Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2014-04-19 03:02 am
azurelunatic) wrote2014-04-19 03:02 am
Heteronormativity in the time of dish load balancing
The call to lunch is not quite like the call to adventure, as it usually doesn't bring with it risks of gangrene and decapitation. I have also not yet refused the call to lunch.
At some point I will work out a better custody arrangement for my lunchtimes, as it were. Perhaps even something with a schedule. While I am not by any means required to eat lunch with my team, it is good for bonding and morale to do so on occasion.
The move is forcing some organization, so while I keep feeling like I did nothing, in fact there was a lot, and paper getting recycled, and there's my spare set of highlighters and that notebook, and I'm building procedures and things are making sense again. My Overlady has plots for improving things, and I am happy to get behind that, or in front of it, or in whatever direction I would be most useful.
It was an off week for the company togetherness, so there was unofficial togetherness. The other guy, not the Hulk but that friend of Purple and R's, the thin sarcastic guy who's taller than Shrimpy and I think taller than me, but somewhere under six foot so he feels short to me, called for a non-beer-bash sit-together-and-chat meetup. Various bottles were produced from desk drawers, ice and cups and some snacks made their way out of the kitchens, and a right merry time was had. It was The Other Guy, R, Purple, Mr. Zune, and me.
Purple and I were at either end of one bench, and then Mr. Zune slipped in between us. This meant that when Purple said horrible things that required some form of acknowledgment, I had to reach my cane either in front of or around behind Mr. Zune in order to make the symbolic tap on Purple. (It is symbolic rather than full-on smacking, because this is work, we are grown-ups, I have enough muscle to seriously hurt someone if I'm not careful to keep it to a tap, and because the extra length of the cane gives more speed which means more whack.) The rest of the crew learned that it is only Purple who warrants that (because he's the only one who I am symbolically-smacking friends with) so they decided that it would be hilarious if they said terrible things and egged him on, things so terrible that it would be irresistible for him to say something worse, causing me to smack him. I approve of these people. Mr. Zune complained amusedly about all the shenanigans going on over his head, behind his back, and under his nose, but, well, he sort of did sit there. So.
When I was involved with Shawn, I knew that the Shawn Stories were a major up-side to all the various horrorterrors involved in being Shawn's ... associate. Nearly half my life later, the stories are still serving me well. Here's to you, old friend, and may you live your life well (and not close enough to me to screw stuff up like that again).
Mr. Zune's department seems to be staying in one place, in the second floor of the building where my department will land on the first floor. This is because Mr. Zune's department seems to also be under my great-grandmanager. "Cousin!" I exclaimed.
I may be loosening up a little on the name front, but it's not in the direction that might be conventionally suspected. Purple and Mr. Zune already know my real name, and I'd mentioned it in front of R before; I don't think I'd mentioned it to The Other Guy. But now they've all of them heard me refer to myself as "the Reverend Lunatic" in the third person, if only in passing.
At length the party split up, some of us homeward and some of us back to our desks. The moving crew descended, in the hours that most engineers are supposed to have long gone home. The desktop guy was staying late again. A whole fuckton of people are moving around the campus. We go not this weekend but next, and to separate buildings, as we're not in the same department. I clarified that Purple and I were not so much collaborating but commiserating. (Alas, heteronormativity. Alas that proactively answering the question that the desktop guy wasn't asking in the negative would have been protesting too much, even though the answer is in fact in the negative. We continue to be hugging friends, not kissing friends.)
One thing that delighted me to no end yesterday was the facilities response to an email of mine. There's a weekly-or-two newsletter that half of nobody reads. I'm one of the few who do read it. One of the constant problems is dishes. There are dishes for general use, but this depends on people returning them back into the dish ecosystem. Over the last several months, I've had variations on the same conversation with three separate #cupcake engineers:
Azz: Dishes should go back to the kitchens.
#cupcake engineer: Agreed in principle, but I keep forgetting to take it with me when I go back near the area of the specific kitchen I retrieved this dish from.
Azz: Wha-- oh god. No. That is not a requirement. Maintenance load balances the dishes between the kitchens.
#cupcake engineer: Oh. Oh! Okay.
I wrote that up with a little more tortured metaphor and sent it off to facilities a while ago. Then in yesterday afternoon's facilities update, I recognized a familiar heading. My minor screed on dish load balancing had been published with only minor adjustments, tortured metaphors fully intact. My Overlady picked it up out of the lineup easily, because while the guy in facilities whose sense of humor we recognize in most of these updates is smart and on the ball, he's also unlikely to be capable of writing a full two paragraphs full of increasingly tormented load balancing and memory management metaphor on returning your goddamn dishes to some kitchen, any kitchen. We'll see if enough non-#cupcake engineers read it to make a difference, or at least read it and be amused.
Tonight was a scram-hastily kind of night; I escaped without fanfare and noticed Purple's car still parked as I zipped off.
Alas for automated checkouts that behave poorly. The one I ran into tonight asked me how many paper bags I was using. This is normal -- this is California. What was unusual was that when I bagged things up to see how many I was using, the session had timed out, and the register locked up into a state that needed a staff member to unfuck. So I stood around waiting for over twelve minutes before someone came by who could be flagged down. It's worth noting that it was indeed pretty late, but I also think they're probably understaffed at that hour. Granted I was sort of just standing there with the red light blinking and poking at my phone, because my brain was sort of crispy around the edges and I just could not cope with the concept of figuring out how to actually find a person.
Still behind on my email. Still behind on the comments that I know I should reply to, but I want to put some thought into it and maybe not type it out on my phone. Ah, sleep deprivation, lack of time, and an utter terror of the various forms of packing to ensue. These days I'm keeping up with reading Dreamwidth on what tries to be a daily basis, reading LJ every few days as I remember, reading Twitter in the corners of time which I have (perpetually behind, except for the few who I get push notifications for: fish, family, braintwin, and the like), going on terrifying tumblr binges when my executive function has given up in disgust and gone to sleep without me and then ignoring it for weeks on end (but the queue ticks on steadily), and deliberately turning my back on facebook and spitting on its shadow.
Speaking of Tumblr and why I avoid it when I'm not feeling self-destructively bored, the concepts of "content notes are useful" and "don't tag your hate" have been crashing up against each other in my head. Yes, of course if what I have to say is "Ted Mosby is a dirtbag and nobody with an ounce of self-preservation should date him", I don't want to rub that in the noses of those in full HIMYM squee. On the other hand, consider my good friends who would maybe be okay with never hearing another word out of anyone about HIMYM not even bad ones, and who ought to be able to block one or two tags globally. It's an information problem! DEAR LIBRARY SCIENTISTS, SOMEONE HAS PUT UP THE BOOKSIGNAL.
At some point I will work out a better custody arrangement for my lunchtimes, as it were. Perhaps even something with a schedule. While I am not by any means required to eat lunch with my team, it is good for bonding and morale to do so on occasion.
The move is forcing some organization, so while I keep feeling like I did nothing, in fact there was a lot, and paper getting recycled, and there's my spare set of highlighters and that notebook, and I'm building procedures and things are making sense again. My Overlady has plots for improving things, and I am happy to get behind that, or in front of it, or in whatever direction I would be most useful.
It was an off week for the company togetherness, so there was unofficial togetherness. The other guy, not the Hulk but that friend of Purple and R's, the thin sarcastic guy who's taller than Shrimpy and I think taller than me, but somewhere under six foot so he feels short to me, called for a non-beer-bash sit-together-and-chat meetup. Various bottles were produced from desk drawers, ice and cups and some snacks made their way out of the kitchens, and a right merry time was had. It was The Other Guy, R, Purple, Mr. Zune, and me.
Purple and I were at either end of one bench, and then Mr. Zune slipped in between us. This meant that when Purple said horrible things that required some form of acknowledgment, I had to reach my cane either in front of or around behind Mr. Zune in order to make the symbolic tap on Purple. (It is symbolic rather than full-on smacking, because this is work, we are grown-ups, I have enough muscle to seriously hurt someone if I'm not careful to keep it to a tap, and because the extra length of the cane gives more speed which means more whack.) The rest of the crew learned that it is only Purple who warrants that (because he's the only one who I am symbolically-smacking friends with) so they decided that it would be hilarious if they said terrible things and egged him on, things so terrible that it would be irresistible for him to say something worse, causing me to smack him. I approve of these people. Mr. Zune complained amusedly about all the shenanigans going on over his head, behind his back, and under his nose, but, well, he sort of did sit there. So.
When I was involved with Shawn, I knew that the Shawn Stories were a major up-side to all the various horrorterrors involved in being Shawn's ... associate. Nearly half my life later, the stories are still serving me well. Here's to you, old friend, and may you live your life well (and not close enough to me to screw stuff up like that again).
Mr. Zune's department seems to be staying in one place, in the second floor of the building where my department will land on the first floor. This is because Mr. Zune's department seems to also be under my great-grandmanager. "Cousin!" I exclaimed.
I may be loosening up a little on the name front, but it's not in the direction that might be conventionally suspected. Purple and Mr. Zune already know my real name, and I'd mentioned it in front of R before; I don't think I'd mentioned it to The Other Guy. But now they've all of them heard me refer to myself as "the Reverend Lunatic" in the third person, if only in passing.
At length the party split up, some of us homeward and some of us back to our desks. The moving crew descended, in the hours that most engineers are supposed to have long gone home. The desktop guy was staying late again. A whole fuckton of people are moving around the campus. We go not this weekend but next, and to separate buildings, as we're not in the same department. I clarified that Purple and I were not so much collaborating but commiserating. (Alas, heteronormativity. Alas that proactively answering the question that the desktop guy wasn't asking in the negative would have been protesting too much, even though the answer is in fact in the negative. We continue to be hugging friends, not kissing friends.)
One thing that delighted me to no end yesterday was the facilities response to an email of mine. There's a weekly-or-two newsletter that half of nobody reads. I'm one of the few who do read it. One of the constant problems is dishes. There are dishes for general use, but this depends on people returning them back into the dish ecosystem. Over the last several months, I've had variations on the same conversation with three separate #cupcake engineers:
Azz: Dishes should go back to the kitchens.
#cupcake engineer: Agreed in principle, but I keep forgetting to take it with me when I go back near the area of the specific kitchen I retrieved this dish from.
Azz: Wha-- oh god. No. That is not a requirement. Maintenance load balances the dishes between the kitchens.
#cupcake engineer: Oh. Oh! Okay.
I wrote that up with a little more tortured metaphor and sent it off to facilities a while ago. Then in yesterday afternoon's facilities update, I recognized a familiar heading. My minor screed on dish load balancing had been published with only minor adjustments, tortured metaphors fully intact. My Overlady picked it up out of the lineup easily, because while the guy in facilities whose sense of humor we recognize in most of these updates is smart and on the ball, he's also unlikely to be capable of writing a full two paragraphs full of increasingly tormented load balancing and memory management metaphor on returning your goddamn dishes to some kitchen, any kitchen. We'll see if enough non-#cupcake engineers read it to make a difference, or at least read it and be amused.
Tonight was a scram-hastily kind of night; I escaped without fanfare and noticed Purple's car still parked as I zipped off.
Alas for automated checkouts that behave poorly. The one I ran into tonight asked me how many paper bags I was using. This is normal -- this is California. What was unusual was that when I bagged things up to see how many I was using, the session had timed out, and the register locked up into a state that needed a staff member to unfuck. So I stood around waiting for over twelve minutes before someone came by who could be flagged down. It's worth noting that it was indeed pretty late, but I also think they're probably understaffed at that hour. Granted I was sort of just standing there with the red light blinking and poking at my phone, because my brain was sort of crispy around the edges and I just could not cope with the concept of figuring out how to actually find a person.
Still behind on my email. Still behind on the comments that I know I should reply to, but I want to put some thought into it and maybe not type it out on my phone. Ah, sleep deprivation, lack of time, and an utter terror of the various forms of packing to ensue. These days I'm keeping up with reading Dreamwidth on what tries to be a daily basis, reading LJ every few days as I remember, reading Twitter in the corners of time which I have (perpetually behind, except for the few who I get push notifications for: fish, family, braintwin, and the like), going on terrifying tumblr binges when my executive function has given up in disgust and gone to sleep without me and then ignoring it for weeks on end (but the queue ticks on steadily), and deliberately turning my back on facebook and spitting on its shadow.
Speaking of Tumblr and why I avoid it when I'm not feeling self-destructively bored, the concepts of "content notes are useful" and "don't tag your hate" have been crashing up against each other in my head. Yes, of course if what I have to say is "Ted Mosby is a dirtbag and nobody with an ounce of self-preservation should date him", I don't want to rub that in the noses of those in full HIMYM squee. On the other hand, consider my good friends who would maybe be okay with never hearing another word out of anyone about HIMYM not even bad ones, and who ought to be able to block one or two tags globally. It's an information problem! DEAR LIBRARY SCIENTISTS, SOMEONE HAS PUT UP THE BOOKSIGNAL.
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So the people who need to not see "hate" (for whatever values of "hate") in stuff would then be able to block rant content in the topic of their particular fandom, and the people who are sick unto death of the whole goddamn thing can just blacklist the whole tag, and the people who are hatereading everything can block the squee but still read the rants and critical stuff.
That whole thing would depend on people coming to some sort of consensus on tag shapes, or some sort of wrangulated thing, and tools that take into account tag conjunctions as well as single tags.
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Suffice to say, that's really fucking hard.
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(My own Tumblr experience is wholly unmediated by third-party add-ons, which might help explain why I can't seem to use it actively for more than a week or so at a stretch.)
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Even with some of the add-ons, I get about two days at a time.
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Your tag related pondering dovetails interestingly with something I've been thinking about tone. While I don't have the adrenal issues that I did in full-on post-college hardcrash, having had those issues made me hyper-aware of the effects of encountering the wrong tone at the wrong time, even if it's just "I have an important meeting tomorrow morning and therefore insomnia. Lying awake is just making me think about the meeting, so I need a distraction. I could tumblr myself to sleep, but if I encounter actual rage, the vicarious adrenaline will only make me more awake."
I feel like starting from the terrible-yet-good-enough-that-people-keep-using-them point of other internet filtering (for NSFW content or spam) it ought to be possible to write something that could filter for tone (e.g. the post has too high a percentage of swearing or ragewords or all-caps) enough to decrease the likelihood of encountering do-not-want, especially if one goes with the assumption "the tumblr content stream is freakin' endless, might as well give no shits about false positives."
Of course, as I found out during my early time on Tumblr and again yesterday, sometimes having a low but nonzero frequency of do-not-want can be particularly jarring, because one lets one's guard down and then SUDDENLY DO NOT WANT.
(I swear I spent all of yesterday afternoon and much of this morning scrubbing out the inside of my brain with high-octane do-not-want remover, because I so did not expect that. I do not know WHY I did not expect that. I think it is because I am a fool.)
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There are some people I like just fine but cannot read on Twitter because of the very high chance they will post something that will set me entirely off right before bedtime.
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