Waiting for my plane this morning I picked up a snack at the airport. I think it tasted good, but I tossed it away after a few bites, when I realized that the manufacturer obviously had no idea what the hell was in it:
But by golly, at least the mystery treat was bagged in the good ol’ USA!
What has your host been up to these past two weeks, you ask?Lots of stuff, you will soon discover - and unfortunately using the internet was not among them as much as I would have liked. Read on to know my dramas and tribulations of recent…
So, as I’m sure many of you know I lost my old apartment in the Richmond back in January, and relocated to a place in the Outer Sunset.
Big mistake.
The new place was nice and modern and comfortable. My roommates were not bothersome - much. Except for the fact that one of them left in late March - the one with the Comcast internet account. No big deal - everyone can get internet now, right?
Oh, and I had my smart phone in the meantime and could use it to tether to my Mac, right? Wrong - it’s not compatible with Macs owned by non-Unix Geniuses. But I could still just use my phone browser as a stop-gap, right? Wrong - there is absolutely no cell signal in that little slice of hell sandwiched between Golden Gate Park and Ocean Beach. Well, I could at least manage for as long as it takes to establish a new Comcast account, right? Wrong - the internet-subscribed roomie had left without paying his bill and Comcast would not establish service to the apartment again unless I came in with ID and a copy of the lease to prove that I was not him and that I lived there. Of course, I was not on the lease and there was no lease because I was renting from the owner of the condo. At the very least I could just hook up a phone line and get some DSL or dial-up from AT&T, right? Wrong - because the wiring in the place was so wonky, AT&T could not install a phone line to any specific room in the unit - if I wanted a specific room they would have to send a technician out to do the set-up while I was home - something that’s very hard because I work 10 hour days with a one hour commute each way when I’m in San Francisco, and AT&T technicians obviously do not, since they will only make appointments in windows ranging from 9am-12pm and 1pm-4pm (both of which you know they’d probably be late for). Oh, and I would also have had to pay a $200 set-up fee for the privilege of meeting said technician (yes, they are all supposed to be that hot).
So what does one do when one has six hours on ones hands at the Philadelphia airport after missing ones flight home? One talks about career ideas…
So I’ve been at another low-point in my job lately. The fact is that I’ve been working my ass off harder than I ever remember and seem to be less appreciated than ever as well, mainly because of the combination of taking over for someone who is going on maternity leave, so no one really notices that I’m doing more work - they don’t notice because I’m just doing more.
Then there’s the fact that, after being boss-less for four months we finally hired a new boss for me, who has been a real slave driver getting himself up to speed on the company - no small feat with such a fast changing company in the tech sector. He’s probably going to be really good for the company, but it’s just been a pile of crud I don’t need on top of everything else.
There’s the fact that I’ve been on a 75%+ travel arrangement since January and now they’re saying I’m still not in SF enough. I can agree in terms of needing to be there a lot when taking over temporarily for a middle manager who is going on a maternity leave, but they seem to think that doing things like budgeting and and forecasting and financial modeling require tons of face-to-face contact with people, when in fact all they really require is an intensive knowledge of the systems from which the data needs to be pulled. I’ve got the latter but they insist on the former. So for the foreseeable future I’m in San Francisco pretty close to full-time; I’ll be taking long weekends every couple weeks at home, but otherwise engaged in SF. It’s good I’ve solved the housing crisis there, I guess (I hope).
A ray of hope was introduced in the sense that my role is obviously being considered intensively by my new boss as well, as he took me aside on Wednesday wanting to discuss my career direction/desires - something that always makes me feel better anyway, since it shows I’m not just seen as a worthless worker bee. He said he wanted to give me a new title and start moving me out of the Managerial role in the Accounting department and better use my knowledge of the business to be his personal “get shit done” person. I’m happy with this direction - I just hope that it can eventually lead to a real transition out of this heavy on-site schedule. I need to really consider this current arrangement the last sprint at the end of the marathon, and start thinking of contingencies and plans for the aftermath.
Regardless, if you’re up for breakfast in Charlotte in about seven or eight hours (9am-ish), I’m hoping to land and make David take me for munchies somewhere yummy. Feel free to call me if you want to join in.
There really is something just sort of cool-sp00ky-creepy about sitting in an airport at 3am, playing on the internetz and then opening iTunes and seeing the three other people in the terminal who are also obviously doing the same thing, and then snooping through their iTunes library to see what sort of screwed-up tastes they have… And realizing they might be doing the same.
…And then remembering that I’ve got about 30 porn movies in my iTunes library…
Airports can sure be cold at 4am when you’re wearing shorts, which were necessary just a few hours ago when you were stuck in a tin can with 200 other people on a runway in San Francisco, which was having its worst heat wave ever at the time.
Atlanta is a very nice city with a very nice airport, filled with the laziest-assed people on Earth. They reallyneed some of those “walk to the left, chill to the right” signs in the walkways and escalators. You’d think no one had ever had a tight connection…