Hard

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This week's been hard. I'm really just talking about work, but lack of sleep and stress has made it seem a little like there's been little else this week. There's one project, just about to go "live", that's really OH MY GOSH SO IMPORTANT WE CANNOT MESS THIS UP, DUDES! Then there's another project that's being rushed out the door as a replacement for something else they wanted to do. Then there's interviewing for a new position.

The GOOD news is that tomorrow morning I leave for vacation! Michael and I are driving down to Port Canaveral, where, on Sunday (my birthday) we'll board the new Disney Dream for a four-day cruise, followed by a couple days staying at Fort Wilderness Lodge and going to the parks. I can't believe it's been two years since we were at Disney! This may be the longest Disney-free stretch since we got married. I'm incredibly excited. Except for the whole getting older thing. I just got a card from my mom with the number written down, and that was the first time I'd seen it in print, and it was...shocking. Let's just say Disney World and I are the same age.

The OH MY GOSH project is actually in the best shape; I'm really confident of my part in it, even though I feel as Darth Vader must have felt as he watched the Death Star explode...

I find your lack of testing...disturbing.

The bad news is that I have to be on a call at 11pm tonight--YES, the night before I'm leaving for vacation. I am...NOT pleased. My teammate has everything covered, and my manager usually doesn't ask me to do this type of thing (I don't work Fridays), so I can only imagine he's getting some pressure from "higher up" to have me on call.

The other project...well. I'm a team lead now, and let's just say I didn't get to pick my team. One's great; the other is...um.... Trying. This person doesn't seem to have the abilities to accept verbal instructions, remember how past problems were solved, or take my advice on how to solve problems. This person seems oblivious to what anyone else on the bigger team is working on and always seems astonished that others have different deadlines or bigger workloads. The best I can say each week is, "Well, I didn't kill Repeat this week!"

Why "Repeat"? Here's a background story: I asked Repeat once where a document was, and Repeat told me the Lotus Notes database where it was. "OK," I said, "I can find it in there." "Oh, I can send it to you," Repeat replied. "That'd be great," I said, "but actually it's William who wants the document. Can you just send it to him?" "OK," Repeat replied.

A few minutes later, I got an email with the document attached. William was not copied. I muttered, "Seriously??" and forwarded it to him.

Yesterday provided another gem where when I suggested Repeat get Loyalist (name also withheld, but this time to protect the innocent rather than the guilty) to help with debugging a problem, Repeat informed me of thinking of getting our manager to help. I laughed and said Repeat would be much more likely to get L's time than our manager and lead architect (who is INCREDIBLY busy), and Repeat said our manager would probably just say to go with Repeat's currently approach (wrong, unstable) if it was working (which in Repeat's world means not producing an error). I told Repeat I was pretty sure our manager would say he hadn't looked at that stuff in years and to keep going but get me to check it when I got back (which is what's happened before).

Sorry. I'll stop ranting. And I promise at least some eye candy before I leave!!

JiffNotes
Work stinks, but I'm away for the week on a Disney cruise!!