Things Azz is not allowed to do as a virtual minion (part 6)

Part 5

138. Not allowed to declare a zombie emergency at work solely on the basis of having smelled someone's lemon lotion.


139. Should not fishmum all of my co-workers.


140. Just because co-worker 1 and co-worker 2 get along like hydrogen and fire does not mean that I need to bring the gasoline.


141. There is no need to test the fuzzy areas where "gossiping with my industry friend" and "colluding with the competitor" overlap.


142. bikeshed.org is a teaching tool, not a toy.


143. "awesomely cool" does not override "incompetent as fuck" when dealing with external parties.


144. Never, ever, ever piss off my Overlady.


145. My formal job title is "Administrative Assistant II", not "Minion", and I should remember this when introducing myself to the CEO.


146. I have brought my rooster to work. I do not need to bring my vuvuzela.


147. Even though I am capable of explaining things like Foul Bachelorette Frog at work, in entirely work-safe language, does not mean that I should.


148. Not allowed to actually employ a bucket of ice water to immediately stop a bad presentation.


149. I am neither an engineer nor a ninja.


150. Not allowed to schedule meetings in the room people use to pump breast milk.


151. I am allowed to "experience the power of Java", but it is neither mandatory nor recommended.


152. "...would rather go back to pine..." is very strong language.


153. I am allowed to come in to the office after everyone else has left for the evening, but I needn't expect the whole abandoned-office ambience to be anything but creepy.


154. No matter how wrong a random co-worker is on the intranet, I still don't get to punch him. Them. Usually him.


155. Probably should not explain the "motherfucker" pain scale over lunch.


156. When responding curtly to someone who is being Wrong on the Intranet, look up their department and title before hitting send on the four-word curt answer.


157. The amount you loathe the email program is inversely proportional to the amount you should be googleable in relation to that program's name, if you work for the company that makes it.


158. Things which should not be swag at the upcoming event include:
     
     • Friendship bracelets
     
     
     • catapults
     
     
     • trebuchets
     
     
     • marshmallow guns
     
     
     • ...any projectile toy
     
     
     • cowbell (small)
     
     
     • more cowbell (medium and large)
     
     
     • kazoos
     
     
     • vuvuzelas
     
     
     • ...any noisemaker
     
     
     • those little pop-and-jump widgets, which are both noisy and projectiles
     
     
     • improbably shaped stress balls
     
     
     • condoms
     
     
     • lube
     
     
     • lighters
     
     
     • custom-branded chickens
     
     
     • sheep
     
     


159. Promotional lighters send the message: "We think you will have problems at this conference that can be solved with fire."


160. "This thing is on fire" is not a problem that can usually be solved by adding more fire.


161. "I loathe my co-worker" is a problem, but should be solved by HR, not by fire.


162. "Goatse" is not a verb that should be used at work. Especially not with the little hand gestures.


163. Not authorized to be high on Pixi Stix while customer-facing ever again.


164. Not allowed to swear at the developers, even when they did lose some of my data.


165. "Ostensibly" is a word that shouldn't need to be used at work.


166. A request to view someone's code in order to affirm that they have l33t 5killz in it need not be worded as, "Can I see your python?"


167. Shouldn't make fun of any of the co-workers who get automatically assigned usernames with really bad implications.


168. Even if they've been a thorough pain in the ass to their teammates.


169. Should avoid getting entangled in a circular morass of help tickets.


170. Definitely don't get to tell Mr. Bad Username that his teammate could replace him by drinking a second cup of coffee.


171. Not allowed to rent an apartment and not live there for school district fraud purposes.


172. Not allowed to swear at the guy who was suggesting this.


173. Not allowed to decontaminate toxic people at work using weapons and duct tape.


174. Shouldn't use the phrase "How do you schedule a Monday-to-Friday meeting in this monkey-fried system?" when filing a ticket about date confusion in the calendar, because someone might get confused because the meeting I was trying to file was between different days of the week.


175. Also because helpdesk may have heard of Snakes on a Plane too.


176. "Also the previous query, [redacted], except louder, with a dance number and maracas," is an acceptable form of swearing among the team, but should not actually be exposed to helpdesk either.


177. Should not accidentally share the Chocolate Penis Saga with a random co-worker.


178. No trolling the homeopathic users on an internal mailing list.


179. Not allowed to create an environment of sexual harassment accidentally via autocorrect.


180. Never again attempting to schedule something the same day as a major holiday.


181. This includes Halloween, Voting Day, and the release of the latest geek magnet film.


182. "Asks" is never to be used as a noun.


183. Roaring about my mighty godlike powers upon a particularly nice bit of troubleshooting only lasts until the next fucking bug.


184. "Motherfucker" does not belong anywhere in the help ticket or the bug report.


185. Don't fuck up any manager's meeting, even if there are bugs in the calendar.


186. Doubting a dev's veracity to their face when they say something will be fixed quickly is arguably rude. Saying that you'll believe it when you see the code checked in, when forwarding the promise to the angry manager whose meeting you just screwed up, is only human.


187. Chocolate is often a valid form of apology, especially to that manager.

Part 7

things done today (a partial list)

• Woke up on my own at just after five the fuck in the morning.
• Took the early bus to work. Didn't make myself motion sick by trying to read while that bouncy and that tired.
• (ran work errands while passing through admin.)
• Prepared for the early meeting with dev. (This was the reason that it was necessary to take the early bus to work.)
• Started the meeting with dev in the Junior Researcher's absence.
• (Thankfully fell back on the Junior Researcher's comforting presence, because he knows more about this than me.)
• Explained to dev why a "cosmetic" bug was high-priority with an apt analogy: say there's a wrinkled rug. It's just a wrinkled rug. But that rug is right in front of the door, and you trip on the sumbitch every time you go in or out. IT NEEDS TO BE FIXED. Got their understanding.
• Explained to dev that my workflows are not as smooth as they imagine. Eventually declared to the Nervous Dev that for my workflows, she should imagine severe ADHD with people banging pots and pans in the background. (That got her to giggle, and perhaps understand.)
• Got understanding on the number one priority and why it is priority. Did not yell or curse. Also explained that the thing had timed out of being catastrophic.
• Enjoyed lunch.
• Checked in with my manager. There is a sense of a lurking horror of THINGS TO DO OH MY GODDDDDDS upcoming, but for *right now* things are not bad. Got some closure on the Meeting Room Saga. I'll be reaching out to the new point of contact.
• Manager suggested that perhaps Nervous!Dev should do a contextual interview with me, to watch me in my actual environment and observe my workflows. I inquired whether she would want that I ask the team to then schedule dropping in on me and interrupting my workflow as happens in the wild.
• Mailed the mailings from the Junior Dev's research, and did all the associated data entry. *preens*
• Went to game night. Had fun at game night.
• Retrieved my car from the parking lot. Found, to my horror, that there were ants all over the outside.
• Picked up a few things at Costco. Refueled. Found a car wash. Enjoyed the novel feeling of clean windows.

Tomorrow, a check-in with my grandmanager.

Real Adult Professionals Forget Things.

(Also on Things Real Dreamwidth Programmers Do.)

I filed a bug at work today. This is how that went:

First, I noticed a little glitch with the Move Message dialog, which had been bugging me subconsciously for weeks, and just then floated to the top. I thought maybe I should file a help ticket, but thought that I'd filed enough help tickets for a while and this was minor, so I might as well save them the trouble and look for duplicates first.

So I went to that product's bug tracker and searched for the most obvious keyword, which had 400 results. So I added the next most obvious keyword, which narrowed it down to about 90. Then I went down the list and started opening things in tabs, including two that by their titles looked like they might be duplicates of each other, but were entirely unrelated to what I was complaining about.

After that, I read through the tabs I'd just opened, and found nothing that looked like the bug I was encountering. Then I looked at the two that might have been duplicates of each other, and found that they were in fact nothing at all alike except in the title. Then I looked at some of the other bugs that could have been duplicates of those, but those weren't very interesting.

Reading through all those bugs had given me another couple useful keywords to try, so I tried that and got only about 10. Those were really quick to read through, so I did. And I closed the last tab from the bug tracker.

Then I closed the help page, because I couldn't remember why I'd opened it, and obviously it was not for any good reason if I couldn't remember.

Then I went back to my email and noticed that for some reason I'd stopped in the middle of moving a message. "Huh, that's weird," I thought.

I looked briefly at the message to figure out where I wanted to move it. I looked at the dialog, which had been recently changed to retain the last folder that I'd moved something to, in case I was doing it a lot. I noticed that I couldn't see the highlight, and couldn't remember what it was. "That's obnoxious, I should file a bug," I said; "I can never remember anything like that longer than 30 seconds."

I opened up a tab for a helpdesk ticket, and then realized what I'd just done.


Yesterday I'd described my workflows to a dev as "Imagine severe ADHD, and people banging pots and pans in the background", and I stand by that description.

10 tweets for 2013-4-24

In the last 24 hours, I posted the following to Twitter:

• Wednesday, 0023: DW entry: Things Azz is not allowed to do as a virtual minion (part 6) http://azurelunatic.dreamwidth.org/7034954.html
• Wednesday, 0102: My fitbit #Fitstats for 4/23/2013: 7,852 steps and 3.4 miles traveled. http://www.fitbit.com/user/23LLYD
• Wednesday, 0301: Each commercial radio play of "Manic Monday" or "Friday I'm in Love" on the wrong day should result in a $25 donation to the temporally lost
• Wednesday, 0303: There are time traveler charities, right?
• Wednesday, 0837: @AlbredaAylese You're welcome. Compiling these reminds me what an effective force of surrealism I happen to be.
( read the other 5 )

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