I Never Write About Work, Dr. Toyoda
6/7/1
The biggest thing going on right now is something that I won�t write about in Stuffo. It�s work. To put the smallest details on it, the new guy who should be here for 8 hours a day, has classes at school which only allow him to be here for 3.5 hours a day, he keeps his door locked when he�s not here so I can�t put files in his office, and he generally will not do anything. His yelling is a little odd in our office too.
You�d think that the 6 month probation rule would be rearing it�s wonderful head, but it isn�t since the powers that be hired him in October. So his probation period was over at the beginning of April. When he mentioned this to me yesterday, he reared back his head and laughed before and after.
This could get interesting in a not so good way.
Meanwhile, I�m desperately trying to not do his work for him. He�s not here and it has to be done. However, I have several other projects that I should be working on. I�m going to have to let him ruin everything that I�ve been maintaining for a year and a half.
That pains me.
It�s raining today. It was very hard to wake up. I�m still rather sleepy, but I got two more projects assigned to me this morning. One is a great idea and easy to implement. The other is a good idea, in theory, but will take not only a redesign of the database, but training those who will now be users on it. But it will help in the long run. I�m not a believer in teaching the new dogs the old dog tricks, and this is a step in the right direction.
I did a little office swashbuckling yesterday. The new guy, Newguy, doesn�t have a radio, a pager, a cell phone, or a printer. While he was using my office to do some billing, I managed to get our pathetic network to allow me to set up Five-O�s printer to Newguy�s computer. I talked to the Director about the pager and radio problem. He said we were out of money. I called a guy who�s been here for over 20 years and he said that he�d have a radio for Newguy, but Newguy dropped it in a [bottomless pit] about a year ago. At that time I made up another colloquialism:
�Ah, the cat has bitten his own tail.�
The person immediately knew what I meant. Excellent. I�ve now created two colloquialisms.
The old timer did have some info for me. �For the pager, just get with Surly Secretary and go down to [Pager People].� So I did. And I got Newguy a pager. We are only charged $3.45 a month and get the pager rental for free, so if they feel like making a big deal of it, since we allegedly don�t have money until October, then they can take it out of my pay.
So, what�s the other colloquialism?
�Taking Sunday dinner for a walk.� And you have to say it in some scratchy throated, hick accent. I usually say �like taking Sunday dinner for a walk.� even though I�m usually talking to the cats. This isn�t a public type colloquialism, or I�ve never had the opportunity to use it in public.
And it obviously means that, in order to show your nicest stuff off, you do something with it that makes no sense.
In other news, I went through one of the coolest plants yesterday. It makes V8 engines, but that�s not the cool part. The amount of robotics and clean, shiny white surfaces...I saw it before it really started operation. (And this isn�t the new Toyota plant.)
I do have an invitation to the Toyota plant�s groundbreaking on my desk, the beauty of being connected. However, since Aisai won�t take off work just to stand around in a place she could care less about, I�m not going. It�s rather geeky of me to want to meet Shoichiro Toyoda in the first place. And the governor will be there, a US senator (and one I voted for), a US congressman (who I didn�t vote for), and the mayor.
I�d just go up to Mr. Toyoda and say, �Great cars, thanks.�
Maybe say they need to bring back the Supra in an all wheel drive form.
Maybe it�s better that I don�t geek out on Dr. Toyoda.