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Notes to Self:

• Always listen to instinct. Especially when it says "don't have any alcohol tonight, it'll just give you a headache."
  
• Before calling landlord about lack of heat in apartment on very cold day, check gauges on ALL boilers/oil tanks in basement, not just the one you think is the right one.
  
• Cleaning the cat litterbox more than once per week will make the task less unpleasant.
  
• Sleeping late on Sunday morning will cause insomnia Sunday night, which in turn causes Monday morning to be hell. Of course, I've been making this particular note to myself for years and it hasn't taken yet.
  

In other news, TiVo is still the coolest thing ever. I found out that if you start watching something for a few minutes and then hit 'record,' it actually starts recording from when you started watching. That's because of the way it works, saving everything you watch "live" in memory. When you hit record it just transfers that to hard drive. This can be pretty convenient (or it can be annoying, but not yet so far). I have to use the TiVo more, though, because so far the Suggestions that it's giving me are, well, let's just say they don't really mesh with my viewing preferences. ;) Tomorrow night I'm going to record "Angel" both with TiVo and with my VCR, just in case. Not that I don't trust TiVo or anything ... heh ... yeah.

Isn't it sweet how cats tell you it's bedtime by racing maniacally around the apartment yowling at the tops of their lungs?

On my job, and lack of validation/motivation

So this week marks my fourth anniversary of working at this company. (I started out in the tech-support department in January '98, moved to engineering as the sole tech writer in January '99, and am now one of two tech writers.) Four years, whoa. In the software/dot-com business, that's like an eternity.

But it's basically meaningless, since the company is in a salary freeze right now. I'd like to be PC and say that what really matters is improving my performance and helping the company be the best that it can be, but that would be bullshit. I care about how the company is doing, but only insofar as it affects my future. And knowing that I won't be getting a raise, or in fact anything in recognition of four years of dedicated service, really makes it hard to give a crap about the place.

And as for my performance, knowing how I'm doing and all that ... I pretty much feel like I have a handle on that. My boss, and his boss, and many other people in the company (in positions of power and not), think that I am the goddess of technical writing, which I am. Certain other people here, in positions of power and not, think that I'm a lazy bum who spends more time surfing the 'net than working, which I also am. But after all this time, I probably know our product better than almost anyone here (not counting the guys in engineering who've been here as long as or longer than me). Add to that the fact that people who have both technical aptitude and writing skill -- people who really are technical writers -- are very rare, and I'm one of them. And then factor in the fact that there's already more work than Kevin (the other tech writer) and I can handle between us, and that it takes a long time to train someone on a product as complicated as ours (Kevin is still learning and he's been here nine months). It all adds up to me feeling pretty safe. I figure they'd be stupid to fire me, and they know that, so they won't.

Of course, I could be wrong. I could be in for a very unpleasant surprise. That would, like, suck. But I don't think so.

So now I spend most of my time at work surfing the web, live-journaling, chatting with friends on AIM, writing and reading email, etc. Every now and then I do a bit of actual work, and its utter flawlessness dazzles all who come in contact with it, so my boss is happy and his boss is happy and the people who are mad that I waste so much time get madder. Nyah! Take that, say I to them. Yeah, come talk to me after you've been at this company for four years and single-handedly turned the documentation set from an embarrassment into something actually somewhat useful. Hah.

If the job market weren't so crappy, of course, I'd probably be gone by now. It gives me a cruel, nasty thrill of pleasure to think about how totally fucked my boss would be if I went in there today and told him I was quitting. (Not that I want to be cruel to my boss per se. He's a perfectly nice guy and a decent boss. He's only been in charge of the technical documentation group (i.e. me and Kevin) for about six months. It's not HIS fault that they dumped in his lap a group that consisted of one utter newbie, one utterly disenchanted old-timer, and a huge pile of work.)

And yeah, I have attitude at work. I feel like I can get away with it (see above for reasons). I say what I think and don't give a fuck if it pisses people off. I snort at my coworkers who try to be more circumspect, who wait till we're in the car on the way to lunch before they start talking office gossip. When people come by to ask me to do stuff (especially if they're from marketing), I say no before I even hear what the request is. Okay, then I grin at them to show it's all a big joke, but really it's my little power game I'm playing. I gotta find my fun where I can, right? I talk back to my boss too, and he takes it, because he respects my work (what little there is of it ) and knows that I know what I'm doing better than he does.

Oh. And the cubicle thing. That's a whole other issue, and this is getting long so maybe I'll go into it some other time. To sum up: I hate life in a cubicle. I'm thinking of getting a curtain to put over my doorway to create a little more feeling of privacy. I wonder how that'll go over....

travelin' fool redux

It seems I most likely will be going to Montreal after all. The back-story is that every year the Philips Academy (ritzy private high school) choir and orchestra go on a tour. Their director/conductor is the conductor of my choir and also a friend of my mom's. So when they need extra chaperones, which is just about always, he turns to my mom, and sometimes to me. I haven't gone on any of their overseas trips because chaperones have to pay their own way (or at least part of it) and it's expensive. My mom generally gets a free ride because she doubles as the trip nurse. Since this trip is just within the continent of North America (Burlington VT and Montreal), it'll be a lot cheaper so I'm invited along, and whether I have to pay anything will depend on how the final budget comes out, but I'll probably pay it anyway because it'll be reasonably cheap I'm sure.

Pro's:

• Get to travel to fun new places.
  
• Get to perform great music (Bach's "Magnificat" in this case)
  
• Any time not spent at work is a pro to me. (see previous journal entry!)
  

Con's:

• Traveling with a hundred-plus teenagers. Nuff said.
  
• Need to learn Bach's "Magnificat" by early March. Ack! I have the opening chorus and the "Sicut locutus est" down, cause they're pretty easy, but DAMN, have you looked at that "Fecit potentiam"? And then there's the "Omnes generationes"! And I'm singing second soprano this time, whereas I've always done first, so it's like learning the piece all over again. Yikes!
  

Anyway, it should be a lot of fun, if stressful at times too. Let's just cross our fingers that none of the kids get horribly ill, since I'll be sharing a hotel room with the trip nurse (my mom). And, of course, that none of the kids do anything horribly naughty either. Last trip I went on, the worst that happened was a couple of the boys caught smoking in the stairway. Big no-no, but little lasting harm done.

And just another reason to get my passport renewed, right tiggrrl ?

really obsessed, and sick

It just occurred to me that if I learn the "Magnificat" for the tour in March, I'll know it already for when the other chorus is doing it in later March and April and May, so I can skip some of the rehearsals and stay home watching Buffy instead. I'm so shallow. But it so sucks that rehearsal night is on Buffy night! Wah!

On the work front, after investigating a procedure I needed to write, I learned from the developer involved that this procedure will require the customer to perform a unique SQL query on every user at their site. Some of our customers have user bases numbering in the thousands, or tens of thousands. And there is NO way these queries can be automated; each will have to be done individually. I explained this to my boss and he made some very interesting faces. Later he came by to tell me he had explained it to the SE's (sales engineers) who will be having to explain it to the customers. Oh, to be a fly on that wall. An innocent, don't-kill-the-messenger fly. A very uninvolved, 'don't look at me I'm just telling you what the developer said' fly. Yeah. Anyway, I'm working on writing up the procedure, and after that, I wash my hands of it. Somebody Else's Problem.

In cat news, I got my landlord to sign the statement saying I can have another cat. So now I'm free to go to the shelter any old time and pick one up. I just gotta figure out when is good. I'm thinkin' maybe I should wait till after the Montreal trip. :(

And now, back to thoughts of slash. Homoeroticism Yay! (here)