Dude, Where's My Zone?

How To Get Rich

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 01:53:00 +0000

I've forgotten about owning my own company. I now aim to appeal to the small creatures who will carry me off to the land beyond the clouds....

Many thanks to David for pulling my iron out of the fire by sending me great material to keep everyone amused (to see it in full size, click on the picture, then zoom in if you're on Firefox, view image full size if you're on Exploder, and too bad so sad if you're on neither).

If you all are very good, David might agree to come on as a guest blogger if he has the time in the next few weeks. All my threads are being utilised at full capacity elsewhere (in a slow spiral of corporate rot) and I would hate to leave you faithful readers with no mindless drivel with which to pad out your most bored moments.

Yes, I do consider myself the packing peanuts of the blogging world. David, however, has much more important things to say about the social care system, vodka, and the North East of England. In that respect, he is much more like the bubble wrap of the blogosphere.

A New Low

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 04:26:00 +0000

Speaking of human dignity, I have lost all of mine. This is what happens when I try to check out my blog on Technorati:

I officially do not exist anymore. Maybe it's time to pack up and turn off the lights.

David Was Right

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:20:00 +0000

This morning, I read this article about migrant workers in California whilst scoffing sachertorte and Trader Joe's milk for breakfast.

By the time I reached the end, the crushing sense of unworthiness overwhelmed me. How was I lucky enough to be born into the upper-middle class, to professional parents who cared for nothing but the education of their children, when there are children who sleep 11 to a room while their parents scramble to earn $10,000 in a year?

Only 500 miles separate me from the family described in the story, and it is certain that although they are a particularly grim example of how migrant families live, similar situations are happening in much closer proximity.

I stared at the remains of my recently demolished slice of torte, on lovely wedding china, and looked at the cat. Forget about me, even the lazy live rug has an existence far more luxurious than many humans. Under my scrutiny, she scarpered under the nearest coffee table.

This was a reminder to me of a conversation (in person, would you believe) that we recently had with David, where he posited the question of what we would do with our gifts, genetically inherited or otherwise. Understanding that we have been blessed with innumerable advantages is one thing; putting that knowledge to good use is another.

David and Mrs. David have chosen to clone the advantages they've got by fostering children who simply haven't had the support or resources behind them to make or take the opportunities in the modern world.

As for the rest of us, perhaps being grateful is an excellent first step. There are still some in this nation of brats who still won't deign to step inside a WalMart, much less acknowledge the fact that our lives are a careful balance of fate, effort, and the sweat of others less fortunate than us.

So why, you ask, am I still here, harping on about the seeming trivialities of a cushy corporate life? Good question. A decent answer will take some time, but I reckon that the shame I feel at the broader issue of social inequality is the same shame I wish those who lie, cheat, and intimidate in a work setting would feel. Maybe I'm just trying to find the shreds of human diginity in a world where it doesn't seem to matter anymore.

CONGRATULATIONS MISS T!

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 06:55:00 +0000

A million congratulations to Miss T, who mailed yesterday to say she has just landed a job as a primary school teacher in one of the top schools in the county!

With a newly-minted masters and one of the highest GPAs in her class, it was only a matter of time before she began indoctrinating the yoof of today... And with her wacky sense of humor and a keen intellect, she will hopefully mold a better future for all of us - whether or not they're stupid enough to join the big corporate world decades later...*

What an injection of hope! In her own words:

FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS! Even if it gets you into debt (I'm there, for the first time in my life) it is completely worth it to love what you do and be proud of your accomplishments. GO CATCH THE STARS, MY FRIENDS!!!

Problem is, I don't have a dream yet. For now, however, Miss T, your complete and utter glee makes life seem that much more fair.

*Please, Miss T, make them smart enough to earn big bucks but dumb enough to still agree to fund our social security cheques!

I Don't Make This Stuff Up

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 03:22:00 +0000

Airy Fairy, overheard talking to Perky Pet Analyst (an Ivy League grad):

"We'll be working on this stuff at the same time as Iteration 0... You know, the one before Iteration 1."

Work Sucks... Or Not

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 02:47:00 +0000

This afternoon, I spied a license plate holder in the office parking lot which stated "Work Sucks... But I Need The Bucks." At first I sniggered. For all of about half a second.

My brain then kicked in and protested deeply at the fact that there are people populating the workplace who simply don't care about what they do. The software they write means nothing to them, except as something they crank out just to pay their cable bills.

Am I alone in the world thinking this is incredibly shocking? The people who construct mechanisms through which everyday commerce transacts only do what's good enough not to get their behinds fired. They will not strive for the best. Because you and I are simply not worth it.

No pride, no care, no effort, just "Me, Myself, and I." How rude. How disrespectful. How utterly disgusting.

Have they ever considered the following two options?:

1. Work sucks because they suck.
2. Work sucks but that doesn't mean their work has to suck.

Nope. They've just given up and become white collar burger flippers, taking orders through glazed, expressionless faces and thinking no one will notice if they use a bun that dropped on the floor.

You may believe, on the basis of the ranting that you witness here on DWMZ, that I am one of those people. I admit that the content here could, at first glance, be classified along the same lines as the garden variety "I Hate My Job" blithering found in fine corporate workplaces everywhere, but here's the difference:

I care very deeply about what I do. I want to be surrounded by people who care too. There is nothing more important to my working life than striving to create the finest possible output representing the greatest value to the end consumer. Nothing beats getting a job done right, whilst being part of a team that gets to laugh and build cool (and beautiful) stuff together every day.

My frustration lies in the fact that I can't find the love in IT these days. Nonetheless, just because I'm heartbroken at the state of affairs doesn't mean I'll ever stop trying to care. You'll never catch me spitting in my use cases.

Work doesn't suck... It's the people preventing good work getting done who suck! And they're the ones who think work sucks - because doing it properly is just too stinking hard.

How To Be An A-Lister

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 05:19:00 +0000

Begging your pardon for my lack of content recently. Like a hamster in a ball, I am happily isolated yet careening to an unforseen yet quite amusingly steep set of stairs, e.g. the next iteration.* Still, carpe diem**.

To continue the thread of being a non-entity, a very enlightened person pointed out this link on how to become an A-lister. It resonates quite a bit with my suggestion that perhaps the incestuous world of Web 2.0 might perhaps be, amongst other things***, a collective ego-fest. It's nice to know I'm not completely alone in this thought.

Either that or I'm just bitter that no one links to me yet. But hey, what did you expect from a raw veggie?

*Nope, no project plan still. You really didn't have to ask, did you?

**I will not disabuse Airy Fairy's of her belief that this means "Fish of the Day" in Latin restaurants.

***Like soapy containers of nothing that sting your eyes if they pop too close to your face.

Drifting

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 02:05:00 +0000

These days, I've got no one but myself to keep me company. Substitute Bionic Seagull has gone on vacation, and I'm tied up with a special project. The special projects are just about as much fun as one can have without a match, an aerosol can, and a spider the size of a quarter. I trundle along, geeking out as much as I can in a pseudo-language, humming away in my personal Happy Bubble.

No meetings, no drama drag queens, no overhead... Pure bliss.

It's very much like how this blog floats in the ether, the ranking bobbing up and down. It lurks along the bottom, but the movement patterns trace out a story of life and death on the open seas; thousands of blogs disappear from day to day, but thousands more take their place. Waves of hope crest over the neglected and decaying.

I'm just pleased the number's actually higher this time around. But I know, just as at work, it's only a matter of time before I hit a brand new low - certainly, an achievement in and of itself. And as many of you know, I'm all about achievement.

The Man Is OK If You Are The Man

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 03:33:00 +0000

Working For The Man: £1 of flesh.

Working With The Man: £10 to turn tricks.

Working For The Man Long Enough To Get Valuable Knowledge To Leave And Be The Man: Priceless.

For Everything Else, There's Social Security.

The recent publicity garnered by my Paw-In-Law's young company reminded me of the advice PIL imparted to me one day some years ago on the way to the airport. No, not the one about how to groom eyebrows by encouraging a bonfire with a can of petrol.*

Yes, the corporate world truly smells.

Yes, there's so much that one could do to make it better, more efficient, higher quality.

No, it really doesn't get much better.

No, you can't just run away. Yet.

There is a bright side, he said. If you stay really, really quiet, and filter out all the nuggets of industry knowledge from the company muck, when the time is right you can strike out on your own with like-minded souls and be a model of how things should work. And indeed he did, along with a couple of others close to us who have recently gone into phone booths and come out as entrepreneurs.

Of course, the road is paved with uncertainty and some struggle. But seeing PIL succeed in such a relatively short amount of time is heartening. One day, I may yet follow that fine advice. Until then, I would like to do my part in chipping away at the conspiracy of silence surrounding big company insanity.

As for the other advice, I'm still weighing it up. Never having to wield tweezers again is a distinctly tempting possibility.

*PIL's adventures in DIY have resulted in several masterpieces: new windows, massive extension, beautiful patio. They have also resulted in the occasional DITY (Do It To Yourself).

Our Fudge Runneth Over

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:53:00 +0000

Substitute Bionic Seagull comments to me today that things are awfully quiet on the project as of late. He's finding it spooky, especially after having been pestered for two weeks solid to spend all his time and more doing janitorial work on BSA byproducts. I explain to him that the lull is due to release and iteration "planning."*

"Don't you worry," I assure him, "Enjoy your free time while you can. It's only quiet now because management are busy boiling up some scalding chocolate sauce and lining up Ziploc bags."

"Eh?"

I explain to him that it will take all of 5 minutes for management to pour too much super-heated fudge sauce into sandwich bags which are too tiny and not heatproof. After taking 10 minutes to figure out how yellow and blue make green, they will casually but forcefully fling the overladen bags to the team.

The bags will then promptly explode, leaving brown goo all over the equipment, staff, and innocent bystanding users. Mayhem and panic will break out.

As the minions struggle to clean their environment, just about near the point when everything looks respectable and the skin grafts start healing over, management will ask everyone why they failed to deliver beautiful chocolate sundaes, and why the whole place looks like...

SBS nods slowly with a thoughtful smile spreading across his face. Either he agrees with me or he's considering a Haagen-Dazs run.

*T minus 4. If a project plan gets talked about in a war room but no one hears about it, is there actually a project plan?

Lost

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 03:34:00 +0000

T minus 10 to the start of a new project, and still no sight of a project plan. I am writing this under cover of darkness, with only a faintly smoldering wreck of a cubicle to illuminate my scribbling. The stench of charred flesh from the intense spontaneous blaming is almost too much to bear.

Many have gone insane from the uncertainty of it all. Will the new project plan rescue them, or will they be left behind on this God-forsaken old project, stalked by wild production support beepers in the night?

As I peer out from behind my special project shelter, I hear groans emanating from analysts with severe back wounds. Their eyes, glazed over with fear, stare into space; their hands, still clutching rudimentary and rather dull accusations, strike out at all who pass, even those who try to help them. Unfortunately, they are beyond help. Their use cases show no vital signs whatsoever.

Along the edges of the destruction, maniacal laughter of scavenging developers peppers the night air. After several fractured ambush attempts on the analyst encampment, they have managed to run off with disjointed fragments of business process modelling. They have used these broken pieces to construct twisted, leaky structures for shelter. Many of them, as a result of exposure to the toxic document dust cloud hovering over the area, have contracted terminal refactoring illness. The main symptom appears to be keyboard-shaped indentations in the forehead region.

I try to huddle deeper into my corner, but my hands only find more hard places and rocks behind me. Instinctively, I pull my keyboard and mouse closer to me. I am getting better at shooting CYA emails at zombie-like forms approaching my dark but dry patch. Fortunately, most of them take each other out before I am forced to fire warning shots across the ether.

Once or twice in the past few days, plan-shaped objects appeared on the horizon. Some poor souls who crawled out from beneath their documentation, believing salvation was at hand, were instead trampled in the stampede. They should have known. Real plans have a characteristic stable flight pattern which none of these decoys had.

Hope slowly fades. How could no-one have noticed that a project carrying so many passengers failed to reach its destination? We are lost, utterly lost. When will a real project plan arrive?

I shall continue to search the skies, but my will grows weaker by the day.

Please send help.

That Sinking Feeling

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 02:01:00 +0000

Whenever I feel like perking myself up, I go to Technorati to see exactly how much credibility I don't have in the blogosphere:

Every time I do, my ranking is significantly lower than ever before. It's actually quite fun to track and happens to be a great way of documenting my headlong belly-flop into the depths of web obscurity.

As if it's not enough that my rank is in the multi-millions, Technorati's phrasing couldn't be any more insensitive:

"No blogs link here"

"Favorited by: 0 members"

Come on, where's the love? Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to put in logic which inserts the word "sorry" at the end of such raw proclamations.*

Don't get me wrong, though; I actually find this quite nice. Always preferred a small number of close comrades to a large number of acquaintances, me. In the Web 2.0 world of social networking, blogging, digging, and ranking, meaningful connections seem lost in a sea of hit hungry hippos.

No longer does one have to physically hang out with a person, much less be able to carry on a thoughtful conversation with them, to become their friend. All it takes is some reciprocal linking and Bob's your uncle! Or your Friendster.

The passable use of apostrophes and possessive nouns has also become a mere luxury and quality content often means whatever happens to be the weirdest, grossest, or most shocking utterance of the day. It's an acceleration of the dishonorable decline of journalism into the pursuit of "eyeballs" instead of truth.

In this maelstrom of transitory superficiality, I take comfort in the few regular visitors to my dusty museum of oddities. Whatever brings you here - familial obligation, a shared sense of disillusionment, a taste for morbidity, or just plain derangement - I thank you for reminding me of where to find humanity in the coldness of cyberspace. If there were millions more of you, I might just feel far lonelier.

*A peculiar habit I picked up in the UK is to pepper my conversations liberally with apology. "Sorry, I didn't get that..." or "Terribly sorry, but your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries." Whilst hardly a guaranteed indication of regret, it does serve as a mark of civility so lacking in society today, much like the bow before the duel (where someone's going to die and the other person's going to be sorry). I can now say with absolute confidence that I am a sorrier person today than I ever was.

Pet (Print) Peeves

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 03:50:00 +0000

Ever since moving back to America, I have been utterly appalled by common Americans' unabashed willingness to flaunt everything about themselves on their car stickers. Where we live, the most prevalent things seem to be:

People displaying mock-Hawaiian emblems - e.g. hibisci, turtles, sandals, etc. - in a futile attempt to demonstrate how "Hawaiian" they are when in fact they only go there on vacation for a week every two years, during which time they annoy the real Hawaiian natives by being thoroughly ignorant tourists.
Though not necessarily stickers, flourescent spray paint proclaiming support for snotty preteens and their inconsequential sports teams. They just aren't complete without the requisite heinous spelling and grammar in 6" high lettering: "We love you Ryan! YOUR GRATE!"
Stick-figure family "self portraits", including dogs. Confidence tricksters around the county rejoice, knowing the full names of all the members of low-IQ households around town.
RIP memorials to dead people. Were these the people who were so in debt they couldn't afford a proper tombstone for their loved one? Are the ashes in the spare tire compartment?

I find this all much like living in a nudist colony of sorts. Loads of people have wrinkled, ugly, or coma-inducingly ordinary bits that they insist on wiggling at the world. I feel a palpable sense of embarrassment on their behalf.

For the most part, that's as far as it goes: a slight unease at having to focus on the dimply fat rolls of other people's lives. However, there is one sticker that pushes me into a cranky red oblivion:

I don't really know why it bothers me so much. Perhaps it's because the people who put these stickers on their cars purportedly have a deep commitment to the outdoors and outdoor activity that Big Bear Lake and Resort are famous for. If, indeed, they are so in touch with Mother Nature, how do they not know the simple difference between BEAR prints:

And DOG prints?

They might as well have a sticker on their window that says "Welcome to Stupidville!"

I also blame the creator of the sticker, whose standards were so lax that they could not even bother to a) check out the official Big Bear logo (seeing as how presumably they'd been there about a squillion times) or b) Google "bear print" before mass-producing emblems for public consumption.

I thought I was only surrounded by intellectual zombies at work. Now I realize that they're with me all the way there and all the way back too.

I Hope It's Not Contagious

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:30:00 +0000

Just how much air could possibly fit inside Airy Fairy's head? Ponder this...

I had a really tough time deciding how to decorate my cube when I first got assigned one after months of sitting with UI Dev Lead and one other developer in a bullpen. Left to my own devices, I'd rather not fill my workspace with useless kitsch proclaiming how much better my personal life is than other people's personal lives. Proclamations, I feel, are best left to the insecure.

But nothing could take away the fact that part of the cube wall was glass, and when Clueless Himbo Backstabber came to visit my neighbor, I didn't care for the idea of him seeing code on my screen and making up stories about how I was trying to hack into the corporate systems.*

I found an old relic from my first days at university which fits the bill, dimensionally. It is a map of my university town, labeled at the top very clearly:

Blackwell's
OXFORD

Actually, the latter line is much bigger - about 125 point. Even bats could tell what it says. If they could read.

So AF, our native 55 year old Lolita, drops by to chat with my neighbor. She mock-casually peeks over my way, and asks:

"Oh! Is that London?"

Uhhhh. I really didn't know what to say, except, "No.... It's Oxford..." I point to the big bat letters in an effort to help her understand.

"Oh, OK! It's just, it looked like London, with those streets!" She vaguely motions at the High Street and Queen Street.

It should look like Oxford, with that lettering, I desperately think to myself, in an attempt to understand what possible logic exists in this utterly soul-killing small talk. And every city has streets.

"Um," I just about manage to spit out.

"It looks like a very small place!" She breezily proclaims.

If you thought it was London 5 seconds ago, how in holy criminy can you now suggest that it's small? I will my phone to ring. Ring, dammit. Even a telemarketer would do.

"Er, Oxford's actually quite a big city," I stammer. Usually I'm halfway decent at playing to people's conversational gambits; Airy's given me what Americans would call "bupkus".

Eventually, bored of mingling with peons who don't compliment her brassy hair enough, she wanders off. I quickly scribble on my Potential Entrepreneurial Ideas List: "Sell AF's head to bouncy castle vendors."

*Stuff like this actually happens to me. Don't bother asking me about the time a deeply ignorant man who claimed to know enough technology to be a development team manager shopped me to corporate security because he thought it was suspicious that a business analyst was in the command line environment typing something that looked indented, like code. If he'd bothered to ask me or my manager, either of us would have explained that it was Perl, which I was using to write a small utility script for a user. But he thought I was just reading about gemstones I might find when I programmatically cracked the safe at the glowing core of the building. Yeah, after I regexed everyone to death.

Goodbye To The Bionic Seagull

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 04:01:00 +0000

Last year, after a vacation, I return to my desk to find a consultant unexpectedly sitting in the space next to me, grinning rather amiably.

It turns out Dough Boy couldn't cope with managing a team of five simple developers without having a meltdown every other day, so UI Dev Lead was brought in to spoon feed him pureed project plans. Despite my internal shock and bristling at the implications of his arrival, I find it difficult to contain my "Oooooooh, a stranger, from the OUTSIDE...." awe.

Over the better part of the next year, UIDL proves to be a man of the utmost integrity, incredible efficiency, wicked wit, and a staunch supporter. His impeccable project plans and frank leadership style - honed by constant assignments at Wall Street caliber firms - made the impossible happen: DB started to look passably competent.

Whenever we speak about the team, he employs a distinct talent for communicating his understanding of my frustration without actually indulging my cynicism.

Ever the diplomat, he tells me, "You have such vision. You could run this whole show. If only you would try a bit more tact."

I laugh. "That's never been my strong point. I tell it like it is, you know that."

"It's not worth winning every battle. It might be easier to win the war if you don't."

"Well, sir, if I win every battle, I will without doubt win the war," I flippantly counter.

UIDL smiles kindly and shakes his head. It is an expression he uses with me on a regular basis.

Before long, he tells me that he is moving on to another project in another state. I knew he was never going to be around forever - as is the nature of consultants - but on a project as permanently dysfunctional as this one, anytime was bound to be too soon.

There has been some delay in writing this final tribute to UIDL because it's taken me some time to get used to the landscape without him at the helm of the UI development group. Truly, he was a Bionic Seagull. He flew in, and instead of crapping all over the place, he actually cleaned up a bunch of turd before flying right out again.

I Believe In Bolognese

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 04:46:00 +0000

Another item for the list of things I believe in: The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Never mind that His Holiness looks like tapeworms feasting on larger portions of intestinal matter. It just proves that The Creator manifests Himself organically in everyday life.
Perhaps if I pray hard enough, He might use His Noodly Appendage to smite the opponents of reason on my project.

Growing Up, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 01:59:00 +0000

Even if I do eventually turn into some semblance of a grown-up one day, that won't stop me from collecting all of these Developer Action Figures.

Growing Up

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 01:46:00 +0000

I had a revelation today. Amidst tortuous hours arguing a point for a centralized design "service" for creating screens, and attempting to sort through and learn about other people's very different viewpoints, I finally got blog-angry. If other people won't listen to me, and I'm tasked with making sure this thing turns out right, how am I ever going to make it work? What's the point? I should just let them do whatever the bleep they want to do and get what they deserve.

And then, I stopped.

I realized that I was going about it totally the wrong way round. If I stopped thinking about these meetings as me against the world, the picture looked totally different. Instead of looking for differences and trying to purge them, I should look for the similarities and try to build more.

Win people over, not defeat them in debate.

If I make my mission to make friends, instead of killing enemies, then the world suddenly becomes a much more interesting place. Is this what growing up feels like?

DWMZ Soundtrack

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 03:28:00 +0000

Every struggling blog, I feel, needs a good soundtrack. Partly courtesy of the defanged and hobbled Napster, here are some of the tunes which, together, attempt to form a crude representation of the mood here on DWMZ. You may have to register*; if you are paranoid, like Marvin and me, browse the lyrics instead:

Stuck In A Moment (U2) lyrics
Under Pressure (Queen and David Bowie, or David Bowie and Queen) lyrics
Seven Nation Army (The White Stripes) lyrics
Wild West Show (Big & Rich) lyrics
People Are People (Depeche Mode) lyrics
Welcome To The Jungle (Guns 'n' Roses) lyrics
You've Got To Serve Somebody (Marianne Faithfull/Bob Dylan) lyrics
Plastic Man (The Kinks) lyrics
Change (Lightning Seeds) lyrics
Big Town (OMD) lyrics
Opportunities (Pet Shop Boys) lyrics
I'm Going Slightly Mad (Queen) lyrics
Everybody Wants To Rule The World (Tears For Fears) lyrics
I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor) lyrics
The Show Must Go On (Queen) lyrics
Boss Of Me (They Might Be Giants) lyrics
One Horse Town (The Thrills) lyrics

And one which has nothing to do with anything at all, but which I consider to be a classic of the highest degree:

Doctor Worm (They Might Be Giants) lyrics

Also, if anyone out there knows of a reputable New Wave/New Romantic rehabilitation clinic, I would be much obliged for the details, and so would anyone who is unfortunate enough to be driven in my car.

*Through an un-cunning combination of clearing cookies before clicking on the Napster links, I have managed to bypass the registration process once or twice. Now we really know that Napster isn't run by hackers anymore.

The Hand Inside The Puppet Head

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 05:43:00 +0000

Strange things have been happening.

It all started last week. Development Manager -- once perfectly willing to nail gun me to the whiteboard for being the subject of randomly fabricated gossip -- performs a classic micromanaging monologue, stops, pauses, and turns to me.

"What do you think? Are you comfortable with this approach?"

Even more shockingly, after I cautiously demur with an explanation, he says:

"Okay, that sounds fine. Scratch what I said."

I brace, waiting to be peppered with roundwire sash pins....Nothing. Days later, instead of the typical grumbling about not getting things wrapped up in less time than people normally need to brush their teeth properly, he says to the group of us working out last minute changes:

"Excellent progress!"

Honestly, someone needs to call the Men In Black. Some alien life form is using the apparently slimy, sleazy, scheming, rug-pulling, heartless maniac and pretending (with a little too much effort) to be human. There is no other explanation possible for why, after a year of masking project difficulties by shifting project plan dates to fit the circumstances, he would suddenly proclaim in the team lead meeting:

"I have received feedback that we're always painting a rosy picture of the project when it may not necessarily be the case. If something is behind, if issues are cropping up, then we need to reflect that in these plans and be honest about them to the users. I cannot emphasize this enough."

If it's not extraterrestrial body snatching, the cynic in me suggests that maybe someone's just been royally spanked.

Then again, I recently learned that more people I truly respect on the team would not be here if not for DM's direct intervention against prevailing opinions. If those aliens aren't careful, their repeat visits may just trigger a government investigation. I won't tell anyone, though, if you won't.

Dream A Little Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 04:40:00 +0000

Over the last four days, I repeatedly experienced a dream I haven't had in a very long time.

The one where I'm wandering around a bustling financial city center again, shivering, in the middle of July. Driven and bright people surround me -- ones who value the intellectual satisfaction of their jobs instead of the tokens of affluence that a salary affords. We find friends who we can laugh with till we all hurt, over very lengthy dinners out.

We talk about code, silly brain teasers, and tell horrible jokes.

Work is full of purpose, walking in and out of offices shared with valued colleagues. Between energetic debates about one topic or another, we all settle into focused quiet, occasionally staring out large windows facing onto a city blending old and new, water and granite.

Every 20th car outside might be an SUV.

Today I woke up. As the dream faded into memory and the sadness settled slowly into my heart, I pondered: Are the too-bad-to-be-true accounts which I describe here endemic in corporate life everywhere, or is it disproportionately exacerbated by a famously superficial locale? Is it the system, or is it the people?

The Zone: A state of mind? A state of play? Or just a different place in the state?

vole.icio.us

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 03:36:00 +0000

The campaign against the voles has begun. My weapon of choice:
However, I am unworthy of wielding such a widow-maker. It's more likely to be a recipe for DIY amputation than anything else, and I haven't got free healthcare anymore.

Anyway, we're talking about the person who stood for nearly 20 minutes in front of the Yummy Rodent Death Pops, frozen by moral debate - thus proving that while I might fancy myself an assassin, my aspirations far exceed my jelly-wobbly nerve. So I've stuck to the tried and possibly-true castor oil repellent.

If what I read on the internet and the back of the packet is correct, as the pellets dissolve into the earth and coat the voles' food sources, causing them gastric upset. Death, no can do. Next best thing: dishing up the equivalent of a really heinous burrito left in the sun for at least a couple days.

The theory goes that once the stinkers figure out that they regain regularity outside the bounds of our garden, they'll stop frequenting our hot dog stand and tell their friends too.

So far, it seems to be working.

I couldn't help but think, though, that this is the exact same approach that companies deploy on decent folk who try to get stuff done in an efficient manner. Want to round a number to three decimal places instead of two? Write up an issue! Discuss it with a Change Management Board! If the change is allowed, get approval from the user. Forget about phoning them up and dealing with it in 30 seconds - you have to get carefully worded proof in written format approving the change.

Every piece of unnecessary process installed in a company equates to sprinkling a bag of them Gassy Gurgling Granules all over the turf. Employees who just want simple jobs to stay simple start getting grumbly bums, and edge towards the door.

Yeah, blame it on the audits. Blame it on the shareholders. Blame it on the blame game. Whatever it is, it's a crackdown on good, old-fashioned trust for employees, users, and management. Corporate systems fail to be oiled by the honest social currency of trust, and I'm desperately curious why. Is it because people in general have become inherently less trustworthy? Or is it because companies of a certain size must necessarily be so risk-averse that they are willing to sacrifice productivity and innovation?

Unfortunately, it seems that life mimics the garden yet again. Those voles who decide to move on from our yard will populate other yards, where they will very likely experience more dodgy cuisine. And so on and so on, until they die of exhaustion.

I hear Google has a very good cafeteria, though.*

*I wonder if they serve vole-au-vents?

How To Digg One's Own Hole

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 14:11:00 +0000

As part of my gardening theme this week, I thought it most appropriate to explore Digg*. It's a relatively simple concept:

Sign up.
Submit web links.
Check out other submissions and vote on them ("Digg It" or "Bury It").
Follow the popularity of the links you, er, Dugg or submitted.
Feel really important as your links get promoted.
Cry as your links fall off the end of the rolling ticker, not having managed to set a throng of Web 2.0 denizens abuzz.

It's basically a beauty contest of regurgitated web content fluffed up by a community of will-never-bes (of which I proudly count myself as one), who sublimate their frustration at the mismatch between their achievements and their self-perceived authority by playing God with weblinks. The generic term for this, I believe, is a "mashup."

I prefer to think of it as a gigantic Web Hot Dog. A thousand parts of the pig - edible or not - blended into an unrecognizable pink paste, subjected to intense processing, and extruded into a friendly rounded shape for convenient consumption. Absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever, but surprisingly tasty and disturbingly addictive.

My own attempt at Digging, as you can tell from my paltry Dugg List, demonstrates patterns similar to voles in new territory, e.g. shallow holes scattered throughout cyberspace. It began with shameless self-promotion in the name of testing the waters. Sadly for me, only one other person Dugg my original vole post.

I then punted a New Scientist article which I honestly found intriguing. It had faultless spelling and NO apostrophe misuse to boot (something I only wish would catch fire in cyberspace). Obviously, only two other people and I value solid content and good grammar. Or, to gain more interest, should I say grammer?

In a quest to discover what people really like to see on the web, I placed my bet on a content-free but wildly entertaining link offering to tell me my typing speed. Clearly I was getting warmer.

Either lazy programming or a boundless sense of socialist optimism powers this site.

I resisted the urge to punish an informational pop-up dialog sporting a warning icon and the blatant lack of meritocracy. I figured that if this man managed to keep me on his website for an embarrassingly long period of time, typing chunks of the Gettysburg Address, I might as well spare a Digg for him.

My adventure came to a pause after I discovered a submission of a Slate writer's cautionary tale describing how he tried to experiment with Digg by promoting an article he wrote about Digg on Digg. Not only did I learn that my transgression of self-Digging could earn me a title of Hit Hog, but my head started spinning from the self-referential-ness of it all. People on Digg Digg themselves, Digg other Diggs, make friends with other Diggers (Digg my back and I'll Digg yours), Digg stories about Diggers writing about Digg. I had to sit down for a spell.

Is it democracy, or is it a collective ego-fest built on the shallow currency of clicks? I haven't really made up my mind yet, and until I do I may just keep lurking, making the odd crater here and there and becoming a hopelessly hooked Digg fiend. Mmmmm. Pass the mustard.

*It's yet another idea created by Time Travelling Dot Com Body Snatchers From 1999, whose foreheads are characteristically tattooed with big glassy pastel blue buttons labeled "Fund Me" in 12-point sans serif. Their hypnotic powers are such that people stop to stare and utter, "How are they making money?"

Trippin'

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 03:35:00 +0000

My heart bleeds for the chappie next door, who like many not-so-young men of the region seems perpetually trapped in an identity crisis of enormous proportion. Is he gangsta or is he white trash?

His gleaming pickup truck, perched high on sparkling clean tractor tires, screams white trash.
His lowered black Escalade with spinny hubcaps, proclaims gangsta.
He and his weedy, pale homies sit on lawn chairs on his driveway, drinking Bud Light. With rap and reggae blasting out the garage.
He owns a golf cart. With spinny hubcaps.
He probably reads the CNN website via Gizoogle.

It's an open-and-shut case, it seems, of Drumstick (Cornetto) Syndrome: fake chocolate on the outside, Vanilla Ice on the inside.

After many years in the IT industry, I have sadly observed that it too is increasingly populated by those who suffer similar identity crises. Gone are the days of through-and-through geek-mania. Where are the ponytails? Where are the Birkenstocks with white sport socks? Where are the black t-shirts tucked into too-short trousers?

Now, there are so few left who truly embrace technology, whose first love was not another human but a small black console with magical powers, who aren't ashamed in the least.

Welcome the new breed, who became technologists for one of two reasons:

Easy money; or
Cool factor.

Slowly but surely, the cube farms fill with folks in matching clothes who have watched the Matrix ten too many times and honestly believe that the shallow gold-diggers sitting on their laps value them for their looks. Never mind that their code or analysis reads with the literary quality of "See Dick and Jane Run." Don't you know there's a skills shortage going on?

All puff and no stuff, as my Finnish chum puts it. I can't help but feel incredibly sad.

Occasionally, however, I read stories of nerd clusters roaming free and happy in other parts of the country. I am glad for them, and my myopic eyes mist over at the thought of once again being surrounded by so many people true to themselves, embodiments of the Granola Factor - crunchy on the outside, and crunchy on the inside.

Bad Teams and Pest Control

noreply@blogger.com (Little Green Potato) — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 17:15:00 +0000

As if it's not enough dealing with the insanity of a dysfunctional team for 8+ hours in a day, I now return home to a once thriving garden with select plants that have been buzzed to near ground level. Not to mention the wiggly tracks of dead grass in the lawn, emanating from the borders.

A thorough internet investigation reveals that the cause is rodent infestation -- microtus californicus, or voles, to be exact.

As I read more about how to stop these vegetation marauders, it strikes me how many parallels there are between the situation at work and the one in my borders.

They may look harmless, but they can do a world of damage in a very short amount of time.

One might guess that anything with the capacity to raze a plant with 20 2' long leaves to the ground in the space of one evening would be at least the size of a small breadbox. The sheer volume of organic matter should not by all accounts fit into a handful of furry black golfballs, especially ones that hardly make themselves seen.

Turns out, voles are burrowing animals which consume some obscene amount of thriving vegetation many times their own body mass daily, leaving behind piles of excretion in their surrounding environment. They love to make homes in areas of dense shrubbery, where they can hide from anything that can kill them.

And so it is with bad teams. Managers who hide in their offices and window cubicles (much like Dough Boy), covered by dense heaps of project plans and meetings, never surface often enough to be identified as pests. However, behind the scenes, their lack of intellect and slash-and-burn finesse turns happy and productive teams into a grumbling mass of discontentment in record time.

It's not just managers either; with peons, like Darth Hut or Soulless Himbo Backstabber, negative attitudes reproduce quickly and spread under bad visibility (accountability) conditions. The damage is especially potent when they are given direct input into hiring and mentoring.

They are related to lemmings.

As we all know, based on the wisdom handed down by video games, lemmings form large brainless herds which can be easily led -- in the absence of benevolent intervention -- off steep cliffs, down deep holes, or into walls.

'Nuff said.

Killing them is probably not an option.

I haven't the heart to buy or make poisons yet. For either the voles or the humans.

If you put them somewhere else, they will probably just come back.

Gardening forum participants report that catch and release ("Gopher Chauffeur") never really works unless the release occurs at least 10 miles from the catch location, preferably across a wide body of water or a multi-lane highway. One ingenious man painted the backs of the pests before setting them free, and was hardly surprised to find that weeks later, the matte-finish wonders had returned to his yard.

The catch and release is a common gutless upper-management technique whereby underperforming middle managers or other employees get re-deployed to other posts ("Loafer Chauffeur") -- either to isolate bad behavior and/or to accelerate resignation. But they're never put far enough away, and these folks manage by sheer dumb luck to achieve greater visibility or influence than ever before. Unfortunately, very few happen to drown or get run over on the return journey.

The sad reality is that NIMBY can be quickly followed by BIMBY: Back In My Back Yard.

Persuasive tactics have a mixed track record.

From chili powder to used cat litter to castor oil, various methods attempt to either put the voles on the run or give them the runs. Evidence suggests a mixed track record, and the application of such methods requires regular diligence.

Similarly, corporate deterrence employs increasing levels of discomfort: offsites, morale-boosting events, warnings, management workshops, etc. Occasionally, I've seen these things neutralize a certain level of unprofessional behavior. But without regular application, managers and other free-sadicals continue to work their aggro on suffering teams.

This shock therapy/convince-them-it-was-their-idea approach assumes a basic level of reasoning ability on the part of either the voles or the deadwood. As far as I can tell, these were the ones who, when God was handing out single-serve pasta salad bowls, didn't get sporks.

Natural predators work best.

Nothing works better at ridding an area of plague-ridden growth killers than something sharp, fast, and dangerous on the prowl for most of the day.

Introduce a top manager to a flagging project and within weeks they'll be lining up half-dead bodies and vital organs at the doorstep. In a good way.

Prevention is always the best cure.

If we'd known that voles were a major threat to gardens in this area, we would have taken every measure to keep them at bay from the start. There'll be no next time for these mini-Tribbles.

It's somewhat more impractical, however, for corporates to prevent infestation. It's not as if bad managers, programmers, or analysts cannot fit through 1/4" wire mesh.

I can't help but feel that one of the answers has to do with size. Larger gardens bring larger numbers of creatures, and more luscious plants invite hordes of plant-eaters. In smaller gardens and smaller companies, it's exponentially easier to build secure walls and perform regular maintenance to keep the groobies* out.

*My in-laws have unexpectedly expanded my vocabulary to include words like groobie (any of several small scurrying things that causes one to jump and, occasionally, to scream) and chod (a generalized term for anything that has to be scraped off a welly or which is generally transported in piles via wheelbarrow).