Best manager is best.

Tuesday is the day I have a 1:1 with my manager.

Today she was a bit late. It seemed that work was doing a thing that involved lots of dessert. So she was late, with the vague aura of very recent sunshine about her person (originally I wrote "smelling of sun", but my nose was not actually involved in that), carrying two cupcakes and a lime-beet popsicle.

"I figured that if I was going to be late, the least I could do was bring you a cupcake. Is red velvet okay?"

Best manager.

Community support, or lack thereof.

Other people have probably expanded on these concepts a lot more, and a lot better, and a lot elsewhere. They were running through my head and I was finally able to pin them down a bit.



The other side of

"But You Are A Lady And She Is A Lady Writer And Writing About Ladies Being Awesome So You Should Support Her And Not Let The Side Down"

is

"But I Am Bisexual Therefore While She Is Being Destructive To My People Or My Good Allies Who May Be Lesbian Gay Trans* Ace Or Other Interesting Gender And/Or Sexual Minorities Or Perhaps Other Variously Disadvantaged Groups She Is Not Actually Helping; The Very Least She Could Do Is Remain Neutral On That Front So No I Think I Will Do Her A Favor And Do Nothing Instead Of Actively Attempting To Tear Her Down Like She Ever So Casually Just Did To Us."

It is cousins to

"Just Because I Am Gay People Who Don't Know Me Stereotype Me As Liking That Artist Who Is Also Gay So I Have Been Avoiding Him Even Though I Think I Might Dig Him Because There Is Only So Far I Can Throw People's Expectations In Their Face Before I Just Fucking Snap"

and

"Look, It's Great That This Dude Who Hits All The Stereotype Buttons Could Come Out Of His Personal Closet At This Point In His Career But The Cynic In Me Thinks It Also Smells Like A Marketing Move And I Resent Being Played Like That So No I Won't Buy It This Year."

Jellybean Solution

The Stage Manager dropped by my cube with some of the little clear plastic cups that they have in the kitchens for M&Ms and walnuts and other random snacks that come in the big plastic cereal-dispenser jars. He set them down next to the jellybean bowl.

"This will make it easier for me to steal some of your jellybeans," he told me solemnly.

(Every now and then he checks in and makes sure it's still okay for him to raid my candy. It is. This is in part because I wouldn't have them there if they weren't to share, in part because I like him as a co-worker and a person, and in part because every other now and then, he leaves me some good chocolate or a contribution towards the jellybean fund.)

The other day, he ran smack up against something that the Kipper/Llama group swear was fixed. He complained about it on not!Facebook, and complained that he couldn't log in to the Kipper/Llama bug tracker. Someone on not!Facebook told him that it's a separate login, and that he should go make himself a login. He ... tends to stick to his comfort zone a little, unless he's lured outside of it. I opened up an incognito tab and poked at the Kipper/Llama bug tracker. Bugzilla, so I entered his email address and it sent him his temporary password. Et voila.

Later, I heard him complaining that the Kipper/Llama guys must think he was crazy, but he swore up and down he was still having the thing happen. I popped in with a little cup of consolation jellybeans and watched him do the thing. The thing happened. I tried duplicating. I couldn't. I popped back in and looked at his setup a little closer, and then something horrible occurred to me. I popped back to my desk, left the settings in his mode, and refreshed the goddamn page. I tried again. The thing happened.

I rampaged into the bug and declared that I'd duplicated it, with steps, including the motherfucking refresh bit. I was 100% certain that the Kipper/Llama guy had swapped his settings, tried the thing, failed, shrugged, and swapped his settings back. But I knew Kipper/Llama's tricks, refreshing having been key in things before. Whatever was unset by those settings must have been still in force and not cleared away until the refresh.

The dev duplicated. Yesterday I saw code checked in, as he'd tracked down one thing that would cause it, and fixed it.

The email popped into my box. I read it. I grabbed a little plastic cup and scooped up some jellybeans of celebration, and popped into the Stage Manager's office. We exchanged cynical cheer (just because it's checked in doesn't mean we're going to get the release with the fix any time soon; we haven't even got the most recent stable release from like fucking May yet).

On my way out, I saw one of the other little plastic cups, more than halfway filled with uneaten green and yellow jellybeans.

My tweets

• Tue, 12:48: ...VorLunatic? :-P http://t.co/AyqYkNCt5D
• Tue, 17:30: RT @ColleenLindsay: Man discovers surprise eight-foot crocodile under the bed. SURPRISE! BIG SHINY TEETH! http://t.co/XYgu7SjBTn
• Tue, 17:32: RT @ftrain: One thing that's okay about living in an apartment is that you never wake up to someone standing on your lawn at 4am with a swo…
• Tue, 22:58: I think I saw a roadkill Roomba on my commute.
• Wed, 01:03: My fitbit #Fitstats for 9/17/2013: 3,837 steps and 1.7 miles traveled. http://t.co/gFMrr7HEB6
• Wed, 01:04: Photoset: swaggityswagimastag: This is my favourite thing wow, http://t.co/IZV6PvWjb9