Several weeks ago one of the computer file servers died, taking a lot of data with it. After the crash it was found that there were very few tape backups made, most could not be read, and we lost a lot of data. Many hours were spent in reconstruction, people taking manual inventory and entering orders from paper copies, and lots of time in pulling print files into data files. As a result of the crash my boss (the big one) and a hardware guy lost their jobs. My boss because he didn't plan for problems, the hardware guy because he didn't make tape backups on the drives my boss didn't authorize purchase of. (sound good?)
This company is owned by two men that are concerned with what goes on, but I am told that they at times are a little emotional over people that mess up. I've only seen one of them once, and the other sends instructions through the president. Everybody is afraid of them.
This morning my project manager had a problem, and just as he was about to demo his new program to one of the owners he lost some program files. It took a while, but he found that there was no backup, and he had no backup copies of his own. After last month's episode this didn't sound too good. Especially since we were all supposed to practice with demos for the owners, and were not supposed to mess up. Especially with backups.
Lots of yelling took place at assorted times, and in early afternoon the hardware manager walked in talking on his cell phone. I guess he was being blamed for not having a backup of my PM's computer (no, he backs up the servers not the 400 desktops). He was talking to the emotional owner, and said that the owner wanted us to all hear the conversation. Putting the cell phone down on the PM,'s desk, we proceeded to hear the most interesting one sided conversation that I have ever been part of. I think it deserves an award for the longest single rant by someone who never took the time to breath. The conversation went something like:
I f*****g am f*****g tired of f*****g around f*****g people who f*****g can't f*****g get f*****g their f*****g act f*****g together. If f*****g you f*****g people f*****g can't f*****g do f*****g your f*****g job f*****g you f*****g all f*****g can f*****g just f*****g pack f*****g up f*****g your f*****g desks and f*****g get f*****g out f*****g of f*****g here f*****g and f*****g find f*****g work f*****g some f*****g other f*****g place f*****g else.
There were about ten minutes of screaming, most of which was not intelligible because of the volume which caused the little cell phone speaker to go all fuzzy. But I am sure that there were rarely two words in a row that did not have the word f*****g inserted between them. I put down 'tired of' above, but it was probably 'f*****g tired f*****g of f*****g', but I can't remember for sure.
My PM did find a copy of the program only about a week old. He worked for a few hours to enter all of the changes he has been putting in, and gave a demo again around 4. He fully expects to last no more than a week before being told to leave, if that long. He has been here four years, and knows the owners well. But not well enough to mess up in a demo for them. The office pool gives even odds (nice phrase, even odds - appropriate for Vegas) that our entire group (6 programmers) will be canned, leaving the company to really fall apart without software support. (the programs really are unreliable, and there are daily problems). But I guess if you start up and are sole owners of a company you can get as mad as you want to with your slaves (sorry, employees). Nice, friendly environment.
Sorry, no f*****g pictures of the f*****g event. I f*****g wouldn't f*****g know f*****g what to f*****g photograph f*****g anyway. (Sorry, I just had to.)
But, since I promised a photo blog I better put some shots in.
We recently took a Grand Canyon trip - here is the cabin we stayed at at Jacob Lake (actually a mud puddle) just outside the park entrance. Different environment than Las Vegas. But the cabins were small (about a foot on each side of the bed) and cold.
And we've been working on our patio, and I wanted to show you how nice it looked.
These are two shots taken today. You can see the two fans I just put up, they work well to give some breeze when the wind isn't blowing, and the lights make it nice at night.
Does it look like it's 102f? The lower picture gives a more tropical feel, with the green grass and trees. The upper shot gives more of the Vegas-boy-it's-really-hot impression.
My son and I did the steel work. I put the roof up around ten feet, to make this section feel more like it really was outside rather than feel like an outdoor room. It covers the full 55' width of the house, and also wraps around to the kitchen door, just to the right in the upper picture, and then down along the north side. This side of the house faces west, so you can see the shade provided by the cover. My son does good work, welding in addition to working with wood.
And just to round up the work that has been going on around here, this is what our front room floor looked like during installation of the new Pergo.
My wife decided on diagonal, and fortunately having put in the stuff before at our San Diego house I almost knew what I was doing. It took a while, and I still have to finish the transitions, but it looks pretty good. I don't want to remember the hours spent cutting the angles around the corners, and into the closet (the door at the left). This is at about the half way point. I still need to do the dining area, where I'm standing. It's done now, with furniture back in, and really looks nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment