Friday, October 28, 2005

Restless

OK, I'm ready for winter to be over already. I'm sitting at home right now wishing that tomorrow was going to be 75 and sunny and that I could be planning a trip on my bike right now. I'd even settle for driving my car somewhere. But anywhere within driving distance in the whole state is forecast to be cold and rainy tomorrow. Blah!

Other random thoughts:
1. Monday is Novelloween. That's where everyone at Novell brings their kids to work to go trick or treating. The halls bulge with little munchkins who make out like bandits since the offices are packed more densely into building H than houses generally are in suburban neighborhoods. Kids get a lot more candy for a lot less effort. A bunch of us stopped at Sam's club today at lunch to stock up on candy for the event. Between the 5 of us that went, we probably walked out of Sam's club with 30 or 40 lbs. of candy. It was disgusting.

2. I had my annual competency review today and it was determined that I am indeed competent. Hooray for me. I can't believe that they call them "competency reviews". The very phrase seems to imply that you are incompetent.

3. During my review I broached the subject of telecommuting. My boss said that he'd look into it but it didn't sound very promising. It was a tempting idea at first. When you spend all day locked in your office slinging code you can't help but wonder, "Why couldn't I do this from anywhere?".

But when I really started to think about it, it occurred to me that I easily spend a couple of hours a day directly interacting with other people. Whether it's reviewing someone else's code, helping a co-worker solve a problem, working with CPR, participating in a design team, soliciting feedback from co-workers, or just everyday communication and coordination, I spend a reasonable amount of time every day face to face with people. It wouldn't be impossible to do all of that remotely, but it would be much more difficult.

4. Some of you may have heard about the impending layoffs. Rumor has it that 10-20 percent of the company may be out of a job soon. The original rumor was that it was going to happen this past Tuesday. It didn't happen. The new rumor is that it will be next Wednesday. We'll have to see. I kind of just wish that they would get it over with already. Nobody likes to have that kind of thing hanging over their head. Oh and by the way, I think that I'm legally obligated to tell you when speaking about work matters on my personal blog that this blog represents my personal opinions and not those of my employer.

3 comments:

B.G. Christensen said...

How often do you perform CPR at work?

svoid said...

More often than I would like to. CPR = Critical Problem Resolution. They are the group that makes fixes to older versions of the product after the core engineering team has moved on to new releases.

Anonymous said...

I was wondering about CPR, too. Thanks.

I also wondered if they postponed the layoffs til after Novelloween, for the sake of the kids who are looking forward to it??? It does sound like a fun thing to do for the kids. I'm assuming that since you are, indeed, 'competent', you needn't worry.

As for your complaints about the weather, I thought I'd throw in that I spent the day with a friend at the beach. It was beautiful - probably close to 80 degrees. Too bad you can't do your telecommuting from Hawaii.