cellio | Entries tagged with work (general)

( congregations, job, educational surprises, reading, Volkswagens )

I think I've now gotten questions to everyone who's asked for some so far. Please let me know if I'm wrong about that.

( death, Catholicism, SCA, meeting people, job )

Here's how it works:

If you want to be interviewed, leave a comment saying so.
I will respond, asking you five questions.
You'll update your journal with my five questions and your five answers.
You'll include this explanation.
You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

My friend Gail had her baby last night. The girl is healthy but premature by 10 weeks, so she gets to spend the next several weeks in the hospital while she finishes growing. I really hope everything works out ok; I know how much Gail wants to be a mother. So far, so good.

At work, today was largely a day of putting out fires. They weren't usually my fires, but often I seemed to be the only person who knows where we keep the fire hose. This must change. :-) (This will change, as some of the people involved are new hires who are responsible for learning this stuff. But knowledge transfer has not been orderly.)

Yesterday a repairman was supposed to come between 8:30 and noon. Dani and I agree that a phone call at 2:10 saying he'll be over soon, with no prior contact (and no ability to track him down), does not meet expectations. Now, to see if Sears agrees with our assessment that we're due expedited service if we reschedule through them... And to prevent Dani from salvaging anything useful from a morning spent at home, the meter reader who was supposed to come between 8 and noon didn't show either. Whee. (At least Dani is set up to work from home fairly easily. I'm not.)

I didn't know that UPSs had overload warnings. Perhaps my office-mate and I should not be trying to share a single one for both computers. (The office was recently reconfigured for three people rather than two, but the infrastructure hasn't caught up. "You are in a maze of twisty windy extension cords, all different.")

I recently saw an ad for "all meat" hotdogs. Um. I'm not sure I want to carefully consider the alternatives.

Hint to grocery-store managers: When your cashier tells me that she cannot simply cancel the item that rang up for the wrong price, and that I must stand in a customer-service line that's at least 15 minutes long to get my money back, you do not motivate me to pick up anything extra on future trips.

The Bush campaign is rallying church volunteers to work their congregations -- which is fine at the level of "chat up your friends", but now we have this: "A copy of the guide obtained by Reuters directs religious volunteers to send church directories to state campaign committees [...]". In at least some organizations, distributing the membership list to outsiders is a violation of the membership agreement, to say nothing of the ethical implications. Anyone who does this deserves to get smacked down by other members of his congregation -- and probably shouldn't be surprised by some of the mailing lists he ends up on as a result. And I'd have the same objection if the other side did it; it's just that either they aren't or they're being more subtle and I haven't noticed.

Gee, thanks, Sun.

In chasing down a bug (failure to run) in javadoc, I came to the tool change log. It records a fix in the standard doclet for the bug I am seeing. We don't use the standard doclet, so we'll have to make the corresponding fix. They provided a link to a bug in their database, which I clicked (in search of a description of the solution).

This brought me to a login page. I don't have an account with them, but they have a link for free registration. I clicked it; it's a 404. So I searched their web site for user registration, found what appeared to be the relevant page, and signed up.

Armed with this registration, I returned to that bug link. This time it did not return a login challenge; instead, it said "this bug is not available".

Grr.

(In the unlikely event that anyone reading this knows what arcane magic I must work to get javadoc to run on code that contains assertions, please let me know. Currently I am commenting out the assertions, which is not a good long-term solution. We use 1.4.01 by default, but it doesn't work with 1.4.2 either.)

This afternoon I got a phone call from a recruiter dangling a geek-writer position in front of me. (C/C++, VMS, Linux, must be ok with reading source code, in Pittsburgh, deadline tomorrow. I don't know, but have a theory about, the identity of the company. If this speaks to you, let me know.)

So anyway, I told her thanks for keeping me in mind (aside: I have never heard of this recruiter before) but I'm currently very happy where I am. She said, "yeah, that's what everyone said, but I had to try." That piqued my curiosity; apparently she's been talking to my coworkers from my last employer.

It's nice to be in demand. :-)

Most recently from

rani23: list all the (paying) jobs you've ever had.

cook/cashier/flunky (sub shop, not a burger joint)
proofreader
typesetter (mmm, chemical fumes! really!)
grader (sociology)
research assistant (same sociology prof)
scullery maid [1]
teaching assistant (computer science)
technical writer [2]
programmer
customer support manager (technically... [3])
web developer
musician [4]
Edit: lab rat [5]

I think that's everything, though it's possible I missed some stuff from the college days. I've never babysat, waited tables, or had a paper route.

[1] One summer I worked at an inn at Pennsic. I got a W-2 (or maybe it was a 1099) and everything! For one weekend's worth of work!

[2] First as an undergrad member of a project team, once as a student intern, and several times professionally.

[3] We didn't actually have any customers; I was supposed to create infrastructure so we'd be ready when we did. That was a small part of my job in practice, and eventually I got them to give me a more accurate job title.

[4] Yeah, I've actually been hired for a few solo gigs, again with 1099s and the whole bit.

[5] It wasn't a "job" in the conventional sense, but I made a non-trivial amount of money in college by participating in just about every paying research study that didn't involve consuming chemicals. This was especially helpful during my freshman year, when I didn't yet know that by the time you show up on campus in the fall it's too late to get most work-study jobs.

This has been a week of interviews. Each day at work has included at least one interview for engineering candidates (and I did my first phone screen today). Then I spent a long evening interviewing architects for some work we're doing at my synagogue. As worship chair I get to sit on the renovations committee, and tonight we had five firms in to tell us why they should get the job and what great ideas they have.

One thing that was refreshing about the latter, and that usually doesn't come up in the former, is that the questions "is choosing X ethical?" and "will it appear ethical?" got serious consideration. After all, hiring someone is about more than getting a job done for the lowest price. (I won't talk publicly about the details, but my questions were answered positively to ny satisfaction, just in case anyone was wondering.)

I just received (at work) a phone call from a consulting firm. It was pretty obvious that he was calling to either (try to) recruit me or sell services to me, depending on how the first 30 seconds of the conversation went. It was pretty amusing. He apparently doesn't get a lot of "actually, I'm very satisfied with my current position and company" these days. :-) But they might actually have some relevant services, so it wasn't a waste of my 15 minutes either.

(Specifically, if someone could come in and affordably wave the DocBook [1] magic wand for us, with fairly painless migration and all the flexibility we currently have, I'd lobby for that expenditure. There are important things that my current tools can't do and that, apparently, DocBook can. But I don't have the cycles to climb the steep curve right now.)

[1] Or maybe we should be looking at a different tool instead. That evaluation would be part of the job.

Okaaay... "thingamabob" is sort of in the dictionary. But I don't think the first entry (from American Heritage) counts. :-)

(This arose from a bit of linguistic anthropology. The words I use for this are "thingamajig" (spoken only, except in meta-conversations like this) or (more common) "doohickey" or "thingy"; Dani uses "thingamabob".)

I persuaded a developer today to implement the correct, general solution to a problem, rather than the expedient solution that would have been good enough for his current needs (only) but would be hard to maintain. Yay. As an extra bonus, I anticipated one area where he might have been tempted to hard-code a value and persuaded him not to. I love it when these things work. :-)

Speaking of developer interactions, it's nice when "how do I do such-and-such with this interface?" generates the response "you're right, that should be supported; I'll take care of it". :-) (I thought the problem was my lack of knowledge, not his lack of support.)

I tried a new-to-me recipe for fish stew tonight (thanks src). It had a mix of spices that struck me as unusual, but it works well. Definitely a keeper. I couldn't find cellophane noodles (would that be dry, frozen, or refrigerated?), so I served it over rice and that worked.

(For anyone who's wondering, src is her initials, not a Unix reference. I didn't get that right away either. :-) )

1. If you were running for president, what would the major points of your platform be? ( Read more... )

2. What is the best job you've ever had? What did you like about it? ( Read more... )

3. Aside from religion, what is one aspect of your philosophy, beliefs, or lifestyle that has changed significantly in your life? What motivated the change, and how did you go about it? ( Read more... )

4. When you were growing up, who in your family did you feel closest to? What was the best thing about that relationship? Are you still as close to them now? ( Read more... )

5. Consider the following scenario: ( Read more... )

Version-control systems should not behave differently depending on the location of a file. That is, "cvs [operation] somedir/file" and "cvs [operation] file" should produce the same results with respect to the file in question. You may infer from the fact that I'm writing this that this is not the case. Hrmpf.

In happier news, last night was the Transarc doc group reunion dinner. I had fun; Dani had less fun because he knew fewer people. (We were also seated near people I didn't know all that well, though enough conversations got shouted down the length of the table that this wasn't that much of a challenge.) Jim and Laurie were both there. We haven't seen them in ages! (Well, I saw Jim at a previous reunion dinner, but it's been a long time since I saw Laurie or Dani saw either.) Gotta fix that. Jean, too.

Coincidentally, the NetBill gang is talking about holding a reunion dinner next month. It's been about a year and a half. That'll be fun too. I volunteered to host that one; there are fewer NetBillians than Transarcians.

Tuesday was D&D. It was largely a role-playing session this time; I infer that there will be monster-bashing next time. :-) (I also need to figure out the best use of my character's share of recent loot.)

I've been having an annoying experience with a third-party seller through Amazon Marketplace. Almost a month ago I ordered the second season of B5 on DVD; it's not here yet, though it was required to ship three weeks ago. The seller has given me two different bogus tracking numbers for the package, and doesn't really answer email. (Those two tracking numbers are a significant percentage of the total word count of his messages.) He has thus far failed to tell me when the package actually shipped; I'm betting on either "a few days ago" or "never".

If worst comes to worst I can file a claim with Amazon for the money (in another few days), but I'm kind of irked that this loser seller will have cost me a month and some extra money. (The going rate is higher now than it was then.) He's got a large pile of negative feedback (all since I placed my order); I haven't left any yet. I wonder what makes people like that tick. I mean, I assume Amazon is going to go after him for all the insurance claims they'll have to pay out. How stupid is this seller?

But in happier news, according to Amazon the third season will be out in August. Yay!

This is the best description of the release engineer's job I've ever seen.

The story about the elephant is the funniest thing I've read in days.

I have a new front-runner in the "deceptive marketing" category. Today I examined a bag of Glenny's Soy Crisps, which proudly proclaims "10 grams pure soy protein" and "only 65 calories per serving". However, it is not 10 grams of protein per serving. (The bag contains two servings, so it's 5g protein per 65 calories.)

Yesterday I came into the office to find a keyboard tray peeking out from beneath my desk. I wondered how long it had been there without my noticing; it was possible to push it back well out of sight, so it could have been there for a long time. The mystery was solved when someone walked into my office later and found me, not my office-mate, sitting at my desk. Apparently he'd installed it the previous night, but in the wrong place. I suppose that beats the alternative outcomes. :-) (No, I don't want a keyboard tray; my arms aren't long enough to use one with proper posture.)

Tonight was an On the Mark practice. Jenn has decided to leave the group due to an attack of life. It's unfortunate, but I understand. I don't want anyone to burn out. Ray is staying, so we'll juggle some parts around and things will be ok.

Tonight's episode of Enterprise, "Cogenitor", had a dreadful preview. It was also one of the best episodes of the show to date. That was an extremely pleasant surprise. (Ok, I saw every key plot point well ahead of schedule, but that didn't hurt the show, as it turned out. Now we just have to wait and see if they actually follow through on this in future episodes.)

Embla lay down in my lap while I was watching the show tonight. She's never done that before. Yay! It took five and a half years, but she's finally comfortable enough to actually settle down in my lap, rather than just walking across it and then scampering away. Progress. :-)

It's been a hectic week at work, due largely to our lack of committed, firm process for software releases -- or rather, the inability of the engineers (thus far) to prevent requests for a "quick and dirty snapshot -- just a beta" from going somewhere. We will discuss this next week. (I think I was finally able to impress on the right person, on Friday, that we are not just making accelerated progress -- we are doing stuff that we will have to undo later, and that has a cost.) The real answer here is to have frequent quasi-releases, where we go through the freeze/QA/archive process even if it never leaves the building. If we do this every month, then when someone nees the "latest and greatest" he is at most out of date by a couple weeks. Part of the problem this week was that it's been too long since the last release -- but until recently, the next release was not a priority.

Tuesday night was the D&D game. It was fun. My character is now in negotiations with an intelligent weapon, of all things. This should be fascinating. (Only two party members are even elligble to wield the weapon, due to size and class restrictions. The other one is not interested. In general, if my character, a sorceror, is in melee then something has gone horribly wrong, but if something goes horribly wrong there's something to be said for having a good weapon. But this might not be what the weapon had in mind.)

Wednesday night's West Wing was fun. I think a lot of the quality of that show is in the writing (as with B5); this show seems to be targetting more of a "thinking" crowd than many shows out there. Keep it up, guys.

I'm not sure how I feel about the "Rapture-esque" Twilight Zone this week.

Saturday night we went to a "wine and dessert" party hosted by Sharon and Eliot. It was a very pleasant evening and I got to see some people I don't see often, like Christine, Greg, and Jody. I also met some new people who were interesting to talk with. Ralph and Lori were there, too, as was my co-worker Jake (with his SO Erin -- not sure which of them is the connection to which of Sharon or Eliot). Sharon and Eliot have wide social circles.

This morning I asked one of our developers for a feature we had discussed a while back that never got implemented. He agreed that it would be a good thing, sighed about the size of his queue, and said "If I get one more request I'll implement it". I turned to our administrative assistant and asked her to ask the developer for this feature, which she proceeded to do. (Just to be clear on this, this is something she has no earthly use for. I fed her the words.)

Now the developer is complaining that that's not fair and it's not what he meant. I think it was a valuable lesson about specification, and he should suck it up, give me my feature, and be more specific in the future.

I suspect that's not what will happen, though. Oh well; I'll just have to be more creative.

We have an informal "test lab" that has been growing, over the last month, in some otherwise-unused space. It's currently up to 24 machines, which are for the most part all in use simultaneously. These machines are piled up, 4 to the desk, because we need to test collaborative applications.

Yesterday one of my co-workers asked the obvious (in retrospect) question: how are all of these machines powered? We both got visions of a network of power strips all ending at one or two wall outlets.

Fortunately, that's not the case. They ran real wiring on some reasonable number of circuits and just fed it all into this space. That's good. :-)

I told this story to Dani last night, who reminded me that the electrician we had in a couple days ago had yelled at Dani for his network of power strips all plugged into one outlet.

Current Mood: amused

I'm trying to produce one representative well-documented example to accompany our SDK. (More will come, of course, but I need a basic one now.) Werner gave me a fairly simple demo he had put together a while back and suggested I use it as a starting point.

The code had rotted. I fixed some of the bugs, and a couple other developers fixed the ones I didn't know how to fix.

So today during the engineering meeting I was reporting on this, and I mentioned that it now worked "but it's still throwing some 'bad karma' warnings from {FooClass}; do I need to worry about those?" As I'm saying this, someone pokes his head into the room (our meeting was running late). The reaction on his face to our matter-of-fact discussion of bad karma was priceless.

Hey, "bad karma" is a technical term, and we all understand what it means. It's not just a figure of speech! In fact, we have levels of bad karma, and a switch where you can set how bad the karma has to be before we complain about it. :-)

(In case you're wondering, this particular bad karma comes from calling blocking code in the Swing thread. Definitely bad juju -- but "bad juju" isn't a precise technical term.)

I've learned a valuable technique for getting information from developers who are too busy to talk to me. It goes as follows: "One of us will be embarrassed if I ask this question in tomorrow's code review. Just in case it's not me, do you have a moment?" :-)

I've also just learned some useful things about Java that I did not know before, which is handy. (I still have a lot to learn, particularly in ways that Java is not like C++.)

Reminiscent of grad school, we often have meetings involving food at our company, and the leftovers (if any) appear in the kitchen sometime later, whereupon they are descended upon by the staff.

I just went to the kitchen to get my yogurt out of the fridge, and saw a couple of quiches (not the usual lunch-meeting stuff) and a bowl of salad, accompanied by a 2-word vulture-deterring note: "not yet".

Drat. That's stuff I would actually eat. :-) Usually it's pepperoni pizza or something equally appealing.

Current Mood: amused

Another developer has joined the ranks of those who have learned that asking me to document something will expose you to a design review -- not because that's my explicit goal, but because I ask the kinds of user-oriented questions that may or may not have come up before but probably didn't get followed through. The result is generally a cleaner API that is more coherently-explained.

None of these developers have complained about this, by the way. They seem to appreciate it (and have been known to compete for my time), and I'm glad to be working with people who can appreciate it. (I, in turn, understand the concept of something that's sub-optimal but not going to get fixed. My job is mostly to ask the questions...)

Apparently the developers here have a shorthand for this phenomenon now: they call it the "Monica effect". :-)

Current Mood: amused

Monica

interviewed by jerusha

interviewed by profane_stencil

assorted bits

(mostly) short takes

mutter grumble (Sun)

It's nice to be wanted.

jobs meme

interviewing

buying or selling?

short takes

questions from ommkarja

recent happenings

a different style of job description

short takes

last few days

say what you mean

(no subject)

(no subject)

tactics

vultures

automatic design review

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