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April 19, 2000 |
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Ever had a bad day? I mean a day when you know is going to be bad before
you even before you step out your front door?
I suppose that it started yesterday. I did laundry. I washed my exercise
clothes; this included number of white cotton shirts, a couple of running
shorts, and the hand wraps I got a
couple of months ago. Did I mention that the hand wraps were red? …a
bright red? …ones that I had never washed before? I knew
that it was a calculated risk to wash them with my white cotton shirts, but
I figured that I wouldn't really care if the red bled from the hand wraps
and turned my shirts pink. Give me some credit. They are workout
shirts after all, who am I trying to impress at the gym? However, what I
didn't count on is the color from wraps bleeding in blotches. I was left
with shirts that were not uniformly pink, but instead also had some random
red spots. Life mocks me.
That was last night!
Last Friday, I went to a movie with Pam. Whenever I go to a movie, I turn my pager and cell phone into silent or vibrate mode. The only problem is that I occasionally forget to turn my pager back to the audible alert. When I'm at home, I don't carry my pager, so I don't notice a page when I have it on vibrate.
I didn't notice the page this morning. It was a bad page to miss. I do my normal morning routine (we'll overlook the fact that it wasn't actually morning anymore), getting out of bed, showering, cleaning my nipple piercing, etc. I didn't check my pager until I was getting dressed.
Apparently I had managed to break the build with some things I checked in a couple of days ago. I don't really expect people who are not software engineers to understand precisely what that means, but it makes a number of people very upset.
I'm not going to make excuses. I got cocky and careless. I was warned a couple of days before by my manager and I still didn't take it seriously enough.
Once I got in to work, Jim was already attending to it. Besides being a good friend, he is also a good boss. He was on his way to figuring it all out and trying to put it back in working order. We spent too much of the afternoon trying to figure out all the little caveats and little problems we were encountering. Actually, Jim was doing most of the work, I was simply doing whatever I could to help but mostly staying out of his way. The director of the group scheduled a meeting with us, to make sure that the problems were addressed and that this won't happen again. Just to give you an idea… this was at least five managerial levels above me. My manager took much of the abuse, despite that fact that it was due to my negligence.
Needless to say, it won't happen again. It was a tense day. We lost many manhours because I got careless. This simply shouldn't happen.
I called Pam; I needed a hug.
I had dinner with some of the guys from work, namely Christian, Nathan, and Mike. I've known Christian for a while, and we have chatted about many things. Not really a surprise though; he seems to have a good head on his shoulders. Nathan was the one who recommended the piercer, Chuck; he is a cool guy, who has incredible manual dexterity (being a percussionist and all). Although I haven't exchanged many words with Mike, he does seem quite likeable.
On Monday, Christian and I talked about getting dinner at a nearby teriyaki place, Sapporo. That's where we went. It is a typical mom-and-pop restaurant that I would imagine gets most of its income from the local businesses and their lunch rush. The place was quite pleasant. Christian drove his car, the one that has leaks into the interior and smells like mildew, not that I mind really… I was simply pointing it out.
When I talk to these guys at work I didn't realize that they get quite this giggly for lack of a better word. We just seemed to get into this phaze were we simply could not stop laughing. We got into some earth moving discussions about television; I wish I were making this up.
For one we discussed that the "three hour tour" premise of Gilligan's Island was a faulty one. Logic would dictate that if it were a three hour tour, then the trip would be, at most, a one and a half hour trip straight out and back. How bad can the weather forecast be for that span of time, both in distance and in time? We also wondered if the ship went out of California or Hawaii. Anyone?
If can picture this, the conversation then deteriorated into the discussion of cartoons. We discussed the finer points of the Superfriends among others. We had a brief discussion about Captain Caveman. We all knew that he carried a club, but there was some debate as to whether or not he wore a cape. I cannot make this up.
Truth be told they were the ones who were doing most of the laughing. I was still in a bit of a somber mood, but those guys, jokers as they were, did brighten my spirits. Towards the end I was feeling much better… almost normal.
April 19, 2000