Category / work
Well, kiir was right. she’s been telling me, since i said i was gonna try it, that i wasn’t gonna come even vaguely close
and, well, she was right. still too much with getting settled at my new job and stuff, and weekends i’ve been non-stop cleaning, basically, so i haven’t had any time to really work on it.
maybe next year i’ll be prepared and have thought things out in advance :o
i was tasked with looking into subversion for doing version control at the office, back when i started
(then i asked for vmware so i could practice messing around with it; don’t hve vm yet …)
this week, it came back up. so i installed it at the office
and i’m working on my nanowrimo story. which i keep having ot mail back and forth, or the new bits, etc
and it occurred to me: hey! why don’t i just set it up and put my story into subversion! sweeet :)
now i can work on the same freakin’ text both ways!!!
ok, so, you probably find this far less exciting than i do. so bite me :p
Ok so didn’t post the last two weekends, so covering both now real quick.
finally figured out how i could get to my desk without knocking on the door. the mailroom door isn’t locked. inside, there’s one of those double-half doors like in a stable, but it’s locked. except the top is always open, so if i go into the mail room and just reach inside, i can open the door then walk around to my desk :o
that was on a tuesday afternoon. wednesday afternoon i had my badge. what timing!
last wednesday i actually got access to log into some servers! so now i’m starting to be able to do my job. working on some php right now, and someone just passed on some perl that they got from my predecessor. except no one but my predecessor was good at perl. conveniently i am :)
getting some work done feels nice, though. sitting around being useless was getting a bit annoying. especially since i’m on a temp contract, i wanna show that i’m GOOD and they should HIRE me!!!
well, there’s still one day left of this week, but i’m gonna go ahead and do this today. get over it :o
still have no badge (and no particularly great belief that THAT will resolve tomorrow :o the ribbon for printing on the badges was delivered to the building monday. but not to the badging office. apparently no one’s managed to find it yet :o)
getting my off-the-shelf linux box set up to be as usable as i can. except i can’t install SHIT. nada. can’t change off of gnome to something less useless. i mean, my windows laptop (which i don’t really need now ;) i can’t install firefox or gvim (b/c they’re not “approved applications” … folks, it’s a web browser (that’s approved on the linux machine) and a TEXT EDITOR!!! come ON!). trying to get VMWare on the linux box so i can play with installs. the unix support group has it, so it’s apparently vetted. now, if only we could figure out how to get ME a copy.
(actually, i have emails saying they added me to the dreamweaver and some other macromedia groups so i can run those apps … if only i HAD those apps (and some ungodly reason to use them) … so we can only guess how long vmware will take me)
took 3 days to be able to use the linux box. apparently it wasn’t ACTUALLY set up. it was just KINDOF set up, oops. had a stupid damned session this moning telling me all about how to use the document management software. “now select
looking at subversion for my group (thus why i want vmware; i wanna play with installing it before i fuck up a real system :o) and figuring out how to set up my dual monitor on a matrox card … i didn’t know matrox still MADE cards!
started the new job this morning. took the marc train (commuter rail) to union station. union is between mass and H, and first and first. yeah, it’s between the same street :o
trekked off to 4th & G … except 4th & g is now a residential area and not my government building anymore … i went to the wrong fucking 4th and g! so, turned around, back to union and now the OTHER direction (FYI — from 1st&H to 4th&G is NOT 3-4 blocks. it is, apparently 5 or 6 … don’t ask me. the streets do a lot of weird shit; this is why i’m not driving around that nuthouse)
get to the office, start signing in for visitor when guard realizes i’m on the auth list. she tells me to go to the training room, training started at 8:30 (it’s 9:15 now; woulda been 8:45, but i went the wrong way, remember?)
go up, get to the room and there’s a packet still waiting to be picked up. at least this won’t be awkward :o except the packet isn’t mine? get told to grab it and get IN THERE anyway.
10:30~11 … there’s finally a break, so i ask. while all the civil servant federal benefits ARE nice …. i’m a contractor, am i supposed to be here? surprisingly enough, no. not until the afternoon half (which was the half i knew about, too, so that matched up)
couldn’t DO anything all day. didnt get my computer and securid until the afternoon session. badging office was out of badge-ink or something and couldn’t print badges. yeah, i’ll just sit here then? computer session was kinda muffed up too ; network maintenance meant some of us couldn’t log into our domain controllers! *sigh*
took marc home whee. marc’s decent at least :) bought the month pass this afternoon. figure i’m gonna use it anyway an’ all
So today was the last day at my old job. spent the morning going through my office, making sure all the drives were scrubbed of my stuff. swept and swiffered my side of the office. it needs more swiffering. it actually needs a heavy duty mopping, stripping, and waxing. but i had a broom and a swiffer. the new guy’ll have to learn to cope :)
went to rsync everything off the desktop to the laptop, so the desktop could be wiped to whatever the new person wants. but i had a backup dir, which had 10G of data from another server when IT ran out of space. and a 10G directory with the last 9 months of logs. compressed. there was like 8-10G a month uncompressed … and sept wasn’t compressed yet b/c it wasn’t complete yet. so yeah. 20G of stuff, plus the 15G of build and burn directories for the installs. i gave up when i needed to go, wiped the partial, and left the desktop set. shut it all down though
made magic envelopes, printed out the docs i’d hacked together the last two weeks. turned in all my keys, cards and badges. exit interview was boring but quick. hr lady said she takes the feedback and gives a summary at the end of the year (not that my comments, if they get comments, won’t be blatantly mine, but whatever). and if there are problem areas they’ll talk to the employees about what they think could be done to improve communications and training and stuff.
this meeting will, of course, be like a hundred people per session and will involve telling the employees that the mandatory security BS will be every 3 months, now, instead of every 6. yay communication :o
but maybe my officemate’ll be able to get some training. before everyone quits next year for real jobs ;)
today was the farewell lunch
i’ve been out to lunch with people from the team (not counting my office mate) … less than a dozen times. and half a dozen of them i’d say were me and dave when he wanted to “sit down and talk with me” about something. usually sometime where i just shut people down by dismissing their concerns out of hand or something :o
mind, i’ve not had much interest in going out with them in general, but it’s a principle thing :p they wanted to take me out and hang out some b/c i’m leaving. not b/c they necessarily like me or want to hang out, but b/c they feel they should since i’m going. oi.
got my white pizza again though :) not sure how much more often i’ll get that, now :/ they got me the new guildwars expansion (collectors edition, preorder) which was kinda cool actually. well, rob picked it out, and no one else knew what he’d gotten.
cleaned up more garbagio and went to make a final backup of the ve disks, since we don’t have a real backup system. except the usb drive wouldn’t recognize. i think somethings wrong with it. again. last one blew too. after letting it go for hours to see if it was fscking or checkdisking or whatever, i dug around and found another one in my office. hooked it up, and it was fine. so i took it and the office laptop down and started the backup. amusing part is, this drive i pulled out of the trash when someone was cleaning their office. it had the drive and power, i figured what the hell :) and apparently it worked! handy that
burned out my chat options at the office. figure i’ll be offline tomorrow. need to finish up the docs and write up magic envelopes, but otherwise i think it’s all pretty well set to leave.
tomorrow’s my exit interview :o “why are you leaving?” “because i’ve had no advancement, no raise, and i was generally treated as an exploitable resource. exploit THIS!” :o ok, so maybe in different words?
since friday i have to turn in my keys and badges before my exit interview at 2pm, i figure friday’s pretty well shot.
so today i started the final processes of uploading anything i wanted to keep from my systems to my home server, and started deleting non-work things.
flushed out my stored passwords, deleted the apps from the laptop (including wiping the directories totally where they kept data), and trimming out all the notes and such i’d accumulated over the years.
tomorrow, when i leave, i’ll have flushed pretty much everything. i won’t really be able to do much on friday, even if i wanted to :o
wheee
forgot to add on yesterday’s post
at the weekly meeting yesterday, they always ask for ideas. i didn’t have anything (again; i don’t generally look for earth science things; i watch for computer and server things, since it’s kindof myy job)
at some point i made a comment about how to fix some problem, and rob says “hey! that’s your idea! one idea in three years!” “uh?” “you’ve been here three years and finally had an idea!” “i’ve been here four and a half years, rob” “really?”
sadly, 3 years has been the upper end of how long people think i’ve been here.
at least i’m respected and people think about what i do and that it’s done. yeah, right.
my office mate is a slackass. he was in today, and he’s not coming back in this week :o what a slackass. so we said goodbye (he’s one of the people i actually like). made threats to keep in touch and he swore he wouldn’t badger me with things for the office (he probably won’t, to be fair)
the sysadmin i’m good friends with is out of town at his in-laws this week, so we made vague motions and such last week. we’ve been threatening to call each other and get together outside of work, with our families and such, for years now. yeah, like we’re actually gonna ge around to that :o
i’ve been having splitting headaches for the last few days. figure it’s stress/worry over leaving this week and starting next week. and worrying about finances, even though we should be better off even having to pay like 4x for our health insurance on COBRA for the first 3 months.
packing up the office, have most of my stuff out now. the documentation i’m typing up is 17 pages now, although it’s a little haphazard and 5 pages are me describing the new database structures i specd for the redesign. i’m sure my replacement will want to dot hings their own way (i prefer doing things my way, too), but figured i’d at least provide it.
ok, by “describing” i mean “pasting in the sql table creates and putting a few lines of meaningless and blatantly obvious eplanation for every 30-50 lines of sql” but the tables are self-explanatory and self-evident. c’mon :o
they’re taking me to lunch thursday. frankly, i’d be inclined to skip it :o i don’t want to hang out with most of these people. we’ve never had much to talk about when i was here and i wasn’t usually included in lunch, but now we all wanan be pals? yeah, wtfever :p