Recently in Work Category

Big deadline this week for localization work in subtitles. My team has worked hard and is ahead of schedule. In fact, by the end of today we will be finished the first pass of all subtitles in all cinematics in the game.

I'm sitting here at my desk in the office. I just installed a little fan behind me and took a few minutes to relax while the game compiles. Now it's time to run the game and see the latest updates in Italian. And the game will not FUCKING RUN.

Goddamnit. Maybe I should stick to managing resources rather than actually being one of them. At least I can try reason with people. You can't reason with code. But in reality, I feel fine.

Now that I think of it, this might actually be a decent day in terms of relaxation and health. It hasn't been a good week in terms of how I feel physically; I realized just how bad my non-cancer-related health is. Specifically, yoga showed that no matter how easy the physical activity is that I am doing, it is still a big challenge for me. I did yoga on Monday, and I still have a sore neck. The soreness goes all down the left side of the neck to my shoulder. I hope it's just a case of unused muscles being annoyed at being woken up.

I am really looking forward to getting my body back, if at all possible. I will continue this gentle cancer yoga for as long as I can until I think that I can get into a gym (although with all the financial management I have started, I wonder if I can afford it). imagine being as fit as I was when I was 25! I think that I can do it. Yoga is about accepting what is, but I find this to be very difficult. We are going to focus on this in the next few sessions.

I think I might be getting a little impatient. I am normally pretty patient when I want changes to occur in my life, but I want to go back to school now; I want to become financially responsible and more debt-free now (although I think that I can attain my credit card goals this year), I want to become more physically fit right now. This isn't wise and is not good for the mind or spirit. I am changing both positively and negatively. I need to work on that, I guess.

Sometimes as a manager, you have to make tough decisions that affect the lives of your employees. It's sometimes worse when your superiors make a decision, but then require you to carry out the carnage. Today my boss (thank God it was my boss and not me) had to let go a promising young artist because of something that happened over on the other side of the company, and that had absolutely nothing to do with him. This may result in him having to leave the country since he's here on a work visa. What's worse is that we wanted to keep him on as a full employee when his internship ended, and that we (well, HR and my boss) basically promised this to him.

I was informed yesterday about the decision. The leads and I were all against this, but there's nothing we could really do. Every time I saw him today, I imagined a calf being led to slaughter without having any idea of the fate that awaited him. I feel like a complete asshole and I had absolutely nothing to do with this.

I was just thinking, for no particular reason, because I am so random, about a few incidents at my old job from 2004. There was this woman consultant working there that gave a couple of training sessions. I was absolutely blown away by her sheer competence in technical knowledge and especially communication, her confidence and her pure professionalism. She could put most Toastmasters to shame. I wished that all consultants and other employees could be more like her, especially myself. I expressed this to a couple of coworkers. I would say, "Wow, what a professional." You could say that I had a professional crush on her.

This got back to a couple of other employees, who complained to my (female) boss about inappropriate comments about female coworkers. Possibly because the professional comments weren't the only ones I made. Once in a while I might remark on what someone was wearing, saying that it looked great and wondering where I might find something like that for Rose. If it was a guy, I'd do the same thing except I might wonder where I could find something for me, obviously. In any case, I was very respectful no matter who I was dealing with. Regardless, I received two formal warnings about my comments. When I asked for examples of my inappropriate comments, the "professional" thing came up. Why is calling a woman a real pro an insult? Is it like calling a black man articulate, as though it were so unexpected? Or is there an underlying hidden meaning that I wasn't aware of? Perhaps people took it as me calling her a professional whore. Maybe, but it was never explained to me. No one ever came to me to discuss what I said. I never got the chance to defend myself or explain myself. And they cherry-picked incidents instead and looking at the way I also treated everyone, which was fair and with respect. None of the men considered that I was sexually harassing them when I said that I really liked their new shirt.

Another complaint was that I would not praise other women (specifically women) for their professional behaviour. The truth was, I would occasionally say that I liked what they did, but generally speaking, nothing they did was all that spectacular. Darlene the professional was simply much better than just about all of the men and women that worked there. So I wouldn't praise their worksite virtues because there wasn't that much to praise. The ones that complained about me were marketing women, the very marketing women that inspired me to write this hate-filled entry. I can't dismiss the possibility that Darlene was as good or better-looking (in one case MUCH better looking) than these marketing women, and that this caused some kind of bitterness. Or, if I were a man that appealed to them sexually, I strongly doubt that there would have been complaints.

So the idea was that I was a sexist pig. I can see how getting the shaft like I did might turn someone into a sexist pig if they weren't one before. I have not been confronted with allegations like these since that day, and I treat all men and women with the same respect.

This was what I received in the mail today, along with my second to last payment from insurance. If I understand correctly, I don't get any long-term disability (and I only wanted a partial amount until the middle of January) because I started treatment during my first three months on the job. This also means that I will have to start back full time two weeks earlier, because I need the money. Luckily for me, my company gives us a paid (I think) shut down from December 24 to January 1.

The obvious lessons: insurance companies are sneaky, and don't get sick during your probation period. This means you.

It just hasn't been my summer so far. even though the war against the infected vein was won, the recovery was awful. I was pretty dozy at work the week I returned, and in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have bothered to even go. The following week I was back to form, but unfortunately I was only there for the first three days of that week. I think that I got some work done, though.

Here's where things start to go awry again. Last Thursday, August 2, I started my third and final round of chemo before surgery. It was more or less normal. Instead of a PICC line in my venously mangled left arm, they put one in my right arm. After all, it was to be the final treatment lasting only five days after which they would remove the line. However, on Sunday night I started feeling some discomfort in my right arm. Monday morning around 11 am, I decided to see what they could do at the hospital, although I didn't hold out much hope. I figured that I would be there a couple of hours, they would tell me that there wasn't much they could do (I was hoping maybe for an adjustment of the line) and I could go back to work and my Hamburger Helper which I had packed with me.

I was in emergency for 30 hours. During that time I learned that:

Remember this job? You may recall the whole saga of how it didn't work out. Well this story has a sequel.

The person who got me in the door at this company was a certain Immutable character, a former Yulblogger. Through his tireless efforts my name got the attention of his game director, who works on a different team. After the recommendations of not only him, but one of the directors I interviewed with as well as the VP of HR, I got a second interview with his director. As luck would have it, this week I am working nights to cover the people that are taking vacation this week, so I was free at 9 am on Tuesday.

I didn't get THAT job, either.

I am going to stop talking about job opportunities until one of them pans out.

I had that interview on Friday. I was the first person that they interviewed, which gives me mixed feelings. It's good because there is no one that I have to beat yet, and the interview would probably be easier this way. On the other hand, I don't get a chance to be clearly better than someone else before me, and I may not have really been able to show what I have to bring to the table since they may have been lobbing puffballs at me, rather than whipping hardballs. In any case, I will not get any kind of response until this Friday at the earliest, and I wouldn't be surprised if I had to have a second interview.

This is a problem, because today I started at zura's company. It was option #2. If I have to have a second interview, then I will ultimately have to call in sick or something. If I then get the job, then I simply suck. They will have trained and paid me for nothing. I would feel bad about that, but the hounds are at the door, I can't wait that long for cash, and I would much rather have the extra 50-60% in cash.

It was pretty difficult to truly accept that I have a job now. That I have to get up in the morning and go to work. I can get used to this again, of course, but this morning it felt as though I was going to a seminar or something. Nothing to get excited about. And as I anticipated, they weren't ready for me, so I am sitting here, well, blogging. There isn't anyone available to actually train me for the moment. I don't even have the software to get started. But once I have that, I know that it will become interesting as hell.

Just ran into Leonard Cohen on boulevard St-Laurent, near his house. I nodded and smiled hello. He nodded back, graciously. Yep, I'm feeling pretty slick right now.

Anyway, I have an interview to become a project administrator tomorrow. I think my chances here are much better than at that video game company. Some references have already been called, and those calls went well. As stated, they already know that I don't have the five years experience, and that they aren't going to find anyone with anywhere near that level of experience. Such people are already either project coordinators, managers, control officers or something other than a lowly administrator on a contract for one year. I think that my chances aren't bad, but since I am well acquainted with disappointment, I have no expectations here whatsoever.

Maybe I should have had Saint Leonard bless me or something.

P.S.: I feel a bit lame because I don't really know Cohen's works at all and I feel like it's just too late for me; there's just way too much to catch up on. On the other hand, Anjani Thomas (his music partner and current love interest, talk about May-December) has been said to be, artistically, "Leonard Cohen reincarnated as a woman". Maybe I could start there.

Interesting developments workwise in the last couple of days. After wallowing in a pit of despair, I sent my CV off to zura's company in order to see if I could get a crappy job. This job is thankless, exactly what I swore I couldn't do anymore (although it does sound a bit easier than any job I have had) and less lucrative than my first real job in 1999, EIGHT YEARS AGO. They do say that my experience and charisma (they didn't asy charisma, but you could tell that was what they meant) could net me more money, and working the night shift would give me an extra 15%. I wouldn't mind working the night shift so much since Rose is already on nights, and it's more money. So I lied through my teeth, saying that I don't mind rigid schedules for breaks and lunches (you actually have to work your way up to having a full hour!). This is by far the greatest challenge for me. Even in 1999, I had some level of freedom. Not so, here.

The interview was yesterday, and they said that I should give them a week before hearing from them. However, they really did want me to start. They simply had their due diligence to do. I sense no added layers here, either. The hiring process would be quick and straightforward. However, I did not expect it to be as quick as I thought. I received the offer in my voice mail that afternoon, although I didn't get the message until much later. They want me to start Monday. For someone in my position, that's great news, especially considering that Hydro sent an enforcer over to my house two days ago. Luckily, and this is all part of my master plan, they can't cut me off until April.