Category: Pulverbatch

July 13, 2006 /

My first day working from home (yesterday) went really well! Except I left Brenna unattended too long, and she ate Halo 2.

Today was the first time I tried my new anti-tendonitis workout plan: swimming at the Y! I never had time to do this when I had to commute, but now I can get up at a reasonable time, swim, shower, eat breakfast and still be ready to work by 8:30. I swam 16 lengths. I don’t think that is very many! Then I kind of wanted to throw up for a while. That’s how you know your workout was good.

The big news!

July 11, 2006 /

Today is my last day as a systems analyst in Troveris, the software division of Trover Solutions, an insurance subrogation company. I don’t want to try and explain insurance subrogation and you don’t want to hear it, so let’s just say this: insurance subrogation is not a bad or evil job, but it is boring.

Tomorrow, I start my new job as a consulting web developer for iNDELIBLE, a design firm in Manhattan. Unlike with Trover, there’s no point in trying to hide this blog by never linking or mentioning them, as my boss is already aware of it (he saw it during my phone interview as part of my web portfolio). I’ve been moonlighting on projects for them for the last three weeks, and I already enjoy the work more than what I’ve been doing. I’ll continue working from home while consulting; assuming all goes well for the next few months, I’ll be moving to New York in October to work in their offices as a full employee.

iNDELIBLE’s offices are in the same building as Fog Creek, where Sumana works, and it’s entirely due to Sumana’s agency on my behalf that I got this opportunity. I was and am very lucky to have a friend like her in my corner.

Talk about loaded

July 6, 2006 /

The real basilisk is sometimes called the “Jesus lizard,” but the other basilisk may have been based on the cobra, which has crownlike markings and projectile venom. The enemy of the cobra is, famously, the mongoose; one species of mongoose is the meerkat, which in turn is called the sun angel, and protects villagers from the werewolf devil of the moon.

Mulch, mulch, rumble rumble.

June 21, 2006 /

After almost exactly three years here, it finally happened: my work internets have locked everybody out of LJ, Blogspot, and every message board I even tried to keep up with. Curiously enough, Facebook and Myspace remain unaffected. The same disparity means that Flickr is banned, for being “remote network storage,” but GMail is untouched. Wait, did I say “curious?” I meant “blind and stupid.”

Anyway, the man remains unable to hold me down, and I’m learning Lynx. The guys in IT, by contrast, are learning nothing.

Actually I was just frequently late, and tired

June 20, 2006 /

On the back of my wallet there’s a ring imprinted into the leather from the inside, perfectly centered, about an inch and a half in diameter. It is very obviously a condom. Except it’s not, it’s the BBC I got as a souvenir on my trip to San Francisco in 2004. I’m serious.

I wonder if anybody ever notices it, when my wallet’s sitting out, and if they assume it is what it looks like. That’d probably be the biggest gap between assumption and truth I’ve ever presented about myself.

Except maybe when I always showed up late and tired for my freshman-year research assistant job, and my professor decided I was a pothead.

June 14, 2006 /

Last of three posts about work, I promise. I just got conferenced into a call with our old buddy Grumpy Man.

Grumpy Man: Right, I’m putting you in on this to talk to their systems guy. Just follow my lead.

Me: Sure.

(click as he adds them into the conversation)

Grumpy Man: Okay, I’ve got Brendan Adkins from development here. Brndan, we’re talking to Ruth and… what was your name, sir?

(cold pause)

Grumpy Woman: Deb.

June 14, 2006 /

We got new evacuation instructions for our building today. Before, we had to alternate in the east and west stairwells by floor, which was a pain to remember. Now, the instructions are to go to the east stairwell if you’re on the east side, and the west stairwell if you’re on the west side. You got to whichever stairwell is closest. It’s that simple!

In the last ten minutes, I’ve heard two people come up and ask the Lady in the Next Cube whether we’re on the east or west side.

HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA

June 12, 2006 /

At work, we have this client we pay for data. The client likes to know that only humans are seeing this data, presumably because they are stupid and bill by the hour rather than the byte (and maybe because of HIPAA, whatever). My employer likes to have computers get the data for the humans, so we can stop paying the humans to do extremely tedious copying work. This is why I have spent a significant amount of my time over the last year creating and maintaining a kludgy application that gets the data by pretending to be human. It can trick another computer, but you would probably not be fooled.

As of this weekend, the client in question deployed a whole new method of connectivity: a tiny embedded custom applet that works okay for humans, but doesn’t have the features necessary for our kludgy impersonator. They disabled the old connection, of course.

This is why my boss and I spent two hours, this morning, trying to hack in to a system we are paying to access.

I need a new job.

June 5, 2006 /

Argh. For the record, I figured out why everybody reading this via RSS or LJ got the last fifteen entries today–I didn’t close a span tag when I edited the Brick rave, and RSS readers decided that the whole document was now a) different and b) invalid but readable. Sorry.

wheeeEEEEEOOOO

May 17, 2006 /

Will trashes Lyle’s assumptions with another sequel from the LJ comment feed:

“Elaine groans as the dripping ceiling becomes a trickle onto her math homework: melting clouds are not conducive to learning. She hasn’t actually gone to classes in two weeks, though; hasn’t gone outside. She’s afraid of what’s up there. Or what might be up there.

When the wall between her burrow and the next collapses Elaine builds a fort out of borrowed furniture, reads by the weird light of a shard of broken sky. This lasts two days, until Dave asks for his sofa cushions back–and by that time she needs to use the bathroom anyway.

She looks up, gasps:”