all the dead bees that I've ever met

Now, this may come as a bit of a shock...

2009-01-13T15:25:00.002Z

so you might want to sit down. I've come back to work after mat leave and.......(drum-roll please).....nothing has changed!

Oh, I apologise, some people have new 'titles', and there's a bit more paperwork but that's about it.

During the interim we moved offices too and now the coffee is attrocious. This is incredibly upsetting as those of you who work in IT will know. Decent coffee oils the wheels of the IT industry. Without it some people barely function - mind you, there are those who barely function with extra strength espresso and a gun to their heads.

I have to say that I am honestly pleased to be back. Never mind the muppets, at least I don't have to entertain a small child all day (lovely tho he is).

So far I am unstressed, but I'm sure that will change. In fact today I am quite happy as I've already thrown a spanner in the works for one persons pet 'project' - he wants everyone to follow his nicely defined 'convention', he produced ppt slides and everything. Only problem is is that the core product doesn't support it. Well, if they will give me actions at meetings then I will go and find these things out. He'll have another 'project' next week which will be equally meaningful and helpful to the business I'm sure.

De-mob happy

2007-10-12T16:03:00.000+01:00

Today is my last day at work for some time and I am very happy about this. My baby is due in 4 weeks and I plan to do nothing except relax before then, maybe with a day a the spa, a spot of online shopping, sitting on the sofa with the cat watching black and white movies.....bliss.

What I will not be doing is worrying about which muppet has promised which impossible dream to which HAL supremo. I will not care that no-one has the slightest clue what is going on with any of the projects. I will not care about the witch-hunts and the finger-pointing. I will not miss sitting through endless conference calls and meetings and people's "slide packs" (who are these people with time to put together powerpoint presentations on the most trivial of things?). I will not miss filling in endless pointless spreadsheets that nobody reads.

I will be serene in the knowledge that management are wankers now and they will still be wankers when I get back. There's an outside chance things will go to the dogs whilst I'm away but the smart money is on nothing actually changing.

but most importantly, there will be more time for cake :-)

Busy

2007-09-20T12:07:00.000+01:00

been a bit busy recently. Why? ah, well. Some people have been making rather rash promises to the big guns at HAL regarding what we can deliver and when. Turns out we can't actually deliver a speech, let alone deliver robust, functionally correct, tested, efficient software. Shame we're a software company then.

Some bright spark had the idea to put some responsibility for some of this (for responsibility read blame) on my team. If they'd waited a few weeks they'd have got away with it, but whilst I'm still here I'm not about to gift them a get-out-of-jail-free-and-save-your-arse card. There are some people who deserve such cards - but I don't work for any of them.

So, I've been busy. Busy pointing out half-arsed ideas and why they will fail. Busy writing down our responsibilities and procedures so that no-one can come along in a few months time and say "oh, but I thought Daisy's team were responsible for that". Busy doing paperwork - get this, the person in the far-away office who does the same thing as me has never actually designed any software in his life. He does, however, have time to produce 'slide packs' and spreadsheets, which he then expects us to have the time to read and fill in. Tosser.

This morning I had to sit through an hour and a half of people talking rubbish, going over the same stuff again and again. Listening to people say "I'm compiling a list of bugs that are affecting the quality of my team's work" when really what we want to hear is "we're upgrading to the latest version of the software which contains all the bug fixes in it". Don't compile a list, just get on with the sodding job!

I start my maternity leave in a few weeks and I feel confident that when I return nothing will have moved on, people in other departments would have taken all sorts of liberties, blame for everything will lie with my team and mangelment will generally make a complete dogs-breakfast of everything whilst I'm gone. I am trying to coach the rest of the team to say 'no' to people and to get things in writing etc but I fear that they'll get bullied into all sorts of nonsense whilst I'm gone. I thrive on saying no and upsetting people - everyone else is way too nice.

And then I'll have to clear it all up when I get back.

OR - they will all cope beautifully whilst I'm gone and I'll get back to discover that I am the root of all the problems.

I just want to do some proper work!

2007-08-16T17:21:00.000+01:00

I've been promoted. Don't laugh, but I am now a team leader. (no extra money, mind, just a bunch of extra meetings - how is that rewarding?)

Thus my days now seem to be filled with conference calls and answering stuff on behalf of my boss. Which is all well and good (well, apart from the conference calls obviously) but it's getting me down. I spend all day saving the world but the difference is that now I'm not allowed to do proper project stuff. My boss says he doesn't want to 'overload' me but in reality it's the ordinary day-job stuff that keeps my sanity.

I'm happy to spend a few hours shouting at muppets and stating the bleeding obvious but after a while I just want to design some software - that is, after all , the reason I took this job.

I'm hoping that things will calm down soon. Manglement are in a bit of a blind panic at the moment. Since HAL took over, they are all trying to make themselves look good. Unfortunately this means coming up with half-arsed ideas that so obviously wont work it would make you weep.

I've decided to bunk off early tomorrow - see, sign of 'team leadership' that, I believe it's called planning ahead.

conference calls - what's the point?

2007-07-25T16:15:00.000+01:00

My boss has a rubbish job. He's gone on holiday for 2 weeks and left me in charge of some stuff. Mostly this involves attending conference calls on his behalf.

Yesterday I was on a call with the Chief Technology Officer of the division no less. Poor sod, he was trying to get a straight answer out of Slippery-manager from the far-away-office. After an hour and a half I'm still not entirely sure we got an answer out of him. The question was quite simple, 'how long will it take to do this bit of work?'. The answer should be 'a couple of weeks'. I think in the end he came up with '3 to 4 weeks' but only after prevaricating for a blue-age about utter rubbish 'well, we have to spend weeks testing this random thing on the off chance that we might find a bug' and other nonsense.
Who's idea was this...'on the off change me might find a bug', what a load of rot. I'd never be able to get away with that sort of attitude. Imagine, "I'm not writing that document for you because there is a chance that you are too stupid to understand it". This may be true, but it's no way to run a business.

There's another meeting in a fortnight to discuss that fact that nothing has happened and we're no closer to any decisions being made. Fortunately the boss will be back by then and he can deal with it.

Management - definitely not worth the money.

Conversations I never thought I'd have

2007-07-17T17:03:00.000+01:00

yesterday I had a conversation about a carpet. It seemed perfectly natural at the time. Phrases like "that new carpet smell" and "room sized remnant" were used without either party sniggering or holding their head in dispair.

This morning, the whole thing seems almost surreal. Is this really what growing up is all about, sensible conversations about interior furnishings?

We quietly ignore our growing domestication as we get older but it gets us all in the end I fear.

does anyone else get emails like these?

2007-07-13T16:11:00.000+01:00

First I sit through an hour and a quarter of excruciating meeting listening to the famous "I'm not technical" manager fail time and again to grasp the easiest of concepts.

Then randomMuppet1 sends everyone an email asking for clarification as to what they need to do:

"perform tasks A, B and C"

Then they ask "so I need to perform tasks A, B and C right?"
I kid you not - why would anyone need to clarify the words "perform tasks A, B and C" with exactly the same wording?

So the response is "yes, as previously stated, peform tasks A, B and C"

and the reply from them is "can I please have confirmation from Daisy that this is ok?"

Christ on a bike, can't anyone do anything without my say-so? I'm only an engineer, it's not like I'm important management or anything.

"yes, go ahead and perform tasks A, B and C"

Then, after a short while, I receive an email "but if I over complicate matters by performing tasks x, y and z as well then this will totally bollox things up for everyone and yet I cannot see how not to do this?"

Just do tasks A, B and C. Do not pass go. Do not collect £200. Do not deviate from the original plan. If you cannot manage this then you should go straight home instead and look for a new job.

I feel a bit sorry for these muppets, after all they have to deal with me sending them a preverbial slap round the ear via email everytime they try and do their jobs. If only we bothered to train people before letting them loose with the code.

Oh well, 'tis the weekend and there is a newly refurbished pub near my house with fantastic views and a nice beer garden.....if the rain holds off.

when you say critical bug....

2007-07-05T17:01:00.000+01:00

turns out that my idea of critical and manglements idea of critical are 2 different things.

Monkey1 "this is a critical bug, we must fix it in this release. How long will it take?"

whippingboy1 "it will take Daisy a few hours and me a day and then whippingboy2 will have to test it so add another day"

- err, guys? has anyone checked that we have the information to do this? anyone ask the customer for their input?

thought not.

It can be as critical as you like but if we don't have the right information to add it in to the product then it can go in. It's not rocket science, no really it's not. We take a certain sort of information and turn it into code. If we don't have the information in the first place we can't turn it into code.

and another thing, this doesn't affect functionality so therefore it's not critical.

oh never mind.

I had such a nice holiday and yet it seems so long ago now....

well we sort of fixed it...

2007-06-01T15:27:00.000+01:00

2 bits of code - they need to match.

There's a bug so one piece of code is fixed by a certain team of muppets who conveniently work out of smacking distance on the other side of the world.

Then they test it and find that the 2 bits of code no longer match.

So then they take out the fix for the bug so we are now back where we started from.

and yes I did point out the lack of logic in this but, again, no-one was listening.

ssshhhhhh....

2007-05-25T15:31:00.000+01:00

hear that? nope, nothing. Not an irrate email asking for an "urgent" yet pointless task to be completed in the next 5 minutes. No inane questions. No phone calls asking you to repeat what you wrote in your email.

Manglement have the day off.

I can't tell you how happy this makes me. Peace and quiet - bliss. I've had a nightmare week work wise, dozens of urgent tasks that involved me working like a demon only to find out that they weren't urgent after all. countless pointless questions repeated over and over. My particular favourite was yesterday's exchange on the phone:

"Daisy, has the project been completed now?"

- yes, see my email I sent yesterday.

"ah, does it take into consideration the comments from the customer?"

- Open the email

"yes"

- what does it say?

"Here are the completed project files"

- and underneath that, what does it say?

"Here is the completed project documentation"

- and underneath that, what does it say?

"this takes into consideration all the customer comments. Oh!, aha-ha, so it does. Thanks"

And so it goes. The urgent project that I completed for this guy and he doesn't even have the good manners to read the sodding email.

I haven't actively hated someone this much in a long time.

Snotty emails

2007-04-25T18:51:00.000+01:00

If you're going to send me a snotty email claiming that the reason you are rubbish at your job is because I failed to tell you something when in fact I did tell you, you should not really 'CC' your boss.

This is because I will take offence and I will reply to all stating exactly what happened and you will look like a tosser at the end of it.

And then you will feel obliged to ring me and try to explain yourself and I'll have to make sympathetic noises and pretend to give a damn about your or your career.

So in future, think before you try and blame me for your ineptitude. Everyone knows you're rubbish, it's too late to try and change their minds now.

Witchhunt

2007-04-17T11:48:00.000+01:00

All procedures were followed and yet something went wrong - the customer noticed 3 problems with the software. They, quite correctly in my opinion, pointed out that we should have spotted these three errors if we'd tested the damn thing properly.

So we have a "root cause analysis" meeting....aka a witchhunt.

Muppet: "why was this not spotted Daisy?"

I don't know why they ask me these things, I only design the software. Once I hand it over to development I never see it again.

Me: "It probably wasn't tested properly"

incompetant1: "well you didn't tell us to test it"

Upon my life, that's what they said. I asked them to write some code but I did not explicitly state that they should test what they wrote.

Now I used to write software for a living and practically the first thing you learn is to test what you write. But it seems that things have changed, the new modern way is to get me to specify exactly in a step-by-step manner how everyone else should do their jobs.

I've yet to see how this benefits anyone (except perhaps my therapist), but it does mean that other people can avoid taking responsibility for their own work.

Hours we've spent in this meeting pointing the finger at everyone except who is really to blame - the muppets who wrote, but did not test, the code.

It's the customer I feel sorry for. They expect us to be professional but the only thing we're proficient in is crushing my will to live.

Let's have a meeting...

2007-03-16T13:37:00.000Z

Yesterday I had a meeting (a conference call to be exact) only I was the only person to turn up to this call.

"oh, it's been moved. did you not get the email?"

what do you think, you muppet? I got the email but blatently decided to ignore it and spend 10 minutes waiting for people to turn up when I already knew they wouldn't? Of course I didn't get the email.

So we have the meeting today instead.

"Daisy, did you complete your work"

- yes

"Did you follow your procedures"

- yes

"Did you update people if the procedures were not followed?"

- er, see answer to previous question. All procedures were followed.

"Did you produce all the documentation you were required to?"

-yes

"Is there anything else that you need to let the developers know?"

-no. If there was I would have documented it in the aforementioned documents.

"crikey, that's the quickest one of these sorts of meetings I've ever done"

- that's because the rest of us know what we're doing. Unlike you who can barely cut up your own food.

Well I'm glad we had that meeting. Half an hour of my life I'll never get back - thanks.

Alternatively we could sit about for a bit doing bugger all

2007-03-13T16:34:00.000Z

This is how it works, I do my bit of work. I pass it to the next team. They build what I have designed. They test it. They pass it to the 'quality' team for testing. It gets released. someone installs it at a customer site.

only the process seems to have changed. It now appears to be... I do my bit of work. Every bugger else sits about moaning and doing sod all.

Can you spot the flaw in this new process?

I recently finished a piece of work and for the first week, nothing happened. Then the next team started to look at doing their part only it looks a bit tricky. Not all of it mind, only about 0.05% looks tricky but well, you can never be too careful.
So, lets all send lots of emails. Someone try and pluck up enough courage to ask Daisy to do an extremely tedious task. That someone receives a verbal smack round the ear. More emails, more manglement monkeys get involved. The more I find my self screaming down the phone "just get on with the sodding job". The more I hear "ah, well. it might be a bit tricky so we're not really sure" - Might be a bit tricky? Might? The sky might fall in on our heads any day now but that doesn't stop people like this existing and getting on my wick.

So, finally, the upshot of all this buggering about is that they are actually going to do the work they were supposed to in the first place. And if things get a bit tricky then they are going to ask for help.

Genius!

National halfwit day

2007-03-02T17:06:00.000Z

was today, although the do seem to practice quite a lot so sometimes it's quite difficult to tell.

First we had: trying to do a lookup in a file that the developer has created himself only he's used id's that don't match his data. This is like saying I'm looking in this file for a row with id=1234, I've created this file myself only I didn't put a row in it with the id '1234'.
But rather than work this out (it should be bleedin obvious to anyone who has ever programmed anything or ever done a logic puzzle) they 'escalate' the issue up to the higher management monkeys who run around like headless chickens until someone asks me and I take on the role of Captain Obvious and point it out to everyone.

Personally I would feel a right muppet if someone pointed out that I'd made such a schoolboy error but no, these people are not embarrassed in the slightest.

Then we had "you've written 'do not remove any functionality' in this document and we're not happy about it, please change the wording". The reason it says 'do not remove any functionality' is because you halfwits keep tinkering with stuff and screwing it up. If it ain't broke don't fix it. And the sky is not about to fall in on our heads just because you don't like the way I have worded my document, it's my document I'll put in what I like thank you very much.

Then we had "you've given both these things the same name and they need to have different names" - oh no! sack me now. Turns out I'm human after all. Just rename one of them and GET ON WITH THE SODDING JOB.

Then we had "I got xxxx to count this for me". Well I guess it's too much to ask a management monkey to be able to count themselves, maybe that's what delegation is all about.

See - national halfwit day.

They're not dead, just a bit sleepy

2007-02-26T10:05:00.000Z

I arrived home on Friday evening to "There are dead bees in the conservatory, you should meet them".

Obviously I was quite concerned about this but there was no need to worry. They were not dead, just a bit dozy.

We've just had a posh conservatory built on the back of our house to replace the shoddy lean-to that tried to pass itself off as a conservatory (oh yes, from Workhouse to posh conservatory in 3 generations, definitely middle class now). The old lean-to was a bit, erm, open to the elements shall we say, and we always suspected we had masonry bees living in the walls.
Now, of course, we've walled them up with plasterboard and made it nice and toasty with underfloor heating so all the bees have woken up, made their way into the conservatory and promptly fallen asleep again.
Fortunately I bought a bee house last year whilst visiting a very nice windmill (see, middle class - nah-nah-na-nah-nah) so I spent much of the weekend carrying sleepy bees outside and putting them next to the bee house. I'm not sure if any of them will live but at least they wont be dead in my house.

I met 14 bees in all, none of them dead on my watch.

A bright spark

2007-01-31T17:31:00.000Z

We have a manager here who is supposed to be quite good. I had higher hopes than normal (although admittedly that's not too difficult) that he may actually kick some people back into reality (or failing that, kick them out of the company). But all my hopes have been dashed. He has recently sent an email out extolling the virtues of the rubbish office across the sea and far away (the one staffed with goodwill-sapping-morons). He is impressed because as he left the office at 8.30 PM a lot of people were still there!

2 things here:

a) obviously they were still in the office at 8.30PM if he was there. First rule of impressing someone with the power to make you redundant is never leave the office before they do.

b) these people are actually incapable of doing their job within normal working hours and therefore have to work late due to their gross incompetance.

3 years ago the task that these people do took 4 weeks. Now, at their request we have lots of checks and tools and wizzy scripts and suchlike to reduce the time it takes to do this task. It now takes 10 weeks.

I kid you not. TEN WEEKS!

Stop laughing, you wouldn't like it if it was your company.

another stupid idea

2007-01-16T16:14:00.000Z

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

"lets ignore, entirely, how the software is designed to work and lets do everything manually from now on"

in the above sentiment for "lets do" please substitute "you will do" with a side order of "whilst I sit on my arse doing bugger all because I am a management monkey".

This is what is known as a bloody-stupid-idea. It slows everything down, the customers will hate it and, crucially, it wont actually work.

But no, we have to 'discuss' this idea. I don't see why. Some muppet who can barely power-up his PC is making decisions about how I should do my job without the slightest clue about what is actually involved.

I have mentioned the futility of going down this route and suggested that the product manager may want to be involved before we start making random, arbitrary decisions on what is and isn't possible with the product, but guess what! No one knows who the product manager is!

genius.

Happy New Year

2007-01-02T17:29:00.000Z

New years resolution: be nicer to people at work. They may just have been in the wrong queue for common sense and initiative and I must be more considerate.

Today I have been extra nice to people at work. I think they are getting a bit suspicious but generally it all seams to be going ok so far. Then again the 'far-away' office have a bank holiday today and that's where most of the good-will-sapping halfwits work - sorry, sorry, they are nice people and are simply lacking training.

I have a feeling this resolutions isn't going to go well.

I need a break

2006-12-15T16:59:00.000Z

back to the doomed 'urgent' project this week. Happy-Happy, Joy-Joy. Have worked like a demon to get it in on time, not that it will make a blind bit of difference as I'm on holiday next week which means that bugger-all will get done.
I've made a very sensible recommendation to management that they plan ahead and keep the customer informed. Hardly rocket science but the monkies will ignore it. the customer will get hacked off and then....oh why do I bother?

Today has been a horrible day. Somebody decided that a project team should "just run it and see what happens" and I agree, how do you know there's a problem if you haven't tried out the software yet? but this recommendation from management wouldn't be relayed to the project team until someone had asked me to 'ok' it! Why do I need to get involved? it's not even my project. Why does it even have to be suggested as an idea? Everybody knows, first thing you do is "run it and see what happens". (although this is followed by RTFM in most cases.)

Then, someone got my name wrong and used the pathetic excuse that they were hungover. If I didn't already hate this guy I would be quite upset. Unfortunately this guy thinks I'm great - marvellous, just what I need, another office stalker.

The network is shafted, email is up the spout and the timesheet software is buggered. This means that come Jan 2nd I'll have an overflowing inbox and zero will to live.

Only the Sauvignon-blanc can save me now.

Happy soltsice everyone.

Sniffer Bees

2006-11-30T12:08:00.003Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/animals/newsid_1987000/1987799.stm

Finally

2006-11-29T16:47:00.000Z

Yesterday we found out that in about 3 months, after all the government regulation wotnots are sorted out, we will be part of the big HAL family.

So now speculation is about which office we will move to. This is mainly "we wont move offices, they'll keep us" to which the reply is why would they want to keep a two-bit office like this open when they already have an office in the next city, about 15 miles away. No, no, no, we are being 'incorporated'. There is no room for people who want to stay as they are. We will become part of the big corporate machine. No-one will every know our individual names. A tiny drop in the ocean to the corporate behemoth that is HAL.

Still, that's ok. There'll be investment in people and infrastructure. New laptops. new corporate mugs. product strategy. planning. all the sorts of things you expect in a successful company. It will make a nice change.

AND they are getting rid of some of the management monkeys - I know this because we were specifically told that their jobs are safe. How many times have you heard that before? "the minister in question has the PM's full support" or "the manager had the full support of the board". Politics/football/software it's all the same. The statement of support is usually the kiss of death.

Hang on though, they also said that we the people were their greatest asset. Maybe they wont move us anywhere, maybe they'll just show us the door.

HAL

2006-11-23T13:34:00.000Z

at last we have a date for the big announcement at work. It is a well known secret that HAL are buying us and we have all been summoned to the other office next week to hear this in person.
Now to hear some of the people in this office talk you would think they've been asked to chew off their own feet. "I don't see why we have to go" "I don't want to go"...etc. The company is laying on a bus to ferry us all there and we get lunch too. This constitutes the first freebie from the management monkeys in about 2 years. The last freebie being a revolting and badly fitting corporate shirt.

So what's the problem with everyone? We've been begging the management monkeys to sell the company to someone with an iota of common sense for years now - show some enthusiasm guys. So you have to get up a bit earlier to get the bus, for christsakes it's hardly the end of the world and you never know, they may sack the current CEO before our very eyes.

I would pay money to see that.

Oh No! There's an "S" missing

2006-11-17T17:02:00.000Z

Today's panic is a missing "S". Apparently this constitutes a 'major' bug in the code.

To fix it, you have to open a file and insert the offending "S" and then save the file.

Go on, try it. Open a file, insert an "S" and then save it. There, how long did that take you? Exactly.

Why am I spending time explaining this to my boss? Because the morons who wrote the code want to distract people from noticing that they can't actually do their job properly. I think we have more important things to worry about than a missing "S". More important things like, the rest of the code doesn't actually work.
Err, hello, priorities anyone?

So, no, we don't need a new process to avoid missing "S"'s. What we need is to hire people who have at least a tentative grasp of the concept of software development and who can actually write some sodding code without breaking the bloody product.

It's not that difficult a concept, surely.

This project is doomed

2006-11-15T11:59:00.000Z

This project is doomed. We don't have the information we need to be able to finish. Worst case scenario is that when the data arrives, we have to re-write everything.

I did mention this to the powers-that-be. Once or twice.

So I have been continuing regardless because it is "urgent". We don't know what we're doing, the customer doesn't know what they're doing or what they want and their supplier hasn't got a clue either.

As I said, doomed.

but now, I have been told to stop work because...there is significant risk of producing a load of rubbish.

Captain Obvious strikes again.

Helping

2006-11-07T13:33:00.000Z

I'm working on an "urgent" and "high profile" project - yawn, yes another one. This one is turning out exactly like all the rest. Struggle along without the correct information for long enough and suddenly it's not urgent or life threatening after all.

This time it was deemed so urgent that some Manager decided to help me out by doing part of the work. I knew it wouldn't work, but would he listen?
So the situation is now that this Manager is reviewing my work and doing his bit and oh, hang on. He's now on holiday for 3 weeks.

That kind of urgent, then. You bugger off for 3 weeks and I'll stay here fielding irrate phone calls from clueless managers as to why the project has slipped and why I've given up and started on a different project.

I hate that. If you want something doing properly.....

In other news, we are apparently only a week or two away from HAL buying the company. I wish they'd hurry up. There's a risk of redundancy but as I don't have the willpower to get off my arse and get a proper job, that might not be a bad thing. I hope they cull the management. I've started offering prayers to the gods "please get rid of at least some of the management monkeys". Of course it could all be another red herring. That's quite a depressing thought.

Project managers 2

2006-10-25T17:23:00.000+01:00

"hello, we have 12 bugs in this code and we need to know how serious they are"

WELL WHY DON'T YOU READ THE FUCKING BUG DESCRIPTIONS THEN?

And breathe.

This is from the "I'm not Technical" project manager. Who has been with the company donkey's years and...wait for it....used.to.be.the.product.manager.

Oh yes, she was in charge of the product development and yet was not techinical.

Now let's see, why is the company I work for not making any money. I wonder.

fuckwits.

I've found a Popple

2006-10-19T16:45:00.000+01:00

I'm researching my family tree. As you know, this geneology lark is de rigeur these days so I thought I'd hop on the bandwaggon.

It's not as easy as it looks, especially not if you have a name like Smith and relatives who insist on dying before younger generations get round to caring about their past.

Anyway, yesterday I had the very great honour of informing my Dad of his grandma's name. That's not something you get to do everyday. I'm quite chuffed with myself. And her name was Agnes Popple, which is even better. It's such a great name, you can't help but repeat it to yourself. Agnes Popple.

So it's not all bad, although the black clouds are looming.

Busy Bee

2006-10-13T17:26:00.000+01:00

my 'to do' list this week comprised:

Monday: Sit Postgrad OU exam. (actually enjoyed this, guess that makes me a bit sad)
Tuesday: standard work/saving other people's careers stuff.
Wednesday AM: minor operation to remove weired lump from back/shoulder
Wednesday PM: drive in torrential rain to Heathrow and fly to Lisbon
Thursday: 2 meetings with customers, all very nice. Fly back to Heathrow.
Friday (just): arrive home. Remove carefully kept dry dressing, inspect impressive 2 inch wound on back and fancy stitches - never had stitches before. They hurt. A lot. Spend rest of day with general work shit.

my 'to do' list this weekend comprises:
-
absolutely nadda. ziltch. nothing.

which is just fine with me. vague thoughts about going to Westonbirt to see the trees, lift my soul, but nothing else.

Apparently keeping busy can help to stave off depression. I now realise that it does this by killing you through exhaustion first. Which is kinda cheating if you ask me.

Questions

2006-09-29T16:49:00.000+01:00

Life is full of questions. From "why is there a hole in the bic biro" and "why is the milka cow lilac" to "why can't management find their arse with both hands and a map" and "why can't project managers manage projects".

I'm happy with the first two questions, something to do with air/ink flow and marketing respectively, the third question is an utter mystery as we all know but I think I have the answer to the last one.

It's because none of our project managers actually talk to our customers.

Now I realise this is quite radical but actually talking to the customer does not cause the end of the world or cause the sky to fall in on our heads. No,no,no. On the contrary, in my experience, talking to the customer avoids mistakes. Customers like to give their input. They know stuff that we don't and they, ultimately, hold all the cash so in general, being nice to them can be a good thing.

Obviously there are lots of customers who are complete James Blunt's, but only because no-body ever spoke to them to find out what they needed. Imagine if we hadn't expended all that time and energy actively avoiding them but had spent a 10th of it having a quick chat.

But no, project managers are scared of customers. "Can you just ask the customer this please Daisy?" Yeah, right. I'll add it to the list of things that are actually the responsibility of other people but that they can't actually be arsed to do.

Running

2006-09-22T10:41:00.000+01:00

I'm not sure how this happened as I was completely sober at the time but I have somehow managed to provisionally sign up to being in a corporate team for running the Bath half marathon again next year. I guess now I've done it once (last year) I have a Personal Best to beat...Ok so my PB is 2hrs57 but that's not bad for an asthmatic who only started running 6 months before.

However, despite my grand words at the time, I have singularly failed to keep up the running. So now I need to start training again, which is fine because once I get started I'll really enjoy it. It's just quite difficult to actually get off my arse and make a start.

2 of my friends have made a pledge to avoid alcohol for the next 6 months and I'm thinking this might be a good idea, would go well with the training. Maybe I'll try too. Of course I can hear you say, I'll give her 3 weeks before she twists a knee, hurts her back and succumbs to a G&T, and maybe you're right. Then again, what do you know, maybe it will go really well.

In other news, the builders who are digging holes in my garden (in lieu of any actually 'proper' building) have uncovered a fireplace behind some plaster in the utility room. When I say fireplace I don't mean one of those Time Team type post holes where they dig a hole and then speculate wildly and try to convince the viewer that actually there was once a lump of wood there honest. No, this is a real fireplace, made of stone and about shoulder height. In my utility/cloakroom. A huge gothic stone fireplace in my downstairs loo. How mad is that!

The benefits of working for managers who can't be arsed

2006-09-14T16:38:00.000+01:00

I had my performance review at work yesterday. My boss used to work for the company that took us over (sorry, sorry, "merged" with us) a while back and as such is an expert in his product but not in the 2 products that I deal with.

This is generally a good thing.

A) I get to say things like "it'll take me 6 weeks to do that" and I am believed (I'm always honest, it will take me 6 weeks, what with my OU assignment that I have to do as well)

B) I get to be the font of all knowledge about things and my boss constantly refers to me for answers

Sometimes it's a bad thing

A) nobody really cares if it takes me 6 weeks to do anything

B) I get to be the font of all knowledge about things and my boss constantly refers to me for answers - i.e. I get all the crappy "Can you just deal with this difficult question please?" kind of emails

But best of all yesterday I was offered the carrot of becoming "Technical team lead" for stuff that my boss has no interest in knowing about. He was quite honest about it, he couldn't really care less and needs me to deal with it leaving him to do stuff that he likes to do. So i guess it's a kind of promotion. of sorts. ish.

There's no extra money in it, obviously. Just the faint promise that in 6 months I might get bumped up a grade if I prove myself.

In the meantime I get to....actually get things done!

All those times I've thought "oh for christ's sake give it here, I'll do it".....just goes to show you should always be careful what you wish for.

I'm off for a beer.

Brown bags

2006-09-08T10:02:00.000+01:00

The management-monkeys have a new term...."Brown bag seminars".

stop sniggering.

apparently it refers to what we used to call "Lunch and learn" sessions which pretty much does what it says on the tin. The difference between a "lunch and learn" session and a "brown bag seminar" seems to be that the latter requires you to buy your own lunch and also makes people think of winos on park benches drinking out of bottles wrapped in brown paper bags.

But the best part is, these "Brown bag seminars" are not even going to be a lunch time! Due to the way our company is cunningly structured with offices in 3 locations all 8 hours apart, these sessions are going to be at 5.30 UK time.

err, hello? 5.30? hands up all those who seriously think I'm going to forgo a swift exit to the pub for one of these things.

Israeli Otters

2006-08-30T16:26:00.000+01:00

as promised....

A: That is Ray Liotta

S: What Israeli otter?

A: eh? That (pointing at advert on TV) is Ray Liotta

S: what? What Israeli otter?

A: (frowning) surely you mean who?

S: no I mean what, or perhaps where. why would I mean who?

A: that makes no sense.

S: no, you make no sense. what is an israeli otter?

A: aha! Not israeli otter, Ray Liotta. He's an actor. Y'know, he's in Goodfellas.

S: Who is Ray Liotta?

and so on. A bit daft maybe but at least we can now blame any future misunderstandings on those pesky israeli-otters.

I wonder if they have otters in Israel.

Work drivel

2006-08-15T16:32:00.000+01:00

a whole hour of my life has just been spent listening to utter, utter drivel. Spouted by the head boy of the company. He failed to answer any questions directly and just wittered on inanely.

But he didn't fool anyone....there's no bonus this year.

Again.

On the plus side, there was a lovely little Israeli-Otter this weekend...
"I like that sofa, what style is it"
"I think it's Georgian"
"oh, George and Barabara like it too"
"?"

I'll explain about Israeli-Otters in more detail soon.

Timesheets

2006-07-28T15:54:00.000+01:00

it's quarter to 4 on a friday, technically I should be at work for another 2 hours but because I've already done my timesheet I kinda feel like I should stop working.

I wonder if I could get away with reading my book at my desk? I see other people surfing for holidays, checking out their footie teams discussion whatsits, reading the news. But I did all that whilst I was 'working through lunch'.

There are 9 people (including myself) currently in the office and I doubt a single one of us is doing any work at all. I sense I should feel some guilt about this but dur-management-monkeys have driven out any sense of loyalty or commitment that any of us ever had.

oh well.

management-speak

2006-07-21T15:18:00.000+01:00

"what we need is a value proposition"

a what? what's that supposed to mean?

"it shows why a customer would want to buy our product"

doesn't the marketing department have that sort of thing? After all, we've been convincing customers to part with their money for donkeys years, surely someone wrote something down.

"it needs to be high level"
so I do a high level document

"but what you did doesn't contain all the individual detail"
that's because you asked for high level. if you wanted detailed you should have asked for detailed. muppets.

so we to and fro and I do stuff and it gets rubbished and I have to do it again and it occurs to me that the sales person involved is probably going to loose this sale and needs someone to blame. no-wonder no-one likes him. tosser.

thank god it's the weekend.

The perils of internet dating

2006-07-12T17:24:00.000+01:00

recently disclosed to me "ditched the russian bird, as after some investigation it turned out to be a fat bloke from texas".

nice one bro. better luck next time ;-)

Time off from saving the world

2006-06-16T16:07:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow I am going on holiday. Not far away, staying in the UK. Renting a cottage with some fabulous friends.

Gonna bit great. No work for a whole week.

Unfortunately, if my last week off is anything to go by, no-one else will do any work next week either.

Oh no. They save it all up for when I get back. Bastards. All those inane questions. "help us daisy, we can't find our arses with both hands and a map." "help us daisy, we've found a spelling error and don't have the enough initiative to correct it ourselves." "help us daisy, we are too incompetent for words and really don't know the first thing about computer software."

notice that last point. 'Computer software'. No life threatening, earth saving, crucial to world peace and stability work. Just designing and building software. So why all the panic? Why is everything urgent? Why do I have to be asked about every small thing that anybody else does? I cannot be the only competent person in the company with a pulse.

Can I?

Still at least it pays the bills, and if I got off my arse and got a proper job I'd have to actually do some proper work and we wouldn't want that.

So a whole week with people who are fabulous....and the world cup :-D

The "why's" about woodlice

2006-05-22T16:55:00.000+01:00

I know I said I wasn't going to post on this, 'twas just a means to an end but I got a special request to post about woodlice.

Why are there so many woodlice in my house? where do they come from? how do they get upstairs and into my spare room? do they teleport there? why are there so many dead ones just lying about? what kills them? why do they die in my house?

What, in short, is the point of woodlice?

and furthermore

why do we just consider them to be small insecty type things that never hurt anyone and are just there. We ignore them, mostly, but we never consider the fact that they are lice! Now, ordinarily when you hear the word "lice" you think 'ewww' in a prison-camp-scratchy-thin-grey-blanket kind of way, but when you hear the word 'woodlice' you just think, well, nothing really as they are so insignificant.

There, I hope I have done justice to the woodlice question and that 'S' who requested this will be happy and we can all go back to ignoring them (the woodlice that is, not 'S'. that would be mean).

in the beginning....there was reluctance

2006-05-08T16:09:00.000+01:00

OK, I promised myself I wasn't going to blog. It's for clever people, witty people, and people with too much time on their hands, i.e. not me (well, maybe the latter on dull workday afternoons). People will read it and hate it and all my insecurities will be justified and....shoot me now, it'll be kinder.

I'm only doing this so I can post inane comments on my friends blogs.

this will probably be the only message I post.

total waste of time.

just you wait and see.