Skirmishes

There is not a huge amount to report today as I have spent most of it head down at work and, once I had escaped that servitude, I hit the wine and nibbles.

Basically nothing has gone smoothly today. Nothing has been easy. Everything has been either problematic or I have had obstacles strewn across my path. Progress has been made but it has been hard work.

The day started with a two hour long team call where each member of the team gives a quick overview of their current workload and seeks guidance from our Boss where necessary. I don't mind the call but am still undecided on it's value. On a positive note it does block out two hours of my Thursday morning and I only really need to perform for about ten minutes of that time.

With that call finished I then presented an overview of a project I am designing to some of the less positive stakeholders. The call went reasonably well but was far from straightforward. It became apparent that one of the less positive individuals hadn't got a clue about the background to this piece of work. This is incredibly worrying considering that he is supposed to be managing the team that supports the service! It came as no surprise that a vociferous programme manager chimed in with his usual waffle and I finally realised that he just makes up bullshit on the fly to support his arguments. Today he attempted to argue that my proposed project would take too long to implement as we would need to contract it with the customer. I responded by pointing out that not two weeks ago he was advising that my project was an activity that did not need to contracted or charged to the client. I need to keep a close eye on this chap and pay attention to his bullshit as he has some powerful allies who have been sucked in by his propaganda.

The outcome of this call was muddied by the fact that the key decision maker decided to bugger off to another call before we came to the conclusion. I guess I will just need to keep pushing forward until someone tells me to stop.

For a break I decided to wander outside and take Hayden a cup of tea. While I was out there he showed me a sample of the paving he proposed to lay and I have to say that I was not impressed. It was a concrete cast of a riven slate but it was truly awful. It looked cheap and artificial and I instantly knew that I did not want that laid on the steps leading to our front door. I had a quick video call with 30% and she agreed that we should reject the slabs … it looks like Hayden has some homework to do.

I then wandered back to my desk and dialled in to the next debate. This was about whether a process I had developed needed an interface to another function. The point was valid but it rapidly became one of those calls that spiralled around the same question because the person who could provide definitive guidance was not present. I eventually managed to get the fuckwits to appreciate this point, closed down the call and went to lie in a darkened room.*

As the day closed I entered my final foray. Earlier in the week I had had my arse chewed about the pricing on one of my projects. I had been set some revised price targets and had been told to get  a lower price release. A frolleague had informed me that we were performing a very similar activity with the same hardware at the same locations at a much higher price than we were considering quoting. With a customer like the one we have we need to make sure all of our pricing is aligned or they will, to use the vernacular, tear us a new arsehole.

It appears that our Salesman had conveniently forgotten this point so I took great pleasure in reminding him of the situation and politely reminding him that he needed to fully understand the pricing before giving me some targets.

Job done, day over, where's the wine?

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* I got the fuck away from my desk and went and did something more interesting instead … There is a cut out on the Enfield's rear mudguard where it clears the chain guard. This cut out has a nasty sharp edge. I have fixed a piece of split, aquarium, air line tubing along this cut out with epoxy resin to act as a bumper strip. Hopefully this will prevent cuts when cleaning and maintaining the bike.