Vacation
I haven't quit writing.
Written on Saturday in a vet's waiting room, posted Monday night from Oban, Scotland after many not-so-wee drams.
Things have been rough personally and I've had no respite at the office. Ripa's incredible incompetence, for example: my work was interrupted because, after eight years here, she still can't think to look in the "Associated Files" page of a technical document when a customer needs a patch specified by that particular document. Then there's the unbelievably extreme stupidity being foisted upon us which not even our competition would think to try and make us do. That sort of sheer, mindless fuckwittery can only come from within, the product of a warped middle manager's excuse for a mind. I'm still working on an analogy to describe this without clearly identifying myself and I don't think it's possible but I'll keep trying.
Mook Man continues his assault on our entire team's nerves and sanity, and he's brought in back-up, having colleagues even stupider than he submit tickets. I swear that if Man-cub was a hypochondriac he'd demand a fucking hysterectomy. No, you cannot run $SomeAIXProg on your fucking Windows server. No, not even with MS Unix tools installed. No, not even with cygwin. No, it is not a defect. No, we will not make a Windows version of a program which runs in UNIX to allow a Windows-based module to function correctly on AIX. Go ahead and file a bad survey on me. I don't give a shit at this point as long as you go away.
Down home fuckwit goodness is coming from every angle. Jill wants to upgrade her rusty old version 2.7.f to 2.7.h, This version was written almost seven years ago and we haven't changed jack shit since then. She can have the patch but she wants to know if all the single fixes from 2.7 through 2.7e are fixed in 2.7.h. She's been told by three different people that they're all rolled up and included in fucking 2.7.f which is why we have the fucking versioning to begin with. They already don't affect her because all the fixes are already installed. And no, this isn't a question about regression errors since 2.7.h is the absolute last, final, never-again-to-be-touched fixed roll-up. End of life version.
She keeps escalating the ticket so that one manager who doesn't actually read through the ticket after another bitches at some poor monkey who then has to slog back through it all and write back that the question was already answered and that Jill is a fuckwit. It's so bad that the managers actually agree and the latest one -- be still my heart -- actually wrote back to tell me I was right, no escalation, and she'd deal with Jill on Monday.
Whatever. I won't be there Monday. Or Tuesday. I will be elsewhere with a very nice glass of very rare whiskey in my hand, noting the leathery aspects of the nose and the old books and sea finish. After a very long time I'm taking three weeks of vacation to see some stuff I haven't seen before and see some friends I haven't seen for a while. I should be back in mid-November.
This vacation was forced on me; I can only take two weeks of built-up vacation with me into the new year and they have to be used in the first quarter. That's fine. I have plans.
But I may get some of these vacation days back, giving me even more of December free (taking at least half that month as well). It's good to be a specialist, and there are a couple things which only I can handle. Daylight Savings Time is coming to an end, and on two different weekends. I'm on call. Should there be a question that the weekend monkeys can't handle they have to call me. All it takes is one hour of my time to get me back a vacation day.
On top of that a couple Citrix issues are hotting back up and I'll definitely get a call for one of them. Sitting in a pub in Mallaig with a glass of Bruichladdich or Bowmore quarter-barrel cask strength is an amazingly good way to remain cool and calm on a conf call, especially when that call bought me another day out of the monkey cage. I'm no fuckwit.
Written on Saturday in a vet's waiting room, posted Monday night from Oban, Scotland after many not-so-wee drams.
Things have been rough personally and I've had no respite at the office. Ripa's incredible incompetence, for example: my work was interrupted because, after eight years here, she still can't think to look in the "Associated Files" page of a technical document when a customer needs a patch specified by that particular document. Then there's the unbelievably extreme stupidity being foisted upon us which not even our competition would think to try and make us do. That sort of sheer, mindless fuckwittery can only come from within, the product of a warped middle manager's excuse for a mind. I'm still working on an analogy to describe this without clearly identifying myself and I don't think it's possible but I'll keep trying.
Mook Man continues his assault on our entire team's nerves and sanity, and he's brought in back-up, having colleagues even stupider than he submit tickets. I swear that if Man-cub was a hypochondriac he'd demand a fucking hysterectomy. No, you cannot run $SomeAIXProg on your fucking Windows server. No, not even with MS Unix tools installed. No, not even with cygwin. No, it is not a defect. No, we will not make a Windows version of a program which runs in UNIX to allow a Windows-based module to function correctly on AIX. Go ahead and file a bad survey on me. I don't give a shit at this point as long as you go away.
Down home fuckwit goodness is coming from every angle. Jill wants to upgrade her rusty old version 2.7.f to 2.7.h, This version was written almost seven years ago and we haven't changed jack shit since then. She can have the patch but she wants to know if all the single fixes from 2.7 through 2.7e are fixed in 2.7.h. She's been told by three different people that they're all rolled up and included in fucking 2.7.f which is why we have the fucking versioning to begin with. They already don't affect her because all the fixes are already installed. And no, this isn't a question about regression errors since 2.7.h is the absolute last, final, never-again-to-be-touched fixed roll-up. End of life version.
She keeps escalating the ticket so that one manager who doesn't actually read through the ticket after another bitches at some poor monkey who then has to slog back through it all and write back that the question was already answered and that Jill is a fuckwit. It's so bad that the managers actually agree and the latest one -- be still my heart -- actually wrote back to tell me I was right, no escalation, and she'd deal with Jill on Monday.
Whatever. I won't be there Monday. Or Tuesday. I will be elsewhere with a very nice glass of very rare whiskey in my hand, noting the leathery aspects of the nose and the old books and sea finish. After a very long time I'm taking three weeks of vacation to see some stuff I haven't seen before and see some friends I haven't seen for a while. I should be back in mid-November.
This vacation was forced on me; I can only take two weeks of built-up vacation with me into the new year and they have to be used in the first quarter. That's fine. I have plans.
But I may get some of these vacation days back, giving me even more of December free (taking at least half that month as well). It's good to be a specialist, and there are a couple things which only I can handle. Daylight Savings Time is coming to an end, and on two different weekends. I'm on call. Should there be a question that the weekend monkeys can't handle they have to call me. All it takes is one hour of my time to get me back a vacation day.
On top of that a couple Citrix issues are hotting back up and I'll definitely get a call for one of them. Sitting in a pub in Mallaig with a glass of Bruichladdich or Bowmore quarter-barrel cask strength is an amazingly good way to remain cool and calm on a conf call, especially when that call bought me another day out of the monkey cage. I'm no fuckwit.
posted by ReallyEvilCanine at 00:01 (direct link)
5 Comments:
AWESOME...
Man, you're living the dream I wish I had the $$$ to live (downing fine scotch in Scotland)
Your country's labor laws (or is it company policy?) seem pretty damn sweet too. Talk on the phone for 1 hour while on vacation and get an ENTIRE DAY OFF in return? That's unheard of this side of the pond.
Do you have any tips for breaking through to osterreich women? I can't seem to get beyond the bunker-busting hardened steel-reinforced leathery scale exterior. thx.
that's a mee too entry. nevermind the booze (as my name implies, i'm an ex-alcoholic), it's outside my monkey cage. hmm... hehe, i wonder, are there any humans reading this?
This comment has been removed by the author.
In Mallaig I was drinking "As We Get It", a cask-strength single malt which the bottler buys by the cask from one distiller or another. Stupid me didn't bring back a bottle or two of it. Stupid me did, however, bring back 12 other bottles.
reepr: Germany has a stardard 30 days plus national holidays. On top of that Bavaria is so Catholic that we get some Catholic holidays off as well. This leads to anything from 33-40 days off a year, one of the reasons I've managed to keep working for a company I don't own myself. Also, it was a two-hour minimum time spent and I didn't get it. Perhaps this weekend.
Anonymous: you need a wingman to block the cockblocker friends.
aahelp: I at least resemble a human; reepr is (as far as I can tell) human or human-like monkey, and according to logs, mail and comments elsewhere there are indeed other human-like beings reading this.
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