Mind The Gap

…from Sunday can be found here.

Ever notice how more and more ‘nice’ things in restaurants and pubs are starting to look like they came from Target?  I’m not sure if that’s Target moving up or ‘fancy’ establishments moving down.  The ‘stone’ countertops were just some kind of composite that sorta looked like vomit if you got a close view of it.  The beautiful blond wood was, upon closer inspection a veneer that, in ultimate insult, may have been plastic instead of wood veneer, and since it wasn’t a work surface, no greater durability was afforded by doing so…perhaps the ugly counters received some utilitarian benefit from their situation.

Looks great from a few feet off…is there still virtue in things being plain and not flashy, but  also being exactly what they purport themselves to be?

Working on a big game trophy (think the giant moose head on the wall at a ‘lodge’ type place) – only instead of being an animal it’s a zombie. I bought a styrofoam head from the beauty store (used for displaying wigs) and also several blocks of florist’s foam stuff from a craft store, and I’ve glued and carved. After I got this set up in such a way that the zombie’s head and upper torso are emerging (so they could be mounted to a plaque suitable for wall hanging) I undertook a very messy effort, covering it with paper mache to create the dead flesh texture.

Very messy indeed. Anywhoo that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far…after this is all dry I’ll start painting. I’m also going to need to get a cheap but decent wig, something to make a worn and tattered shirt, and some fake worms from the fishing area of a store (going to feed wire into them so they are poseable and have them crawling out of whatever’s gouged or gashed). I’ll have to figure out what’s good for making fake brain matter…maybe I’ll just use more paper mache but carve something to use as a mold for it to get the ridges right.
I’m going for sort of a cartoonish pinup girl thing, so it’s not so realistic as to be too difficult for me to do well, or too scary to have around. Hoping to be silly and kind of gory, and generally a good laugh. After she’s all done I’ll set up a nice wooden plaque to put her on, and hang her over the fireplace like any good game hunter. Need to get some kind of weapon to hang on a rack near by to claim that’s what I hunted her with.

Fun!

We are now ready to sign with a firm to review and validate our PCI compliance implementation approach (so I have charter and implementation plan documents all laid out pretty), with the idea being to fill in any gaps and make sure it’s an acceptable approach before spending time and resources on implementing it.

I’m excited.  Some of the architecture changes we’re proposing to make to increase security also centralize processing in such a way that it could simplify and otherwise benefit implementation of our CIS and credit card payment add-ons for customers that purchase the products.  (The system I work on is one for utility billing, that we build in-house, use ourselves, but also make available to sale for entities in a similar industry that are not direct competitors to us, such as those in markets we could not enter ourselves, or choose not to enter.)

I plan to write something about the architecture of our solution and how it works for us after we know the solution is feasible and acceptable to meet the standard.  I’m abstaining until then as I wouldn’t want to give out unvalidated advice when there is such a ready opportunity to validate it first.

So excited to get this moving forward.  First step of the journey and all that.

We had so much fun doing the last desk set, that when we identified another worthy individual, we made another one. This time the recipient is another analyst, trained by the first one to receive such a prize, and the reason this second gentleman has received the honor is because of his unstoppable siege against our work order queue. He’s been here a little over 3 months, and it’s about that time that I try to pull some tangible measurements of how someone has been doing, compare them to my anecdotal observations, and just generally see what’s up.

So, I gathered up the numbers, and boy was I surprised. In his time here, this fellow has closed more tickets in his 3.5 months than each of the other of us closed in 4 months prior, by a reasonable margin. With a resolution time that’s pretty admirable too, one might add. That decided it, so off we were to find some goodies and start the crafting.

I took a lot more pictures this time, so rather than put them in the post, you can view the gallery here.

After getting the stuff all finished, we left it to dry overnight, and in the morning, my partner in this crime snuck the set into my office and hid it. Then, we waited.

After lunch, the office mate of our victim sent him on a mission to fix something and spread joy somewhere. Then he tipped us off and the clock was ticking. We all three scurried to the office in question, me with suspicious looking plastic shopping bags in hand, and began to ransack his desk.

After some rearranging to get pens in the pen holder, and paper in the letter sorter, etc, we had it all set up. I snapped a few pictures and we all went back to work to wait for our prey to walk into this cunning trap.

And now, his desk is tacky, and we hope he likes it. We sure had fun doing it.

The annual expedition to Brooker, FL to eat mud bugs and random covered dish fare.

Ramon posted up on his cooler:

Ryan coming back from the tent where some men would periodically dump out spicy boiled things:

Shannon and Russ:

Ryan and Nathan:

One that was saved by a small boy and so escaped the fate of his brethren:

One that was not so lucky:

Shannon attempting not to have her picture taken, but alas, I succeeded:

A good time was had by all, except for the crawfish.

So, once a year, usually within the couple of months prior to my annual review, I pull out my resume from the last year, and update it, while making the ‘list of accomplishments’ that we submit with our self-assessments that our supervisors review and include in their review paperwork.

I was working on the revision for this year, and decided to sort of combine both into one – by adding a Project Portfolio section to the resume where project-y accomplishments can be listed. It makes the document sort of long for a resume (given that I believe you are supposed to keep it at 1 page, 2 max), but now I feel much better that it’s doing justice to my work efforts. Just listing the place and the title doesn’t say a whole lot, and in my field the actual things you are focusing on change with each project, and listing out the high points can take a long time and be too much for the typical ‘work experience’ listing. As a result I have the work experience listing with high level stuff, dates, and titles, and then a project portfolio section with a very brief bit of info about each of several projects that I thought were particularly notable (in that I did or learned something pertinent to the direction I want to go in). Sort of describing each ‘project’ as a job with a suite of applications and responsibilities associated to it. I think it worked out pretty well.

Makes me feel better that the resume is actually saying something. Also added a trivia section to give info about hobbies, interests, random things. Makes me feel like the resume does some little bit to portray me as a person rather than a list of qualifications.

Damn I worked on a lot of stuff last year.

Last Friday, a friend of mine from work treated me to a very cute surprise. She took me to lunch, and to the Build-A-Bear workshop in the mall.

Here’s my bear (er…leopard):

Her name is Anne Bonny, after a certain historical figure that was quite piratical.

As you can see, she has a jolly roger on her shirt, and they are featured again on her bandana (man I wish they had one of those bandana’s people-sized). Also note the saddle shoes, rockin’ leather jacket, and emo glasses. This leopard is so punk rock, or maybe she’s indy…any way, she’s cool. She also has a second outfit (pirate costume complete with eyepatch and parrot). To top it off, my leopard has leopard print pajamas, in pink (recursing leopard) – with a bathrobe and bunny slippers to boot.

I prefer to think of it as child-like, rather than childish. No matter what you call it, it’s pretty cute. She growls when you squeeze her arm.

Here’s part of why I chose a leopard instead of one of the other available animals.

The backstory: A long time ago, I bought a crappy plastic goblet, spray painted it gold, glued lots of rhinestones on it, and painted ‘Pimp For A Day’ on one side. I took it to work, and gave it to whomever had done something cool that was notable and specifically, made my day/job less crappy. The idea was that the person receiving it would, on the next day, pass the cup on to someone who helpd their day not suck. It was a decent joke, earned a few laughs, and was passed around a few desks. Then at some point it disappeared. Presumably, someone moved desks, packed it up, and it never emerged. It’s probably in a box of things someone took home instead of to their new seat, and it’s sitting in a garage somewhere. This is more appealing than the idea that someone stole it, and one should generally avoid assuming malice if something else could easily be the cause, so here we are.

Modern day: There was a large release going, involving three major migrations (the movement of two databases to a new server, impacting the applications that use them, and the conversion of a large ‘enterprise’ system from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2). An analyst in my employ was working on one of the database migrations, which had been hairy, was part of a mission-critical set of applications, and required lots and lots of testing. To top it off, due to the amount of time needed to make the production release, the release of the whole kit was happening on Easter Sunday, and he’d have to be there to test everything after the release and help troubleshoot if there were issues.

The migration involves payment systems, and my boss (the grand-boss of the analyst, you might say) is the original lord and master (mistress?) of those systems, so she spent a lot of time sharing knowledge and giving tips for testing etc. She had stopped by on Friday afternoon to wish him luck and express her confidence in him, and he had asked if he got the pimp cup if this all worked. (The pimp cup disappeared long before he was hired, but I suppose he’s heard of it.) She noted she wasn’t sure where it was, but maybe.

Then she stopped by my office to tell me of this, and ask if I knew where it was. Of course I didn’t, for reasons mentioned earlier, but suggested that I might make a new one over the weekend. She took the idea one step further by jokingly suggesting a crunk desk set in place of a crunk cup. I thought the idea was excellent, so the race was on.

I stopped by a store, bought a cheap mesh desk set, gold spray paint, special glue, and lots of rhinestones. Then I went to my house and dug in my arts/crafts area to find glitter glue stuff, purple crushed velvet fabric, and spray adhesive. Once at my boss’ house we dug up some more goodies, including some small diamond shaped mirrors, and some ribbon with gold swirls on it.

The assembly: These pictures are the decoration of the desk set components after the initial task of spray painting them gold was completed.

Trash Can, Desk Caddy and some fabric.

Letter Sorter, and Sticky Note Pad Holder

Desk Caddy, +1 Pimpin’

Desk Caddy, +5 Crunked

Sticky Note Pad Holder

Trash Can – there is also a band of neat ribbon around the bottom, but alas, it doesn’t show in this picture.

Executing Operation Crunk: Yesterday during said release, under the guise of grabbing my laptop(well, really I was grabbing it) and my boss legitimately grabbing some files, we snuck the goods into my office and hid them (because certainly if I was carrying purple velvet office gear down the hall first thing Monday morning, folks would ask why, so it was better to get the set in the building while the building was mostly empty).

The plan was that today she would call him to her office (which requires him to pass my office to get there, and means that I can get to his office without him seeing me) to talk about the release. Then I would sneak down to his office, stash his current deskwear, and set up his desk with the crunk desk set.

There was a bit of bungling as there were meetings all day today and little chance to arrange for him to be called to the office. Fortunately an alternate strategy arose, as I saw him leave for lunch just as I got back from lunch, while my boss was at lunch, so I called her and informed that Operation Crunk was underway, and set up all the stuff on his desk.

Then, I went back to my work while waiting for him to get back and discover the purple velvet, gold and rhinestones. Buwahahahaha!!!!

If you didn’t know we liked him and thought he did a good job, you’d think we were picking on him. Now to decide who gets the next pimped out desk set….

so bad.  http://dirtymicrobe.com/products/how-i-roll/275/274