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Feb. 18th, 2003 12:39 amHello to all. In particular, hello to those brave souls who have friended me, and a big fat thanks for the vote of implied confidence -- I'm the first to admit, it hasn't been too thrilling around these parts lately.
Toronto for the weekend, family birthday, time with the parents, Daredevil. Friday off was pretty much a complete and utter waste of time from the getting-things-done point of view (from the lying-in-bed-reading point of view I suppose it was a complete success, as from the slicing-myself-on-a-broken-wineglass-while-doing-the-dishes point of view -- just a small nick but it bled quite profusely). Nearly managed to miss the train while I was at it, embarrassing considering it leaves at 5 p.m. and I had nothing else to do all day but be on time for it. And at that I forgot to bring anything to read, so was forced to write in my paper journal and eavesdrop on my fellow passengers. One girl stood in the aisle making notes on a book (Playing Boal, I believe was the title -- orange, with handprints all over it, something to do with theatre therapy) for 50 minutes, then for another hour at the end of the trip. She had lots of grapes in her bag and seemed quite happy. Amazingly beautiful. By strange coincidence I sat next to the girl behind her (across the aisle from me) on the trip back -- we were in one of the fours with 2 other girls, all of us ranging I suppose from 19 to me -- she turned out to be likewise a McGill chemistry grad (and had also been eavesdropping on everyone else), while the other two were respectively a McGill linguistics major from Pennsylvania and a pregnant woman from U de M doing her PhD in public-health. We had a fine time.
Funny how the train always makes me moody and introspective if I don't look out. I can convince myself my life is headed straight for hell and oblivion faster than anything on the train.
Back at work, the day off didn't do me much good but doesn't seem to have done much harm either. Clients do annoy me sometimes. Yes, I know I'm paid to cope with them, but likewise the task of saying "No" without pissing off either (a) the client themself or (b) the account director who's trying to sell them something else can be a challenge.
Mostly they are reasonable. I have however been handed a pair of beauties on a legacy project who have (a) plucked out of thin air a feature that to my knowledge they have never requested before, and that will require MAJOR work (time, interfacing with their database, messing with our database, etc.) to implement, (b) started referring to its absence as a major problem with the system, and (c) refused to move forward until said problem is fixed. Grrrrr. It's not like we're making money off them. Also, they are tag-teaming me, which is unfair, and I really don't have time to deal with this this week anyway. (And do we have any documentation on what we actually promised them back in the fall of 2001? Not that I can find, although there has to be a contract somewhere. Have emailed about this.)
By contrast the client who asks for 2 new exercises 2 days before we are due to deliver the extremely rushed project is at least pleasant and reasonable to deal with. They do try it on though.
I should go to bed, but I got home all irritated by the MTC -- bus stopped at University for no discernible reason and all the passengers got off, again for no discernible reason. I followed without enquiring of the driver WHY I was getting off the bus into the -15°C Montreal night, and felt silly and sheep-like immediately afterwards. Went into Paragraphe to keep warm and read and naturally managed to miss the next bus in the process, but got the one after that. Anyway then I read my Saturday Globe -- cancelling the Gazette when I go away for the weekend is about all I can deal with, the Globe by itself doesn't seem like quite such a fearful waste. And I have finally come across the Whiny Male Columnist; his name is Jamie Kastner, the column is Guyville, and here it is. Same page as Leah McLaren's but he only gets the headshot while Leah gets the adorable arms-folded, leaning-against-the-column-on-the-right waist-up shot. Anyway the subject matter is slightly different from last week's but the tone is wellnigh identical: some of the carefully chosen example women I know are doing nasty tacky things previously reserved exclusively for men, if men did it the women would get all pissed off, oh woe, alack, civilization is ending, what is a nice modern man to do? One can only assume that his editor has requested something provocative to piss off the feministas, in which case I am merely playing into his hands by getting all cross about it and should begin to ignore it immediately. Still, it's irritating. Also, it's kind of boring.
Anyway, high time I was in bed. Big delivery tomorrow. At least I have resources/minions to work on my projects -- makes a lovely change. And have managed to bleed off my general unfocused hostility, which doubtless makes for dull reading but certainly makes me feel better.
Good night...
Toronto for the weekend, family birthday, time with the parents, Daredevil. Friday off was pretty much a complete and utter waste of time from the getting-things-done point of view (from the lying-in-bed-reading point of view I suppose it was a complete success, as from the slicing-myself-on-a-broken-wineglass-while-doing-the-dishes point of view -- just a small nick but it bled quite profusely). Nearly managed to miss the train while I was at it, embarrassing considering it leaves at 5 p.m. and I had nothing else to do all day but be on time for it. And at that I forgot to bring anything to read, so was forced to write in my paper journal and eavesdrop on my fellow passengers. One girl stood in the aisle making notes on a book (Playing Boal, I believe was the title -- orange, with handprints all over it, something to do with theatre therapy) for 50 minutes, then for another hour at the end of the trip. She had lots of grapes in her bag and seemed quite happy. Amazingly beautiful. By strange coincidence I sat next to the girl behind her (across the aisle from me) on the trip back -- we were in one of the fours with 2 other girls, all of us ranging I suppose from 19 to me -- she turned out to be likewise a McGill chemistry grad (and had also been eavesdropping on everyone else), while the other two were respectively a McGill linguistics major from Pennsylvania and a pregnant woman from U de M doing her PhD in public-health. We had a fine time.
Funny how the train always makes me moody and introspective if I don't look out. I can convince myself my life is headed straight for hell and oblivion faster than anything on the train.
Back at work, the day off didn't do me much good but doesn't seem to have done much harm either. Clients do annoy me sometimes. Yes, I know I'm paid to cope with them, but likewise the task of saying "No" without pissing off either (a) the client themself or (b) the account director who's trying to sell them something else can be a challenge.
Mostly they are reasonable. I have however been handed a pair of beauties on a legacy project who have (a) plucked out of thin air a feature that to my knowledge they have never requested before, and that will require MAJOR work (time, interfacing with their database, messing with our database, etc.) to implement, (b) started referring to its absence as a major problem with the system, and (c) refused to move forward until said problem is fixed. Grrrrr. It's not like we're making money off them. Also, they are tag-teaming me, which is unfair, and I really don't have time to deal with this this week anyway. (And do we have any documentation on what we actually promised them back in the fall of 2001? Not that I can find, although there has to be a contract somewhere. Have emailed about this.)
By contrast the client who asks for 2 new exercises 2 days before we are due to deliver the extremely rushed project is at least pleasant and reasonable to deal with. They do try it on though.
I should go to bed, but I got home all irritated by the MTC -- bus stopped at University for no discernible reason and all the passengers got off, again for no discernible reason. I followed without enquiring of the driver WHY I was getting off the bus into the -15°C Montreal night, and felt silly and sheep-like immediately afterwards. Went into Paragraphe to keep warm and read and naturally managed to miss the next bus in the process, but got the one after that. Anyway then I read my Saturday Globe -- cancelling the Gazette when I go away for the weekend is about all I can deal with, the Globe by itself doesn't seem like quite such a fearful waste. And I have finally come across the Whiny Male Columnist; his name is Jamie Kastner, the column is Guyville, and here it is. Same page as Leah McLaren's but he only gets the headshot while Leah gets the adorable arms-folded, leaning-against-the-column-on-the-right waist-up shot. Anyway the subject matter is slightly different from last week's but the tone is wellnigh identical: some of the carefully chosen example women I know are doing nasty tacky things previously reserved exclusively for men, if men did it the women would get all pissed off, oh woe, alack, civilization is ending, what is a nice modern man to do? One can only assume that his editor has requested something provocative to piss off the feministas, in which case I am merely playing into his hands by getting all cross about it and should begin to ignore it immediately. Still, it's irritating. Also, it's kind of boring.
Anyway, high time I was in bed. Big delivery tomorrow. At least I have resources/minions to work on my projects -- makes a lovely change. And have managed to bleed off my general unfocused hostility, which doubtless makes for dull reading but certainly makes me feel better.
Good night...
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