Play & Work

The Mensa website saga continues. I ordered an account from swhu.com, and was told I would receive my website information within 3 days. Well, that was Monday, and I’m still waiting. Angela & I talked about it, and she made a good point — the reason we’re having trouble finding a good, cheap web host is because we insist on using the free domain National Mensa has given us. So, we decided to cancel the account with swhu, get cheap hosting from cyberwings.com, and register our own domain: okmensa.org.

We found nothing but good reviews about Cyberwings. We have a good feeling about this company. So good, in fact, that we went a little nuts. :-) With hosting so cheap, we thought, why not move smartgoat there? And, with domains so cheap, why not register a few more? They say we’re crazy, but we have a good time. :-) It’ll be nice for Crafty Goat and News Goat to have their own domains. And Mystical Meatballs? You’ll just have to wait and see… :-)

One of the nice things about this is, all these domains will include MySQL databases. That will make some things much better. And our current host is just too slow. This should be fun — at least, for a geek like me… :-)

March is approaching, and no one is looking forward to that month more than I am. :-) I haven’t written about work in a while, mostly because I haven’t had anything good to say. I’m finally so fed up with the whole thing, I’m breaking my silence.

Shortly after the layoffs, I was told I would be spending some time with the RAD team. The RAD team is a development group, in a different department from the rest of development, that is supposed to create quick solutions to problems. At first, I was just supposed to learn some stuff related to work I would be doing. Then, when the guy I was learning from decided to quit, they wanted me to learn all I could from him before he left, so that whenever they hired a replacement, I could pass on the knowledge. Then, they said they needed my help until March, to keep the project moving until a replacement could be hired. Then, when they hired a contractor to do the work, they decided they needed me to keep up with what the contractor was doing, so that someone would know what he had done. And I couldn’t do this from my cubicle, I had to sit at a cubicle next to his.

So, after all the “thens,” what have I been doing for the past month? Almost nothing related to the RAD team. I attend meetings, review the contractor’s work, and occasionally get him access to things he needs. All things I could have done part-time, sitting in my own cubicle, between bouts of working on real work.

Which brings us to yesterday afternoon. The RAD Team team leader (who, because of layoffs and resignations, no longer has a team), came & asked me to take a look at a program that was generating errors. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get it to work, without any success. I mentioned the program to Angela, who thought it sounded familiar. Today, she mentioned it to one of her coworkers. Turns out, one of my coworkers was already working on the program.

Either somebody thought things were taking too long & thought they could get a “RAD Team Quick & Dirty” solution from me, or they didn’t know this was already being worked on. Either way it was stupid, and a waste of my time. I think that’s what bugged me the most about it — it was the culmination of nearly a month of wasting my time. I had enough of that at the NWS…

But, good times are on the horizon. The RAD Team has hired someone, and he starts on Monday. Of course, he’ll need a place to sit… ;-)