August 31, 2004 :: Fever dream

I've been told I am a pessimist. Maybe that's accurate. I tend to think most people are pessimists. It's certainly borne out by situational surveys across the completely nonrandom unscientifically selected group of people I call my friends. I suppose that, as a pessimist, I view the majority of my life as a struggle to achieve that which always seems to eludes me.

Those of you who I talk to on a frequent basis know that for the past 3 weeks or so, I've been in a feverish dream state. For that short period of time, my life was upended, transformed, however you would like to describe it. It felt different, that's for sure. It was almost unfamiliar. I was happy, for a brief moment or two. I don't know who I was, but I wasn't me.

That's all over now, I'm back to being the surly yet lovable curmodgeon you've all come to know. Did you miss me?


p.s. Nutri-Grain vanilla yogurt bars taste like whole grain Twinkies. try one...

posted by Rainmayun at 10:28 AM -

August 27, 2004 :: Mama, hold my mule!

I went to see the most ghettoest play in DC last night... "A House Is Not A Home". For those few of you who may not be familiar, it is one of those cheaply written and produced black Gospel plays with familiar themes... cheatin, betrayal, and preaching. I don't know how I got suckered into this one, but I did.

It was supposed to be starring Allen Payne, Miki Howard and Chico DeBarge. We spent the whole play trying to figure out (from the balcony) who was Miki Howard... had she lost a bunch of weight? maybe we forgot what she looked like. Turned out she wasn't even in the damn thing... they had some other random woman playing her part. I should have asked for a refund, they didn't have any signs announcing the understudy or anything. Typical black folk.

The play itself centered around a typical, somewhat fractured black family, with a man and wife and a babymama and a 15 year old daughter who gets pregnant. They included the usual stereotype characters: the ultra loud, ultra ghetto friend of the wife who gets saved at the end, the even louder more ghetto and country friend of the husband who acts the buffoon but is really wise, and the cross dressing dude who plays the uncouth granny. The whole show was so predictable that my companion was literally calling out lines and events before they would happen on the stage. The performers couldn't even keep a straight face through some of the scenes, because they were laughing at the stupidity just as much as the audience.

The part that pissed me off the most, though, was toward the end when another one of the husband's friends went off on a 15 minute tangent that had nothing to do with the story and everything to do with preaching to the audience. I don't know about you, but I don't usually pay.... well, I'm ashamed to admit how much I paid for the ticket, but I said I'll be damned if they start passin around collection plates too! Seemed like he was about to do an invitation to join the church, only it wasn't a church, it was the Lincoln Theater. I don't mind having religious themes, but if I want church, I'll go to church. Until then, let me be the heathen that I am.

posted by Rainmayun at 2:22 PM -

August 19, 2004 :: Coping in the Workplace: Throttling

I've decided to start a new series of posts here on my beleaguered blog. I will be featuring techniques for coping with the vicissitudes of the workplace and the inanities of coworkers and managers. Today's post will focus on a technique I call "throttling".

No, throttling doesn't mean choking the life out of the idiots who stir up the bees' nests in the peaceful corner of the meadow that you call your cubicle. Throttling is a method of pacing your productivity at work so as to maintain a sane level of expectation of your capability with your coworkers and managers. Most of my friends are far more capable than their jobs would suggest; in some sense, that's a consequence of the capitalist system. Sure, you could be writing brilliant travelogues of the Italian riviera, but right now all someone's willing to pay you to do is shuffle papers and try not to fall asleep on conference calls. But there's a bit more to it than that... you could shuffle those papers more efficiently, but as any good engineer (and lots of other sane, efficient people) knows, that just leads to more papers being piled upon your desk that require shuffling.

Let's examine a case study: Recently, uptownbrowngirl was tasked by a supervisor to perform an analysis in one day that her less talented coworker was unable to finish in three or four weeks. Being the bright mind that she is, she could see how it could possibly be done in one day, but could not guarantee it (and did not want to promise it or commit to a deadline), because there are always contingencies. So she agreed to do it, with no promises that it would get done. She did, of course, get it done, for which I'm sure all involved were grateful.

There is a flaw in this approach, though. By getting the analysis done even without promises, a halfway astute lazy coworker who's always looking for someone to share the burden might observe her capabilities anyway, and make a mental note of the result. Then, next time, someone will make the request and have the expectation anyway.

Throttling solves this problem by calibrating their observations of your performance down to a level that still gives you breathing room and down-time, without actually compromising your work. For example, if you have been given an assignment that will only take you 2 hours at your peak efficiency, don't give anyone the deliverable until 4 hours have passed. Sure, you still spent two hours on it, and you also had two hours to spare, and chances are those extra two hours on your TPS report didn't affect anyone's life, money or anything else. Of course, you can't do this when you have real deadlines, but when things are not so pressing at work, try spreading your work out. It will take some time, but if you do this consistently, your coworkers' expectations will eventually be calibrated to give you time to catch a breath, answer an IM, take lunch sometimes and still get your work done. You'll be surprised how little your coworkers care about the extra time, even if you work in an industry like my own where we bill the client for all time spent on work performed, down to 15 minute increments.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for poor performance assessments, demotions, terminations or stagnant career development due to over-throttling. You must find the throttle set-point that works for you!

posted by Rainmayun at 3:26 PM -

August 10, 2004 :: Dream state

Last night (or more accurately, this morning after my alarm went off and I went back to sleep), I had a brief dream. I was back in Washington State, visiting my family in the area. I had stepped out on a busy street to follow my brother, who then disappeared into the crowd. While I was standing around looking for him, three blond youths mistook my confusion at his disappearance for unfamiliarity with the area marking me as a tourist, and stole my wallet. For some reason, they remained in my vicinity, pretending to be innocent citizens in the area. One thing led to another, and I ended up beating up all three of them, without much resistance on their part, in an effort to get my wallet back. Then I woke up. Didn't get my wallet, and I beat down three people in the process. What's worse, two of them were women. I wonder what this says about me.

posted by Rainmayun at 11:32 AM -

August 05, 2004 :: Misdialed? maybe.

The following is the full text of a voice mail I received this morning. I've edited out the "um"s and most of the "ok"s for clarity.

Listen, to whom it may concern there, I did not catch your name, I assume that you are affiliated with the Congressional Research Service, because for some reason it's difficult for the switchboards there to find the ombudsman's office. This is Mr. Huffmeister (703)xxx-xxxx and I have contacted David Christopher of course in human relations in the CRS, and with regard to the Library of Congress Mr. Jesse James, Jr., who may be in conference, and he's in the Office of General Counsel and presumably an ombudsman or someone to redress a grievance.

I must complain that in 1971 after leaving graduate school o f library sciences with a perfect grade record, I did apply for a position and internship in the LoC and with possib a permament employment there. They denied me; they had preselection, and I wish to protest that, to refer it to an ombudsman, and the CRS is of course related in that it performs a research service exactly for the LoC and perhaps a few other selected clients. The CRS does have area studies structures, among them Russian and also Middle Eastern. They are staffed with people capable of researching and people who are quoted in papers the Washington Post and the New York Times, and that's reflective of their research assignments. Some of them are published scholars, some are not. Possibly after serving in the LoC a better, more suited research position, I suggest this as a means of redressing or correcting a grievance that occurred at that time.

I find myself under investigation by the government at the same time, the Department of State, CIA, FBI, Department of Defense, even very wrongfully maybe the IRS, and I do urge you as an ombudsman. I contacted the Dept. of State ombudsman, I've pleaded with him to assign something. I have done the same with Mr. James, and the same with you, and the same with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, that I contacted yesterday, that they look at my resume and qualifications as soon as possible. The same with the CIA which, because of its role in this investigation, has chosen to approach to me indirectly rather than respond to applications that I have made. The same would apply to the FBI which has initiated this harassment, which of course falls under the DOJ, John Ashcroft there, and pursuant to this call I am still in the process of desperately trying to find a lawyer who will file that injunction.

OK, please assign something, ok? I'm telling you that I need a job. Please get back to me, Charles Huffmeister (703)xxx-xxxx.

posted by Rainmayun at 12:24 PM -