It always seems like I get sick after traveling.  The week before last I traveled for business and I started feeling nauseous and exhausted early last week.  It’s been dogging me ever since, and it really hit me yesterday.  It seems like there’s something about airplanes that does it to me.  I guess the cramped quarters and dry air make it easier to transmit airborne “stuff.” 

Feeling a little better today, but still very tired, and the heat doesn’t help much.

As I mentioned earlier, I am going to be transferring to a different division on 7/1.  There is a little bit of a story behind it, but I have been thinking about how to tell it without identifying the company I work for.  While my company doesn’t discourage blogging, I think it best that I keep my blogging separate from the company.  Many of my opinions are too politically incorrect for the company’s corporate image.  If it ever comes out where I work, then I’ll just add a disclaimer, but I’ll burn that bridge when I cross it… 

I’ve worked for this company in one capacity or another for nearly 12 years.  For the last nine years I have been working for an organization in a particular division whose primary function is to do software development on a contract basis for both external and internal customers (although I’ve been working on internal projects the entire time).  I never signed on to work for this organization.  My job was transferred there when the project I was on at the time was moved into the organization as part of a company-wide effort to move all development efforts into this organization. 

To say that it was something of a culture shock would be an understatement.  We moved from direct management to matrix management and from a team environment into a project-based billable system.  Instead of having a manager who knew your work, you ended up with a manager you were lucky to hear from once a quarter (one guy I know only hears from his manager during the yearly evaluations).  My team’s first communication from our new manager was a notification that we weren’t meeting our “billable utilization” targets.  Our first response was of the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!” variety, since we had no clue was he was talking about.

You see, this development organization (DO) requires that each employee bill a certain number of hours each year, which basically means that you have to make up for your vacation and holiday time.  Regardless of whether your project or tasks really require overtime, if you don’t bill a certain number of hours, you get dinged on your yearly evaluation.  This was a shock to us, since in our previous organization we were just concerned with meeting deadlines.  Sometimes this meant working 10-12 hours per day and other times you worked a standard day.  From what I could glean over the years (from various snippets of conversation), the DO’s business model requires this level of overtime to make up for lowballing the bill rate (and to support all the layers of management).

Over the past three years I’ve been working on various projects for the same internal customer, who has projects in two main areas: web and backend.  I’ve done projects for them in both areas and gotten to know them fairly well.  Lately they have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the DO because of the high level of bureaucracy and red tape required to engage us.  The DO has a reputation of being hard to work with (which I suspect is richly deserved).  Also, it was difficult for them to get “what if” questions answered for projects they might want to start but hadn’t formally begun.  In general, employees of the DO have a negative incentive structure to perform any work outside of their currently funded projects.  Any significant time spent on something that doesn’t have a project billing code means that the employee has to either find an existing project to bill against (a lie?) or make up the time on a billable project (lost time worked basically for free).

Lately,  the DO executives have been working hard to send most of the development overseas.  Those of us left here are doing design and project management work with most of the actual programming done by teams elsewhere.  Sometimes they’ll send some people here to learn about the project, but mostly the teams are in other countries.  At the same time this is going on, they’ve been making noises about signings and revenue being down.  So I suppose it wasn’t a big surprise that layoffs would be coming in the U.S.

I need to go back a little bit before I get into the layoff situation, though.  In early May a little birdie told me that there was a move afoot on the part of our customer to move the backend team out of the DO and into another organization.  I was glad to hear about this, but I took a wait-and-see attitude, since I knew it would take them a long time to get anything done (the wheels of bureaucracy move slowly in any big company).  In late May I heard that they were pretty serious and that the customer had given the DO a list of people it wanted to transfer.  This would turn out to be a dangerous thing for all of us…

On the morning of 5/31 I was sitting at my computer trying to get through my morning email when my teamlead sent me an IM saying that he’d just been given notice that he was on the layoff list and he had 30 days to find another job in the company or he was going to be let go.  Given that this guy is absolutely critical to the project, I immediately knew what was happening: the DO was jettisoning all of us who were on the transfer list.  Sure enough, within five minutes my manager IM’ed me to ask if I had time to talk. 

From experience, I’ve seen that the DO doesn’t like having business taken away, and will do things to sabotage any other business unit that tries to move development back in-house.  Of course, legal notification requirements and the need to get us out before end of 2Q likely influenced their decision, but the fact that it would severely impact the customer would likely just put icing on the cake from their perspective.

This event set off a set of panicked meetings on the part of my customer, who then had to accelerate the transfer negotations.  Even so, it took nearly three weeks for them to finalize the deal, and we didn’t get notice until last Friday that it was completed. 

It’s interesting, but I took the news of the prospective layoff pretty well.  I did some calculations and determined that with the severance package and some savings that I could get by (provided I didn’t splurge on anything) for a little more than a year while looking for another job.  I think this was motiviated by the fact that I was pretty burned-out working in the DO and I was really wanting to get out of it.  Whether this was accomplished by a transfer or by leaving the company didn’t really matter anymore.

I was even considering my options for getting into a new career.  Working for the DO really saps the life out of you.  Body shop development is really a game for naive new-hires.  It gets really old, really fast. 

I’m looking at the transfer as a chance to start over.  I can now concentrate on getting the job done, rather than how many hours are billed.  It should also mean less silly process nonsense.  Heck, I may even end up working more hours when all is said and done (don’t know yet, although all the people in my new organization seem pretty balanced and happy from what I’ve been able to glean from them).  But it doesn’t matter to me if the job is interesting and I can focus on it instead of process and hours.  It will also be good to have a direct manager who knows what I’m doing on the job.  It’s hard to describe the feeling, but it’s really like a great weight has been lifted.

The excrement impacted the rotary airfoil device recently, as my employer has announced a round of layoffs.  I’ve got wheels turning and irons in the fire, so to speak, although I don’t want to say too much right now, lest I jinx things.

Anyhow, I should know something more by the end of the week, or early next week.  Until then the current sucky level of service will continue.

I tend to go for short hair, since it’s easy to deal with and cooler in the summer.  I used to get old-fashioned flat-tops done by real barbers.  Unfortunately, these are getting harder and harder to find, especially in this area. 

A few years ago I knew that the flat-top was dead when I asked for one at one of the chain places (since I couldn’t find a real barber anymore) and saw the look of panic on the young woman’s face.  She gave it a valiant effort, it was mostly presentable, but something about it just wasn’t quite right.  I had one of the old barbers tell me that my head wasn’t shaped quite right for a flat-top, but he was an old Marine and knew how to make it work anyway.

Anyhow, I don’t see much choice anymore but to just deal with it.  I may look a bit like a misshapen cue ball when done, but these days I go to the local chain shop and tell the young woman to use the #4 guard on the clippers and take it all off.  It’s a lot harder for them to mess that one up.

I’m not dead (yet).  Although if this heat continues…

Anyhow, my lack of posting can be attributed to two things.  First, my laptop has been on the fritz.  The hard drive is dying and I’m still waiting for a replacement (which is on backorder).  It works intermittently and will fail at random and inopportune times.  A bit of percussive maintenance (a sharp rap with a fingertip) will often get it going again, but it’s living on borrowed time.  I suppose I could post from my work PC, but after spending all day working in my office, I don’t have much desire to go back in there when the day is done.

Second, the pollen counts were in the 7000-8000 range, which just completely sapped my energy.  The Claritin worked, but just barely.  Even though it controls the symptoms of sneezing and watery eyes, it can’t completely hide the fact that your immune system is at war with a foreign invader, which uses a lot of energy.

I went to a friend’s birthday party at his house in Dallas on Saturday night.  I got back home around 2:00am Sunday morning.  On Sunday I became acutely aware that I seem to have misplaced my “stay out late and get up the next day without any ill effects” card.  Does it get revoked at 30 or something?

Anyhow, I will say that my friend knows how to put on a party.  He hired a bartender and had a good portion of the country’s strategic liquor and beer reserves on hand.  Unfortunately, the buzzkill neighbors objected to the noise and a couple of Dallas’ finest showed up around 11:30.  He promised them that he would tone things down, but I suspect the freakin’ MARIACHI BAND queueing up behind the officers at the gate didn’t exactly give them a warm-and-fuzzy.  In order to at least try to quiet things down we piled about 50 people and the mariachi band into his garage and closed the door.  It went pretty well, considering, although I think the blaring trumpets rearranged some of my brain cells (or perhaps a portion of “The Glenlivet” and a great honkin’ CIGAR* had something to do with this as well).

Isn’t there some sort of unwritten rule that you don’t call the cops before midnight on a Saturday night?  Or at least that’s how I tended to treat noisy neighbors when I had to deal with them.  Here in Keller none of my immediate neighbors seems to stay up past 10:00 pm. There are some houses with high schoolers (and a couple of college students) up the block, and there is occasional nocturnal activity there, but so far nothing noisy.

* An A. Fuente Canones (8 1/2 x 52, Madura) I picked up at Ole Grapevine Cigar & Tobacco Shop on a whim.

When I was in college I spent a summer working in the fab shop where they built Rotaflex (PDF) oil-field pump units.  As the shop peon my primary job was to clean slag from the parts that had just been cut on the cutting table (not this exact model, but similar).  What this entailed was taking the parts (often while they were still hot) and using a big hammer to knock off the largest pieces, then using a grinder to clean them until smooth.

This wasn’t necessarily so bad in the grand scheme of things, or at least I didn’t mind it as much as when they had me “buff the beam” (*).  However, those Rotaflex pump units had a weight box inside that would hold between 8,000 and 15,000 pounds of steel plate in pieces.  These pieces were made by taking 2000-lb sheets and cutting them into rectangular pieces (about 12-inches x 16 inches).  Since these pieces were to be stacked in the box, the slag had to be removed from each piece by hammering and grinding.  Once cleaned, it was stacked on a pallet and then tied down using straps.  This whole operation was my domain.  On a good day I could clean and stack about 10,000 pounds.

Anyway, besides learning a few things about welding and fab shop operations, this experience left me with another lasting “gift.”  After a month or so working there I would wake up in the middle of the night with painful tingling in my hands.  It feels a lot like what happens when the blood comes back after circulation is cut off in a limb (like if your foot “falls asleep”).  It happens in both hands, but it’s worse in my right.  Often I will have trouble maintaining grip in that hand until I’ve used it for a while.

I hadn’t been bothered with this in a while, although it comes up every so often when I use certain hand tools and I aggravated it pretty badly this weekend.  I started out trying to trim an out-of-control bush so I could more easily get to my storage building.  However, I got tired of messing with it part way through and decided to just get rid of the damn thing.  This led to an extended bout with a shovel and an axe trying to get the stump out.  The ground underneath was hard as a rock since it was so dry and the stump was practically glued in.  Fortunately, the rain on Monday filled the hole and softened up the dirt underneath so that I managed to pull it out with a cable-puller (a.k.a “come along”) and some more judicious axe work.  But I’m still paying the price this morning, although it’s nowhere near as bad as it was on Monday morning.

I suppose I could see a doctor about this, but from what I’ve learned of RSI, it would likely require surgery and rehab to cure it, and even then I would likely still be susceptible to relapse.  Worse, someone I know who has had carpal tunnel surgery still has trouble with the grip in that hand, even after a supposed “full recovery” and rehab.  Given that my grip strength returns after a while, and I don’t want to risk weaking my stronger shooting hand, I suppose I’ll just keep dealing with it.

I suspect there’s probably a lesson in ergonomics somewhere in all this mess, though.  I know that repeated use of power tools (especially anything that vibrates) can cause permanent damage if you’re not careful.  I wonder if they’ve done anything about this since then?  I doubt it, though, since the job is generally handled by a temp or a college student working summers who won’t see the effects until a while after leaving the job.

* The frame of the pump unit is composed of two long steel I-beams, which were about 30 feet long and two or three feet wide.  When they start assembling a new unit, someone has to clean the entire beam with a grinder equipped with a wire-cup wheel to remove any rust, dust, or junk that has accumulated while the beam was in storage.  As the shop peon, it was my job to do this.  That wire cup wheel was a dangerous bit of equipment, and I treated it with a great deal of respect and never had an incident with it.  But still, I preferred not to have to mess with it.

The people at the shop called this operation “buffing the beam.”

I’ve been tired, congested, cranky, and irritable lately.  This is the main reason why…

Everything looks lovely outside this time of year, but it comes at a price for some of us.

I’m not dead….

I’ve just been crushed under a combination of work committments and personal activities.  I’ve been working between 9-12 hours per day,attending the Citizen’s Police Academy and participating in CERT training and activities.

Sorry for the lame lack-o-posting of late.  It seems offline activities and workload all came together at about the same time.  The big project that I just finished the design for was given the go ahead, and I just concluded the kickoff meeting with the development team.  So it looks like work will be pretty busy for the next three or four months.

I started attending the Keller Citizens’ Police Academy at the beginning of this month.  It’s on Tuesday nights from 6:30pm to 9:30pm.  I also just wrapped up an amateur radio class last week, which had been on Thursday nights from 7:00pm to 10:00pm for the past 10 weeks.  I am now the holder of a Technician class amateur radio license (or at least I have my call sign, which is in the FCC’s ULS, but the actual license certificate has not yet been sent).  I don’t have a suitable radio yet, although I’m investigating the available dualband (2m/440) handheld units.  The amateur radio class was done as a continuing education activity for the Keller CERT team.  During an emergency HAM radios are often used as a communications link when all the conventional systems are down.  Tarrant county has a RACES net, which I may join.  I’ve got the required training out of the way now (you have to have a HAM license, incident command training, and the SkyWarn class), although I think I want to revisit the SkyWarn stuff before I do so (they covered a lot of stuff in the seminar, and it didn’t all sink in the first time).

The Citizen’s Police Academy has been good so far.  I went in with a bit of trepidation, as I’m a bit suspicious of police in general.  So far, though, it seems like at least our local Keller police are pretty down to earth.

The first night we learned about DWI field testing.  It cleared up some of my concerns about what they’re looking for (e.g. I couldn’t stand on one foot very well stone sober, but it’s not so much balance, but attention to directions and doing two things at once, which drunks don’t do well).  This department puts a lot of effort into catching drunk drivers.  Last year they had 403 arrests for DWI/DUI in Keller.  That averages out to 1.1 per day, every day of the year, in a city of approximately 30,000.  From the police reports I see in the local paper, it’s about an even mix of local residents and people from surrounding cities.

Last night they covered searches, seizures, and arrests.  Of particular interest is that Keller officers generally don’t try to talk people into consent for searches.  If they think they have cause, they go ahead and arrest the person, tow the car, and get a warrant to search (or do the search incident to the arrest).  I’m not sure whether I like this better or not, given that the arrest is generally for something simple (e.g. broken tail light) that is technically an arrestable offense.  But then, they usually only do this when they have a strong suspicion that there’s something wrong.  I suppose my trepidation about the whole situation is that it mostly involves drug offenses.