So, I tried to reach the people that live above me several times about the leak that is coming in from their tub. No response at all. So, I called the condo association and they said I shouldn't have to do anything like offer Javier to fix it. They said they would take care of everything.

I talked to Rob today and he's working up a change order. I don't think it will be horrible. Everything is going pretty well. I asked him if he thought we would be done by the end of March (so I could give my 60 day notice here) but he said that might be tight. Ugh. Oh well. Although I would like things to speed up, I'm happy with the way things are going.

Sounds like you are doing much better. Glad to hear it.

Glad you're back!

opcorn:

yessssssssss.

I have days at work where I can view it as just a job that pays well, provides good health insurance, allows me to periodically work from home, and has a generous time off policy. It gives me the opportunity to set myself up for a hopefully comfortable retirement.

Then there are days where it sucks another piece of my soul out.

Today was the latter.

On the remodel front, Rob told me he is finished with the change order so we will be meeting Friday to discuss.

Dilbert stories? C'mon man, DILBERT STORIES!!

and poop log

Unfortunately, there's no uplifting tales to be told from either front.

I will rant some, though.

As some of you might know, last summer the application development group I was hired to be a part of was assigned an almost impossible task.

It was basically to take a really really really crappy system and make it work for a new customer. And do it in a couple of months. It was the equivalent of taking a rambler and fixing it so it can win the Indy 500.........by tomorrow. Without any tools.

Only one person on the team was kinda familiar with the programming language. Only one person had any knowledge of the business. Nobody had ever worked on this particular system. Our manager had just been assigned to manage our group and she had 0 programming experience. None.

Our executives sat us all down to explain to us how important this was to our company. Not just important, but THE most important thing. However, every single person on the team got a ton of other work dumped on them at the same time.

I could go on an on an on about how we had no chance of pulling this off but we did somehow. It wasn't pretty, though. Constant pressure to have something done yesterday. Lots of nights and weekends.

Anyway........................

Today we had a lessons learned session with the programmers. We were asked what went poorly. We filled up a huge whiteboard full of all the obstacles the programmers had thrown at them. When asked what went well, we had only 1 item. The programmers banded together as a team and worked well together.

After that, I had my 1 on 1 with my manager. The yearly metrics came out that executives use to rate all of the developers. We came in last in every category. Mostly things like getting things done on time and number of bugs. Stuff like that. Given that our workload was 3 times the next busiest team it seemed normal. But we are getting beat up on it.

I forgot to mention our user. She is literally the most vindictive person I have ever met. She refuses to answer any question we have. So we have to guess at a large percentage of our code. Of course we get it wrong, which cues her to call up programmers and **** all over them. I'm not exaggerating. Not a single programmer will answer her calls any more. Anyways, part of our rating is derived from the users rating us on a variety of things. She gave us a zero. Yes, a zero. How a zero is even possible is beyond me. But we got it.

/workrant

Metamucil not working as advertised either.

On the script front. I haven't talked about this much but bluegrassplayer has inspired me. He recommended a screenwriting book which I've been reading. A lot of things in there seem intuitive or are things I've sort of figured out on my own. Some is about the mental challenges, which I've found helpful. But mostly it just has me thinking about writing more than I have.

I have mixed feelings about where I am with it. I feel good about the story. I have all my characters nailed down. I have a beginning, middle, and end. And, I have most of the scenes written in various stages of completion. On the down side, there is so much detail work to do. Cleaning up dialogue, filling little plot holes, cutting out unnecessary scenes, etc.

I'm encouraged enough to get this finished but it is such a struggle to find quality time. I have been able to write an hour here and an hour there but it's much more productive to be able to sit for several hours with a clear mind, which has been difficult to make happen.

But I do see a light at the end of the tunnel.........

That sounded an awful lot like a dilbert story to me. Sorry to hear about your poops


glad to hear you've read the book If you should thank anyone it's Gioco though, he's the one who recommended it and the other stuff. Really nice of him to write that up for me.

If you want anyone to read over the script for you let me know, I'd love to. BTW do you use scrivener?

This showed up on my facebook feed, kind of relevant:

Thanks. Yeah, I would like to run it by someone at some point. The book mentions this but when you give it to friends you don't really get good feedback. They don't want to say anything negative.

I use Movie Magic Screenwriter.

This may sound weird but having it accepted is really secondary to me. I finished one a few years ago and it never got accepted but just finishing was satisfying. I also realize there's about a gazillion people writing scripts and only a handful ever get accepted so I'm pretty realistic about it.

As a followup to the ridiculousness of work......

I might have mentioned that we rate management every year. The top brass is super serious about this. Employee satisfaction is huge to them.

Well, our management (not just our group) got slaughtered. Horrible ratings. But the beauty of this is the higher up the chain you are, the more insulated you are. So, the ratings are officially attached to my immediate manager even though about 10% of the horribleness here is under her control. I didn't realize this when I filled out the survey but every one of my ratings had upper management in mind, not my immediate supervisor.

I have a feeling she will not last much longer based on the metrics and the employee survey. Although she's not really qualified to lead a development team, she's a super nice person, works very hard, and does have our best interests in mind. As a side note I found out she's the 5th person to lead this group in 5 years. The last one was fired.

On top of that, the top brass takes turnover extremely seriously. It's sort of funny when I browse jobs on glassdoor how many are for where I work. Like 1/2 of the openings. Literally hundreds of positions they can't fill. Anyway, upper management is rated on a turnover metric. However, they are able to decide if each person leaving the company is a "desirable" or "undesirable" termination. So, basically, they completely control the metric they are judged on.

That is so funny how similar that is to what was going on at my last (not current ) employer. There was also every year a evaluation of the company by the employees. My last three years in the company it plummeted down. This year the upper bosses decided to skip this evaluation.

I met Rob today to discuss change orders. Ugh.

He informed me that the fire marshal is causing some headaches. Apparently when they initially turned 2 units into what is there now they didn't get any inspections for anything. The fire marshal doesn't like the ductwork we have. His suggestion is that we drop down the ENTIRE ceiling. This would suck beyond belief. I cannot imagine living in a place where the ceiling is 4" from my head. Rob thinks they have some ideas on how to make the fire marshal happy. One involves putting dampers next to each vent. I think that's what he told me. Doing that will probably cost around $1500. They have another suggestion which is cheaper that involves moving a couple of things around. One of the problems is this is considered a commercial project and additionally there is a wood subfloor above me. Both are causing the fire marshal to make different decisions than he would if this was just a 1 story residential. Hopefully we can come up with some solution that doesn't involve me living in a box.

Back to the change orders. The first was for the desk I asked for in the office. This included a couple of base cabinets and granite. The second was for electric work, mostly for additional can lights. Another I requested. The third was for plumbing rework and additional tiling in the bathrooms that was unexpected. Not my request. The fourth was for extra framing, mostly for ductwork which was also not my request. The fifth was for extra HVAC work. This one and the framing one are both still tbd due to fire marshal issues.

All total it comes to about $6500. About half was the two that I requested. It was difficult to swallow when he showed it to me but all in all I guess it isn't horrible. I don't think too much more will be coming (crosses fingers).

I asked how much work was done this week and he said not much because of the negotiations with the fire marshal.

I really really really hope this works out.

Think of how'd this go if you tried to DIY. Geeez, seems tough when you're paying for others to do all the work.

Well, that's how this blog started. I did DIY on my house. Pretty much the same sort of thing really. It just takes a ton of time and a lot of frustration dealing with the bureaucrats.

If you ever get bored you might at least read the insanity of me dealing with the city. Good for some laughs I think.

A little background on Rob. When he first contacted me before I hired him/them he somehow made it so I could see his picture whenever I talked to him on the phone. I still am not sure how this magic works. He's the only contact I have where that is the case.

Anyway, when I met him the first time we agreed to meet at a Panera. When I got there I looked around but didn't see anyone that looked like him. Eventually we found each other and I was really surprised at how different he looked in person.

After talking I came to find out that he had been diagnosed with cancer some time ago. Throat cancer. When we met he had finished his treatments and he said the prognosis looked good.

Rob is incredibly upbeat about everything. He's one of the nicest guys I've ever met. He's really gone above an beyond what I would expect from a contractor on this project. I can't say enough good about him.

Yesterday we talked a little more about his cancer. I was sort of unsure how much I should ask but I was curious. He was really open about it and I found it really interesting.

Then he said they found something yesterday on his lymph node. This is one of those things that you don't want to say anything about but my first reaction was "oh my". He said they wanted to operate. I really hope he beats this thing.

Oh, I did read a bunch of that. That's what I mean, this time around isn't as tough but I'm still surprised at the amount of unforeseen issues and potential decisions.

It's been a rough weekend. I've been obsessing about some recent work developments. It really isn't that the developments are so bad, but my inability to deal with them is troubling. Why can't I blow this stuff off anymore? I keep trying everything to stop my mind from thinking about it. It's not important - I won't even remember it a year from now - It's just work - etc. etc. I try to redirect my thoughts but my brain just won't turn off.

I've been thinking about this a lot and I have a theory. I'm an introvert by nature and introverts always need to get away from people to recharge batteries. I feel like my batteries are just getting older, run down faster, and take longer to recharge. I was attempting to try daily meditation a while back and it just sort of stopped. Woke up late, forgot, etc. Really just not ensuring I stuck with it. I'm going to give this another shot.

I have been able to work on the script. It's becoming a huge effort to focus but I've been making good progress.

Although this script is only 109 pages, I have 96 scenes, although many are "LATER" and some are no dialogue cutaways. I have a couple I think I'm going to eliminate but even then it's definitely over the norm. Hopefully this isn't a horrible thing. It's funny but now when I watch movies I find myself counting lines in scenes.

I remember reading somewhere that on average 1 page = 1 minute so that's a pretty long script.

I'm shooting for 90 and expecting to have trouble.

This struck me as familiar and I was thinking about it today. Have you ever read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time? It's a great book.

Did you download headspace? I remember it got brought up in the meditation thread in S&F. I ended up buying it and I enjoy it. Not the greatest, but it's nice to have something on my phone which takes me away for 20 minutes.

I'll check out that book.

I checked out headspace. I think I'm going to pass. For some reason I don't find that guys voice as very soothing. The reviews are fairly mixed. It seems that people like it at first but don't get much of an increased benefit as time goes by. And it appears as if cancelling your subscription is difficult. I think I'll try it on my own.

I went back and looked at the H&F thread. Downtown posted a really nice simple beginner video. I'm going to stick to the basics (again) for a while and see where it takes me.

the basics

Imo/ime the first rule of meditation is to actually spend a bit of time regularly doing meditation. The rest is huge FPS until you do that. Pretty much like everything else that exists in life (exercising, dieting, learning something, etc. etc.).