Nycsca on Og Maciel's Journal

Living In A Movie

Mon, 23 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Kinda scary when you can relate your job to a movie:

BOB SLYDELL Y’see, what we’re trying to do here, we’re just trying to get a feel for how people spend their day. So, if you would, would you just walk us through a typical day for you? PETER Yeah. BOB SLYDELL Great. PETER Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late. I use the side door, that way Lumbergh can’t see me. Uh, and after that, I just sorta space out for about an hour. BOB PORTER Space out? PETER Yeah. I just stare at my desk but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I’d probably, say, in a given week, I probably do about fifteen minutes of real, actual work.

About To Get Rough

Thu, 19 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today all consultants working for my current employer received the email below (contents changed to protect the innocents):

As the old-timers among you know, I periodically ask the IT consultants the gross annual or hourly pay you receive from your respective consultant firm. This information helps us determine the salary range and level of equity among the consultants of each work type/skill set; check that the consultant firm margins are somewhat reasonable, etc. Please return e-mail (to me only) the following info:

What Does It Mean???

Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

What does it mean when your direct supervisor keeps asking you to do some of his tasks and you know for a fact there’s no promotion involved? I guess my biggest “beef” is the type of stuff he asks me to write about:

What is .NET and what advantages does it offer?
What are the advantages of using Microsoft Visual Source Safe (VSS)?
What are the requirements for working on the code library we just purchased and have no documentation on???
What is ADO.NET and how can we use it?

This wouldn’t bother me as much but I was told (by my recruiter) I was joining a team of talented .NET developers when I took this job!!!

Where Do We Get These People?

Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

While typing my last post I was interrupted by a so-called “.Net Developer who just earned his PMP.” He’s been “featured” here before for asking “very intelligent questions.” =) This time he told me he had just bundled some application and given to a DBA to run it when they received an error message: Oracle[blah blah blah].dll not found!!!

"So this program you wrote is trying to connect to an Oracle database?", I asked. “Yes”. “And what technology are you using to connect?” “Huh???” “Are you using ODP.NET?” “HUH???” “Are you using Oracle Data Provider for .NET?” “Yes.” “Does the client also have it OR have you included it with your application?” “HUH???”

Dragging My Carcass

Fri, 13 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Been really busy attending the Project Management class these last 3 days. It’s been very interesting but there’s a lot of material and concepts to absorb. The end product of this is that I get home completely drained and just pass out! Been “running” off of a million cups of coffee and caffeinated snacks… Still haven’t had a chance to play with Perforce and have 4 new books awaiting for me at home. Hope to be able to do some hacking over the weekend since my new toy/hobby application (RssReader.NET) has been neglected for some time now… Damn it!!! Class started…

Away From My Desk

Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Starting today I will be stuck attending some training class for work. These “classes” start at 9am and end at 4:30pm, all through Friday! Hopefully I’ll get a chance to grab a cup of coffee in the next 5 minutes. Managed to update this blog to WordPress 1.5.1. Since this was a bux-fixing release, don’t expect to find anything changed here.

As a side note, am looking forward to some WoW playing time with Vinny tonight! Go, Ghost Force, Go!

Primavera Project Management Class

Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I was told to attend “a class” at work starting today. To be honest, I wasn’t very thrilled about the idea but since I didn’t think I had a choice, I prepared myself to spend some long, boring hours at the “class room.” Well, it turns out that besides learning to use a project management tool called Primavera, we are also learning what it takes to professionaly managed a project (from the IT perspective). I am actually completely awake and really enjoying the experience of “playing” the software manager for a ficticious company. I’d say this is the closest I have ever gotten to learning how to properly manage something. It has got to be also the first time I didn’t fall asleep during any type of training I’ve been to in a long time! By this Friday I should be in good shape to add this as a new skill under my belt and my resume.

A Hazy Shade Of Freedom

Tue, 10 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

After battling for a few days with a certain free (as in non-proxy-ed) wifi AP, I experienced approximately 5 minutes of unlimited freedom right after lunch. My friend Kelvin and I had spent a good chunk of our morning trying to figure out why the connection was dropping all the time but to no avail. I did some “googling” around and saw that some people have been complaining about the same problem but for me this only happens at this certain AP. At home the connection is rock solid! I got the suspicion that the problem is that the AP is now using WEP authentication but some other type (maybe Cisco’s LEAP?) that keeps fluctuating the WEP keys. That could explain why I sometimes get the connection and then it just drops! Anyhow, for 5 minutes today I experienced sheer joy when I was able to get a signal and listen to my favorite internet radio station… I need to spend some more time trying to figure out the solution to this mystery.

Amazing...

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes I wonder how certain people get employed… really! I usually get drilled with a bunch of technical questions in every job interview I’ve gone to (with the exception of a couple where the hiring manager had absolutely no clue about IT… this re-enforces me original point!) and feel that I really have to show “what I’m made of.” In the meantime, some people get hired and surprisingly manage to keep their jobs whilst they lack (IMNSHO) the knowledge and skills.

The Good Stuff

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Wow!!! It is amazing how great this whole week has been for me so far at work! Been churning out code for my very simple data to xml application and sometimes (the horror) I don’t even want to go home so I won’t interrupt the grooviness! Tomorrow I’m scheduled to give a live demo to the rest of the group! I’m ready to blow them off their socks! For such a simple and small program, I think I’ve done a pretty good job at making it usefull and stable! It’s almost quitting time and I’m already looking forward to tomorrow… ;)

One Voice

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday our recently elected CIO paid us a little visit for the first time. The entire IT team attended the hour long meeting where the CIO very eloquently explained his plan for the entire IT organization (which is actually made up of several smaller IT groups throughout the Board of Education). In the end he “opened up the floor” for questions and/or comments. For a grueling 10 seconds nobody uttered a word. Being that I was genuinely interested in what he had just said, I stepped up to the plate and fired my first of three questions. Basically I challenged the current state of our policies and standards governing the development of software within our group. I told him they were very obsolete and inadequate, often causing a lot of distress amongst the developers around here. Sometimes something as simple as adding a new feature to Crystal Reports (for instance, the functionality of exporting existing reports to PDF format) could take 2+ days coupled with several emails for request and approval. By the time said feature was installed I had already forgotten the original reason for installing it in the first place! He was very diplomatic on his response and acknowledged that some actions will be necessary in order to bring our organization up to speed with technological advances, but always keeping in mind our standards. My following questions were about the availability of any document generated by the newly created IT steering committee (with the sole purpose of investigating, proposing, and implementing the necessary changes to improve our organization) and if the organization had ever considered Open Source as an alternative to some of the outdated systems we have.

Groovy

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today I actually enjoyed work!!! Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to mention “work” and “enjoy” together? I haven’t done it since early 2002 when I worked for the now defunct Synaptic Pharmaceuticals!!! I spent most of the day working on a new VB.NET application for work (something very small and simple for XML generation) and my C# (soon to become Mono) rss reader. It feels absolutely great to be back in the groove of coding! I only wish everyday could be like this… Hope this will last for a while…

Sharp Turns

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today was my first day back to work since last Wednesday when I flew to Boston to attend Linux World Expo. It started out just like any other day: woke up early, drove daughter to daycare, crawled through traffic on the FDR Drive, parked across the street and coughed up the $11 daily rate, signed in at 8:25am, walked into my cubicle, said hello to my co-worker… Only there was no reply… there was nobody sitting there… in fact, the space previously taken by my Russian friend was empty! “He quit?!?!?!?” I thought. Immediately, as if sensing my disorientation someone from the cubicle “next door” approached me and told me that “they” had moved my friend so as to make room for the new consultant that is starting today. I haven’t been given the facts yet and what I know right now is mostly based on rumors circulating the office. There’s a great possiblity that the new consultant (a woman from India) was hired to be my direct manager, adding yet one more layer to the current hierarchy.

Jail Life

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

No word about getting a copy of my database backup yet… In the meantime, here’s a (mug) shot of my at my so called “prison cell.” Been here for almost 6 months and haven’t gotten used to living in this “cubicle forest” yet. The inhabitants are a bit edgy and can turn to cannibals without any warning. Boy, am I glad that Tux is here to protect me (that’s him sitting atop my pc).