What's it all about, Alfie?

I was doing a little surfing the other day and came across a place selling SGI Indigo² power supplies. Now, this is a source of pain for me as I had to decommission barney my Indigo² this past summer due to his burning up a third power supply. Interestingly enough, this place talked about dual-head supplies. These supplies could handle two High Impact board sets or a Maximum Impact and a Solid Impact pair. This places them higher than the models I'd been putting in (and burning up) in barney.

So call me a chump, but I had to try it.

Last weekend I spent the time getting barney out of storage and powered up. He only lasted about 20 mins. before shutting down, but it was enough to convince me that he was back and ready for the new power supply.

This morning, I received UPS shipping information on the package and it'll be here tomorrow. I'm very excited about getting it in and having a complete 30 days to see it run before worrying about a blowout. I'm really excited about getting barney back in the picture again... there's just something about SGI machines that I really love...

Yesterday I wanted to get a nice console tool for OS X, similar to Spy on NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. Basically, Spy will sit there until something is sent to the console, and then pop up for a predetermined time and then disappear again. This allows you to know when a possible error occurred without having the console app from Apple always in your face.

I saw that Spy for OS X 1.0 was out, and that it did a reasonable job, but was missing a few things from the previous incarnation. So I did a
search and found BetterConsole which is almost perfect for what I need.

I found a bug in the font-setting code, sent it in, and the developer agreed that he hadn't looked at this code for a long time, and it didn't work as planned. So he's going to look at fixing it. Excellent!

This makes OS X even better. I can't believe the ease at which I can be as productive on this platform as any I've ever had. Amazing.

I've had a bad morning.

I've had a great morning.

When my manager at work started his tirade about how difficult I was to deal with, and how he had no time for this, I actually looked into myself and for a minute examined if I was as bad as he said.

This is vintage me, by the way... looking to see if some mean spirited remark is really true. Now that isn't to say that I'd examine myself if someone said that I was a mass murderer, but when statements like "you're too difficult", or "...too intense" are made, I tend to try and step back and see if they are on the mark or off. It's amazing that in this case, given who was saying this, I actually did it and wondered for 30 sec. if I was as bad as he was making out.

When I realized that he was full of crap, and explained how he had put me into a near-impossible position, he backed off a little, but the way in which he said those hurtful things was very, very painful.

I went and talked to a friend about this and he was amazed that I even considered for a second the thoughts I had. He then said something that was a tremendous realization to me... that I had to stay away from people who would poke at my dark-side, as it was too painful.

This'll take some explaining...

If we look at Superman and Batman - the 'new' Batman with anger and angst, we see two entirely different kinds of super-heros. Critics of Superman will say that he's one-dimensional, that without anger and angst, he's far to simplistic a character to carry a storyline. These same people will say that Batman is a character that's real. He's got the anger, and kills people when he wants to. Out of his own sense of justice.

Personally, I don't like a super-hero that's got a dark side. I like Superman. Why? Because I'm very aware of my own dark side, and am often times afraid that it's too close to the surface and will erupt at any moment and I'll end up doing something that I will regret. I know that I have a lot of things in my past that leave with with anger and resentment, and while I know that "good mental health" dictates that I let go of them, they keep many things - like my arrogance, in check. If I loose the understanding that I'm really not all that nice a guy, I'm sure I'd be free to become a completely nasty person.

So I don't need to study the dark side of a person - I live it. That's why when I think about things I want to read and see, it's the White Knight that I want to think about.

When events like today's cause me to examine my dark side even closer than I normally do, it's far more uncomfortable than any situation with other people. It's a battle with myself. The critical part saying "see, you're as bad as all that", and the good, honest part, trying to see if any of this is accurate.

Maybe I have to live with this occasional painful experience. I remember a quote of Socrates (I think) "The unexamined life isn't worth living" - or something like that. Maybe this is the cost of examination. We're not perfect and every now and then I surprise myself by acts of involuntary generosity and kindness. I also see this in my kids, and I've heard it said many times that if you want to see the worth of a person, look at their children. Mine are great, by the way.

So maybe I just have to deal with it. I know that the realization of people poking at my dark side is important. I'll never forget it. I don't know what will come of this, but if I'm going to have an 'examined life' then I have to pay attention to the big events.

I've had about the worst 48 hrs. of my professional life. It's brought me as close to impulsively quitting a job as I've ever come. Wait... there was that time in grad school that I was afraid I was going to hit my major professor, so this would be the second time in my life.

Two days ago I was asked to import an Excel file into a database and then use the web-based tools that another group has built to put this data on the web. I started the parsing of the file, but then the manager of that other group said his people had tools to read Excel files directly (I was exporting it as text and then parsing that) and when I talked to this manager he and I agreed that his people could do the importing easily, and then just as easily throw up a web page. I said "Seems reasonable."

When I went to my manager to explain that this other Team had it all taken care of, his response was "I gave it to you to do. That means I want you to do it - not them." Hmmm... I thought... why does it matter? They know their tools and environment, they'll be faster, what's the big deal?

So I told the second manager that I had to do it. This was OK with him, and when I said "Just put it in a database, and I'll use PHP to write the page." his response was "But look at what we have! You can't do this as easily in anything else. It'll only take you 5 minutes to use our stuff." I knew this was a stretch, but given that I was going to be using his database, I gave in and said "OK, I'll do it your way eventhough I know it's no 5 min job for me." I was right about that.

After a day and a half, I got the page working reasonably well. It was exactly what my manager had asked for, but the second manager had come to the idea that I was now working on his Team, and as such I should take direction from him. When we clashed, he wasn't happy.

He then proceeded to tell my manager that I was difficult, arrogant, and not someone he could ever work with in the future.

So when I was asked this morning by my manager if all the historical data was loaded into the database, and my response was "They told me they have it.", his response was "My original intention was to have you work on this." I went to talk to him about this clear communication problem.

You see, there's no reason that this should have been this difficult. I didn't add much to the mix because I spent so much of my time on the learning curve and so little in the efficient developer mode. It was clear to me that the right thing to do was to leave this with the group that had the tools and experience. So I had asked my manager why it wasn't being handled that way. His response was basically that the other group didn't work fast enough and he didn't have any control over those people. Me, on the other hand, he had control over, and if I could learn what they do, then he wouldn't have to ask them to do these things any more.

When I went and talked to him about this I was prepared to say that this just wasn't something I understood. It didn't seem logical at all that I should be a useful addition to this process unless there was a change in the direction of our group, and we had to move this way. What I got was a completely unprofessional yelling at. Nothing short of amazing.

You see, it turns out that this second manager's comments about not being able to work with me had hit him in a sensative place. He was telling me how I needed to work on being nicer, kindler, gentler... I was accused of thinking too much - as if that's possible. I went from that meeting to talk with the other manager to clear the air. What I found there was very enlightening.

It seems that as things stand now, my group is going to be dissolved. That's too bad, but it happens. This would leave my manager with nothing to do. The other manager, however, is doing fine and will not receive cuts. That makes his group one to be a part of. Now, my manager wasn't doing this for me, he was doing it for him. He wanted to have someone on the inside that could handle the technology if it came down to a war between himself and the other manager. He believes that if he's successful, and the other manager leaves or tries to do a 'scorched earth' policy on him, then I'm his ace in the hole.

While normally politics just makes me uncomfortable, this kind of spying and game play makes me realize that this place is going to get a lot worse before it gets even a little bit better. This means that I really have to look for another place to work.

In the meantime, I've patched things up with the second manager and he's certainly willing to work with me, and looks forward to having me help out his team on a few things. My manager, is, quite frankly, at the end of his mental and emotional rope. I'm not sure that he's stable, and I know he's not someone I want to be around.

Until I get another job, however, I have to keep him happy. And I will. But it's also clear that this place is so far gone that logic and reason aren't even considered anymore. It's jockeying for position and power on a sinking ship. In a few years things may be nice again, but the carnage of these next 8 months will be nothing short of horriffic.

Like a lot of people, I have a hard time understanding people wit whom I have very little in common. For example, I can't understand many people born and raised in a foreign country simply because my background is so compeletly different that there are precious few points of common ground that we might share. I've never seen my country ravaged by war, and don't know what it's like to be afraid of land mines. So there's an understandable disconnect that I can try to bridge by creating common reference points, but without that effort, there's a lot that will simply be a total surprise.

I find myself in a curious place. Management wants to believe that by keeping me out of certain meetings that I won't learn of them, and understand the context of those same meetings. They want to believe that for these meetings I'm not as smart as they expect me to be all the rest of the time. They believe that if I'm not in a meeting I won't know of it's existence, it's attendance list, and from that infer the context of the meeting and why they want to exclude me.

So I'm in the position of being close ot being re-assigned onto another project. That's life, and in and of itself isn't so bad. I've built a system that looks easier to maintain than it is, but they'll learn that as they transfer it to someone less competant, but that person will either get up to speed or they won't.

No, my biggest gripe about this is the way in which they believe that I'm simply a tool that doesn't care what it's working on, so long as it's just working. This dehumanization of me bothers me a lot.

Sure, back at the turn of the century I'd be lucky to get fresh bread, but that's not the point. The point is that they expect me to behave
professionally towards them and their projects, but at the same time, they don't believe that they need to behave professionally towards me. The source of my greatest frustration on this is that it is my honor that keeps me from dealing with them in-kind. It is precisely because of this honor that they believe I'm so valuable, and professional. So I'm having my own good nature used against me by less honorable individuals.

I can't control any else's actions... only my own.

OK, so just when you think you have a slight bit of control on things, life throws you a curve and you realize that you don't have the first clue as to what's really happening.

So things are going pretty well these days... the running I'm doing at the incredibly early hour of 3:40 am is still working. With the TV I installed into a nice little built-in shelf unit right in front of the treadmill it promises to be a reasonably enjoyable winter as I run my 2+ miles each morning.

Liza and the kids are doing really well... the weather is typical Fall in Chicago - lots of cold, rainy weather, but soon enough it'll be cold and snowy.

Work is work, and that's where the curve comes from.

I'm not sure if this is intentional or accidental, but since the downturn in the economy - due in some part to the incredible losses these guys have posted, work has been an exercise in The Unknown that would rattle a Zen Master. I mean really. First things are going to be OK... then it looks like they aren't... then they are... then we're going to wait for a couple more months and then look at things... then we're going to do things right now... Needless to say, it's the management that's the big problem - and most of it is due to the lack of good management.

It's perfectly understandable to have the back-and-forth on the decision to continue with certain things. The financial markets are as down as they've been in a very long time. Things happen, and not all of them are good. But still... you'd think that managers would take a few pointers from military commanders that were considered successful even when they lost the battle. Communication is the key... you have to let people know what's expected of them, and what their role in the organization is. If they are front-line troops don't tell them they're on KP... they'll get their heads blown off - for no good reason. Tell them what to expect as best you understand the situation, and then give them a job to do and trust that their professionalism will keep them from running off the battlefield.

But if you're a commander (manager) that doesn't believe in giving out useful information you're going to end up with people under you not really all that sure that they should follow what you have to say. Certainly, not after they see a few people getting greased due to lack of information that was certainly known to the managers well in advance of the fight.

Respect. That's all it comes down to.

When you're in a job where you're not really respected it's a constant struggle to find a good sense of worth. It's tough when you hear the words "You're appreciated... You're respected..." and see actions that totally fly in the face of those statements. At first, you want to believe that there's a good reason that for this instance the words and actions didn't match up. But after it happens time and time again, you start to think that these managers may say they're on your side, but they really aren't. And then everything they do is brought under suspicion - even when they may honestly be looking out for your interests.

So I guess I'm at that last phase... thinking that I'm really working for some very bad men, and wondering if it's just a few bad data points, or if it's really bad men looking out for themselves and using and disposing of people as they feel needs to be done in order to protect themselves from harm.

And the big question to me is if I've gotten into this place where there are so many questions, what should be my stance? The job market is clearly hard, but it's not that hard. If I'm working for people that I don't trust, am I really doing a good job? Or have I taken that first step back and lost the commitment to the organization that's so very important when times are really tough.