Archive for the ‘Geekly Aspirations’ Category
That’s right.
I almost never write about work, because duh, I’m not stupid. But I think an email thread that recently went down can be presented in general enough terms. I summarize it briefly here:
team member #1: “I’m having problems with Big Complicated System! Wah! Jenny, please figure out what’s wrong, over email, with minimal details!”
team members 2-6: “Wah! Me too! Wah!”
Jenny: “Well, I’m no expert, but this has worked for me in the past. You need to blah blah blah.”
team member #1: “Oh, no! You don’t know what you’re talking about! That can’t be right.”
annoying, know-it-all, totally not involved team member #7: “He’s right. Let’s ask BigWigConnectionofJenny’s for help.”
Jenny: “Can we please try my solution before we go bugging BigWigConnectionofJenny’s?”
team member #3: “Good idea! I just forwarded him this thread.”
Jenny: (outside of email thread: Fuck!)
team member #1: “Jenny is dumb. That can’t be the way to do it.”
team members 2-6: “Yeah! She’s dumb! Wah! Wah!”
BigWigConnectionofJenny’s: “Jenny’s information in this thread is spot on. Unfortunately, we don’t have a debugger for Big Complicated System and can’t troubleshoot these issues very well. I recommend first trying the steps in the ‘Troubleshooting Tips’ located at….”
Ha ha, suckers! I confess to dorkily thrusting my fist in the air when my BigWigConnection weighed in. Jeez! People are so lame. Don’t you hate it when someone asks you for help and then insists your help is wrong?
Posted by Jenny @
9:42 am |
Oh what a feeling!
I should not be witnessing the sunrise, people. Really. I would be quite happy to never see it. This one was nice, however.
I begin this post with a pretty picture, but I now move on to whining. My last contract with that large software company in Redmond, I got to work from home most days. Now, I have to go in Every. Day. This means I am spending 3-4 hours in the car Every. Day.
I’m not grumpy while I’m doing it. I’ve got lots of podcasts to listen to, I’m super caught up on current events and can name the presidents of most middle eastern countries, and I make lots of phone calls. It’s after I get home and it’s too late to go to yoga, I haven’t eaten dinner yet, and I have to go to bed in 2 hours that I get mad about the whole thing.
The other day on NPR, I heard that Americans have an average of a TWENTY-FIVE MINUTE commute each day which equals EIGHT DAYS in the car annually. That’s how Steve Innskeep said it, “TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES!” ”EIGHT DAYS!” I heard that and first I laughed. Poor dears with their twenty-five minute commute. Then, even though I knew I shouldn’t, I decided to do the math on my commute.
On a good day, it’s an hour and a half each way, so we’ll just go with that:
3 hrs a day x 5 days a week = 15 hrs a week
15 hrs a week x 4 weeks in a month = 60 hrs a month
60 hrs a month x 12 months = 720 hrs a year
720hrs ÷ 24hrs in a day = 30
THIRTY.
DAYS.
A YEAR.
Oh my god. That’s right, folks. I’m now spending a month of my life each year in the car.
All of that being said, I like my job. I’d rather be sitting here whining about my commute than whining about being unemployed. I realize I may not be making the best quality of life decision with this contract, but I’m gonna stick it out. I’m getting great experience and hopefully after it’s over, I can find something that’s either in Tacoma or more flexible.
Well, since I now spend such a significant amount of my life behind the wheel, I decided it should be a NICE wheel.
CHECK! ME! OUT!
Fuck yeah, dude.
It’s a 2007 Prius. I love it more than anyone should ever love an inanimate object. It’s my first ever new car, and a welcome and needed replacement for my twice wrecked, damp, cracked wind shield, 95 Ford Escort.
And I get to be at least a little Green Team about my commute! It averages 48mpg, but during rolling slowdowns, otherwise know as “my life”, it gets 99mpg.
Stay tuned for further reports on it’s various bells and whistles.
YAY!
Posted by Jenny @
3:38 pm |
I am insane.
See that piece of sidewalk? At least twice a day, I jump because out of the corner of my eye I think something is crawling on my desk, but it’s actually someone walking by down there.
Posted by Jenny @
11:08 am |
Pardon my cobwebs
Hello, friends! My, how I have neglected you. I have a really good reason, though. I got a job! Halleluiah! I’ve been “between contracts” (”unemployed“) since June. My boss seems really cool and my desk is near a nice big window. It’s with that software giant based in Redmond, once again, and as I am not an idiot, this is the last I’ll speak of it. But, yay!
I imagine I’ll reach the ‘blogging at work’ level of comfortability at some point, but until then, it might be a little sparse around these parts. Don’t go away!
____________
Our friends K&A are superinvolved with the ALS Association and they invited us to do this walk with them this morning. We brought Freya and had a great time! The forest was beautiful and the walk felt good.
Mountain and Zoo – notice how freaking dark it is. It was 10:00 in the morning. *sigh*
Zoo Escapee
Walking for a Good Cause
____________
In other news, I started a Photoshop class at the cool-ass School of Visual Concepts last week, and I am so geek-ily excited about it. In my last techy job, I was often asked to use Photoshop to move an arrow or correct wording on a graphic for a website. After a brief crying jag, I would bumble about pathetically in Photoshop, taking an hour to do something that should have taken me 30 seconds. Now I will be an expert! Plus, I look forward to applying my new skillz to my pictures and maybe even a blog redesign. They have all kinds of classes, so if you’re local and techy, check ‘em out.
————
So, don’t worry! I didn’t die, I just had a week of getting up at an un-godly hour and having to look busy and responsible all day. If I don’t make it back here much this week, come back next week for sure. SB and I have some adventurous and slightly naughty plans for the weekend that should result in blog fodder. Stay tuned.
Posted by Jenny @
11:44 pm |
Such is the life of a contract worker in the IT field…
So… remember how, like, FIVE MINUTES ago I started a new job? Yeah, well, it’s over already.
June is the end of my six month contract and the group I am working for has decided not to make anymore websites. So, they obviously no longer need any web production staff.
I am not freaking out. I’ve been assured by numerous folks that this is just how it works. SB has been doing this for longer than I have, and has been in this position many times, and it always works out.
So now I have to find a new job. (This is where I start to freak out a little) While I clearly have more experience now than I did the last time someone hired me, I’m still REALLY afraid of having to convince someone that I can do their work. I didn’t have to interview for my last position, but I probably will next time. Six months of working in the tech industry has only taught me how much I DON’T know. I have absolutely NO ability to fake it. It’s not like it’s an office-y position where you can throw in a few words like “synergy” and “collaboration” and make it sound like you now what you’re doing. In this field, everyone speaks in TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) and the first time I trip over one of those in a sentence, my eyes glaze over a little bit, the voice in my head starts screaming, ‘HELP! WTF is he talking about!?!?’ and I start to sweat.
Okay, so assuming I CAN convince someone to hire me, then I actually have to DO the work. On this project, I was fortunate enough to have a lot of hand holding and someone I could call with my questions. My new job might be with a different vendor company, so I can hardly keep calling my friend from my current company for help. There will be a new boss and new things to find out I don’t know. But, I guess that’s getting ahead of myself.
I’m just bummed because while I was waiting for a project, I felt like an unemployed loser who needed to get her shit in a pile. Then I started the job, and I spent the first two months crying about how scary it was and how stupid I felt. The last two months, I’ve started to feel like, hey! I can do this! I’m SO COOL. And now, back to square one.
It took this picture in the car the other day. I was sitting in traffic, using my dorky bluetooth headset, having a meeting with the marketing manager of Europe, a Brit who sometimes says fun Britt-y things that make my day. I took the picture because I couldn’t believe my life and what I was actually doing. A couple of hours later, I was told I was about to be unemployed. Strikes and gutters, man.
I’ll keep you all posted on the job search. I’ve decided not to begin the joy that is resume composition/turd polishing until next week.
Posted by Jenny @
3:40 pm |
Attempting Professionalism, Failing Miserably
Yesterday I was working from home, [sidebar: Oh, the glory that is working from home! Getting to sleep in through when I would usually be showering and communting, attending meetings in my pajamas, etc] but I had a meeting, so I had to be on a conference call. There were just three of us, me, my boss, and another Important Guy. I was eating my lunch at the same time, so I was using the mute function on my blackberry so that no one could hear any chewing. I would un-mute when I needed to participate.
When you mute, my blackberry makes a cute little beep-BEEP sound, and when you un-mute, it goes BEEP-beep. About half way through the meeting, though, I sort of couldn’t tell whether I was muted or not. The meeting had gone on so long, my screen had shut down and for some reason I couldn’t get it it to wake up. I started interjecting some “okays” and “rights” to try to test whether they could hear me, but that never seemed to illicit any response. I started to panic. I didn’t want them to to think I wasn’t paying attention, so I decided to take a chance. Fifty-fifty, right?
Me: Am I on mute right now?
Boss and Important Guy: …
Boss: Did you just say, “Am I on mute right now?”
Me: Well, I couldn’t tell! I’m sorry.
Boss: You could have at least made a barn yard animal noise, or something. That would have been a lot more entertaining.
Me: Yes, but even less professional.
Important Guy: …
When I shared this with SB, I was laughing like it was funny (it was) but he gave me this look like, I can’t believe you did that. Oh well. Navigating this high tech world is always a challenge, but so far I haven’t cried this week*, so it’s all good.
*She says confidently with half a day to go, foolishly tempting fate.
Posted by Jenny @
11:55 am |
There’s no crying in baseball.
You may remember back in August when I quit my unfulfilling, underpaid, brain-rotting j-o-b? I thought I’d only have a couple of weeks before I started my glamorous new life in the IT field.
HA HA HA.
With the exception of a project here and there, I’ve been UNEMPLOYED. Since AUGUST.
It’s been great! Yes, I’ve had to deal with plenty of guilt about spending money while not earning money, but really, I’ve enjoyed myself. And I got so much done! Once January rolled around, however, the savings account was starting to make me nervous.
I am delighted to report that I started my new job last week. It’s official! I’ve got an ID badge and everything. This is such a relief in so many ways. I’ve always known I’m a smart person that should be using her brain, but with the exception of some translation work, I’ve had nothing but j-o-b’s that ultimately, I felt ashamed of. It’s utterly lame to have so much of one’s identity tied up in having a good answer to the dreaded, “So, what do you do?” cocktail party opener.
So, yay! Employment! Using my brain! Making a grown up wage!
But also?
Stress! Feeling stupid all the time! Crying at least once a day!
Dude. I haven’t used my brain in YEARS. And now? Now I’m making webpages for France. On my second day! I’m not even sure what I do. I think I’m a web developer?
So yeah, it’s been a little stressful. Every moment is another encounter with something else I don’t know. I realize that this is always the case with any new job, but this is a whole new field. I’m often tripped up by the simplest of things. Yesterday, my boss was explaining how to do something over the phone and IM, I was barley keeping up, when he instructed me to use one of my function keys. My laptop is fairly new, so while he is 4 steps ahead of me, I’m still searching for my fucking Fn key. It’s small things like that plus big complicated things that have led to a twice daily cry. I’m not proud of it.
But today? Today I didn’t cry. I got into the elevator with SB and my boss, shot the shit on the way down to the parking garage, and exited alone with a spring in my step. Today I did not cry!
But I did lose my car in the parking garage.
I took two laps, retracing what I thought was my path to the elevators. I was starting to get a little frustrated with myself, so I decided to go back upstairs and pee, then attack the situation with fresh eyes and an empty bladder. I made a few more laps, carefully maneuvering between subtley slanted floors that magically transported me to diferent, but identical universes. Thirty minutes later, it was no longer funny, my bag was getting heavy, and the tears were about to start. Then I finally found it. Of course I did.
So. I’m hoping tomorrow I can keep the tears to a minimum and take better note of where I leave the car. Wish me luck!
I did not cry about this either.
Posted by Jenny @
10:22 pm |
