On Holidays at the Office

Empty cubicles,
dark hallways, locked offices.
My keyboard echoes.

I answer the phones,
and swear next year, I will save
some vacation days.

On returning to the office

Oh dear vacation
That halcyon time of yore
Now I start Outlook

On late nights and long days

Staying out all night
partying like a rock star
makes a happy James.

But work the next day,
fighting just to stay awake
is no fun at all.

Still, I can't resist
the lure of good times with friends.
I'll sleep when I'm dead.

When clients run out of money

Abrupt project halt –
Unceremoniously
Kicked onto the bench.

Studying for tests,
I find myself inclined to
Compose this haiku:

Bored bored bored bored bored.
Bored bored bored bored bored board board?.
Bored bored bored bored bored.

RTFM!

Am I the only
person who knows how to read
documentation?!?

Seriously guys,
at least make an effort to
learn the damn platform.

I'm all for helping my coworkers, but it's seriously starting to feel like I'm their personal Cliff's Notes. I shouldn't have to waste my time answering questions that you should know as part of your @#!%*$ job!

Oh frenetic life:
So chocked with travail and chore
That it may well burst.

The days grow shorter
But my task list still expands.
When can I have sleep?

What's a girl gotta
do, just to get some help here?
Time to suck dick now.

Seriously - I don't know what the senior folks on this project do all day. I'm completely blocked until I can talk to one of them... one's been stuck in a meeting for 3 hours, and the other 2 are entirely MIA. It's goddamn infuriating.

On Development Environments

Locking up for 10
minutes after completing
a build? So not cool.

Developing on a Virtual PC sucks. It's slow. Especially when Visual Studio locks up after every time I do a build, and completely crashes about 1 in 10 times I build my solution. Don't even get me started on how long it take to do a check-in -_-

On Passive-Aggressive Communication

"We might want to try..."
You mean, "You try, then tell me."
Ditch that awkward shit!

This has been the e-mail conversation I've been having over the last two days.

Project manager: I think I found a bug.
Developer: We might want to document that.
Support: You mean, "I think support should document that," right?
Developer: Yeah, thanks.
Project manager: We might want to test it against another scenario, too.
Support: You mean, "I think support should test it against another scenario," right?
Project manager: You got it.

On purchasing power

Corporate phone plan -
PLEASE can I buy a new phone?
Why do you thwart me?

I suffered a phone casualty last week while kayaking when my dry-case leaked. This weekend I tried to go buy a replacement... only to discover that because I'm on my corporate phone plan, I'm no longer a signature authority on my account. This means that I'm not allowed to just buy a new phone - I have to go through the company procurement process! Now I get to wait a whole 'nother week to get my replacement phone! Joy!

On Undesirable Work Tasks

Documentation
I know it needs revision...
but it's so damn long ;_;

Let me tell you how much I don't want to spend my morning reviewing this 100 page user guide. Repugnant isn't a strong enough word.

Disorientation

Mild panic sets in,
How long's he been in this trance?
Wikipedia


Man, you ever snap out of it... unsure where you are, what you were doing, or how long you've been sitting there reading an article on wikipedia? Casually look around to see if anyone is staring at you... try to think back to see if anyone said anything to you....

My grumpiness - let me show you it

Oh, I'm sorry - by
3 days notice, I really
meant 2 days notice!

Even better than surprise travel - it's EXTRA surprise travel! Now I get to go Wednesday-Thursday! On the bright side, I get to spitefully kick their travel budget in the face since a flight the day before runs a lovely $700! Look at all those exclamation points, I must be so excited -_-

On suprise travel

You know what's not cool?
Three days notice for a trip.
Goodbye, this week's plans!

Have I mentioned how much I don't appreciate being told first thing Monday that I need to be in Miami on Thursday and Friday? Have I mentioned how much more I don't appreciate it when it's my Tester overhearing rumors and letting me know, rather than my PM bothering to tell me? And how I doubly don't appreciate it when I already have Big Plans for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday? Piss.

On Punctuation:
I assure you a single
mark does the job fine.

But three question marks
is a bit overzealous.
Not Necessary!?!

I don't think that a defect whose status has been erroneously set to "fixed" instead of "retest" does not necessitate multiple question marks (and the baffled implications that go hand in hand with them) when you IM me about it -_-

On lethargic data operations

Dear Apache Log,

Flowers bloom and die,
Dear server log. Rome could fall
While you try to parse.

... or save.. or open.. or zip.. all of which I need to do to you. I understand you're about 500mb of raw ascii, but it's not like we're mistreating you here. Core2 duo.. gig of ram.. you have all you could ever want. And yet you're slooooooow. It may perhaps be that because of your size, you assume you need to stretch out the time it takes you to do anything to emphasize the mystique contained within your texty depths. I assure you this is not the case. We will be just as interested in your contents whether it takes you five seconds to open, or five hours.

Just... just wake me when you're done.. ok?

On Diswasher Affordances

Dishwashers can be
a tricky beast: how to tell
when clean or dirty?

At home it's easy -
red means "dirty, don't use me!"
Doesn't that make sense?

But at work, red means
"Dishes are clean! don't put in
any more dirties!"

Confused and baffled!
A cutlery explosion!
Poor Lisa panics!!

On girl-shoes

Have I bitched about
this before? It's possible:
my brain's like a sieve.

Oh, well: Women's Shoes...
I try you on in the store
and you're so comfy!

Then when worn to work
you make my tootsies cry out,
"Blisters: do not want!"

"Well" is not what you would call the boding of this code.

For the love of god,
don't check in your broken code,
thus screwing my team.

Bad move number one: checking in code that references a database table that doesn't exist. Bad move number two: adding a change that significant during product test. Bad move number 3: when I call to tell you about it saying "oh yeah, we've been trying to fix that... [captain subtext: I didn't think you'd notice that huge breaking issue]"

You are SO fired
from the Lisa Book of Trust.
Time to suck dick now.

Pitiful

You know a day's bad
when I've dropped 20 dollars
on comfort coffee.