February 2006 Archives
I'm a bad man. I got word back of my pending IRS refund... cha-ching!
So I realize I have to buy something nice for the house...I'm thinking a shiny Dell 24" 16x9 LCD?
So allow me to reiterate...I'm a bad man.
You glance over at the TV, which you were sorta watching out of the corner of your eye while working on the PC... and notice that there's this string of images and noise... nonsense...crap... things that make you cringe... what are they called? Oh, commercials. And you wonder why you haven't FFWD'd through them?
Love Tivo.
Man, I'm *exhausted* after this week. There's a ton of back-story to this, but Tues morning there's a financial report which I commissioned last year (had one of my guys write) which our CFO says "these numbers can't be right, there must be a bug in the report" (blah blah blah, the world is ending, you suck, I hate you and I hate the bands you like... etc). He used to be my boss, too. I can't stand the guy (and hence why he's no longer my boss)(among other reasons). Anyway, we (me, CFO, and my -new- boss) agree that fixing this is my #1 priority, since it's needed to close out the company books just in time for their spring audit.
I've spent Tues.... 8 hrs
Wed... 10 hrs
Thurs.... 14 hrs
and so far all of today (Fri) (8 hrs)
... working on this report.
Fix one things, something else breaks. Then it runs too long (and times out)(it's web-based). I try building a new DB server hoping that on a bigger/faster box it might not time-out - nope. Move everything back. Do a bunch of code optimization, that breaks some stuff. Undo some of those changes. Finally, last night, ran a hopefully-final report. Decided that what needed to happen was that I would have to validate EVERY employee's vacation balance numbers manually, compare them to what the system says, and what the report generations (they're similar but seperate bits of code -- long story).
Anyway, 6 hrs today I've spent manually calculating vacation balances, accruals, etc. And other than finding some garbage-in-garbage-out bad data (someone's start-date may have been a day off) - the report works!
So now that I've finished the Dec report - I can move on to the Jan report, manually validate a good number of people - don't think I'm doing 'em all tho - and verify that it's GOOD. I hope. Please.
The last 4 weeks has brought back a LOT of memories. Rummaging through storage and finding scrap-books and photo-books from back 35 years ago (read: baby-books!). Even the last year, catching up with old high school mates from our class alumni website. And recently, finding MC'ers from back in my college days in Vegas.
I see what others have endured, gone through, etc - and my life seems so small. I've gone through my own hell over time, sure - but so what, compared to what some of them have endured. Or may still be dealing with. Quite frankly I sometimes feel so shallow, like such a dork compared to them.
There are those who I do believe would be utterly surprized to realize I look up to them in some ways. Those who I deeply respect what they have done and still do. The things that matter...they're not always easy to talk about. They're not always something you can put into words.
From BBC's MI-5 ("Spooks" in the UK), Season Three, Episode 1:
Maybe there's a lottery committee
somewhere underground
throwing the dice to decide what we'll be day to day
spy
tramp
hero
traitor
