The Company laid off my team's SSIS developer today.
She was notified on Tuesday that her last day would be Thursday, today. Though I'd seen it coming -- she was clearly not carrying her weight, and though I was hired on as a general .NET developer, I had been taking on her duties over the past few sprints -- it still seemed pretty fucked up for The Company to give her just two days to turn her life around.
I guess that's the risk of being a contractor; they can throw you back just as quickly as they reeled you in.
-
One of the reasons I left The Ex-Company earlier this year was because I felt a moral uneasiness being associated with an establishment that was seemingly so unethical to its worker bees. Promises were sold and subsequently retracted. Fellow employees were laid off or placed in uncompromising situations due in large part to management's own mishaps.
I wanted no part in that, and so I left.
Coming into the current Company, I had no expectations that they were anymore morally righteous. It is business after all.
Maybe for that reason, when I heard of the SSIS developer's short notice turnover, I was unaffected. Perhaps the world is predictable, and we are disappointed simply by our own expections.
Sort of like a girl who dates an asshole and expects him to be an asshole. When he's an asshole, she's content because that was her expectation, and in the rare cases that he's not an asshole, those moments seem even more alluring. And it may very well have been the case that she left a lesser asshole for this asshole because she expected the last asshole to not be an asshole, and he disappointed her.
Besides, this asshole probably has more money. Signs a bigger paycheck. And I feel no shame in saying: my silence can be bought.
-
We had a farewell team lunch for the SSIS developer at a Mexican restaurant, which was ironic because she practiced one of those religions that prohibited the consumption of most meats.
The lunch was mundane; guys talked to the guys they normally talk to about the subjects they normally talked about. Nobody seemed to pay much mind to the SSIS developer or spoke to her as if it were her last day.
Upon my departure from The Ex-Company, everyone inquired about my future, and contact information and networking referrals were exchanged. But none of that happened for the SSIS developer. I wasn't sure whether it was because everybody thought what I thought -- that without taking the time for some serious training, she was underqualified for this industry -- or whether it was her own introvertedness that dissuaded others from offering aid. Or maybe a combination of both.
At the end of the day, we shook hands and she simply went home.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Tainted Blue
Thanks to Ike, the 600-mile monster storm hovering over the Gulf of Mexico, the whole city halted operations for the weekend. The Client closed its offices Thursday afternoon and would not open again till Monday.
Don, Trinh, Julian, and I went downtown on Thursday night to throw down before the media-dubbed "$100 billion storm" turned the lights out this weekend. We went to a bar on Main St. with a live 80's cover band.
Late in the night, a group of Asian guys started a quarrel with us. Allegedly, I was talking to some girl earlier in the night, and one of the guys in the group, her boyfriend, didn't appreciate it.
A bald-headed guy in a white T-shirt -- who, from what I understand, was not the girl's boyfriend -- punched Julian -- who is not the guy that talked to the girl. I wrestled the guy off of Julian, and security came in immediately and told us to leave.
I was led out first by a short Hispanic police officer, and I complied, walking through the crowd and out the door on my own without resisting. I didn't want to fight, and the night was just about done anyway.
When I got out of the door, it was just me and the police officer; the other guys had, for whatever reason, been held up a little longer inside. The officer told me to go home.
"I am," I said, "My driver's still inside. He'll be out in a sec, and he'll take me home."
The officer told me not to stand in front of the club, and that I need to step around the corner.
I did.
As soon as I turned the corner, the son of a bitch gave me a cheap kidney shot. He proceeded to grab me by the face and plant my head into the sidewalk.
As I sat up, he walked away. So in a drunken stupor, I started yelling obscenities at him. I called him an overcompensating prick. A short, cockless faggot with a sick Napoleon complex. I generously offered my services to his wife since he obviously wasn't capable of pleasing her. And while I was at it, I suggested that I'd go ahead and fuck his mother, his sister, and even his daughter, too, if he had one.
I don't know why I said the things I said. I was a drunk guy bleeding on the sidewalk yelling at a police officer. The funny part was that, as I was yelling these things to him, I remember that I wasn't mad that I had been hit or angry that I was bleeding; I was fucking pissed because he scuffed my new kicks.
I wholly expected the officer to attack me again and just wail on me, open me up. And in retrospect, I kind of wish he had, because my obscene yelling had attracted a crowd, and some open wounds might've made good grounds to press charges. But he just stood me up and cuffed me, saying to me, "I told you go home. You had to run your mouth, didn't you?"
Though I was cuffed, I never believed that the officer was going to arrest me. Because he never tried to move me anywhere; he just stood there, repeating, "You still wanna run your mouth?" Plus, there was a hurricane just hours away on the horizon, and they'd have to process me super fast and go through the trouble of transporting me to a safer area.
But I didn't call him out on it; I was drunk and stupid, but not quite stupid enough.
Not long after, the guys came around the corner and saw me, accompanied by another police officer, a stout Caucasian guy, who was escorting them out. They all ran over to assess the situation.
As soon as the second officer arrived, I blurted, "I just got two things to say! First, this is my statement: when I was asked to leave, I complied peacefully and willingly. I have hit no one tonight, and no one hit me. Except him." I angled my chin to point at the officer who was holding my cuffed arms behind me. "I have done no wrong, I have violated nobody's rights, and nobody violated mine. Except him.
"Second, that is all the talking I'm going to do to either of you. So if you're arresting me, I'm lawyering up. And I want your badge number." I turned back to catch a glimpse of the officer behind me, then read his nametag aloud.
The two officers discussed something quietly. Then, the Hispanic officer, asked the guys, which one of them was driving me home. Don acknowledged. The officer uncuffed me and commanded, "Take him home."
After crossing the street, I turned back around and loudly reiterated my offer to fuck his wife and mother for him, before being dragged by the guys back to the car.
Don, Trinh, Julian, and I went downtown on Thursday night to throw down before the media-dubbed "$100 billion storm" turned the lights out this weekend. We went to a bar on Main St. with a live 80's cover band.
Late in the night, a group of Asian guys started a quarrel with us. Allegedly, I was talking to some girl earlier in the night, and one of the guys in the group, her boyfriend, didn't appreciate it.
A bald-headed guy in a white T-shirt -- who, from what I understand, was not the girl's boyfriend -- punched Julian -- who is not the guy that talked to the girl. I wrestled the guy off of Julian, and security came in immediately and told us to leave.
I was led out first by a short Hispanic police officer, and I complied, walking through the crowd and out the door on my own without resisting. I didn't want to fight, and the night was just about done anyway.
When I got out of the door, it was just me and the police officer; the other guys had, for whatever reason, been held up a little longer inside. The officer told me to go home.
"I am," I said, "My driver's still inside. He'll be out in a sec, and he'll take me home."
The officer told me not to stand in front of the club, and that I need to step around the corner.
I did.
As soon as I turned the corner, the son of a bitch gave me a cheap kidney shot. He proceeded to grab me by the face and plant my head into the sidewalk.
As I sat up, he walked away. So in a drunken stupor, I started yelling obscenities at him. I called him an overcompensating prick. A short, cockless faggot with a sick Napoleon complex. I generously offered my services to his wife since he obviously wasn't capable of pleasing her. And while I was at it, I suggested that I'd go ahead and fuck his mother, his sister, and even his daughter, too, if he had one.
I don't know why I said the things I said. I was a drunk guy bleeding on the sidewalk yelling at a police officer. The funny part was that, as I was yelling these things to him, I remember that I wasn't mad that I had been hit or angry that I was bleeding; I was fucking pissed because he scuffed my new kicks.
I wholly expected the officer to attack me again and just wail on me, open me up. And in retrospect, I kind of wish he had, because my obscene yelling had attracted a crowd, and some open wounds might've made good grounds to press charges. But he just stood me up and cuffed me, saying to me, "I told you go home. You had to run your mouth, didn't you?"
Though I was cuffed, I never believed that the officer was going to arrest me. Because he never tried to move me anywhere; he just stood there, repeating, "You still wanna run your mouth?" Plus, there was a hurricane just hours away on the horizon, and they'd have to process me super fast and go through the trouble of transporting me to a safer area.
But I didn't call him out on it; I was drunk and stupid, but not quite stupid enough.
Not long after, the guys came around the corner and saw me, accompanied by another police officer, a stout Caucasian guy, who was escorting them out. They all ran over to assess the situation.
As soon as the second officer arrived, I blurted, "I just got two things to say! First, this is my statement: when I was asked to leave, I complied peacefully and willingly. I have hit no one tonight, and no one hit me. Except him." I angled my chin to point at the officer who was holding my cuffed arms behind me. "I have done no wrong, I have violated nobody's rights, and nobody violated mine. Except him.
"Second, that is all the talking I'm going to do to either of you. So if you're arresting me, I'm lawyering up. And I want your badge number." I turned back to catch a glimpse of the officer behind me, then read his nametag aloud.
The two officers discussed something quietly. Then, the Hispanic officer, asked the guys, which one of them was driving me home. Don acknowledged. The officer uncuffed me and commanded, "Take him home."
After crossing the street, I turned back around and loudly reiterated my offer to fuck his wife and mother for him, before being dragged by the guys back to the car.
September Rain
Friday evening, six or eight hours before Hurricane Ike was expected to make landfall, the outer band's high winds whipped through town. I had made a lot of stupid plans with people on what to do during the hurricane. I wanted to fly a kite in the wind. I wanted to make trashcan hurricane drinks and soak some apples in there to eat after we were done drinking.
But the wind went from very calm to very violent very quickly, and none of my stupid ideas came to fruition. The sound you hear when you hold a conch up to your ear resonated outside, and trees and picket fences knelt in mercy to the wind.
Within the hour, the power went out.
-
There was still no electricity on Saturday morning, but by noon, the rain clouds had cleared out and the strong winds had passed.
There were heaps of debris lying on both our front and back lawns, and half the picket fences around our yard had been knocked over. Our fence is a wall of rotting wood, fifteen or so years old and having edured probably more than twice as many tropical storms. We simply stood them back up and nailed the boards back together.
My mother keeps a tree in the front yard with low-hanging branches with prickly leaves that not only stab me when I mow the lawn, but also leave an itchy sensation hours after the fact. The storm had ripped most of the branches off, and I silently celebrated inside, hoping the damned thing doesn't make it.
Shingles had been shredded from our roof in several areas, causing water leakage into a few of the second-storey rooms.
A few years ago, when Rita was supposed to demolish the city, we bought a huge roll of tarp in preparation for roof damage. When Rita veered east and missed us completely, we stashed the tarp away in some dark corner. Consequently, after Ike damaged our roof, we were unable to find it. So in its stead, we took down our shower curtains and nailed them over the holes in our roof.
We cleaned up and made ad hoc patches for whatever damage we could before evening, before it got too dark. I settled myself on the roof with a copy of the latest Maxim, an issue with a nude Megan Fox donning the cover, body parts strategically covered by a bedsheet.
A cold-front was passing into town as Ike was making its way out, carrying a comfortable breeze that made having no electricity slightly bearable. Someone in the distance with an incredible sound system -- and, apparently, a generator -- blasted some Spanish opera-sounding music. The night was like a scene ripped straight out of a movie, based in some European country like Italy or France, with a shot of the rooftops of a town, the streets uninhabited, and the sound of singing or prayers echoing in the distance from a source unseen.
After the sun dipped in the West and my eyes could no longer make out the words or pictures in the magazine, I rolled over and dozed off on the rooftop.
-
Sunday morning, 6am, a second band of rain swept over us, dousing me awake from the rooftop in cold, fat, chubby raindrops.
I climbed off the roof into a window, and quickly ran around the house, closing all the rest of the windows before our carpet took water damage. After washing off and towel drying, I went to find a clean set of clothes only to find that the shower curtains we nailed to our roof did not hold.
The ceiling above my closet had collapsed under the weight of rainwater that had leaked through the roof. My entire wardrobe was covered in dirty rainwater and damp sheetrock debris. I would go the rest of the weekend without a clean pair of underwear.
-
We spent the next seven hours trapped indoors, unable to open windows or doors due to the heavy rain, and without electricity to power an air conditioning unit.
In the late afternoon, when things dried up a bit more, the family and I ventured out and about in the city to find an air conditioned restaurant. I commandoed a pair of basketball shorts and a polo shirt I found in my brother's old closet.
We found electricity in the western parts of the city, where the hurricane had done the least damage, and settled into a deli. Even there, they had just regained electricity, and they served stale bread on their sandwiches and cold soup.
We stalled for a few hours after eating just to bask in the wonders of air conditioning.
-
Came home in the early evening, power had been restored, and I could begin running loads of water-damaged clothes through the washer.
But the wind went from very calm to very violent very quickly, and none of my stupid ideas came to fruition. The sound you hear when you hold a conch up to your ear resonated outside, and trees and picket fences knelt in mercy to the wind.
Within the hour, the power went out.
-
There was still no electricity on Saturday morning, but by noon, the rain clouds had cleared out and the strong winds had passed.
There were heaps of debris lying on both our front and back lawns, and half the picket fences around our yard had been knocked over. Our fence is a wall of rotting wood, fifteen or so years old and having edured probably more than twice as many tropical storms. We simply stood them back up and nailed the boards back together.
My mother keeps a tree in the front yard with low-hanging branches with prickly leaves that not only stab me when I mow the lawn, but also leave an itchy sensation hours after the fact. The storm had ripped most of the branches off, and I silently celebrated inside, hoping the damned thing doesn't make it.
Shingles had been shredded from our roof in several areas, causing water leakage into a few of the second-storey rooms.
A few years ago, when Rita was supposed to demolish the city, we bought a huge roll of tarp in preparation for roof damage. When Rita veered east and missed us completely, we stashed the tarp away in some dark corner. Consequently, after Ike damaged our roof, we were unable to find it. So in its stead, we took down our shower curtains and nailed them over the holes in our roof.
We cleaned up and made ad hoc patches for whatever damage we could before evening, before it got too dark. I settled myself on the roof with a copy of the latest Maxim, an issue with a nude Megan Fox donning the cover, body parts strategically covered by a bedsheet.
A cold-front was passing into town as Ike was making its way out, carrying a comfortable breeze that made having no electricity slightly bearable. Someone in the distance with an incredible sound system -- and, apparently, a generator -- blasted some Spanish opera-sounding music. The night was like a scene ripped straight out of a movie, based in some European country like Italy or France, with a shot of the rooftops of a town, the streets uninhabited, and the sound of singing or prayers echoing in the distance from a source unseen.
After the sun dipped in the West and my eyes could no longer make out the words or pictures in the magazine, I rolled over and dozed off on the rooftop.
-
Sunday morning, 6am, a second band of rain swept over us, dousing me awake from the rooftop in cold, fat, chubby raindrops.
I climbed off the roof into a window, and quickly ran around the house, closing all the rest of the windows before our carpet took water damage. After washing off and towel drying, I went to find a clean set of clothes only to find that the shower curtains we nailed to our roof did not hold.
The ceiling above my closet had collapsed under the weight of rainwater that had leaked through the roof. My entire wardrobe was covered in dirty rainwater and damp sheetrock debris. I would go the rest of the weekend without a clean pair of underwear.
-
We spent the next seven hours trapped indoors, unable to open windows or doors due to the heavy rain, and without electricity to power an air conditioning unit.
In the late afternoon, when things dried up a bit more, the family and I ventured out and about in the city to find an air conditioned restaurant. I commandoed a pair of basketball shorts and a polo shirt I found in my brother's old closet.
We found electricity in the western parts of the city, where the hurricane had done the least damage, and settled into a deli. Even there, they had just regained electricity, and they served stale bread on their sandwiches and cold soup.
We stalled for a few hours after eating just to bask in the wonders of air conditioning.
-
Came home in the early evening, power had been restored, and I could begin running loads of water-damaged clothes through the washer.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
They're Called House Geckos
Friday night, I was leaving work and my car wouldn't start. And nobody at The Client works on Fridays, so nobody was around in the parking lot to give me a jump.
I had to call my father to swing by on his way home from work to bail me out. Jumper cables didn't help; turns out, my battery was just coming to the end of its life.
I left the car at work overnight and brought a new battery out the next morning to take it home.
-
Yesterday, driving home from work, I was going through Meadows Place, which is a tiny little city. Little, as in, like, three blocks little. The Meadows isn't so much a city as it is a residential neighborhood with a bunch of senior citizen homes. The cops in the area are assholes; the kind that'll ticket you for going 37 MPH in a 35 MPH zone.
I was doing about 50.
And as I was driving through, I crossed a sheriff on the on-coming side of the street. Soon as I passed him up, I watched him, from my rear-view, take a U-turn and flash his lights.
Right around the same time, the car to my right made a right turn. He might've braked too abruptly or didn't use his signal or something -- I wasn't paying attention to him -- and the car behind him rear-ended him.
The sheriff stopped those guys instead, and I got off scot-free.
-
After leaving the gym tonight, I was cooling off on the trunk of my car in the parking lot. The weather at night around here has been nice and breezy lately, maybe because Ike's on the horizon -- I dunno, I never paid much attention to physics or biology or whatever the hell science class teaches hurricane mechanics.
A fella leaving the gym got into an old navy pick-up that was parked next to mine and tried to start up. His engine churned, coughed, and died. I watched him make two or three more attempts until he looked up and made eye contact with me.
"Won't start, huh?" I asked. I hate it when people ask obvious questions like that. No shit, it won't start, smartass, who the hell churns their engine for fun?
"Can you give me a jump?" he pleaded.
"'Fraid I got no cables," I shrugged. "Do you have power? Your radio still work? Your headlights come on?"
He turned up his radio and flicked his lights on and off, "Yeah, I got power. What does that mean?"
"Honestly, I got no idea, man. People ask me that all the time when my car don't work. I dunno what it does."
Damn it, I'm a dumbass.
I let the guy borrow my phone to call around for help. I got a fancy shmancy phone, though, and he's pretty old, so I had to dial for him. He only knew one number, some chick, and it went straight to voicemail everytime. He left her a few messages, pleading for her to come get him.
"You from Arlington or something?" I asked him because I recognized the area code of the recipient. For whatever reason, I know area codes to dumb places.
Turns out, the guy's from Dallas and he's just in town for a visit. It was probably a dumb idea for him to take a road trip without carrying a cell phone of his own and in a car prone to failure, but I refrained from telling him so.
I sat around in the parking lot with the guy, asking bypassers if they had jumper cables without luck, until I decided it was time for me to go. I bid him good luck and started getting in my car. As I was loading my gym bag in the backseat, I found jumper cables under the driver seat. My father had forgotten them there from Friday.
"Hey hey hey," I cheered, "Your lucky day, chief!" I said "Hey hey hey" like Doug Butabi did to the skank in A Night at the Roxbury.
-
When I got home, I saw one of those little lizard things crawling on my front door. I pulled its tail off. Don't know why.
I had to call my father to swing by on his way home from work to bail me out. Jumper cables didn't help; turns out, my battery was just coming to the end of its life.
I left the car at work overnight and brought a new battery out the next morning to take it home.
-
Yesterday, driving home from work, I was going through Meadows Place, which is a tiny little city. Little, as in, like, three blocks little. The Meadows isn't so much a city as it is a residential neighborhood with a bunch of senior citizen homes. The cops in the area are assholes; the kind that'll ticket you for going 37 MPH in a 35 MPH zone.
I was doing about 50.
And as I was driving through, I crossed a sheriff on the on-coming side of the street. Soon as I passed him up, I watched him, from my rear-view, take a U-turn and flash his lights.
Right around the same time, the car to my right made a right turn. He might've braked too abruptly or didn't use his signal or something -- I wasn't paying attention to him -- and the car behind him rear-ended him.
The sheriff stopped those guys instead, and I got off scot-free.
-
After leaving the gym tonight, I was cooling off on the trunk of my car in the parking lot. The weather at night around here has been nice and breezy lately, maybe because Ike's on the horizon -- I dunno, I never paid much attention to physics or biology or whatever the hell science class teaches hurricane mechanics.
A fella leaving the gym got into an old navy pick-up that was parked next to mine and tried to start up. His engine churned, coughed, and died. I watched him make two or three more attempts until he looked up and made eye contact with me.
"Won't start, huh?" I asked. I hate it when people ask obvious questions like that. No shit, it won't start, smartass, who the hell churns their engine for fun?
"Can you give me a jump?" he pleaded.
"'Fraid I got no cables," I shrugged. "Do you have power? Your radio still work? Your headlights come on?"
He turned up his radio and flicked his lights on and off, "Yeah, I got power. What does that mean?"
"Honestly, I got no idea, man. People ask me that all the time when my car don't work. I dunno what it does."
Damn it, I'm a dumbass.
I let the guy borrow my phone to call around for help. I got a fancy shmancy phone, though, and he's pretty old, so I had to dial for him. He only knew one number, some chick, and it went straight to voicemail everytime. He left her a few messages, pleading for her to come get him.
"You from Arlington or something?" I asked him because I recognized the area code of the recipient. For whatever reason, I know area codes to dumb places.
Turns out, the guy's from Dallas and he's just in town for a visit. It was probably a dumb idea for him to take a road trip without carrying a cell phone of his own and in a car prone to failure, but I refrained from telling him so.
I sat around in the parking lot with the guy, asking bypassers if they had jumper cables without luck, until I decided it was time for me to go. I bid him good luck and started getting in my car. As I was loading my gym bag in the backseat, I found jumper cables under the driver seat. My father had forgotten them there from Friday.
"Hey hey hey," I cheered, "Your lucky day, chief!" I said "Hey hey hey" like Doug Butabi did to the skank in A Night at the Roxbury.
-
When I got home, I saw one of those little lizard things crawling on my front door. I pulled its tail off. Don't know why.
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