Yet another day of working and whining

I am so irritable right now that arguably, I should simply continue to refrain from any communication with the Outside World and just…smile politely a lot.

It’s one of those periods when there’s a perfect storm of work and personal crap, you know? I’ve got the flu and there’s all kinds of drama and then work is just…oh fer frick’s sake, people…and I find myself biting back all kinds of remarks that are just best left unsaid.

It’d be different if I had deserving targets. But I really don’t; nobody is stupid and nobody is incompetent and nobody is just being obstinate. Everybody is just trying to do their job as best they can under very trying circumstances.

Still.

I have to say, as a general rule, I am almighty tired of a couple things.

I’m a bit tired of being nagged half to death about the status of items that are pointless because no way in HELL this thing is going into production in two weeks.

Also, I rather wish folks would quit trying to “help” me accomplish more than can be done by pulling in other people to take on tasks for me. Half the time they don’t know how to do it, and the other half they’re going to need so much “knowledge transfer” time that I could have done it myself in less time than I spent talking about it, PLUS, they then did it exactly wrong sooooo, I just have to drop everything at the eleventh hour, scurry over there, and do it my damn self anyway.

And a lot tired of explaining the same things over and over again, only to have the same person react as if I just threw a rattlesnake onto his desk three weeks later, when he finally gets around to looking at it for the first time.

Extremely tired of having items failed by the QA team with vague ‘it didn’t work, please do the needful’ comments on them. Five…hours…later…they give me a customer claiming that this is the one they tested with and it didn’t end up right…and I look at it and go, “Dude, there is nothing wrong with this, see? You tried to update the social security number to ‘aardvark.’ That’s not a valid SSN, man.” “Oooooooooh, but, it should update it, because I was logged in as ‘admin.’” “nooooooo, it shouldn’t, because in addition to not being a valid SSN, ‘aardvark’ is also not a number. The field only accepts numbers. Even an admin can’t make aardvark be numeric…” “No, it should be updated. Because I logged in as admin.”

{head-desk} {head-desk} {head-desk} {head-desk} {head-desk}

And don’t get me started on ‘being a senior developer.’ Wait. Let me rephrase that. Being the senior developer.

Sometimes, I honestly wish I could rewind and go back to being less experienced. Or that I had some kind of instant mind-meld like technology by which I could simply infuse what I know into the minds of others. Because I am getting damned tired of my own team staring at me with ‘deer in the headlights’ expression when I’m saying something that to me, is not only really old news, but pretty basic.

Plus, I have nobody I can bounce ideas off of at work anymore. The best guy for that left a couple months ago, and the next best guy for that left last month, and that leaves me just the Internet when I’m wondering if I can solve this or that problem by doing such-and-so esoteric thing that I read about this one time on SqlServerCentral…

Of course, I say that, but what I am reading “for fun” right now? Ahem, well, something about SQL Server 2008 internals…

There really is no going back, I guess; it’s like the more I know, the more I know I don’t know; and then the fact that I know I don’t know kind of bugs me, and I find myself thinking I’ll bet if I just understood HOW this works a bit better, I’d know what to DO about it…and the next thing you know I’m up to my eyebrows in Little Known Facts™ about how the query optimizer actually works.

AND MOST OF ALL, the thing I am the most sick of and ready to just haul off and clobber the next person who displays it…is this kind of thing. Which seems to be how an awful lot of our management and business types react to any information that isn’t what they wanted to hear…

 

Curtains, at long last!

I’ve been meaning to share this: I finally have semi-decent curtains in the master bathroom!

These are Kentucky Wonder pole beans, which produce lovely fresh green beans.

IF! You can get past this phase.

My goodness, however did THAT happen (THREE TIMES ALTOGETHER, I MIGHT ADD!), I wonder quietly to myself…

…ah, I see…

Belief and Possibility

New Years is a funny sort of thing. Considered in a vacuum, it’s an entirely pointless exercise. There’s nothing particularly special about January 1, you know? It’s just another day on a calendar Mankind created as a way to know whether or not you should be mad at someone for not being where you wanted them to be at a given point in time. Darn it, this whole ‘three sunrises from now’ thing is just too vague…I KNOW! I’ll put NUMBERS on it!

There is no New Year Fairy who comes along at midnight on New Year’s Eve to wipe away all the things that block us; there is no astrological event which resets the natural world in any way; there’s absolutely nothing about New Year’s Day that should cause any of us to feel that things can or should be any better going forward than they were the day before.

But, nevertheless…there is a kind of magic to it, born out of our common consent. Collectively, we choose to believe that there is, too, a magic at work in the flipping from one calendar year to the next.

A “bad” year can be put in the rearview mirror, and need have absolutely NO influence on the new one. Resolutions can have more power at this time of year than any other. Even if we have met with failure in years past, this year does not have to be shackled to them.

It is a new, unspoiled thing. A blank canvas, ready for us to draw with ever more experienced hand the life we want for ourselves. Because we said so.

It’s completely silly. Childish, even.

But, human belief is an incredibly powerful thing. When we believe something is possible, no matter how enormous a task it may be, if we really believe we can do it…we will. As long as we do not succumb to doubt, as long as we are willing to keep getting up after we’ve taken a fall, as long as we see these failures not as hard-stops but rather as learning how not to do that totally possible thing – we will do it.

And, if we all really believe that there is a magic to the beginning of a new calendar year – then, there is. Because we just made it so.

So, happy 2014, y’all: I hope your new year is made of all the things you dream; that you will have, do and be all the things you dare to believe possible for yourself; and that doubt will just shut up for a change and let you be awesome as you go into it.