Silent Blog

Aside from the times when I was physically away from a computer during the summer, this is the longest lull in posts I've had on this blog. I'm sure no one actually cares, yet here I am.

Nothing exciting has been happening lately, nothing of interest to write about. Certainly I have some things on my mind that I want to ramble about, but I haven't found the time lately nor the desire. If it's a half-baked idea, I choose to wait; if it's more pointless than not, I reconsider it. This is a blog entry that should have fallen into one of those categories, yet if it's online...

Actually, the main reason that I haven't posted anything is that I'm swamped at work. Usually, and you can check the timecodes for this, I post while at work. Recently, I just haven't had the time. We're coming up on an important milestone, a point where we should have no bugs, period. My team has some 64 bugs, and I have about 30. Fully half of the bugs are on my plate. Nevermind the fact that most of them are idiotic bugs that are one-line fixes. Our tester went off the deep end and seems to be calling anything and everything a bug. Of course, that's her job, but it frustrates me. It's scaling a large staircase and seeing the whole thing in front of you, knowing that you still have miles to go. I'd rather fix a batch today, bring the count to zero then start on the next 5 tomorrow. Oh well.

My dad isn't very happy that I am working such long hours: 9am-8pm weekdays, 6-8 hours weekends. He says that if a person is doing so much overtime, there's something wrong, either with the project or with the developer. Personally, I know that I'm working more than 40 hours per week, but I don't feel like I'm working too much. I feel that I work the required amount, I am there long enough to finish my tasks on time. Of course one can make the argument that I'm overloaded with work, but I'm not going to be presenting that little gem to my manager: "Oh, hey, I know this is the very last part of the development cycle and everything had to be finished months ago, but this feature has to be cut. Yeah, go figure, I started working on it just a few months ago, picking up from the code that a summer intern created, while the rest of the product has been in development for over 18 months. And, somehow, with only me on the project, it's going slow. Imagine."

So I decided to ask Chuck about overtime at M$. He's worked here for 6 years and probably knows the company culture inside and out. At lunch I phrased my question like this: "At Microsoft is there a certain stigmata associated with overtime?" Yeah, that got me some looks. I meant to say "stigma". Look it up.

Then, as if this wasn't enough, I proceeded to act out the odd situation:
"You're going to work overtime!" [Hits metal spike with a hammer]

Seems like this turned into a job-related rant. Well, so be it.

I'm not unhappy at work. I enjoy what I do. I just dislike the pressure that I'm under sometimes, like now, and the testers. Testers make me think of my happy place, San Andreas. Though I'm getting used to my tester's e-mails. She uses the phrase "not acceptable" a lot. Somehow, for whatever reason, that strikes me as particularly harsh, and when talking about something I'm doing or proposing to do, you might as well call me an idiot and tell me to go home. I mean, I would feel the same way. But, apparently that's just the way she talks, so I try not to think about it too much.