Alecto's Ophelia

The Blog Year in Review

One year on Typepad and I haven't jumped ship. I started a blog at the beginning of March, 2006 on one of those, erm, sites that shall remained unmentioned (msn, cough) at the prompting of RW who said he wanted to read what I wrote, and so I did and I made it very, very public. You know, with my whole name and everything. And then last December I googled my name and came up with a video of Jeffrey and I singing the Lumberjack song and decided I needed to get a grip. And I came here.

Until I came here I did not belong to a blog community. I didn't even know what a blog community was. I've learned a lot in the last twelve months. I don't much care to hide my identity (not that I go to great lengths) but I do understand it. I learned what it means to be 'dooced' this year, to lose one's job over one's blog. I don't have any intention of losing my job over my blog but that's a good part of the reason for making sure a google search doesn't turn up much. I also learned that a lot of moms put a lot of pictures of their kids on the internet with a lot of information and that this is a scary thing for me. I don't have an opinion on what others do, I just know I fall somewhere in the middle of the road and that I don't ever post anything about Cletus without letting her know I did it. Little Girl doesn't quite get it yet, but she will and at some point she might object and then I'm going to have to quit it.

I like it though, a lot.

I don't make friends easily. Mostly I like to say I don't like people but that's not true at all, I actually love and adore most people; other people scare the crap out of me and there are very, very few people I actively dislike. What I don't like is the messiness and complication of relationship. That's just because I don't have any skin and well, that's my problem. I find it easier to be with people here. I find it easier the same way I love to chat with my mom via email during the day. It's easier for me to step back and think and nobody can see me scrunching up my face and trying not to show the world every bleeding feeling and thought I've got. I don't like that so much. Some mornings I dread looking at what I posted the night before but pretty much, it's been all right.

In any event, I like it here a lot.  I like my blog community and I really like that I have this space.

One other thought for the night. I started a new career entirely by accident within weeks of starting my first blog. I started on this path because my good friend Jeffrey dragged me in by the ear and said, "it's time to go back to work, Heather."  I did not want to go. I wanted to take a whole bunch of time off, write a book, be with my kids, think about my life and work out what's next. Instead I went into this company to work what I thought might be four to five days per month and would give me darn near close to what I was making in salary at the last start up and well, I stayed.

I stayed because I was deeply intrigued by this particular corporate culture and attracted to databases like some junkie cat strung out on dried up catnip from a dwindling stash. I stayed sometimes because I wanted to leave so badly I just would not let myself quit. I stayed because each time I took stock I found I was changing, even if it meant just relearning some lost humility. And today I got something back I haven't had since 1998 at the Software factory at my first review after I'd spent a year turning myself inside out to be the best darn trainer/writer they'd ever seen.

Today I got a 6% raise. In some worlds that is completely meaningless. In my world, in my past, it might have been marginally meaningless. In this world of reinvention and belt tightening it means two things:

1. I did a bang up job in a field where I went back to just about square one and completely reinvented myself.
2. I have inherent value in a place where nothing is given for anything less than, well, a really bang up job.

I got to go back to the beginning. I didn't even really know it when I started. I got a second chance at that feeling I had, and maybe a good many of us have had, when we are new and young and green and there is nowhere to go but up.

God, it was a good year. Thanks for being here. 

I can haz Gestalt Now Plezzzzzzz!!!!

There's smoke leaking out my pores. It seeps, dribbles and pools on the floor at my feet. I put my head on the keyboard and think about Ridgewalker doing this at I_Corp when his brain was sizzling. RW, did it sooth you? I just get keyprints in my face. I used to go out and have a smoke but since I don't do that anymore maybe I should just go outside and have a non-smoke? It bears consideration, this walking away from the problem.

I know there's a word for the kind of learner I am, I think it might be experiential but that's not quite enough of an explanation. I learn when my whole body and mind are immersed in something and most of the time I don't feel like I'm learning, I feel like I'm failing. It took a lot of years to learn to trust this process because who among us likes to fail?

In any event, the majority of my problems are solved in a moment of gestalt. I might have to walk away from something and feel completely, um, like a waste of oxygen, and then come back and suddenly the answer is right there in front of me.

So I've been working with a database script called ESSCMD (for want of something better to call it) for a long time. Like maybe ten years. Granted, I didn't really get proficient until the last eighteen months but that's what I've been working with. When I upgraded Essbase to the 21st century I discovered that ESSCMD, while it existed, didn't work the way I expected so I bit the bullet and opened up the new and improved (about five years ago, I just missed the boat) Maxl script editor and went to town.

And I cannot make a simple database extract work. This is something I can do with five, count 'em, five words in an ESSCMD script and I cannot do this in Maxl. I'm not asking you to understand what I mean by words like ESSCMD and Maxl or script or anything else like that.

Just that right now I. cannot. make. this. work. and. it's. killing. me.

Please, please, the Essbase gods, what the hell is the end of this sequence? I have tried EVERYTHING. OK, obviously, not everything since it fails at $ which suggests the root of the datafile name.  aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

export database 'PSG'.'PSG' input data to data_file xxxxx;

Alecto's Excutive Summary - For Russ

"Let's face it, I'm tired!"

NaNo finished last night. I even managed to, um, wrap it up, more or less. It ends with Kate driving back into the driveway at the end of a twelve year day only the car doesn't smell like feet anymore and she stands in the driveway looking into the forest... and you'll just have to wait until I publish the book(bwahahahha) Book? What book? There's no book.  I'll go back and look in a week.

My friend Russ over at R a d h o l e did what I would call an executive summary on himself. Russ is pretty cool and I love going to his site, he often makes my day. So Russ was asking who and where I was and I realized that while I'd been introduced to Russ through Amy's NaBloWriMo site in October he might not actually have a clue who I was so instead of answering in email I'll put it here:

Alecto's Executive Summary (hold the snarkiness until it's over)

I am a forty-three year old professional mother of three. That sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? That's because I have a very schizophrenic relationship with my self the creative programming junkie and myself the mother. Myself the creative programming junkie is very important to me. Myself the mother is a given. Sorry, ladies, but that's a fact. I've had to work harder to be taken seriously in the work environment than I have in motherhood. Sad, but true. And whether you share my values or not, understand that to me, the me that is outside of mother is just as important as the me who delivered those squishy bundles 21, 16 and 7 years ago. Yeah, I have a 21 year old son. How cool is that? I also have a 16 year old daughter and that's cool too right up until it's not. The 7 year old saves my sanity.

In writing the story of Kate during November I had to come nose to nose with some very painful pieces of my past. So here it is. I am a corporate fast track executive washout. I made it seven years in a technology corporation on the fast track to SVP of a major profit center and then who knows what else when I fell so hard from grace that I could not bear to go back in for another round. It's not that I did bad, it's that I lost my stomach for it. That embarrasses me more than I can tell you. If I was a man I would be shamed into oblivion for not picking up and going on. As a woman I have been given a buy and this is what shames me more than anything. I hang my head but know the truth.

So where was I? 43 year old mother of three, divorced twice, married three times, I might be the bravest person I know. Or most stupid, jury's still out. I receive no alimony and no child support from the father of my first two. The father of my third is a bit better and I got smarter. I am hard core mother, that's a fact. I am an application programmer and business analyst. I look at numbers and tell you, more from my gut than not, what a particular market is doing. For me it's in paper and printing at the moment but I'm pretty good at it. I work with databases and system architecture. I am the person you call when it all goes to hell. I don't have the answers but I'm the one who will work it out because I believe the buck stops in my lap, even when it doesn't. This is a not an attribute.

I care more about the food my children eat than the state of my databases. This causes daily angst as I try to wrap up in time to get home and feed them something organic and appropriate before they need to go to bed. The S on my chest is for Sucker and I'm finally OK with that.

I like to write, a lot. I recently wrote a 50,000 word book in 27 days. I am nuts.

I paint, mostly in watercolors but when I was younger in acrylics all over my bedroom walls. My mother was very good to me. I grew up with horses, sort of. From the time I was twelve years old I leased a pony or a horse so I could ride. I did the family laundry and a whole lot of other things to support this habit. It was never for free. I was very good, good enough to do things but I didn't care, so I hacked instead and was happier that way. I had a farm with horses during my first marriage. The horses have all gone back to my mother in Ohio, I'm OK with that.

I would like to have chickens in my backyard again. I might just do that. Even though it's going to piss off my neighbors so bad I won't be able to stand it.

I read a lot, almost anything except chick lit and romance, can't stomach the stuff. I like Mark Helprin and Stephen King. My favorite book is Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. It's about magic, and cloudbanks the structural integrity of bridges and New York City before and after the turn of the century.

I live in a part of the country that is unbelievably privileged. I worked very fucking hard to get here. I am a high school drop out. I was raped on the floor of my living room at 17. The evidence of my case was hosed by the over zealous detectives, he is still out there. My parents emotionally abandoned me at 17 and then completely at 18. I cleaned houses to put myself through college. It was not so easy. I had a baby and a husband too, that part was OK. I am privileged but I have a really, really hard time acknowledging that. I am angry and that embarrasses me. 

I love music. I don't listen to nearly enough since I split with husband number two, who has a real knack for picking up the esoteric and eclectic. Lately I listen to almost nothing but what's over on Madeline's site or what's on WFUV, which is basically public radio.

OK, that's not exactly an executive summary, is it? I'm babbling. But there you go, that's me, precariously balanced and doing my damn best to have it all.

(p.s. I'm also a happy person. Because I want to be and that is all.)

(p.p.s. I just wrote 1,100 words like it was nothing. Damn. Look what happened? Maybe I can do this after all)

Cyber Space - or - Born for Fun (take your pick)

In the day we sweat it out in the cubes of a runaway upgrade dream
At night we ride through servers of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out in Cyberspace,
Chrome racked, RAM injected
and steppin' out over the fire wire
Baby this room rips the bones from your back
It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap
We gotta get done while we're young
'Cause geeks like us, baby we were born for fun

Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
I want to guard your code and sequence
Just wrap your scripts 'round these filter rims
and strap your ports across my engines
Together we could break this trap
We'll run till we drop, baby we'll never go back
Will you walk with me out on the wire
'Cause baby I'm just a scared and lonely coder
But I gotta find out how it feels
I want to know if sql is wild
girl I want to know if sql is real

Beyond the Palace cosmic-powered blades scream across the overhead
The geeks comb their hair in cabinet doors
And the veeps try to look so hard
The Cyber Center rises bold and stark
Security is huddled on a bench in the mist
I wanna die with you Wendy in the racks tonight
In an everlasting list

Cyberspace is jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power play
Everybody's out on the run tonight
and there’s nothing left to save
Together Wendy we'll live with the madness
I'll share with you all the Cat5 in my soul
Someday girl I don't know when
we're gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go
and we'll walk in the sun
But till then hacks like us
baby we were born for fun

- again, apologies.  This time to Mr. Springstein.  The good news is migration is going swimmingly after two corruptions and one trip running screaming out of the building, down the street, into the mall and around and around four times until I thought I could go back into the office without crying and slobbering all over anyone who came within six feet of my cube.

The Data Trolls Picnic

To the tune of Teddy Bear's Picnic...

If you login to the server today
You're in for a big surprise
If you login to the server today
You'd better go in disguise.

For every troll that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the Data Trolls have their picnic.

Picnic time for Data Trolls
The gnarly Data Trolls are having a festive time today.
Spy them, catch them unawares,
And see them picnic on their holiday.
See them gaily dance about
They love to play and shout.
And never have any cares.
At six o'clock they'll trash your binary
Chew your cable and melt your raid
Because they're tired little Data Trolls.

If you login to the server today,
You'd better not go alone.
It's lovely out in the server today,
But better to stay at home.

For every Troll that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day you migrate your data in real time!

If you login to the server today
You'd better not go alone
If you login to the server today
You might as well gnaw your own bones.

Every Data Troll, that's ever been bad
Is sure of a treat today
There's lots of wonderful things to eat
And devious games to play.

Beneath the cabinets, where nobody sees
They'll hide and cavort as long as they please
Today's the day the Data Trolls have their picnic!

If you login to the server today
You'd better go in prepared
If you login to the server today
You'd better have Norton in bed...

Because... today's the day the Data Trolls have their piiiccccniccccc!

many, many apologies to John W Bratton

Packing It In

I am seriously considering packing it in.  I'm five weeks shy of 42, married, 3 kids, 2 step-kids, lengthy and broad career in technology and 98% sure I'm dead as a doornail, current jobwise, 9 AM Monday morning. It's Thursday, by the way, and I've been sent home by my COO - denied entrance to the all hands on deck meeting at Corporate. 

Lets face, I'm tired.

In beta land it's been a wild ride beginning 14 months ago and culminating with our first client/partner facing beta launch yesterday at 3 PM CST.  Six short months ago it was on again off again as the internal product team accessed and tested, rejected and re-rejected the first few attempts at a the new release, otherwise known as The Limping Thing.  Dates slipped, communication got sticky, communication got ugly and the board got rightfully nosy. Stack that up against stunningly poor sales performance and life got dicey.

With the most graceful and amazing slight of hand, The Product Marketing God redirected attention from The Limping Thing to The New and Improved and Completely Different Thing, otherwise known as The Thing (The Thing being something yet undefined but definitely coming to a theater near you very, very soon!). Thousands of dollars, maybe millions of dollars funneled into the undefined New Thing at a frightening rate. Tempers flared, too many unqualified cooks stirred the tempest and the abandoned Limping Thing Orphan skulked toward the oft-slipping finish line. The Product Marketing God left the building and the smell of impending blood-letting permeated the holy triumvirate of corporate, stateside ops and offshore development.

An interlude called The PSO Lady occurs, otherwise known as Bob.  Bob turned the world upside down. Truly I don't believe she meant to, I just don't know that she believed what she saw.  Who would?  Bob lasted just 3 months and in that period managed to flatten stateside ops eliminating any kind of efficient leadership whatsoever. Delivery started to make it's familiar high pitched whiffling noise as it came within degrees of internal combustion.  Bob didn't know any better, she said, 'suck it up'.  It's OK, we've been here before.  In a fit of brilliance, Corporate recognized a grave error in judgment and removed Bob.  Either that or Bob pissed corporate off in the process of failing to produce any significant results (short of dramatically increased whiffling). Stacey comes and Stacey goes.  So sayeth the maligned project manager. We thought there was light.  You know the punch line, right?  It was just the freight train at the end of the tunnel.

The organization flattened completely and reported directly to the COO who appears to have the attention span of a flea and the remarkable ability to get away with the repeated and public use of insipid platitudes. 

One day the COO and the CFO visit the ops site and announce a major reorganization involving the severing of technical operations from professional services and the relocation of a central position.  They hide behind the board: it's a direct order. 12 of 16 resumes hit Monster in the first three days.  They take it back. Sort of.  More or less.  Reasonably speaking.  And most of us drink the kool-aid.  Two of us duck and roll into the arms of product development and pray for shelter.  That umbrella turns out to have more holes than fabric.  There isn't any budget and we're going to sell what we have and hope for a 2007 with the doors still open.  Nobody seems to know that product wise, you're only good for three months. This is all proprietary, by the way, when R&D leaves I don't think they're coming back.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, three weeks short of beta and The New Thing is dead.  On the shelf after all that money and it was just starting to look like something. One week short of beta for Ye Olde Limping Thing and the CEO is dead. The anticipated heir to the proverbial throne steps into place and the event is nearly a non-event.  Because they forgot one.  It's still poison in here, and maybe even poison cubed.

Meanwhile, beta marches on.  Unloved, unwanted, generally ignored, unsupported and desperately needed.  Documentation is produced, curriculum developed, change managed and an unexpected power struggle rears it's head. We got there anyway.  It was all good.  As a matter of fact, despite some disturbing performance issues once on site, it was all brilliant. The client/partner is ready to rock and roll, the two beta geeks leave the techie geek to finalize the implementation and head for the airport.  The intention being, fly home, get a couple hours of sleep and then make one epic, and one slightly epic drive for the new and improved corporate offices and the all hands on meeting.

Except for the voicemail.

Life is powerful. This I know.  You put something out there and the universe is ready and willing to deliver.  Be careful what you say, be careful what you ask for.  You are going to go exactly where your intention drives you. I don't care how good you are, I don't care what kind of impact you're generating, if you make a phone call to your husband while waiting for delayed luggage and staring down the barrel of a 3 hour drive at dawn in a snow storm and tell him that you absolutely cannot stand one more minute of this madness and that you simply must get out right this second... well then you either knew what that voicemail contained or you created it out of the ether.

It's funny.  I check my blackberry voicemail religiously, once every six months whether it needs it or not.  I checked my blackberry voicemail out of some combination of fear, irritation or boredom.  Stay home.  Be with your family.  Get some rest.  Do not come to the meeting.  I hear you were very unhappy today.  New pres put the agenda together, not me.  I'll speak to you about this on Monday.

Lets face it.  I'm tired.