Category: Real Jobs

August 10, 2006 /

Three years after switching to NewsBruiser, I finally have NFD looking like I wanted it to look all this time but was too lazy to figure out the CSS. Me, not it.

I’ve been writing HTML for over ten years and CSS for over six, just because it wasn’t hard to learn and I could do fun stuff with it, and now I find myself in the position of the guy who makes a living off his hobby. Admittedly, so far this has been largely the tedious bits–like if I spent most of my day trying to shake a little broken flange out of an O-scale model train–but compared to my previous job of shaking out, say, crusty ketchup from a broken bottle, it’s aces.

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.

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.

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.

March 28, 2006 /

One of the hilariously demented* developers who works on this floor has recently posted a sign in his cube, which reads “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” I, being much cleverer and more handsome,** immediately thought “ah ha! This human has printed a corrupted version with the incorrect word order! The correct phrasing is ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here.'”

I was so certain of this because my version fits nicely into an iambic pentameter, while his doesn’t (you can make it fit, but that involves stretching a short vowel to a long syllable and vice versa). But it turns out neither of us was right: the Divine Comedy translation which spawned the phrase, by H.F. Cary, actually goes “All hope abandon ye who enter here,” which is much better and still in perfect iambs. Bah! Iambs are fickle! That’s why I support dactyls. Want to hear more about the Pro-Dactyl Initiative? Contact your local poet laureate today.

* Developer may be neither hilarious nor demented.

** I am very handsome and clever.

March 6, 2006 /

Since I arrived here, our IT department has used XStop software to filter the naughty bits out of our workday. The only way it really bothered me was that it blocked the Onion (but left the AV Club unfiltered). I got used to it.

This morning we got an email informing us that they’d switched to WebSense, which has already proven to block nearly all my favorite webcomics, the Onion and the AV Club, IMDB and basically anything they categorize as “Entertainment.”

Awesome!

I assume the guys who installed this software (at the behest of the legal department–liability, you know) have passwords that will let them read Megatokyo; I’m sure they also know that getting around this kind of thing is startlingly easy when one has one’s own website. Then again, xorph.com is still listed as a webcomic in plenty of places. I wonder how long I’ll be able to keep tunneling out?

Update 1317 hrs: Oh, “Entertainment” has been unblocked. Cancel jihad, cancel jihad.

January 19, 2006 /

Heard from the office next to my cube, mere moments ago:

(chuckling) “Yeah, a rose by any other name… is… still a rose!”