because a Reverend can't be wrong.
Oh no. This little boy is up too late. Now he’ll never get up in time for his job which means, if he doesn’t arrive at 8am, the entire world will blow up.
I did good though. Not a single drop of work was done by me after 5:00pm. And I could care less if something breaks. If you want me to be an hourly (non-exempt) employee, then that’s what I’ll be. Which means I’m not working overtime unless I’m getting paid for it.
Kitty up and scratch me through my jeans.
Kitty up and scratch me through my jeans.
Kitty up and scratch me through my jeans.
Fuck you, kitty, you’re gonna spend the night
Fuck you, kitty, you’re gonna spend the night
Fuck you, kitty, you’re gonna spend the night
OUTSIDE!
I picked up Toby, and then went to let Umlaut out of the bedroom. Toby took one look at him, got scared and did this to me on his way down. Bastard.
(For those that don’t know. That first part is a song. I’m not actually making my kitty spend the night outside, though I probably should. And he didn’t scratch me through my jeans, he scratched me through my shirt.)
On my way home from work today, there was a guy standing next to the cement wall in the center of I35E. He was dressed pretty dirty, and had a MEAN look on his face. He was flailing his arms about and traffic was stopped in both directions. He was throwing what looked like chunks of cardboard at the traffic and kept jumping over the wall going from the NorthBound side to teh SouthBound side and back again.
I tried to get a picture of him…. I took one from far away, and then continued to take them as I got closer to him, but only while his back was to me. I didn’t want to piss him off. Unfortunately, though I am not sure what happened, my shitty digital camera only took ONE picture, and of course, it was from pretty far away.
Here is the picture I did get, and the approximate location of this man.
Nikon is said to be releasing the D100 this summer. The D100 is Nikon’s first Digital SLR camera for the “prosumer” market. This is good and bad news. While I was slightly upset that I was going to have to “settle” for the non-SLR Coolpix 995, they just dropped the price by $300 on that unit. Now that I know the D100 is coming out I have to wait until the summer to consider purchasing one, and therefore must continue using my horrible Olympus in the meantime. Additionally, the cost of the D100 will probably be pretty steep when it first comes out, to take advantage of people like me who “have to have it”. I have found no indication of the price tag on this unit, but hopefully it will truly be geared for the “prosumer” (less than $1000) and not anywhere near the price of the D1/D1x/D1h (around $4000).
A demo model of the D100 is said to be compatible with the Nikkor lens mount, and has basically the same body and feature set as the N80. It boasts 6.1 megapixels of resolution and 10 segment Matrix metering. It also has a speedlight mount, accepting many older strobes and the new SB-80DX. It has 5 auto focus areas, and a top shutter speed of 1/4,000 sec. It can output a 3008×2000 pixel image (A3 size).
At first I thought it looked like it might accept the MB-10 vertical grip that attached to the N90 series, but it appears that it takes its own vertical grip, the MB-D100. This is a bit disappointing, but acceptable, as the boosted battery power and vertical grip are well worth whatever it might cost.
it also features Depth of Field preview, a much needed feature, and auto-bracketing. Additionally, because of the presence of an actual pentaprism viewfinder, battery life is extended because the LCD doesn’t have to run for most purposes.
If anyone can find any more information on this camera, when it will be available, its feature set, and its price point… I would appreciate it.
Update: Some online camera stores are pre-selling it for $2200. Body only, of course. FUCK!
I just received an email from my boss addressed to many individuals. The highlights of it read:
Media across the country reported that [our company] will eliminate the equivalent of approximately 10,000 positions during the current year. As mentioned earlier, [our company] currently has 275,000 employees and this recent announcement would indicate the company is planning to reduce
around 3.6% of the total workforce (or equivalent).
yay!
Moments before I arrived at work, I received a page:
Dan where are you?
It was from my boss. He sends me pages like that most every day that I am late, which is most every day. After I got here, around 9:05am, he came into my cubicle and handed me the following letter:
To: Daniel Xxxxxxx
From: Ed XxxxxxxReference: Official Written Warning Regarding Tardiness
On several occasions, you have been verbally warned regarding the consequences of tardiness. In 2001, you were tardy in excess of 15 times. I have requested that you contact me when you have become aware you are not going to be at work on time. At each counseling session, you have acknowledged you understand the importance of being at work on time.
As of this date in 2002, you have already been late 7 times. Positive steps must be taken on your part to improve being at work on or before your assigned starting work time of 8:30 am. Failure to correct this behavior can result in administrative action up to and including termination.
Ed Xxxxxxxxx
Manager – Xxxxxxx XxxxxxXC: Daniel Xxxxx file
I have a issues with this. The first and foremost is his statement of “you have acknowledged you understand the importance of being at work on time”. This is not true. In fact, I argued with him for over 20 minutes the last time regarding WHY it was so important. His claim then was that we have [internal] customers who need us here in case things break or they have questions. I informed him that, due to the time-zones we cover, assuming EVERYONE works an 8am-5pm shift in their own timezone, which is NOT the case, then we have customers from 7am-10pm our time. I informed him that if our motivation was really looking out for the customer, then we would stagger our staffing to ensure we had someone here at least during those core hours. He then claimed that the “customers” that need us are the other staff people, who all work 8am-5pm and almost all reside in the Central time zone. I retorted with the fact that the staff people are NOT our customers, they are our peers. Additionally, they do not actually USE the applications we support, so the only things they want from me are are time-lines regarding when they will be completed, status reports on the projects we are working on, and feasibility reports on possible future projects. None of these things need to be fulfilled IMMEDIATELY. They are generally handled via email over the course of a few days. At that point, unwilling to actually listen to my complaints and show me WHY I am needed here at 8:30am, he told me that I needed to be here, because it was a requirement of my job. I can’t argue with that. A requirement is a requirement. Whether I like it or not doesn’t matter. And whether it makes sense or not doesn’t matter. He is my superior, and he does make the rules. With that, I agreed that I would begin showing up at work on or before 8:30am. Never once did I agree that I understood the importance of being here at 8:30am.
I can’t fight this. A requirement is a requirement. If I don’t like it, I should find other work. If I don’t fulfill his requirements, he should fire me. Plain and simple. I believe that fully and whole-heartedly. What I don’t believe in, is the existence of that requirement. I have tried to fight it. It just doesn’t work.
After he handed me that official letter, he talked to me about how he ranked me his “number one employee” and, because of that, I am receiving a bigger raise and a bigger bonus than anyone else in our department. This is even after he docked me one half of a percentage point for my tardiness last year. What I don’t understand is this: if I am such a valuable employee to him, why is he so willing to threaten (and possibly follow through) to fire me over something so silly, and something that he can’t even explain the need for?
I guess there is no use bitching and whining and complaining. If I don’t like it, and I can’t change it, I need to either live with it, or move on. The problem is, sometimes, I really like my job. We have shitty equipment, and my opinion, though it is arguably the most experienced opinion, regarding technical purchases and platform decisions is often overruled, even though, in end, it is me and my team that are forced to work with it. Additionally, my concerns regarding how we perform our daily jobs are never resolved or even considered. However, I like the work some of the time, I like my team, and I like many of the technical people in other departments that I get to work with on occasion.
I know what you’re saying. “Why don’t you just show up at work on time, Daniel?” And you make a good point. Why don’t I? Well… first of all, from now on, I will be… or I’ll be trying my best to do so. The reason I don’t, however, is because that is not how I work. My best programming is done at night. Regardless of what time I am in work, and how many hours I put in, chances are, at midnight that night, I will be programming something, and it will most likely be work related. I put in many hours beyond my required 40. I work very hard. And, not to sound pompous, but I can do in four hours what it takes an average coder (average based on what I have seen in the business) 2 or more days to complete. But, am I paid four times more than the average coder? No.
Essentially, my company is getting the equivalent of 150-200 hours per week worth of work out of me, for the cost of your average coder. I research new technologies. I manage employees. I train. I code. I administer ALL of our systems. I troubleshoot problems in other systems. I design applications. I do database management. I handle desktop hardware issues. I perform feasibility studies. I assist other departments with their coding efforts. I review the work of other coders and offer ideas and concepts for improvement. I do a lot!.
I know many people who work long hard hours, going above and beyond the call of duty, for practically peanuts. Amy is an example of such a person. However, while I don’t know all the details of Amy’s employment, I do know that her employer does the best they can to treat her as good as they possibly can in exchange for her time, effort, and loyalty. They take her to Las Vegas. They throw parties. The buy lunch. Additionally, her work environment is filled with people that she enjoys working with, and that she really gets along with. Again, I am not saying Amy is compensated more than she deserves to be, or that she is even compensated fairly. In fact, I barely know what Amy does for a living. However, if my employer were willing to offer me such small and simple things, it would make getting here at 8:30am and feeling loyal to this company a bit easier. If this office held even a couple of people that I would enjoy seeing outside of this building on a semi-regular basis, I would be a bit happier getting up each morning. (This is not to say that I don’t like my employees or the people I work with. I just mean to say that they are not the kind of people that I would build relationships external to work with.)
Yesterday I was at Taco Bell eating lunch. Sitting next to me were two guys who were talking about employment. One guy mentioned that he made about “two bills a day”. He claimed that the work was VERY easy, didn’t require a lot of his time, and that, he could make up his own schedule. That really made me start thinking about the work I do and the environment in which I work in relation to my compensation. Needless to say, such thoughts do not foster loyalty or work enthusiasm in the least.
Maybe I need to find a new job. Or maybe I need to give up my fight for something meaningful in the work place and accept the fate that seems to plague every American: working from 8am – 5pm every day at a job I hate for the next 30 years of my life, never accomplishing anything I can be really proud of, and not thinking about work for a second once I leave the front doors of this building.
This is depressing.