to http://www.workpump.com/bugcount/, attribute the author, John Browne, and include a link to the appropriate copyright license. You may not use this work for commercial purposes without receiving permission from John Browne.
Posted by ray at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2005
All Nighters Suck
Especially when they involve long periods of waiting on somebody else's build, punctuated by frenzied debugging. I am the rules engine god where I work, so when somebody screws up their rules, they come to me for salvation.
Good all nighters involve Orbital and Eno and Sasha & Digweed as drugs to put me in the programmer's trance.
But bad all nighters? Velvet Underground and Dirty Three. To shut out the world, the three different managers all coming by for status checks every 30 minutes, the coworkers panicking because their rulesets aren't deploying right, the voices in my head trying to convince me that I don't rock, I don't walk on water, I can't overcome this, a seven figure sales deal can go up in a puff of smoke and it will be ALL. MY. FAULT.
It won't be all my fault. Hell, we'll probably make the deal. We're that good.
But the voices are there. And the Dirty Three are gloriously louder than them.
Send me IM love. Send me email love. Send me chocolate-covered espresso beans. I'm here all night.
Posted by ray at 9:22 PM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2005
Vacation again
It gets harder and harder to stay recharged after vacations these days, so we're heading out again, this time for a week in DC. We'll visit family, we'll visit all the fun kid spots, like the Holocaust Museum, the Vietnam Memorial... Not really interested in seeing the White House, though, until after they fumigate the place in 2009.
When I get back, I'll disappear into a work hidey hole for a few weeks. The critical performance tuning that I've been wanting to do for 6 months now, but which was never considered my most important task, has now suddenly become the most important thing in the universe to a lot of people. Every company, it's the same story..."that's not really a priority...that's not really a priority...that's not really a priority...OH MY GOD IT'S A DISASTER CAN YOU HAVE IT DONE BY TOMORROW?"
Sigh...Oh well, at least I get to work on something interesting. And there's that money thing.
I saw a guy mowing the grass at the DPS last week, just driving a big tractor around in the sun, and I was envious.
But then there's that money thing.
I'll have my laptop with me all week, so do lots of blogging and emailing in case I get lonely.
Posted by ray at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)
June 30, 2005
I am so out of here
Maybe the rain will stop following me
With millions of colors reflected in daylight
Right on the kickdrum
Turning the sound up full
Another alone on an everyday night
I think in the morning I think I'll be alright
Watching the blood flow
No wonder I don't know why
Don't look surprised
Erased
Our lives
Erased
I'm taking off til next Thursday, and hopefully I won't manage to touch a computer the whole time. Just me by the pool with Feynman and Mystic Pig. Polyphonic Spree on Friday. Red Sox-Rangers tickets on Tuesday (if it's on TV in your neighborhood, look for us sitting in the vicinity of the right field foul pole).
Thanks for the good thoughts after last night's rant. I love you guys. Really.
See you next week.
Update: More poolside reading. My brother Karl El Vez just sent me a copy of Tim Powers' Last Call. I love you man. Thanks.
All I need now is to get Gina to bring me lemonades in a bikini and I don't think I'll leave the pool all week.
Posted by ray at 5:14 PM | Comments (1)
Requiem For a Dream
The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there's nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you
The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don't owe nothing, so boy get runnin'
It's the best years of your life they want to steal
A couple of weeks back I took the kids out for ice cream at Amy's and chatted outside for a while with a lovely lady who was reading Po Bronson's What Should I Do With My Life? She was younger than me but her kids had already grown up and moved out ("I started really young", she said) and she was in the middle of quitting the career she had to have, in order to take up the career she'd always wanted. I told her I feel like doing that sometimes, and she told me I should definitely give it some thought, that it's more possible than I realize.
I've been either studying in or working in computer science for 23 years now. I've been addicted to tech startups for the last thirteen. I've designed products that were never released, products that never even ran, products that were beautiful but wouldn't sell, and one or two products that made tens of millions of dollars in revenue for somebody or other.
Since 1992 I've worked for, let's see...seven startups and one research consortium.
Five of those companies (including the consortium) have gone out of business.
A sixth had a spectacular IPO, and an equally spectacular flame out. They're living on their cash now, praying for a buyer. I rode the stock options all the way up and all the way down, but I finally got fed up and bailed out during the 14th round of layoffs.
Now I work at yet another startup, along with some colleagues from the IPO days. Enterprise applications. A brutal fucking business, hugely complex mixes of technologies, with sales cycles of six months to a year or longer, and giant mega-tech competitors waiting to crush you at any moment.
The hours are long. The expectations are high. The pressure to produce, to stay on top of new technologies, to not fuck up, is immense. And I've never been happy unless I'm surrounded by people who are as smart or smarter than me. Face it, a company where I'm always the smartest guy in the room is not a company that's gonna succeed. So the competition amongst coworkers, the intellectual pressure to not be a dope, to not admit that there is a problem that you can't overcome, is sometimes overwhelming.
Your work day never really ends. It gets in your brain and you can't drive it out for more than a couple of hours. I used to drink it out of my skull, but that's no longer an option.
And lately I'm starting to wonder if I can do this at all any more. If I can really do another ten years of software. Or five. Or one.
Every time I go to Whole Foods now, I chat with the guys at the fish counter. I want to know what it's like, cutting up fish all day, bagging oysters for people, talking with random customers about what's good for grilling, how to prep a soft-shell crab, which salmon looks best this week. And then when your shift is over, going home and not thinking about work at all for the rest of the day.
Sometimes I think about chucking it all. Go to work for Whole Foods. Or go work for the Red Cross. Just vaccinate kids in Africa all day long. Anything to get me away from the incessant march of product releases and crit-sits and showstopper bugs and broken builds and quarterly sales numbers.
But I'm addicted to the money. Face it, a guy slinging haddock at Whole Foods does not get to live in a big house in Hyde Park and send his kids to private school and spend $2000 on a fucking tattoo. Do I want out bad enough to move into a tiny house, or a house out in the suburbs where I can have Republican neighbors all around? Give up on being able to put Cassidy and Liam through the college of their choice and just let them tough it out at UT or ACC?
For a few years now, I've been wanting one more IPO score. Something that would set us up financially so that I could tell the software business to finally go fuck itself. I'm like those guys in Requiem For a Dream. I just need that one lucky break, that one big score, and I'll be set up for life. Only that break never comes and I keep needing a taste and I fritter away the whole stash, my whole life away, pour it into the keyboard a little at a time like junk going up my veins a little at a time until there is nothing left and no more opportunities to get any of it back.
The enterprise software economy is rough right now, the money is tight, the deals are few and far between, and when they start looking around for the fat to trim...well, like I said, I don't like to be the smartest guy in the room. But the smartest guy in the room is usually the one who still has a job at the butt end of a weak quarter.
I'm fucking tired. And I feel fucking trapped.
Posted by ray at 12:15 AM | Comments (12)
February 5, 2005
Midnight at school, Rudy. Nooooo clazz.
I know I don't talk techie in these pages much, but this is working my last nerve.
At what point did it suddenly become fashionable in Java, when naming a variable of type Class, to spell it "clazz"?
I've been programming in Java since 1995, version 1.0prebeta1, and as Java has assumed the mantle of "the standard" programming language, it's been interesting to see programming style fads come and go, as subsequent generations of programmers who were weaned on the stuff come out of college and enter the workforce.
I'm not talking about technological improvements like Hibernate and Spring and XDoclet and all the other cool shit that makes life worth living.
I mean fashions. Like for instance, lately it's become the trend to declare private variables at the bottom of the class rather than at the top. Why? "It makes more sense that way." Horseshit. It's fashion. It doesn't make more "sense" that way any more than baggy jeans make more sense than 501s.
This new one, though, drives me nuts. Clazz? It's irritating, because if, like me, you tend to pronounce things in your head as you read them, you read this and your inner voice says "clazzzzzzzz" and it sounds like the guy who wrote the code you're reading was high and slurring his words.
I know why you have to do it. "class" is a reserved word in Java, and so this:
Class class = this.getClass();doesn't work. But this does:
Class cl = this.getClass();and it's worked perfectly fine for years. So why the change?
I googled the word, and it first shows up in around 2001 in Java-related postings in Italian. So that makes sense. (I'm guessing "clazz" is Italian for "class"?)
But now it's everywhere. It's all over Spring. It's in the JR*les sample code. It's making me crazy.
I propose that we up the ante, and go straight to "clazzizzle". Sex up the code a little, y'know?
That is all. Back to work. On a Saturday. As usual.
"Yo ho yo ho the startup life fer me..."
Posted by ray at 1:11 PM | Comments (2)
December 18, 2004
Is this what you call irony? Poetic justice? Or something else?
I got laid off on October 1st, and it was quite a blow...for about two weeks, until I landed another job at a healthier, more mature, more well-funded startup. But it still hurt my ego a little.
Well, last week, that company that laid me off went out of business. Just folded up, booted out all the employees, and put its assets on the market.
So now I find myself in the odd position of being the only ex-employee who currently has a job.
I'm not gloating. Like they told me when they let me go, it's just business.
Really. Just business.
Really.
Posted by ray at 1:34 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2004
As it turns out, nobody noticed that I just drank cranberry juice the whole time, except the waitress, who seemed to have trouble grasping the notion that I wanted "just" cranberry juice. Idjit. I hope she's in one of those good husband-hunting sororities, because she ain't gonna make it on her brains.
I also found out, to my disappointment, that an ex-coworker of mine who I always thought was really smart, fairly hot, and had a bad attitude in a good way...is voting for Bush. Because (get this) "there hasn't be another attack since 9/11 so he's doing a good job with homeland security".
Christ. When somebody who is smart enough to have a degree in finance and is working on a second degree in computer engineering can have such obviously stunted skills in basic logic, I start losing hope.
Posted by ray at 9:39 AM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2004
Coming out of the closet
So most of you know that I'm a recovering alcoholic. I may have in the distant past drunk some of you under the table without even trying. And this week I'm celebrating one year sober.
Today, though, I have have some weird feelings about this. I've been out of the closet with my sobriety ever since last spring, when I was pretty sure it was gonna take, but I've never announced it from the treetops. When it comes up in conversation, I mention it, casually, without shame, without drama.
But today I'm going to happy hour with the engineering crew from the company I just got laid off from. And you know what? None of them know I don't drink. They all knew me from the company before that, where I was known as a drinker, as a beer geek, as the guy who was always the last one to leave the quarterly company parties. Not necessarily a drunk, since I managed to surround myself with guys who drank almost as much as me, in order to blend in. They have no idea that by the time I started working at this most recent company, I had already been sober for three months, and it never really came up the whole time I worked there.
So I have to out myself today, because I know that when I show up, the VP of Engineering is going to thrust a margarita or a Shiner Bock into my hand, and I'm going to have to turn it down. Now this VP is a great guy. Funny, smart, talented. He's also kind of macho. Weightlifter. Type A personality. Likes to flirt with the waitresses and make sure that you notice how good he is at it. You know the type. He doesn't really like signs of weakness in people, and though he will joke about your failures and failings in a good-natured-ribbing sort of way, there is always the slightest undercurrent of something else. You know that he's identified the weakness, and you know that he won't forget that it's there.
What this means is that when I out myself, I have to convey not weakness, but strength. I'm not weak because I can't drink any more. I'm stronger. I'm healthier. I'm smarter.
At least I hope I am. I keep telling myself I am, and most days I believe myself.
At any rate, it's a good day to ride the Triumph. Nothing brings out your inner bad-ass like riding up on the same British iron that Steve McQueen rode in "The Great Escape", that Marlon Brando rode in "The Wild One".
We shall see.
Posted by ray at 3:30 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2004
Everything happens for a reason
I have set a personal record. Twelve days of unemployment, and this morning I got an offer with my first choice of companies that I wanted to work for. With a salary that is back up to my Internet-boom levels. The VP of Engineering is a woman I used to work with, and the CEO was our CEO back at the old company when we got to do our IPO...he's a good guy.
I will stop whining now.
Except about baseball.
Posted by ray at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)
October 1, 2004
Unemployed
Getting more funding meant "extending our runway" which means "reducing our burn rate" which of course means "reducing head count".
Which resulted in Ray getting laid off today.
I'm not mad or bitter. Three of us got let go from engineering, and of the five that are left, they're all brilliant and all have been with the company a lot longer than me, so I can't feel any shame at them being chosen to stay over me.
But I am in desperate need of some self-medication.
I'm thinking the espresso chocolate death thingy at Coldstone will work nicely.
Posted by ray at 1:54 PM | Comments (0)