Honey Badger Day 2012

I feel a bad case of potty mouth coming on. That might be a warning or it might be a bit of left over punchiness or I'm still staggering about in a fog or all of the above. All I know is we started calling the dog Vajayjay last night and it stuck. See? Potty mouth. We called her Vajayjay because, as Cletus so aptly pointed out, you can't really call a girl dog Penis Head; it's just wrong. Penis Head is reserved for boy dogs and we have a boy dog and the night he chose to lift his leg on my one and only basket of clean laundry thus earning himself a night in The Hole used up the name for the week anyway. Why we waited a full day to stick her with the Vajayjay moniker is beyond me because she chewed through the boingy boingy leash at the handle the day before and it was only a minor infraction that sent me over the edge last night.

It HAS been a long week. I DID stay up until 1 AM even though I should have poured myself into bed the moment I walked in the door at 8:30 and I DID sleep until noon and would have slept later except noon was when Vajayjay decided her bladder was going to give out for sure (I DID let her out at 12:55 AM on the way to bed so come ON, dog! wtf? couldn't I have had another hour?). And so I'm up, more or less, wandering around in my bathrobe with a pointless cup of coffee and a not so pointless bagel and cheese.

This week I absolutely lost touch with reality and I'm not quite home yet. I recognize this at least.

I will, however, return to calling the dogs by their proper names. It's the right thing to do. Sane adults do not walk around calling their dogs Vajayjay and Penis Head and then dissolving into fits of adolescent hysteria. At least Elizabeth wasn't around to hear it (because Elizabeth and her father gave up waiting for me because I was too fried to call and tell them I'd left the office at 7:45 and would return by 8:30 and could they please wait) and I'd like to think I had enough filter left to have restrained myself. As it was I didn't see much of Elizabeth this week anyway. I got home after she'd gone to bed and staggered around her in the morning. On Friday morning when the crackberry told me to get up I nearly cried. One night when I made it home before nine and sat on the couch in front of the TeeVee with the girls I wrapped my arms around Elizabeth and wouldn't let go until she finally yelled at me. MOM! Get OFF! That might have been Tuesday and I might have been just as interested in huffing the hairspray leftover from the ballet bun as making sure I was getting enough Elizabeth contact to hold me through the rest of the week because the freight train was already on top of me.

So. What happened? Right?

Complete and utter chaos. Madness.

It is common practice in the business world to blame your predecessor for the first 90 days if the shit really is hitting the fan (don't even start me). You can blame the shitty fan on a bad transition, bad documentation, a bad job, a dozen or more hidden dead bodies falling out of a multitude of closets, a bad national deficit, whatever, but after those first 90 days it's on you. Period. If you're still blaming your predecessor after 180 days there's a problem (not that you should ever be blaming anyone because it is what it is and now it's yours, the good, bad and the ugly) that's indicative of - this ain't EVER going to get better. There has to be at least some sort of forward movement. Some kind of change. Or at least an honest assessment of the state of things. 

What I witnessed and then became part of was... refer to sentences one and two, two paragraphs above; "Complete and utter chaos. Madness." I'll add lunacy to the mix too because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting (hoping, praying, begging for) different results. It got so bad Wednesday night I finally kicked my peer out of his chair (this was all supposed to be observation and note taking time for me so I could see just how it was done, document it up pretty and be prepared to do it next time) and started driving myself. He gave up the wheel no questions asked and I started poking about at the process trying to figure out what we were missing and why shit was blowing up all over the place and keep in mind, I don't actually know jack shit about most of this. In the mean time he's trying to eat his dinner behind me; it's just after 9 and what I hear is not chewing, it's choking. I turned around. Instead of red in the face (which is pretty much his natural coloring due to his natural state of hyperventilation) he was white in the face and well on the way to blue in the face.

Me:    STOP THAT!

Him:    Gulp. Swallow. OK.

Me:    You have to take smaller bites and you have to chew slowly and then you can swallow. Otherwise you're going to choke and die.

Him:    OK. Thank you. You're right.

Me:    OK, I'm going to turn around again and start working on this and I don't want to hear anymore dying sounds, OK?

Him:    OK.

30 seconds later:

Me:    STOP THAT!

Him:    I can't help it.

Me:    (turning around) Give me that sandwich. Now.

Him:    What are you going to do with it?

Me:    Cut it up in tiny little pieces and then throw the small bits over my shoulder at you one at a time.

Him:    OK. Thank you.

Me:    In the mean time I want you to get up and walk around the block (the cube farms are organized into neat walled in blocks) at least once and stop in the men's room and when there's color back in your face you can come back.

Him: OK. Thank you.

5 minutes later he was seated behind me again breathing more or less normally. Sort of. 20 minutes later:

Him:    Can I have some food?

Me:    What food?

Him:    My sandwich.

Me:    What sandwich?

Him:    Didn't I have a sandwich?

Me:    Yes, you did but you ate it earlier.

interlude: look. I wasn't trying to be mean. I DID think about his blood sugar level and decided it was probably perfectly OK since he'd been grazing on trail mix since 2 PM and he did have lunch and he had managed to choke down half the sandwich. I made an executive decision to save his life. And mine.

Him:    Oh. OK.

This man is not stupid. This man was four feet past the end of his rope.

And where was our boss? Elsewhere. At a meeting where he couldn't talk but could periodically respond to text messages. At first I thought he was just being an asshole and testing us. OK, maybe there was a little of that but probably not as much as the other things. And then I thought he was just fried too and maybe in a bit of denial. And then I thought he really had no idea how much Peer really didn't know about the processes and the systems and the fact that the documentation did not get updated between last quarter and this. And then I thought he was in denial about Peer's ability to actually comprehend the bigger picture of the individual processes which is what's required to troubleshoot failures. And then I thought he seriously underestimated what happens when Peer hits DEFCON 1 panic.

All of the above and probably some more stuff.

Dead giveaway:

"You should just be filming Peer and then document everything he does from the film."

I think by the end of the week he realized I'd have to figure out which parts actually worked and it would probably take the entire quarter to get there and not having a test environment in which to replicate the process I'd be grasping at straws. Did this happen to Peer between last quarter and this? Possible but given some of the things Peer said I don't think Peer ever got to trying.

I threw periodic fits.

Not. Oh. kay. None of this. And it's going to stop right now.

I don't remember what day it was. Maybe the morning after Peer and I got 3.5 hours of sleep and staggered back in the next morning to find out we still had a broken process. Whatever day it was I asked Boss if I could expect a post mortem after the close. I think he meant post mortem on a specific database failure. I said, no, post mortem on the entire process because I want to back up 500 feet and look at what worked for us and what didn't work and then figure out what we can do differently next time. He told me I could set that up and lead it if I felt like it. (COUNT on it, sweetheart)

Yesterday that had translated itself into his own version of a two hour meeting next week and I've got to tell you that's one of the most heartening changes I've seen since my arrival. That and the fact that I haven't heard the word 'hate' since my last blog post.

I had a conversation with Peer yesterday which may have disturbed me more than it upset him:

Me:    Peer, you have to get more sleep. You simply cannot allow yourself to lay awake all freaked out about the day before (he tells us every day how he wakes up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep because he realizes he's screwed something up or thinks he might have).

Him:    I can't help it.

Me:    You're going to have to learn to.

Him:    What do you mean?

Me:    You have to learn to let it go. It will still be there in the morning.

Him:    But I can be working on it at night.

Me:    No you can't.

Him:    Why not?

Me:    Because the days of pulling all nighters are behind us now. We are too old to maintain and I'm not entirely certain we were ever young enough to maintain on anything other than sheer hubris and brute force.

Him:    What do you mean?

Me:    It's very simple. When we get really tired and burned out we get stupid and when we get stupid we break shit because we can't think straight and we can't fix stuff very well either.

Him:    I don't get stupid.

Me:    Yes. Yes you do and so do I and quite honestly it's irresponsible to believe pushing through on brute force instead of stopping and saying no is the right thing to do.

Him:    I don't want to let Boss down.

Me:    You already are.

Brutal, eh? I did soften it and he did take it to heart and he did have it out with his wife which was probably a good thing and he did get a good eight hours of sleep that very night. I did too but it wasn't enough for either of us anymore than the 11 hours I got last night was enough.

There's a contra dance tonight. I really want to go. It's going to require a nap. I really don't want to go. I just want to lay down and not get up until I absolutely have to on Monday morning.

And if that isn't the most WRONG sentence ever I don't know what is.

So I'll have myself a nap and I'll go to the contra dance tonight because sometimes it DOES take brute force to grab your life back from your job.

All week my boss kept making references to working to live versus living to work and I just stared at him slack jawed. He thinks it's best to work all night too. And none of this mess is his fault either.

I wonder what I'll decide to do next.

*****************************************************************************************

Oh. Good lord. One other thing. Just before Christmas I was on the phone with my brother, him doing his usual three days before Christmas shopping for my kids (and I'm generally prepared for this now) and he said, 'you don't have time for anything, do you?' and I said, 'no, I don't' and he said, 'I know exactly what I'm getting you for Christmas'.

I hung up the phone a little bit worried but then when nothing arrived for me with the onslaught of boxes I breathed a sigh of relief and I really have no idea what I was worried about in the first place because he's a thoughtful man and short of sending a Manny?... I think the statement just made me think, oh God, you're going to send one more 'thing' to my house that I'm going to have to contend with. But one more thing didn't show up and I forgot all about it.

He called Christmas day like he always does and we passed the phone around and then it was my turn and he told me to get something to write on and with. I got a pen and some leftover wrapping paper. He gave me a name and a phone number and said, 'this is a cleaning service in Wilton (next town over) and we're giving you a thorough house scrubbing for Christmas because I know you don't have time to do it. Just call the man and tell him what day to come over.'

This is my brother. He's been to my house. No offense was taken. The only thing I worried about was clearing up enough wreckage so that I could actually take advantage of such service.

At one point Baby Brother asked why I hadn't done this yet and once again assured me I didn't have to do anything but call the man and I said I still had the Christmas tree in the house but I intended to get to it immediately. And I did. It's out of the house now (the Christmas tree). It's still half on the front porch and half off but you CAN get past it. I called the man and arranged to have him come by last Tuesday which means last weekend Cletus and I had to excavate the house to the best of our ability.

The man came by to have a look on Tuesday to determine how many bodies he had to send in.

When he came in the house the first thing he said to Cletus was:

"Your house gets a real workout, doesn't it?"

Later he called me and said something about needing to talk to my brother because it was going to take at least three people all day and my brother hadn't called back yet. I sent Baby Brother a text warning him about sticker shock.

The next day I got a call back from the man at the service. On Monday he's sending four women all day. I wonder what the hell he told my brother. I know, after a few minutes of conversation it wasn't the Simon slobber that upset him, it was the yuck in the grout lines and other such stuff.

I'm thinking the last time my house was cleaned down to the bones was before that man left over three years ago when there was more income and a very different life. I am wondering why people are so bothered by grout lines. I am looking forward to coming home on Monday night, I really am. I wonder what my grout lines will look like. I wonder what has happened to me. I wonder a lot of things. At the moment I'm a little unnerved but I think I'll have a nap and go dancing instead. I think I'll have a nap and let it all go for a bit.

What do you think?

Comments

[shadowmoss]

I think you are one of the best things that could have happened to that place. And, hell, the cement grout on my floors here is actually coming out in chunks. My only concern is that the hotel folks will want to come in and replace the tiles, and I don't like the ones they use now nearly as much. So, I sweep up the cement chunks and dust and keep the door locked. They sneak in sometimes on a slim excuse and clean behind my back. sigh. Oh, I live in a hotel, in case you didn't know.

[shadowmoss]

Are you a Heinlein fan? Time Enough For Love. The main character is ready to die because after 4000 years there is nothing new to do. He figures out he just needed a challenge. I'm thinking that you were ready for a new challenge. He had it easy compared to you, he just joined the Army on the eve of WW II. So, welcome back to life.

(this is one of those posts that I hope makes sense to someone besides me...)

[Eleutheros]

"You simply cannot allow yourself to lay awake all freaked out about the day before ..."

That's telling him! I've just read this very long blurb about #$@& going on at work, and a couple more before that ... boy, the way your peer carries that around with him!

No, wait .....

[Lewis Medlock]

You will never guess who I thought of when I saw this:

http://youtu.be/ITGyZ2SY9g4

[jules]

OMG! Lewis! THAT is a pack of dogs I'd say. BIG Dawgs!

[Kitt]

Funny, I was coming to post the same thing.

(Not so funny, it seems impossible to comment on your blog from Firefox. I had to switch to Safari. Least of your worries, right?)

[Alecto]

Them dawgs... truly awesome. There is a facebook site called (and I am NOT making this up) A friendly group for saints newfounland and people who wanna share photos - can be found here if anyone has an account and wants to have a look: https://www.facebook.com/groups/240121122718963/

I love this group because unlike any other dog group I've seen or belong to it is entirely devoted to love of the dogs. There may be a periodic shot of a dog getting ready for a show or a best of breed with large cup or ribbon but really more out of, 'ain't he just sumthin' than competitive whatever. In any case, most of the other sites remind me of that movie 'Best in Breed' (which I recommend if you happen to enjoy the antics of Eugene Levy and I do and he has two left feet in this one. Really).

Where was I? Long conversations between diverse groups of people on this site, all of it nice, helpful,encouraging or pure admiration if someone has simply shared a photograph of a beloved pet.

Lots of really cool photographs and here's the punchline. There is a woman, in the UK, *I think*, with 30, count 'em, 30 Saints living in the house. Perfectly behaved and absolutely smitten with her. It's stunning.

[Alecto]

oh, and on the dawgs, I watched speechless for the nearly 10 minutes waiting for them to do the one heinous thing that might be expected out of a Saint, or at least my Saint and a few I happen to know. I don't know why I thought it might happen given the time of year but I was waiting for a bit of mud to be located and all hell to break loose when the first Saint waded up to his or her knees and all the rest queued up for their turn before momma managed to whistle them all back into formation.

They did find the water for a nice cool drink. My guess: no mud at the creek bank.

[Cielo]

Now that I'm re-reading this...

The situation you describe here happened to me shortly before I left the industry. My co-worker and I were bullied into putting a system package in place with an intermittent error that we couldn't nail down in the testing environment. We implemented, the error occurred in a fractional number of database records, we found the STUPID code, had it corrected by the following night's run. Had we not implemented until the next release, 2 business days later, the error would have been found.

Lesson learned.

Hubris, indeed.