chutes and ladders

[totient]

+ I got a new job in January
+ the interview process was great for my ego
+ the pay is good
+ the benefits are even better
+ they sponsored Arisia
+ I have a nice computer on my desk
- I have a tiny shared office
- there aren't enough conference rooms to be able to make private phone calls
- there's no wireless infrastructure to be able to work in any of the nice large open spaces
- the project is huge
- the project is written in Ancient Greek
- the project is out of management's control
- the methods I know to bring it under control don't apply to huge projects written in Ancient Greek
+ there was a smaller project in a modern language which needed someone with my skills to kick its ass
+ I got up to speed very quickly
+ I kicked a lot of ass in a very visible way
- there's no more ass to kick there for at least six months
- there aren't any other projects here like it
- most of the other projects here are sufficiently out of control that adding people to them won't help
- changing projects here is mired in bureaucracy, even if a good project could be found
- overall, I am down enough on my job to be willing to say that I'm thinking of leaving in an unlocked post
+ I have a job interview at Vanu on Tuesday
+ they want me to give a presentation
+ this is an excuse to write up some stuff I did on the rally app a while ago
+ a presentation-based interview process is more likely to result in a company that can see the big picture than a coding-puzzle-based process

+ I learned a lot about how hotel room blocking should be done at the last Arisia
+ I've come up with a really good new blocking scheme
- it's still not quite clear where the open parties should go in this scheme
- I got pretty far behind schedule on getting reservations open
- our rep at the hotel has left, which will delay it further
- people are starting to ask when we'll be ready
+ we're still a long way ahead of last year

- my laptop died two weeks ago with swap file corruption, and then wouldn't boot due to corruption in a system file
- Norton Ghost's bootable recovery CD couldn't see the drive at all
- I hadn't made a backup in over a year
- I couldn't find the recovery CDs, and my subsequent backups were of personal data only
- this happened a month or two before the likely release date of a couple of very sexy new machines that I would have liked to have an excuse to buy
- the next revision of my old laptop dropped a feature no one but me cared about, but which I cared about very much
+ the revision after that has the feature again
+ it has a bunch of other features I like too, and only one very minor negative change which turns out not to matter at all
- that revision has been discontinued
+ I found one refurb for about a third of what the price was before it was discontinued
+ the new machine takes all the same peripherals including the port replicator and extended battery
+ the new machine is handily capable of the one or two CPU-intensive tasks I had been frustrated at not being able to do on the old machine
+ USB disk enclosures for the drive in the old machine are fairly cheap
- UPS took five days to deliver one sent by air from Connecticut
- UPS tracking tells you where the package ought to be, not where it is
- it was the wrong enclosure when it arrived
+ I found this out in enough time to have a new one shipped out that day, from California this time
+ it arrived in time for the very next chance I had to play with it, without paying an arm and a leg for shipping
+ GetDataBack could see the drive no problem
+ GetDataBack doesn't make you register before you can tell whether it will be useful or not
+ GetDataBack can be used for small collections of files without registering at all, and only insists on the registration for a bulk restore
- GetDataBack is kind of pricy for shareware
+ I like supporting shareware authors (as you might have guessed by my naming the piece of shareware in question four times in this post)
- I now have two restores, one complete but possibly slightly damaged, and one old but intact, and will have to sift through it at some point
+ that task can be deferred because the new machine has plenty of disk
+ it doesn't look like very much of the data is damaged at all

+ we found a great contractor to do our front porch
+ he came highly recommended from previous customers
+ he was obviously very knowledgeable about old houses and gave us some advice of the "we'd never have thought of this obviously correct statement" variety
+ he wasn't out of line in cost
+ he was available in only six weeks
- he sent some email around the scheduled start date saying that he was behind schedule
- then he want completely dark
- it has been a week since the revised start date and still no sign of him
- he has a large deposit from us
- one of his buddies thinks he has absconded
+ there is a state fund paid for from license fees for reimbursing people in this situation
+ it will actually cover us, since he was licensed when we signed the contract with him
- it takes a while and involved jumping through enough hoops that you really need a lawyer
- the fund won't reimburse legal fees
+ we found a great lawyer (turns out Bill White, who we already knew was great, is taking clients)
+ he's reasonably affordable for a lawyer and can get us through this process without spending so much money that it's not worth it
- this pretty much kills the idea of doing the porch this year

Comments

[tcb.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry that this place isn't working out very well for you :(

Good luck next week..

[kimberlogic.livejournal.com]

I've heard similar frustrations from other folks at your workplace. Sorry it isn't working out but much luck (not that you'll need it) next week. Hope to see you & Rachel - both Rachels ;> - at Baitcon.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

+ I bought a bunch of pretty flowers in hanging planters to hide beautify the porch a little
- our neighbors have had flowers stolen off their porch and DUG UP out of their ground
+/- our house looks like such ass with this porch, I think the neighborhood yoots see as as old-timers to leave alone, and not gentrifiers to hit

[foms.livejournal.com]

It looks pretty good here http://palmwiz.livejournal.com/2006/12/03/.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

That picture demonstrates the real problem with our current porch: it can only support 20 amps worth of lighting. The new porch would have at least tripled that.

[foms.livejournal.com]

Substance for the purpose of style.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Re: Room blocking - we should chat at Baitcon

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

Rumor has it the Google is looking for people in MA. Maybe this is still just preliminary headhunting, but people are starting to try to contact me. (I'm pretty much ignoring them; If a HH contacts me about a Stratus Job or something I think a friend of mine can use, I'll talk to them. Otherwise if a HH contacts me randomly I really don't have the time or inclination ...)

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

And Google is famous for making it easy to change projects. The catch is that if you change to a project that isn't based in your particular office, you also have to change offices, and most projects there are based in Mountain View. Thanks, but I'll wait until it's possible to work on any project, or at least more than one or two projects, from Boston.

[londo.livejournal.com]

I've had good experiences with UPS tracking being accurate, even when (especially when) the packages didn't quite take the correct route. I'm surprised you had trouble with it.

ITA does appear to have its ups and downs.

[jered]

Ancient Greek? Is that like Lisp?

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

It's a whole lot like lisp.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

... the problem with lisp is that people tend to write things in it that are a lot cleverer than they really need. You can't tell them "Thousands of task-years of practical experience have shown that's a bad idea" because there aren't any organizations with thousands of task-years of practical experience. You can't even tell them "Go use Boost instead, at least someone has debugged that" because well-used libraries don't exist. Lots of companies wind up with this tendency because a hiring process based on coding during the interview selects for it. Last time, you and I got out because we could turn to the experience of other developers to show us the way. This time, I don't have that option.

[enheduanna13.livejournal.com]

If only it had been written in Ancient Hebrew.

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry it's come to this, but not surprised. I hope whatever comes next, will be better for you.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Hope the porch guy comes back and has a good excuse...