July 12th, 2007
After quite a lot of thought and inner debate, I’ve quietly come to the decision that I need a fresh start somewhere. While I’ve enjoyed writing all of these years here at The Naked Truth, I realize that just like the blog before it, I have grown from my experience here and changed and am ready displace myself.
I still have things to say — hell, I still have quite a few opinions and heck, a whole new election year is coming. 
However, I’m not feeling the anger I’ve felt in the past in regards to politics and I don’t want to feel that helpless anger again. I’m ready to really start exploring my new State, I think. I feel that I’m on the cusp of something though I don’t know what it is yet and maybe I want to just blither on about useless things for a while and I don’t know that The Naked Truth is where I want to do that.
I really want to thank those people who’ve stuck by me and who’ve given me such wonderful advice over the years and those who’ve given me such great debate. I’ve loved ever minute of it.
(I’ll be turning off comments, but for those of you who I’ve know for a long time who really really think you want to know what Pugly and I are up to in a few weeks, please feel free to use the contact form to ask.)
Tags: My Life
February 2nd, 2007
I apologize for not at least popping on and saying that I survived the norovirus and that there was an epidemic at my workplace. I have no idea who the carrier was but a bunch of us came down with it all on the same day, but that Thursday afternoon we were all quite ill. There’ve been some trailing illnesses but it seems to have completed its course through this office now.
But that’s not what has kept me away.
Let me explain about the Daylight Savings Time “issue”. Remember how panicked everyone was about Y2K? No one knew what was going to happen to the computers; everyone was afraid that they were just going to meltdown or something because they might not be able to handle the wrap from 1999 to 2000 because they were missing those first two digits and the computers wouldn’t know if it was 1900 or 2000? Yadda yadda yadda….
O.K. So, many of those ancient computers also had the Daylight Savings schedule hardcoded into their OS and bios because that stuff never changes. It’s the same formula every year, right?
Wrong. Last year, the President and Congress decided it would save so much American dollars in heat costs if we moved Daylight Savings Time up three weeks in the Spring and back one week in the Fall. For Windows users and anyone or any business who’s bought a computer or hardware or software in the last 5 years that’s considered still “supported” that’s not a problem because basically the software company is responsible for guaranteeing that when the time change happens, everything still works fine and dandy and that your software actually manages a time change and probably not one in March and then another in April. 
So, our problem is that we have this fabulous Interface Engine that runs on some ancient form of UNIX is on ancient RIS box and the software for the engine, the version of UNIX, and the RIS box are not supported by anyone, which is probably why they’ve been running pretty much problem-free for about 10-years — our secondary Interface Engine is Windows-based on an IBM server and there are daily challenges; not to mention upgrades and “hot fixes”, etc.
O.K. So we have this looming deadline of Daylight Savings Time where we don’t know what’s going to happen to out old Interface Engine and the consensus is to get all of the remaining interfaces and programs off of the old box before then because the time change is hardcoded into the OS and bios and get them onto yet another new Interface Engine, also Windows-based but more stable. The good news is that this isn’t technically new development because there’s already a road map, right? We just have to take the old code and rewrite it. The analysis and logic has already been done for us; the hard part is re-interpreting the old code into the new code — the old interface engine did somethings easier than the new interface engine and vice versa.
O.K. Now, you know I work with crazy people, right? Two of these people believe that they are the only people who are capable of doing anything correctly and completing anything. Of course, they’re way of doing things is the only way to do things as well — that last one fits all three. Mind you, none of them exactly do things the same way. Madness and harsh words usually ensues at that point.
So, I was assigned MJ’s usual pet project and when I was, she sat me down and talked to me about it, about how careful I had to be about it all, like I’ve never done this kind of work before. Did I mention that I’ve been working here since April 2004 and was in Hospital IT for six years before that? Oh, and I’ve been working in IT since ‘94. Let’s not forget that I have a BS in CS.
Anyway, since then, at least once a week, she’s been checking on me, reminding me of how important the project is. O.K. Let me explain. This is the patient demographics for every patient in the hospital and this particular interface goes from the admitting software to the secondary interface engine which will then pass it to the ordering software and also half a dozen other software packages, including medical records. I’ve got the big picture of how important this is. Every little field has to be correct from the patient’s id to the patient’s name to his insurance to his next of kin to his allergies and diagnosis. It’s a patient care issue if it’s not right. I don’t want to be responsible for something happening to a patient because I coded something incorrectly. I get it. Stop harassing me already. I stress myself out over the whole thing I don’t need someone else hovering over me.
Then of course, I had my Gallstone Surgery scheduled for February 2 — yes, you might notice that’s today. You might notice I don’t appear to be knocked unconscious on a surgery table either. There’s an explanation for that. I was scheduled for the surgery and to be out for 2 weeks with the idea that I would work from home.
But the Friday before I came down with the Norovirus, I got a call from one of my other projects that had gone stalled sometime last summer. The person on the phone suddenly announced to me that she wanted me to turn on the demographic feed to her application on the following Monday and that they were planning to “go-live” with the application, interfaces and all, in 2 weeks. Well, I had a complete meltdown in my boss’ office. In my opinion, they had not fully tested any of their interfaces before it had stalled — I suspect it had lost direction after their project lead had been shipped to Iraq. I was told to basically let them “hang themselves”, but in my opinion this would look bad on me because I had written the interfaces.
Fortunately, by Monday, things had changed. They decided not to turn anything on and had postponed the “go-live” to February 6th. However, I was then bombarded with minute by minute requests to make changes to their interfaces as they began actually testing and I couldn’t get my work done on my Daylight Savings Time projects. I was becoming very frustrated because just as I’d get started back on what I wanted to work on, someone would ask me to do something else.
That is when MJ came and asked me to take out some changes I made to an interface in the secondary interface engine for the stalled project so she could put that interface in production for another project that day. It was the morning of the norovirus. Probably I was already not feeling well. I was feeling frustrated. We were in my cubicle and I commented to her that I was feeling frustrated that I couldn’t seem to work on the Daylight Savings Time project because of the other thing. And that is when Drama Queen FW butted in from across the cubicle aisle from his own cubicle and very loudly announced to the whole frickin’ building that “We’re all frustrated but we get our work done.” This started a back and forth and he basically said something along the lines that he and MJ were worried that they were going to end up having to do my work that they shouldn’t have to do. I told him that I never said I couldn’t do the work, just that I was frustrated.
I didn’t talk to him the rest of the day, but what he said ate at me…it still eats at me. Now it’s pissing me off and you’ll see why.
What he said gave me nightmares the whole weekend of my norovirus. You know, I have a fear of being fired because I was involuntarily terminated from my last job and they made up claims that I couldn’t do my job anymore by changing my job description and they assigning me things I couldn’t do and not training me. So, now I’m afraid that if I miss these deadlines, I’m going to lose my job. It’s eating away at me. I’m terrified. It’s making me ill. It’s almost all I think about…and I feel like MJ and FW are somehow setting me up to fail. I just don’t know how, but I feel like they’re doing something behind my back to make me look bad on this project.
Anyway, the Monday after the Norovirus, I moved my surgery. MJ had made more than a few comments about how she didn’t think we’d be able to get everything done if I was out for two weeks in February, so I moved my surgery to March 16th, after Daylight Savings kicks in. So now no one can say that my surgery affected anything. I’m here, I’m visibly working. And I’m working long hours — 9 and 10 hour days. I’ve even been working on Sundays.
And guess who’s on vacation? FW started a week long vacation Wednesday. MJ is taking most of February to go skiing.
WTF?
But, guess what? She’s going to help me with my testing, but only if my code is really “clean” and I’ve made sure everything is perfect before I start testing with the applications.
She had a meltdown when I told her I’d be ready to start testing next week. She gave me a long lecture again about how everything has to be perfect. Then she told me we don’t have much time, only a month. Then she started again on how necessary it is to have every field correct. She said she’d been working for two weeks on one translator and it wasn’t working right yet with the system, so I couldn’t possibly be ready to test.
But then yesterday when I discovered some incorrect code in her interface after she told me to use it as an example for something I was working on, she had another meltdown. She refused to believe me when I said it wouldn’t work the way she thought it would once she fixed it. I knew this because I was using it in my own code.
I think she just makes things harder than they have to be sometimes.
Oh, and the stalled project has moved their “go-live” to March 6th now. They’ll be doing some serious testing next week.
Anyway, for the next month, I’m going to work my ass off to get my projects finished. MJ told me yesterday she doesn’t think “we all” will be able to make the deadline. I plan to meet the deadline as best as I can. I don’t want to be the one holding it up. I certainly don’t want my work to fall on MJ or FW. So, if my posting if few and far between, you know what’s up.
In the meantime, you can keep up with me and my Project 365 photos here.
Tags: work, my life, project 365, choices, norovirus, stress
January 12th, 2007
Last night I told Pugly that we needed to be up extra early because I had an 8am PT appointment and yesterday morning he hadn’t been all that helpful about helping me get to my 8:30am acupuncture appointment on time. He hadn’t seemed all that impressed last night but I thought that maybe something might change in the middle of the night.
The truth is that I don’t do 8am appointments very well.
So, I overslept. I woke up at 6:30am, knowing full well that I needed to leave by 7:15am if I were going to get to the city in time. Pugly took his grand ole time doing his morning business on the lawn and then didn’t seem to understand the whole concept of breakfast for the first time ever.
I got distracted by the fact that I don’t know where my camera case is and I’d like to find it because my camera’s manual is in it. I think I might have lost 10 minutes that way. Never found it.
Let’s just say that at 7:20am with a wet head, no prepared lunch, no caffeine, and no briefcase, I was standing in the door, calling my dog telling him it was time to leave for doggy daycare and he was standing in the hall on the other side of the kitchen blinking at me with a glazed over expression. When I approached him with the leash, which usually excites him because it means “We’re going outside to chase the birds!”, he ran away!
We lost another 10 minutes. There was trickery involved in the capture of Pugly. I have no idea what got into him, but he decided I had some sort of agenda and had to be caught and picked up and carried to the car. Never mind that 5 days a week, every week, we go to the same place that he loves.
So, it was then 7:30am, I still had a wet head, no lunch, no briefcase, no caffeine, and I’d forgotten to brush my teeth. It took me 10 minutes to drive the 1.5 miles to the interstate. I have no idea where all the traffic came from. It’s never like that.
10 minutes and 8 miles later, I called the clinic to tell them I would be a little late to PT. They weren’t very understanding and weren’t sure I’d be seen, but I might be seen if I was there before 8:15am.
8am sees Pugly dropped off at doggy daycare where they are listening to fun music and playing. I wanted to stay there.
At 8:11am, I am at the stop light around the corner from the clinic, still with a wet head now insulated and kept wet by a winter hat, no lunch, no briefcase, no brushed teeth, and suddenly the meds that make me feel sleepy kick in.
Tags: life
October 10th, 2006
I am a Pro-Choicer. I believe in the right to choose. I’ll just state that out in the open. You won’t change my mind on that.
And not that it’s any of your business but I’ve never had an abortion nor do I expect to. I also have no children nor do I plan to.
However, I do have many questions about the Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion view. Mind you, I don’t expect to change your mind either. I’m just curious and interested in a two-way discussion. All (non-hateful) views are welcome.
I find that once I start thinking about the whole when-is-a-baby-a-life debate, I’m just as confused as most anyone. I mean, there’s no evidence as to when exactly a fetus becomes “a living being with a soul”. I’ve read and heard all sorts of debates on the subject.
There’s the thought that a being becomes “a life with a soul” upon conception, but “as many as 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage — most often before a woman misses a menstrual period or even knows she is pregnant. About 15% of recognized pregnancies will end in a miscarriage. More than 80% of miscarriages occur within the first three months of pregnancy.” [“Understanding Miscarriages” (WebMD)] If that’s true, wouldn’t it make more sense that a “soul” wouldn’t make permanent residency until after that 3rd month, just in case.
For me, I often think of my brain or mind as connected with my “soul” — I know, symbollically it’s supposed to be your heart — so I looked it up, and while the brain starts to develop in week 3 after conception, it’s not until the 2nd Trimester that brain waves are detectable and it’s not until the 3rd Trimester that there’s rapid brain development and the baby is strong enough that it might survive if born early, though the chances of complications and death are high. [Prenatal Development]
So, for me, I think it would have to be in one of those steps. Maybe.
I guess I really don’t know. I’m not the Creator of Life after all.
Anyway, I guess that’s why I don’t want to make a decision for anyone else as to whether or not she should or shouldn’t be able to have an abortion or where to draw the line. I don’t think you should kill living beings. I think a living being is someone who could survive on his or her own, given the chance, but I guess that’s not the right answer either since there are certainly a whole lot of people of many ages who suffer a whole lot of maladies and injuries who would die without the care of others. We wouldn’t leave our grandparents to die just because they can’t survive on their own or soldiers injured in war.
Then again, I wouldn’t want to ask a woman whose life is at risk to carry a baby to full term or a woman who’s been raped to carry such a heavy reminder of her victimization for nine months or a young teenager who’s almost a baby herself to carry the child of her incestuous father.
I wouldn’t want to refuse anyone her right to make her personal choice whatever it may be. In the end, she’ll answer to God or Buddha or herself, but it’s not my place to judge her. I have so many of my own choices to weigh on my shoulders.
But I keep coming back to some inconsistencies in various arguments. I don’t understand the people who honestly and truly believe that life begins at conception and that with that life comes a “soul” and that it is a sin to abort that life; it is murder. To believe so extreme and completely is one thing. That I can understand, but then to say, that you want to pass a law making this sin illegal with the exception of rape, incest and danger to health…do two sins make a right?
Tags: abortion, pro-choice, anti-abortion, pro-life
