Friday, October 21, 2005
The third week in review
I still don't access to any servers or tools on my desktop. I have been reduced to begging people to get things done. Even playing the newbie card, I'm just getting the run-around. Their SLA for everything is three freaking weeks!
I was busy all day Wednesday, but only because I was in meetings/presentations all day. I got introduced a departmental status meeting (breakfast was provided). We then got the scoop on WAS 6 from IBM (lunch was provided). After that, I went to a change meeting just to see what was going on. The first part of the meeting was spent reviewing the changes that were overdue, i.e. the work was done but the paperwork wasn't. The middle part was just people responding "on schedule" when their change was mentioned. The last part was for new future changes. There was at least twenty people in the room. The printed report was at least 1/4" thick, and not all of the copies were claimed. It lasted an hour. At the end, the new Change Manager stated that the meeting wasn't respected, and that he wanted feedback on what people's expectations were. From what I saw, it was a totally non-value-added activity focussed more on bean counting than mitigating the risk and impact of changes.
We finally had the kickoff meeting for the MQ handoff today. We had waited a week for the team lead to get back from vacation. Then we waited another week for the MQ specialist to be available. The team lead spends five minutes with us. He spends most of it in CYA mode saying that he doesn't want any problems as a result because there were problems before when two different teams were doing MQ. He was probably pissed because my boss was late for the meeting (he always thinks he can do one more thing). My boss takes off after we talk about target dates, and I am left with Gordo the cowboy. There is no documentation, and he is just going to tell me stuff. I was spitting nails after the meeting. I think the commuting is making me grumpy. I whined at my boss's boss afterwards (a career limiting activity) who cornered my boss who thinks there is no politics involved. I had another session with Gordo in the afternoon where I got some more info, but he's sticking to his oral guns.
My pickup died on Wednesday, well the wheel fell off when they towed it to the garage. I drove home from a church meeting the night before, and all kinds of banging was coming from underneath. The pull to the right had disappeared to be replaced by a wobble with a slight pull to the left. I was just praying that I made it home OK. My mechanic says $350 to fix it, but basically the truck is at the end of its life (1992 Ford F150). We're going to go shopping for a beater from him tomorrow. He has a '98 purple Sunfire with 73K klicks on it for $5000 taxes included. Purple's my favourite colour.
D.
I was busy all day Wednesday, but only because I was in meetings/presentations all day. I got introduced a departmental status meeting (breakfast was provided). We then got the scoop on WAS 6 from IBM (lunch was provided). After that, I went to a change meeting just to see what was going on. The first part of the meeting was spent reviewing the changes that were overdue, i.e. the work was done but the paperwork wasn't. The middle part was just people responding "on schedule" when their change was mentioned. The last part was for new future changes. There was at least twenty people in the room. The printed report was at least 1/4" thick, and not all of the copies were claimed. It lasted an hour. At the end, the new Change Manager stated that the meeting wasn't respected, and that he wanted feedback on what people's expectations were. From what I saw, it was a totally non-value-added activity focussed more on bean counting than mitigating the risk and impact of changes.
We finally had the kickoff meeting for the MQ handoff today. We had waited a week for the team lead to get back from vacation. Then we waited another week for the MQ specialist to be available. The team lead spends five minutes with us. He spends most of it in CYA mode saying that he doesn't want any problems as a result because there were problems before when two different teams were doing MQ. He was probably pissed because my boss was late for the meeting (he always thinks he can do one more thing). My boss takes off after we talk about target dates, and I am left with Gordo the cowboy. There is no documentation, and he is just going to tell me stuff. I was spitting nails after the meeting. I think the commuting is making me grumpy. I whined at my boss's boss afterwards (a career limiting activity) who cornered my boss who thinks there is no politics involved. I had another session with Gordo in the afternoon where I got some more info, but he's sticking to his oral guns.
My pickup died on Wednesday, well the wheel fell off when they towed it to the garage. I drove home from a church meeting the night before, and all kinds of banging was coming from underneath. The pull to the right had disappeared to be replaced by a wobble with a slight pull to the left. I was just praying that I made it home OK. My mechanic says $350 to fix it, but basically the truck is at the end of its life (1992 Ford F150). We're going to go shopping for a beater from him tomorrow. He has a '98 purple Sunfire with 73K klicks on it for $5000 taxes included. Purple's my favourite colour.
D.
