The Tradition Continues
As has been my tradition, I post a link to all the happenings in the year and point out a few of my favorite stories.I almost forgot the World Cup was this year. Probably because I really wanted Netherlands to win, and when they didn't I was pretty bummed. Oh yeah and there was that little oil spill thing in the gulf. Then some crazy woman named Lady Gaga just exploded on the music scene. Her music is ok, but Jesus lady, do we seriously need this??
I didn't think so either. Let the merit of your music stand on its own, not on your bizarre outfits. Apparently she won't have sex either. Giving rise to more conspiracy theories that Lady Gaga may have started out as Larry RahRah if you know what I mean.
Anyways, here's the link to the Yahoo year in review:
What the hell happened in 2010?Enough time has passed, here's the facts
I've been told several people are waiting for me to post about my old job at FindLaw. I have a lot to say, and will make come comparisons to my current job at Best Buy.
It all started well
When I first started at FindLaw, life was pretty good. Our monthly goals were pretty low, the process was very straight forward and in general, all the developers I knew were pretty happy. Then starting in June of 2009, every month suddenly became a "production push". This continued for 7 straight months. I started looking for another job in January. A lot was going on, and I knew several things. First, I would probably never be considered for a "specialized" role (these were all the rage at the time and will be explained in more detail later). My best bet would be to move up the management ladder into a lead role, then manager, then director. Unfortunately, once you set out on the management path, your days as a developer were over. Since I had just started in web development, I had already decided management was not for me. It was then I knew there wasn't much else for me to do, but to sit around and do my job (for a LOT less than the industry standard) and continue to be unhappy. It was at this point I started looking around, getting in contact with recruiters and seeing if I really could find a job outside of FindLaw.
The bad and ugly
At the time, the country's economy was not doing well. The housing bubble had burst, companies were cutting jobs and losing their homes. The vibe I continued to get from management was, "You should be happy you have a job." and thinking at some point just having a job isn't good enough. Shouldn't you enjoy the work you do and like to come to work everyday? As the months turned over, I continued to have conversations with people who were extremely unhappy with their jobs, unhappy with management and flat out frustrated. It wasn't just a few people on our team, it across the whole company. Designers, content writers, SEO people, the sickeness was everywhere. People were burned out and if management knew it, they were doing little to help subside people's resentment. 1 on 1 meetings become an exercise in counseling. And yet, goals continued to go up.
Jailbreak and reflection
In one week I had several interviews with companies. I knew if I was going to get a job at a different company, I needed to be honest. I told myself not to BS anybody. Tell the interviewers you know CSS, HTML and some basic Javascript. Nothing more. Focus on your strengths.
It worked. I had two offers and accepted a job at a company in Minneapolis called Reside. They were a salesforce.com partner and built applications and websites on their platform. It was a short stint (why will be covered at a different time and day) only about 6 months, but I realized a few things when I get there.
This is what I learned while I as at FindLaw - the BAD
- They have a flat hierarchy. There's no where for developers to go who want to advance and do anything beyond being in management.
- All the developers are very underpaid for what they do and what they have to put up with on a daily basis. All of my job offers were 10-13K MORE than what I was making at FindLaw, and I didn't get a raise two of the three years I was there!!
- It's very process oriented. Once you've learned how to develop and integrate 20 sites a month, you pretty much know everything you're going to know. In the end, I really felt like a Ford plant employee putting hubcaps on cars as they came down the line.
- Lack of originality. Even at Reside I was able to try new things and think outside the box to get stuff done. Not the case at FindLaw. The majority of their sites all look the same. then again, you can't be original when your goal is put out 4,000 sites a year.
- Lack of collaboration within departments. Developers were kept isolated from the designers. For me, there's a HUGE opportunity to create some really unique stuff with designers and it's just not happening when you keep those people separate. It was a delight working at Reside where the designers would ask me if I wanted to try something new, and vice versa.
- Hiring outside candidates unfamiliar with the culture at FindLaw. This was a biggie when I was leaving. There were several high profile hires of people into high positions. They were external candidates and all came in and wanted to make seismic waves in the company on the backs of the people who work there. They ruffled a LOT of people's feathers and lost a lot of respect and buy in from the employees. As a result, a lot of people left.
You might be thinking why would anybody work at FindLaw after reading those points, but fret not people, there are some good things I realized after I left.
This is what I learned after I left FindLaw - the GOOD
- The code their sites use is straight forward and rock solid. They taught me to be a code snob. No sissy hacks, no crazy stuff. Standards compliant, clean, fast code.
- You learn to code fast and code well. The one site I used in my interview as a recent example of my work impressed everybody who saw it. You should have seen the eyes when I told them I whipped it out in about 2 hours. Hard to imagine someone could code so well, so fast.
- No bugs. Since the code is so good, there's rarely bugs you have spend time trying to figure out. Having to code for IE6, you'd think this would be a nightmare, but it wasn't. The developers knew all the tricks and after a few hundred sites, you knew them all. This was not the case with the salesforce.com platform. The salesforce.com code sucked so back, most of my time was spent trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking when they laid out their CSS.
- The work is straight forward. You sit down, hammer out a few sites and go home. It's not rocket science. You basically work by yourself and you don't need to have a lot of contact with other departments like the project managers or designers. One thing I found out when I was at Reside was there were a LOT of meetings I didn't need to go to, but since I was the "front end" guy, I needed to be there. At FindLaw, you could "blend in" and do your work, whereas in a project setting, you were constantly being asked to do things other than code.
Not what you expected?
Yeah, the last few months I was at FindLaw sucked pretty bad. Am I glad I got out? Completely happy. I've learned a lot (both good and bad) now that I'm no longer working at FindLaw. With my new position at Best Buy, I'm drawing on all of my experiences and processes which were used at FindLaw. Best Buy is currently in the process of moving a lot of their development back in house and as such, do not have a lot of processes in place. There's a lot of opportunity to have input, and many of the ideas I've spoken to my manager about are already being considered. I had a six month hiccup at Reside and now am back in my comfort zone. I do miss FindLaw for what it;s worth, but I'm also glad I was able to move on. I'm making a LOT more money now (almost 30K more than what I was making at FindaLaw) and my stress levels have dropped considerably.
Amazing German architecture, left dormant for years
Recently caught a Nat Geo show about the underground bunkers and buildings in Berlin. It was a pretty crazy prgram which highlighted several places in Berlin and documented the well preserved fall out shelters and command centers hidden deep underneath Berlin. It was fascinating to see how well preserved these places were. Some with images and slogans about enjoying life and showed images of people laughing and drinking. The guides explained it was a way for the people to think about better times while the allied bombers pounded the city day and night.
Here's a short video from the Nat Geo site which gives you a quick overview of the program. You should try and watch it when it's on again.
Check the Nat Geo site - it's playing again on Thursday December 16th.
Back in the big corporate world. .
After leaving FindLaw I then joined a small cloud services company in Minneapolis called Reside. Everything was going fine, then like a clipboard holding backup QB, I got a call from a recruiter I had spoken to shortly before taking my position at Reside. They needed an FED (front end developer) and the project which was put on hold, was now, back on. They sent me an offer and I quickly rejected it. I had a full time job, this was a contract position, and although the rate would have been a nice increase, I couldn't see myself leaving the security and stability of a full time for something that could last three months or a year. After I got off the phone, I thought that was the end of itThe second offer
the second time around, the rate went up another $6 per hour. Still a ton of money for doing some coding work, but still contract work. I politely told the recruiter, "no" and thought this would finally be it. They gave me their best offer, and I turned them down. I had a nice project I was working on, was happy, and didn't think too much more about it. Then things started to get really interesting.The offer I couldn't refuse
Then came the "final" offer. A full time position, benefits and another $15K on top of what I was already making. This is when I needed to break out the matrix, start writing down pros and cons and completely over analyze this offer. I looked at everything, benefits, what I was doing now (cloud services) as opposed to what I loved doing (front end development). I felt like my HTML/CSS skills were starting to get rusty working on the salesforce.com platform and trying to deal with their marginal code. I also didn't like working with Eclipse and I really missed Dreamweaver with all my plugins. My speed came from utilizing Dreamweaver's auto-complete feature and several other plugins. I could cut and code a site in about 3 hours. Here I was toiling away on someone else's code, feeling like a hack getting it to work. Although this wasn't the deciding factor, it certainly weighed heavy on my mind. But there were other considerations.Reside was in the process of completely taking off. The last three projects were HUGE ($400K plus). They were adding people at an astounding rate (15 people in the last month) and everybody was at full capacity for the rest of the year. In terms of potential, in terms of growing, and having a great spot in the company, Reside had it all. If you ever wanted to be in a company right when it was taking off like a rocket, well, Reside was it.
And now?
I exited Reside as gracefully as possible. It was tough to leave the company. I know they're going to be incredibly successful, it was hard to leave such a great situation. I started at Best Buy (usually referred to as "The Empire" in certain development circles) on Monday and after a couple days, I'm pretty happy already. Even though I don't have a laptop, monitor or a cubicle, I've found out some pretty cool things. First of all, the projects I'll be working on will play to my strengths (coding HTML and CSS quickly). I was told, we're going to be completely revamping all the best practices for coding, of which I will have a lot of input. One of the cool things is the developers have been fooling around with Zing Chart and have put together a pretty cool application to track the work we're doing. Lastly, the campus is stunning. The cafeteria is amazing, and there are several areas where you can relax and hang out, including an area with a pool table, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. For our first week, the team was divided up and we were given a task as a competition. We'll see how our presentation goes on Friday, but I think we're going to win pretty easily. In any case, I'm pretty happy and look forward to how the project is going to go the rest of the year.Turn the page. .
Another page has turned and I'm pretty stoked about the future.Train roll on, on down the line,
Won't you please take me far away?
Now I feel the wind blow outside my door,
Means I'm leaving my job behind.
Tuesday's gone with the wind.
My job's gone with the wind.
ok, so I changed the lyrics a little, but I think you get the message.
It was a good idea to start with
After playing so much hockey recently, I was looking for way to improve my game, even at 40. I started looking on the internet and came across this little diddy:
Then I started to find out where in Minneapolis it would be possible to get some time on one of these machines. I quickly realized there wasn't anywhere in Minneapolis who actually had one of these machines. Then I started working out from there. Then I actually found two places who had the machines:
Acceleration North they have several locations, but the Rapid Shot is only in certain locations. The other is on Rochester at a Play-it-Again Sports shop in Rochester. To be honest, I don't get down to Rochester too much.
I was pretty shocked. The "State of Hockey" could only muster two locations where I could use this cutting edge hockey technology? I couldn't believe it. Then I started thinking what the possibilities would be of having a place where players could come and use the machines and not have to buy some $500 hockey training program to use the machines? Then I started getting stars in my eyes and thought about opening my own place with several Rapid Sot machines. Maybe a small front end retail space? I needed more information, so I called Rapid Shot to inquire about cost of the machines and the full lot of questions I had in order to get a better idea of how possible this might be. I also had a call in to a friend who does commercial real estate to see how viable a two or three lease would be and how much space I would need to house the business I was thinking of.
Discovery
Now it was time to get some numbers and run some numbers. Then I needed to put together a business plan, think of marketing plan, etc, etc. I took a while, but I got the numbers from Rapid Shot. It was a bit overwhelming, but I had to see the bigger picture. Here are those numbers:
Cost of machines with delivery and set-up: approx. 50K. Essentially it's a package deal. They sell the machines, install and set up the PC's which record the information. They send out a crew to set up the machines. They also include the cards that the players use to keep track of their information. As soon as they buy their card and get registered, they can go online and see how they measure up to the rest of the country. It's pretty cool.
When I first came up with the idea, I was thinking 3 machines and then a few "analog" slots with pucks and a tarp so if there's people waiting, they can get warmed up first. The cost for those would be minimal and I'd keep the cost less than the Rapid Shot machines.
Verdict
At 100K+ for the machines, with a 3 year commercial lease, and the cost of the rest of the details (employees, hockey sticks, point of sale equipment) I was looking at a 5+ year run before I would start to see a profit. It would be manageable, but I'd really be all in, every single day I got up. I'd have to promote the hell out of it (easy), market the hell out of it (slightly easier, I'm a web developer!) and then there's the money and employees and all the other hassles of running the business.
The Deal Breaker
Time. Time it would take to get it up and running. Time to market and promote. Worst of all? time away from my family. Doing this business would most likely cost me a lot of the next five years watching my daughter grow up. As much as I think this would be insanely successful, the last thing I want to miss is watching my daughter grow up. One of the stories which always haunts me is when I heard Joe Gibbs (the famous football coach) talking about how he was so obsessed with making his team better, he would sleep at the stadium and send audio tapes home to his wife so they could keep in contact. He said he knew it was time to give up coaching when he went into his son's bedroom one night and his 10 year old son was now an 18 year old 6'5" 230lb lineman. He had missed his son growing up and was very, very regretful. I've already got plenty of regret in my life, I don't need anymore with my daughter.
Leo's are supposed to like Red, right?
I'm a Leo, born in August and was told multiple times from women since I'm a Leo, my primary "power" color is red. I should look good in Red, and for a while I even bought into the hype and started buying and wearing a lot of red stuff.
My girlfriend and the time (you know, the one who won't accept my friend request on Facebook?) had a thing for the color blue. Of course she had some great blue eyes, which I'm sure had something to do with it. When I used to keep stuff at her place, she would always get something other than color blue for my stuff so we could tell whose toothbrush was whose. After some time, I gave up on the color red and started getting stuff that had blue in it. Even after we broke up, I continued to use blue as my primary color for all my toiletries. It was an easy way for me to keep track of my stuff. Don't know why it stuck, but it did. I kind of came around to seeing blue as a cooling, calming color so I've just stuck with it.
I know it was short, but it's still something interesting about me, one of my stranger quirks if you will.
It took a while, but my luck finally ran out
It must have been 1993 or 1994. Karis had moved back to Minneapolis with my son. She moved out and basically ended our relationship. I was living alone in a two bedroom apartment by myself and struggling to make ends meet to pay the rent. At the time, I was in a Pracs study and was complaining about my current situation. Of the guys in the study who was a regular I knew said he would be willing to live with me and split the bills and pay half the rent and all that jazz. At the time I was more concerned about paying the bills than really doing a background check on my new roommate. Boy, I should've known better.
the first month was ok, then it got bad
The first month was cool, bills got paid on time, rent was paid and everything was good. Then I noticed my new roomie "Darren" was using my soap, conditioner and shampoo. After a few weeks of going through my toiletries, I decided to keep my stuff in my room, out of plain site. At the time, we were keeping completely different hours. I was working during the day, then spending my nights at the computer lab toiling away on my senior dissertation as I was desperate to graduate and get back home so I could reconcile with Karis. Darren was sleeping in and not working (which was a bad sign) and staying up late. The only time we really passed each other was in the morning. He would be up at looking for a job, and I was heading off to work or class. This is just about the time the landlord started coming around looking for him.
Fall turned to Winter and he wasn't paying the bills. I found out he ordered some porn on MY cable bill. Then he wouldn't give me money for the bills for heat, water and the cable. I figured the easiest way to get him to pay was to just let it get cut off. I decided to continue paying for the heat for obvious reasons, but then he stopped paying rent.
Spiraling towards the end
After several months of bizarre behavior which included not taking showers, ordering porn and then trying to tag along with me when I went out, as well as leaving his "How To Pick Up Women" book laying around as well as constantly asking me to borrow him money, I knew the end was near. Even when his "best friend" showed up and I really had to make an effort to ditch them, I ran into them when I got home at 2am. They were still up and Darren's friend had pulled out his porno mags and then kept telling him he was a douchebag and an asshole. He started asking me if Darren had stopped paying his bills. I thought to myself, "oh shit, this is a pattern, time to get out while I can." and then proceeded to verbally tear him apart. He was pretty entertaining, but at the same time, it was very troubling for me. I knew this was not good.
At the time, I was only hoping I could get through the Winter and get home without any other issues. The landlord wasn't happy, and every day brought a new adventure. I started figuring out when he was coming and going and told the landlord. One frosty morning, the landlord was waiting for him and I swear I thought he was going to knock him right into the snowbank. A short stint delivering phone books kept Darren afloat long enough to pay the landlord and then flee town. You can't imagine the relief when you come home and your cowardly roommate has left. He moved out during the day without telling me. Just kind of fled the scene. by this time, I was close enough to finishing school, I really didn't care. I knew I could manage for another month or so until I could move out. About three days later, I put in my notice to move out.
There are very few things I remember about Darren, other than he was the worst roommate I ever had. I can only thank god it was short lived and nothing major happened.
I moved out and got back home. It was a rude awakening. When I get back to Minneapolis, Karis wasn't interested in dating or getting back together. This was the beginning several moves I made between Fargo and Minneapolis over the next few years. I finally moved back for good in January of 1997.
It's never been easy to say goodbye. .
When my son was younger, and his Mom was dragging me all over the country from Minnesota to Georgia to Missouri, I always had a tough time saying goodbye. I was usually cool and calm when I'd tell him I love him and see him in a few months again. By the time I got back to my car, I was in tears, convinced his Mother thought much about her son. To me, she always interested in her own agenda, and his was just being brought along for the ride.
Her exclusion of me from his life should be obvious to anybody. He was in and out of several schools until his Mother finally gave up and put him in a Military school for three years. Until they found out they were moving to Australia. Which brings me to today.
The last goodbye
I thought today was going to be tough, but I guess I've accepted the fact he's going away for two years. I'll most likely see him later this year in Hawaii. My Mom is already hard at work working on putting a trip together in November or January. I did I could today which was to hug him and tell him I love him and hope his collerbone heals up nicely. I also said we'd talk online with Skype when he finally gets over there. I just hope the next two years go a lot smoother than the last two at Hargrave. Lord knows he could use it.
On the way home. .
I told my Dad it was interesting to not feel the sadness and depressing feelings I had when we'd drop him at the airport when he was younger. I told him I thought Australia would be good, and he could finally get a good break and enjoy school, have a social life like a real fifteen year old kid and be able to enjoy the last of his teenage years. My Dad agreed and alsp mentioned he's older and more mature now and can take care of himself. When he was younger, it was easy to get emotional because he was still somewhat of a child. Either way, I wish him only the best.
I have no idea why I thought about this song, but I did. I thought it was strange, but it just reminds of me the situation - just so many vast differences between myself and his mother. .
I was expecting so much. . less
When my son showed up on Wednesday, I figured his visit was going to be a lot of the same old b.s. Sleeping in until noon, playing video games all day and only wanting to eat at McDonald's and go to R rated movies. I decided to plan out all four days to avoid such nonsense and make sure he was completely burned out by the time he left on Sunday. Things went better, but not at all as I had planned.
DAY 1
Pretty much what I had expected. Told him several times what we were doing all four days, in grave detail. I tell him we're going to ValleyFair at 10am, be ready to go Wednesday morning. I get a call about 10am telling me, "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad, I'm really tiiiiiiiiirrrrrrreeeeeeddddddd, can I sleep in a little later?" I knew immediately what this meant. No ValleyFair, maybe a movie later and dinner out. Fuck me, here we go again. I fault a lot of people for this happening. Number 1 his Mom for not getting on his ass and telling him he needs to get up early tomorrow morning. Number 2, my son for acting so disrespectful in the first place. that shit would NEVER EVER go with my parents. I started having those old feelings this was going to be another useless visit. I'm a man with a great intuition, the rest of the day would bear out my gut feeling.
Almost over before it started
Instead of going to ValleyFair (it was too late) I decided we'll just grab a movie and then go home for dinner. After the movie (SALT) which is one of the worst movies I've ever seen btw, I started telling him we would go to VallerFair tomorrow if it didn't rain. This is when the whinny, cry-baby tones started from him. "Daaaaaaaad, I don't want to go to ValleyFair, I don't want to go to the racetrack tomorrow with Grandma and Grandpa. I just stopped dead, since I was already pissed about how this visit had already started, I just looked at him and said, "Well then, why the fuck did you even bother coming? You KNEW what was going on, you're here to spend time with your family, if you don't want to do this, then I'll drop you off with your Mom tonight." To which I got the fifteen year old response, "Fine with me." It was a quiet ride home, and then I told him he was going to have to break the news to his grandmother why he wasn't staying.
The long meeting.
We spent almost an hour at my Mom's place talking about what was going on and why he was acting like he was. We agreed on some plans going forward and then we went home to catch dinner with his sister and step-mom. It was a close call, and I simmered down a bit after it was all over. Tomorrow would be a new day.
DAY 2
Once again, he slept in late and we decided we would run some errands and get some stuff he needed before going back home. It was a better afternoon. We talked about a lot of stuff and I finally felt like we were bonding like a father and son should. I opted out of the horse racing trip, but he said he had a blast. He didn't get home until 10:30pm and we chatted about how good of a time he had. I really felt like things had turned around.
DAY 3 - EXTREME WATER SLIDE
I told him didn't have a choice on Friday. We were going to the waterpark and he needed to shake his ass out of bed by 9:30am so we could get there on time. We got there and had a great time the first half of the day.I never thought I could walk so many stairs and still keep up. After we lunch we took a break and decided to ride some of the slides again.
We were riding a two-person raft right away and were having a great time. We were really pushing the envelope, he was leaning forward, getting the raft to go faster and having a great time. Then, he decided he wanted me up front and he would ride in the back. Fair enough. I was leaning forward right as we were coming out of a dip and into a turn. I must've been leaning too far forward. The raft lurched up the side and dumped us both out. I heard a loud "thud" behind me as I was spinning and sucking in water and tumbling toward the end of the ride. The ride spit all three of us out and I could tell he was hurting. He said he couldn't move his arm and his shoulder hurt. All I could see was a small red dot on his shoulder where he must've landed. A lifeguard came over and asked if we needed help and finally told us to go the first-aid station. I asked him if he thought we needed to go the hospital and he said, "yeah". By the time we got out to the car, I could tell he was in a lot of pain. When I went to put him in the car, his collerbone was really swollen up, and black and blue already. I knew then it was bad.
Hospital, X-Rays and the final verdict
After a few calls to Bren and his Mom, we got to the ER, got him x-rays and the doctor came in after a few minutes to give us the verdict. Broken collerbone, right in the middle. He gave us some Vicodin and an immobilization sling to keep his arm in the proper position. Karis (his mom) took it all in stride. As a former athletes, we both had our knocks and broken bones. He was pretty pissed. No LAX for 6 weeks. Tomorrow was the going away party, my birthday party and my parents 42nd Anniversary all rolled into one party. We were supposed to play golf, but it wasn't going to happen now.
The big party
Nothing much to say about the party other than everybody had a great time. We took lots of pictures, had Famous Dave's catered in and told some great stories. It was nice to have my son spend some time with his extended family.
Sunday. . the last day for two years. .
All in all, the visit I thought went better than I expected. He spent time with his little sister (she adores him) and he had a great time with his nieces when they went to the race track on Thursday night. In my next post, I'll talk about my feelings when he left and what to look forward to in the future.
Never thought it would be this hard
I thought blogging everyday for a year would be fairly simple. Since I'm a night owl, I'd whip out some short, easy posts and them pick a deeper topic when I had time. The subtle mix should be easy to pull off - right? W R O N G.
Once my son showed up, I figured I'd write while he was busy playing video games. Then I realized I have to get up with our 3 year old daughter, which essentially rendered my easy writing schedule at night - dead. There was no way I was going to stay up until midnight writing some deeply intellectual post, then get up at 6:30am when my daughter got up.
In short, I'm starting to understand how really hard it's going to be to keep up a rate of one post per day - including the weekends. So once again, here's three posts to make up for this weekends post on Friday, Saturday and today.
By the time I realized it. .
It was already 10pm and I needed to get up early tomorrow. In lieu of these circumstances, this is a "quickie" post. It fulfills my 365 challenge so I'm good.
For the past few years, I've lost track of one of my favorite bands - Fear Factory. After some researching, it seems the band has undergone some pretty tough times.
Although Digimortal had a successful start, the sales did not reach anywhere near the levels of Obsolete and the band received little tour support. The direction of the album coupled with strong personal differences between some of the band members created a rift that escalated with time, to the point where Bell announced his exit in March 2002. The band disbanded immediately thereafter. The band’s contractual obligations remained unfulfilled however, and Roadrunner did not release them without controversially issuing the Concrete album (originally from 1991) in 2002 and the b-sides and rarities compilation, Hatefiles in 2003.
During his time away from Fear Factory, Bell started his side project along with John Bechdel, called Ascension of the Watchers, who released their first EP, Iconoclast, independently via their online store in 2005.
First return (2002–2003)
Over time, it emerged that the rift between the members was largely between the guitarist Dino Cazares and the other members, particularly Bell.
Cazares was the first to speak out after the break-up, proceeding to make claims and allegations against Bell and the other members in May 2002 in a Blabbermouth.net interview.[10] Almost all of these allegations were subsequently addressed and refuted by Herrera in a counter interview,[11] speaking on behalf of all the other members.
Olde Wolbers and Herrera got back together later in 2002 and laid the foundations for what was to become the return of Fear Factory. With Cazares now permanently out of the line up, Bell was approached with their demo recordings and was impressed enough to rejoin the band and Fear Factory was formed once again. Christian switched to guitar and Byron Stroud of Strapping Young Lad was approached to join the band as their new bassist, and has been their bass player since 2003.
Dino Cazares has continued recording and performing with his side project called Asesino, a Mexican deathgrind band featuring Tony Campos of Static-X on vocals. In 2007, he also started a new group called Divine Heresy, featuring Tim Yeung, formerly of Hate Eternal and Vital Remains, on drums.
Fast forward to 2010
this issues have basically persisted to the present day and right now it's just a stalemate between several of the members. Bell just decided to push on with new members and recently released their latest album "Mechanize". I'll have to hear the whole album to give an honest review, but here's a little taste:
So far, I like it, but we'll see after I've heard the whole album.
In the beginning . . .
I dated a girl named Kathie M. when I was a sophomore at NDSU. I fell in love pretty quickly and it was a very turbulent relationship. We broke up several times, but always got back together. A lot of times, we fought about stupid things. She was pretty jealous and it got to a point in our relationship where we couldn't be at the same party together. She would get so jealous if she saw me talking with another girl. It was a pretty crazy first year we were together. The summer came and I went to go visit her a few times. One the of the last times, I drove three hours to see her, only to have her parents make her break up with me. Needless to say, it was a LONG ride home. I thought it was over, but it was only just the beginning. .
Over the summer we stayed in contact and I found out her parents were letting her move up to school early to move into an apartment. We made arrangements for me come and visit. The two days I was there were completely awesome (i.e. LOTS of sex) she thought since we couldn't stay away from each other, we should get back together. It was great for a few months, then the fighting started back up again. I also brought her home to meet my parents and my parents and my sister had mixed reviews of her. Then, during the winter, I caught her cheating. Not like I "thought" she was cheating, but completely red handed with some half naked dude in her bed. I just told him, "Have fun man, she's a total whore!" then walked out of her apartment. This is where it started to get interesting.
This is when she started playing games with me. Telling me she wanted to get back together and she still loved me and all that b.s. I figured, "Ok, let's play some games then." Within a week I was dating two women and trying to keep up the facade of getting back together with Kathie. I creatively let Kathie find out I was dating another woman, which played right into her jealous nature. She freaked out and really laid the honey on thick. Calling me, coming over un-announced, all kinds of stuff to try and get back in my good graces. I relented (since one of the girls was a total fucking psycho, which is another story altogether) and we got back together. I figured this was the 8th or 9th time we had broken up and gotten back together. I was such a sucker.
This next time we lasted a little longer, but the summer was good, but too long. I separated my shoulder, she moved into a different apartment and we both were working way too much and not seeing each other. As Fall wore on, I pushed my luck when she broke up with me shortly after she moved into a house with three of her close friends. Two of which were not fans of mine. I decided this was my last chance to stay together, so I borrowed a friends credit card and purchased a diamond ring. Then I went over to her place and proposed to her. After a day of thinking about it and having a full on committee with a bunch of people, she returned the ring and I figured that truly was the end. Once again, I was wrong
Post breakup, & Summer Companionship
We had broken up and I had already moved on (after getting my heart ripped out for two years, it didn't take much to get over her) and had started dating another woman (another great story btw) when I started seeing her out randomly here and there. She would leave me messages on my car since we parked in the same lot at school. Then the summer came and her serious boyfriend left to go home. She stayed in Fargo. We had been together a few times (I mean, we had SEX) when she got lonely. On the same day her boyfriend left, she was in my bed that night. I'm pretty sure that was the last time we were together, but later on, she did tell me one interesting thing.
All of that. . for this?
What I suspect is the reason why she won't accept my friend request? The same reason her boyfriend errrrrrrrrrrr husband still hates me (even after some 20+ years). He feels threatened. She must have told him at some point, because I'd seen him out at the bar a few times with her during that summer and all he did was glare at me, then they'd get into some fight and leave the bar. All to my great amusement. The other funny thing was my new girlfriend loved making her uncomfortable. One time after we had started dated, my new girlfriend found out Kathie was in the bar and couldn't wait to see her. We were talking and as she walked by, their eyes locked on to each other. Then my girlfriend leaned over and laid a deep wet kiss on me and made sure Kathie saw it. It was one of those moments you can't make up. It was pretty awesome.
I don't expect to ever have her accept my friend request, since her husband would probably blow a gasket, which is something I take great pride in.
You know you're in trouble when
You wake up in the middle of the night and you're in so much pain, you can't go back to sleep. I've come to realize the body has a unique early warning system when something isn't right. My turn to get face-to-face with my own warning system came at 3:30am, July 25th, 2010. I attempted to ignore the pain and go back to sleep. Thankfully, my body did not listen to me and my pain started to increase. At which point I got out of bed and went out to the couch to spare Bren my tossing and turning which surely woke her up. 90 minutes later and after thinking, "I'd better go in, just to make sure, remember what happened to Mike, don't be stupid." Mike, was my nephew who ignored the pain and had his appendix burst while he was at home. My brother-in-law found him, face down in the fetal position, unable to move because the pain was so intense. Several surgeries and hospital stays later, and he's finally recovered. It was enough to motivate me to inform Bren I was going to the ER to get checked out.
On my way over to the ER, I remembered my 6th grade heath teacher Mr. Kenyon trying to explain, in grave detail, the pain of having an appendicitis "attack" as he called it. Guess he wanted to instill in us how bad it would be. His words were something to the effect of, "You'll know when it happens, imagine someone taking a long sword and stabbing you in side of your torso - repeatedly. Trust me, you'll know it when it happens." As I looked around the room I saw several of my classmates wincing in pain and crumpling their bodies up in weird positions. Now, as I drove to the hospital, I knew what he meant. My pain seemed to be radiating across my whole lower abdominal area. If I took the time to breathe deep and relax, it felt just like he described it. Sharp, deep pains to the right side of my torso. Not very comfortable at all.
Luckily for me, the parking lot was empty when I got there. I reasoned there weren't a lot of stabbings, shootings and other mayhem on Sundays like there normally are on Friday or Saturday night. Last time I had to come to the ER, it was on on a Friday night. It was total chaos. Parking lot was full, cops and ambulances were everywhere, people almost stacked up in the waiting room. Cops arresting people while they were getting stitched up. As a morbid person, there is a certain humor that goes with someone getting handcuffed after getting stitches for doing something stupid. In any case, it was front row parking for me. I went in and explained what was going on. The staff did a great job of getting me in and set up with a bed. They said the doctor would be in shortly to ask me some questions and to try and relax.
When you're in pain, sometimes a friendly face can make all the difference
I'm in my room, thinking about a possible surgery for an appendicitis, and then the doctor walks in. It just happened to be the same doctor that treated me when I injured my shoulder playing hockey several months back. She recognized me right away and asked what it was that had brought me back to the ER. I described my predicament, and she said would do anything to help me out. She left and several nurses came in and started hooking me up to fluids and taking my blood and doing all kinds of other things. About ten minutes later, I felt that unmistakable rumble in my gut. I panicked and started furiously pushing the nurse button. A few minutes earlier I had told the nurse I was feeling a bit nausea and she gave me a bag and quickly exited the room. Now, I knew what was coming and I grabbed the bag and let loose with my dinner from the previous night. I had to sit there for several moments before the nurse finally came in the bag. Of the whole experience, this was my lowest point. The nurses quickly gave me some anti-nausea medicine. They prefaced it with, "They give it pregnant women, it's really safe." Of course the nurse came in and said I needed to take some "contrast" drink so they could do a CAT scan and make sure it was indeed my appendix. This, probably ten minutes after I blew chunks. I was in no mood to hear that, but after another ten minutes, I swallowed my pride and sucked both glasses down. A few minutes later, I was off to get my CAT scan.
The Family shows up
After I got back from the CAT scan, I was feeling better (probably all the drugs they were pumping into my body.) I got a text from Bren, her Mom had come over the watch Kenz and she was on her way over with my Mom and Dad. It was good to see them. My Mom hung around until they transfered me to an upstairs bed after determining it was indeed my appendix and it will have to come out. I was told when I got transferred I should be in surgery by 11:00am. The doctor has one big surgery, then I'd be next in line. It was 9AM.
The time comes, then goes. .
Around 10:00am, the nurse on duty came around and started prepping me for surgery. She put these weird wraps on my legs to increase my circulation. I was thinking, "Hey lady, I'm a hockey player, I have great circulation in my legs!". Nonetheless, she strapped em' on. A few more warm blankets and suddenly 11:00am came and went, then noon, then at 1:00pm, the nurse showed up and told me they had a gunshot victim and so this person needed surgery right away, and as soon as they were ready, they would come and get me. It was now 1:00pm.
I don't think there's anything worse than sitting around waiting to get operated on. As a rookie in the whole surgery thing, I was tough to sit around for so many hours thinking about what was about to happen, Watching "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins" wasn't taking my mind off of the surgery. Having Bren there helped a lot. Another 4 hours drifted by, and at 5pm, the nurse finally came and got me. They wheeled me out and down to the operating room. I guess they have an "on deck" area where the nurses started briefing me about what was about to happen. In another few minutes, the doctor would show and we'd be a go.
Surgery. . finally
12 hours after I had first showed up in the ER, I was now being prepped by some veteran nurses for my surgery. They all had a very light hearted attitude, which was comforting to me. They really soothed my fears as to what was about to happen. The doctor finally showed up and explained what was going to happen. They were going to make three incisions. One in my belly button, one near my pelvic bone and one on my left side. They'd remove my appendix and within about an hour, the surgery would be over. He left to go get ready and the nurses then explained what was about to take place. They were going to give some oxygen and then some anesthesia and within seconds, I'd be out cold. A little more light conversation, then it was game on. They brought me into the operating room, got me on the table, strapped down my arms in the "Jesus Christ" pose as I called it. For a brief moment, I thought to myself, "Is this is what it's like when you're about to be put to death?" Morbid, I know, but it's what was going through my head, the nurse then said she was going to start the oxygen and put the mask over my face. I instantly switched to thinking about McKenzie, my family and my parents. I remember my Dad telling me the nurses told him to think of positive things when they were about to put him under for his surgery, so I was doing the same thing. Then everything went black.
Recovery, the long night away from home, then home at last
I woke up to double vision. Trying to focus was not a good thing to try, but I felt comfortable. The nurses told me the surgery was a success and I did well. My face was itching like crazy and I was in some pain. I try several times to open my eyes, but the double vision wasn't working, so I just closed my eyes and waited till I got back to my bed. Bren waited about another hour to make sure I was ok before she left to go home. She planned on picking me up the next morning after I was discharged. Needless to say, it was a L O N G night. I didn't get much sleep, but the nurse on duty overnight was a real doll. She continually checked in on me and keep getting me warm blankets and kept refueling my ant-pain medication which was a godsend. I barely slept and usually slept only about 45 minutes at a time.By the time 3:30am rolled around, the nurse wanted me to get up and try to go to the bathroom. I said I didn't need to go, but I was warned right before surgery how important it is to get your body functioning again since they pretty much shut your body down during surgery. I reluctantly got up and ambled into the bathroom. I pulled my gown up and waited for what seemed like an eternity. Then I started to pee. Then I stopped. Then it felt like fucking razor blades coming out. I started thinking to myself, "I swear I'm never making fun of those urinary flow commercials EVER again. I can't imagine what it would be like to have this condition all the time. After a short pee, I was thankful to lay back down and pass out for another 45 minutes. By 9am, I had sent a text message to Brenda they were getting ready to discharge me. I would have to eat breakfast first. I had pancakes and eggs along with some water After my discharge, Bren rolled me in the wheelchair to the parking ramp where I got up and walked the rest of the way to the car. I was happy to be going home.
As much as I was told it would be a quick recovery, it took several weeks before I was really feeling good enough to start doing normal thing again. I made the mistake of attempting to mow the lawn a few days after my surgery. I was soooooooooo sore afterwards - but it was a good lesson not to push it.
All in all, it was an interesting experience since I had never had surgery before. For all the after effects, I still give credit to the doctors and nurses at Park Nicolet Medical Center, they really calmed my fears and made the experience quite bearable.
I guess it close enough to let the cat out of the bag. I turn the big 40 in a few weeks and to celebrate, I'm going to blog everyday for a year, just to see how boring my life has become. Since my change in career a few years back, I'm going to keep this blog as my personal blog and then use my Tumblr account more design oriented topics.
As such, you need a lot of ideas for 300+ posts, so I'll be updating this list over the following weeks to keep track of some of the better ideas constantly popping into my head.
This is what I have so far:
1) My appendix surgery experience
2) How I got better at hockey - at age 39
3) Why I love some of the software I use like Tumblr, Blogger, Twitter, etc
4) The great FindLaw conspiracy
4) My new job and how its been going
5) Pandora vs. Grooveshark vs. MP3 collection
6) Things that irked me about people I worked with at FindLaw
7) How the door got closed at FindLaw
8) Some future business ideas
9) Why my favorite color is blue (instead of red)
10) college story #1 - how I got the nickname "Weasel"
11) Why my college girlfriend won't accept my friend request on Facebook
12) Short list of my current interests
13) Why I had to kill my six13 website and associated properties (LinkedIn, Facebook)
14) Going back to school at 40?
15) Why I don't use WordPress like everybody else.
*updated 07-26-2010*
16) Why Porn is bad for guys
17) How I got interested in Web Development
18) College story #2 - How I got kicked out of the dorms & how my parents found out.
19) Top 5 best concerts I've ever attended and why they were so awesome.
20) This is how I choose what music I listen to
21) What happened the day my son was born
22) My one horrific roommate experience in college
23) Why I chose to go to NDSU instead of the University of Minnesota
24) How I ended up with a degree in Anthropology instead of Landscape Architecture
25) How I got away with almost burning down my dorm (this is NOT what I got kicked out of the dorms for either) Lucky for me the statute of limitations runs out after 3 years. ;)
26) The 5 weirdest, most insane women I have ever dated
27) The reason I had to put the cork in the bottle and stop drinking altogether
28) What I think the meaning of dreams are.
29) Why dating 18 year old girls can get you busted for DUI
30) How spending 10 years in the wireless industry made me hate salespeople & sales organizations.
*updated 8-11-2010*
31) Why I changed my favorite color from Blue to Green. This may be obvious to most, but there's always a cool story behind it - right?
32) Updates on some of the people who left FindLaw the same time I did and how their new jobs are going.
33) College Story #3 - how I got beat up by a girl at a party and still went home with the best looking woman at the party.
34) How my son has changed my life.
35) The results of my Myers Briggs test and how accurate I think it is.
36) Why I love trance music.
37) What I think FindLaw is good for and why the company will never realize its true potential.
38)A short list of all the jobs I've been fired from and why I got fired and if I really cared or not. Most of these were pre-college.
39)Why I think hockey is the hardest sport to play.
40)Why I finally quit playing soccer after 20+ years and the goal I finally achieved, and why it took so long for me to embrace the sportsmanship side of the game. This might be a LONG post folks. ;)
Only five more days left! I hope I can get a few more ideas out there before I have to start writing.
Usually I'm in a good mood when I drive home from hockey, but the last two nights I've played (Wednesday and tonight) it's been draining and very frustrating for me. Then I start thinking about the rest of my life and I think I'm missing something. I feel like whatever value I got out of life has evaporated somewhere and I can't seem to find the fun anymore.
Friday night hockey used to be about fun. Then all of a sudden one guy (whom I know very well) felt it necessary to start stacking the teams, floating and doing everything to try and gain an advantage so he could win and win big - which I don't get. Pick up hockey by nature is unstructured and is supposed to be about having fun, but not him. Maybe I'm the old sour puss guy just looking to get some exercise and have some fun, but I'm not having fun and getting frustrated in the process. I've come to the conclusion I should stop playing hockey and go back to the gym and look for other activities where I let certain people get to me.
In any case, I think it's deeper than that since I should be right where I want to be in life. I just left a dead-end job and got a nice raise, the new job is fun, but the tools I have to use to do my job sucks. My six year wedding anniversary was today and I was like, "Huh, who cares?". I just cannot seem to find any jot in my current situation and it's beyond me what I have to do to make it better.
Maybe blog about it to get needless attention?
Maybe a mid life crisis? I know I don't need a 23 year old mistress or a sports car to feel better. So what do I need to find some joy in life and feel like I'm actually worth something to this cold and cruel world?
I think I'll sleep on it and worry about it tomorrow. . . too many things to be pissed about at the moment.
Like Ozzy once said:
Voices, A thousand thousand voices
Whispering, the time has passed for choices
Golden days are passing over, Yeah
See you on the other side folks. . .
Unfortunately, today is not the day I post I had a great day and what a wonderful life I have. It's going to be somber and depressing. Today I learned one of my hero's passed away. The lead singer of Type O Negative, Peter Steele died yesterday of heart failure. Today ended with a great sense of grief. One of my favorite bands is gone and someone who I looked up to and related with for so many years is now gone.
It seemed like it was just yesterday when I read the first interview with Pete. It was in Fargo, ND, circa 1994, while I was in college, They were touring with Motley Crue and the local paper did a short interview with him. It was pretty depressing. Pete talked about how he didn't ask to be born, he didn't want to be a human being and thought he would be better off as a maggot on the sidewalk.
The next time I would hear about them was when I heard Black no.1 on the radio. I called the radio station, frantic to find out who this awesome band was. I was shocked to find out - it was Type O Negative. I went out and bought Bloody Kisses and was instantly in love. Pete's voice, the moody, dark atmospheric music, and the overtly sexual lyrics had me hooked.
Soon after Bloody Kisses, I got my first chance to see TON in concert during the October Rust tour in I think 1996. I was living in Minneapolis, but went back to Fargo to see them. It was an amazing concert. Small bar, small stage, and lots of volume.
During this time, I was going through some pretty rough times. My son was born, my ex had moved back to Minneapolis, and I was struggling to find my way in life. I didn't know what the future held for me, and after moving back to get back together with my ex, she didn't want anything to do with me. I was thinking about moving back to Fargo and going to grad school. I was trying to hold on and move on all at the same time. On the October Rust CD, there's a song titled, "Love You To Death. It was a minor hit and getting LOTS of play in Fargo. Towards the end of the song, Pete starts singing: Am I good enough. . am I good enough. . for you? which always made me think about my situation, am I good enough for anybody? Will I ever find happiness?
The song really stayed with me for a long time. The whole album made me think a lot about life, and how much suffering I was going through. I felt like Pete was such a kindered spirit to me. His view on life, how he felt he had been suffering his whole life, it was remarkable how much I looked up to him and related to his struggles to find happiness.
If October Rust was my watershed moment, then the songs off their next album World Coming Down in 1999 was my swan song. I was still pretty depressed in 1999-2000. This album spoke volumes about my life then, what I was experiencing and where I would be in the next few years. At the time, it felt like my world was collapsing in, and there was nobody there for me. I felt so alone and deserted, it was pretty sad. I listened to this album day and night, and it made me get up each morning and keep moving forward. No matter how bad I thought life was, I knew somehwere, sometime it would get better.
After so many years of being such a huge fan, and seeing them multiple times, I knew I would represent them anyway I could. I started having TON wallpapers on my PC, I started wearing the concert t-shirts to work, and then, in 2003, I started this blog. I knew I wanted a TON sort of theme. The title of my blog is a nod to TON. The color scheme, the catch phrase, everything was done as a fan of TON and Pete Steele.
I still have all thier albums and I will continue to listen to their music long after Pete and the rest of TON are gone. They have left an indelible mark on my life and I will never forget what their music has done for me. God, I miss Pete already.
Godspeed old friend, The world will miss you.
PETER STEELE
1962-2010
Remember in my last post how I thought I had made the right decision to move to the maintenance team? Well, that was pretty short lived. In the span of three weeks I've went from thinking it was a great move, to one of the worst career choices I ever made. But I'm a fighter, and I always get up after I've been knocked down. In the end, it wasn't me who quit, it was my team lead, who felt it necessary to call off the wolves once and for all.
PLENTY OF BLAME TO GO AROUND
Several things occurred which compounded the problem. I'm not going to say it was everybody else's fault, but there's plenty of blame to go around for sure.
1) No training. Don't know how this happened. I've had several positions within this company and every time I've had training. I'm puzzled why my team lead didn't think I needed training. Surely there were things I should know - right? In any case, I wasn't trained at all. My team lead basically said, "Here's your queue, here's your accounts, go to work."
2) No discussion about the accounts. Had I known the Northeast region was as high maintenance as they were, I probably would have asked for a different region. In fact, everybody on the team wondered why I was given the toughest region and many of the developers who had been dealing with these accounts were given different territories. I'm still puzzled about this decision.
3) No ramp up period. Most of the times when you get a new position with goals, you're given a "ramp up" period to get you familiar with the processes so you can ease your way into being comfortable with your goals. There was no ramp up period. I was given full goals to begin with - again, with no training and no other discussion. I have no idea why this happened. I think my team lead was given his goals and when the new project was rolled out, he was told the team needs to hit their goals. Unfortunately, he couldn't give me a break on my goals since he was already getting pressure from management to make sure the team hit their goals.
4) We took 100% responsibility. I will never know completely, but it seemed like we were taking 100% responsibility for the errors. The AM's never seemed to be accountable for their errors, yet I was constantly inundated with emails and tickets complaining about the accuracy of the work I did. This was probably the toughest pill to swallow since the AM's flat out refused to take responsibility for any of their actions.
Along with this, I'm working way too fast to make sure I keep up with my goals. My work got sloppy and I started getting tickets back from AM's. Issues were compounded by the AM's writing poor, inaccurate, and often times confusing tickets. As a former AM, it was REALLY frustrating to think people were actually this stupid. But time and again, the AM's either didn't read their email's or the ticket's, or just simply disregarded what I had put in the ticket as a response, a nd laid all the blame on me.
LOOKING AHEAD
I've always been a firm believer in destiny and feel if this was meant to be, the proper steps would've been taken to insure I was successful. It didn't happen, and I have to move on. I'm not going to stay on the development team. There have been too many changes and too much micro management. For some weird reason, I'm actually happy about it, since I feel like I have more opportunities to explore now as opposed to having to stay in maintenance for a set period of time. I've also been looking at moving from Thomson to another company, which is also strange for me since I've been here for almost 5 year now.
Either way, it's a win/win situation for me.
When I started as a developer two years ago, I thought I had the world by the balls. I had moved down from being an account manager (considered a lowly position by the developers) and now was working with who I thought of as some of the smartest, sharpest people I knew. Where people came to me to ask about software and firefox plugins when I was an AM, these people were writing grease monkey scripts for Firefox. I was excited, and every day seemed to be a seemingly fascinating journey to learn the process of taking a website's content and integrating with the design. It was more or less a straight forward process, but after a few months of having fairly low goals, I was rocketed into full quota. By then, I had figured out the process, I was developing more and more shortcuts and was ripping out two to three sites a day. My all time best was integrating 12 sites in a single week.
Some months were harder than others, and I did run into some tough sites and a few months I came close to missing my goal, but I never did. In a full year, I went 12 for 12 and was at 100% for every month.
At this same time, we had a "collaboration room" built on our floor. Complete with a Nintendo WII and big screen TV. It seemed everybody had a surplus of free time. People were hanging out in the Collab room, chatting away, playing the WII, watching tv and generally having a great time. At the time, me and two other developers would play Tiger Woods once a day. 9 holes minimum, somtimes 18. And still, I continued to hit my goal month in and month out.
At the same time, people were constantly working to improve the company. Ideas for better collaboration, better relationships between teams, and most people I knew were always looking for ways to improve the company. We had free time to explore our ideas and have managment help us bring these to fruition. It was a pancea and people were knocking our doors down to get in.
THE TRANSITION
There were several factors which has lead to where we are now. First, we moved to a new platform, which would merge our two roles of integration and front end development. Over the next months, we would only have one development role. It would be awesome, you would be able to cut, code and integrate the site as one task, instead of two tasks. It was going to reduce our turn times exponentially. The funny part is it had been in development for the better part of 7 years (depending on who you spoke with) and had stalled and now the finance people were threatening to pull the plug if it didn't get finished. Needless to say, they got it done and then we started a transition period of combining the two roles. Everything, it seemed, was going to get easier.
And then. . . the housing market crashed, the economy tanked, and things started to change.
THE "PRODUCTION PUSH" WHICH NEVER STOPPED.
In July we were told we're in a "production push" which meant goals were going to be raised and production needed to increase for varioud reasons. No problem, goals were increased, and we handled the incoming work fairly easily. As the months progressed, we continued to miss the "company goals" but every month we were handling the incoming work. It seemed that no matter how high the goals went, we never had enough work to hit our company goals. STrange as it seems, goals were never reduced or made to compensate for the lack of incoming work. Soon, Summer turned to Fall. and Fall into Winter. Goals continued to say high, and people were working hard to hit their goals. Having only learned CSS for six months, I was put on full goal, which started at 18 istes/month in the summer and ended at 21 sites/month by the end of the year.
So what happened?
I missed three months the whole year and by the time December rolled around, I realized the whole offic eenvironment had changed. Many of the people I saw on a regular basis I didn't see as much. People were either taking really short lunches or no lunch at all. The office haad gone quiet and you could tell things had changed.
The realization it was different came in late December when I spoke to someone on another team. He assured me, "Trust me, it's shitty EVERYWHERE man. People are dropping out, and I'm not talking about the regular people. I'm talking managers, team leads, people in senior positions. Right now it sucks everywhere. Make no mistake, you're not alone." It was a wake up call. But it was about to get even worse. .
THE END OF THE LINE. . .
From July until December, we were on a production push for six straight months. Goals went up practically every month regardless of incoming business. This alone really made me think whoever was forcasting our business clearly did not know what they were doing. I mean, we've been doing this for years, how you can not determine how long it takes for an order to get from a sales person to our development team is pretty amazing. Every month we heard we were going to be overwhlemed and to be prepared and guess what? Month in and month out we always stayed ahead of the orders. And yet, the goals continued to increase. By the end of the year, we worked out asses off and blew out the business we had. Oh sure, we didn't hit the "company" goals, but we more than blew out the site they put in front of us.
Remember the whole time, we never heard from the management team or the executive committee they were proud of our ability to tackle the challenges they put in front of us. No celebration, no pat on the back, NOTHING, ZERO, NADA.
Fast forward to the first week in January. I was on my way to Maintenance, off the development team and it sounds as if I've made the right decision. The first development team meeting of the new year starts and not even ten minutes in our team lead is telling us our goals are going UP - A G A I N. Now our developers are going to be responsible to get out 6 sites a week. Once again, no pat on the back, no thanks for the great work, no nothing. After talking to people after the meeting many were still in disbelief. Many people echoed the same thing, "We worked our asses off for six months and the reward is having our goals increased? What a load of shit."
As if we didn't more bad news, it came in the form of an email a short time later. In short it read:
"The economy sucks, which means you're not getting your merit increase".
Fucking great. Just in case we weren't already feeling like shit, the very next email was from our CEO which stated:
"Great news, we just bought another multi-million dollar company."
Funny, the details of the deal were not disclosed for fear of a full on fucking mutiny I'm sure.
Once again, the company turned the dagger in. I'm not sure how much longer people are going to put up with this bullshit - but we'll see. Because you know it's a bad economy, and people would kill to have our jobs - right? Right.
One last bonus - I was planning on going back to school to get a masters in information systems management. My manager put the kybosh on that since there's a "freeze" on tuition reimbursement right now. My only way out has now been snubbed out.
I just told myself this morning, "Better buckle up princess, it's going to be a rough ride."
LATE
