Dan Makovec’s blog

Babies

We’re having a desk reshuffle at work, and for the first time in ages, I’m not one of the people moving.

It’s so funny watching the tantrums people throw when they’re forced to move desks. Fights have been started over the sharing or otherwise of rubbish bins, the color of the chair being offered, and who has to look at whom over the divider.

Considering the rediculously high amount of money these people are getting paid (if they’re not all on 6 figure salaries, they’re pretty damn close to it), they’re incredibly immature about the silliest things. I’ve actually never seen such childish behaviour amongst professionals.

Oh well, I’ve ended up with a double desk, as nobody has been allocated (or wants) to sit next to me. It’s probably something to do with the mess I make. At last count I had 3 laptops, 2 workstations and a server on or under my desk. This’ll free up some space

Itty bitty days

It’s one of those days today. Lots of little tiny jobs that keep popping up and getting in the way of my main goals. Plus a tonne of admin work. I hate these sort of days - they’re so unsatisfying!

Tomorrow I’m off early, hopping on a plane to Adelaide at 6.45pm for 4 days alone with family and old friends. It’ll be great to have a break. I can’t wait!

Feeling like a manager

It’s just about to turn 7am, and we’re finishing up maintenance work that began at 04:00. I hate these early mornings, but at the same time I’m the one who’s scheduling them. The idea is that we bring in a bunch of guys from the ops department and teach them how to perform the procedures, both by demonstration and written instructions. We repeat each procedure at least once, updating the docs each time to get them as accurate as possible.

By the time everybody’s happy with the docs, we give custody of them to the ops guys and from then on the procedure is their responsibility and not ours as developers. The aim is to free up developer time to actually do development rather than maintenance. This is a new concept for the company - we’ve only started doing this in the past month. Consequently I’ve already had quite a few early starts and a couple more to go.

The hard part for me is stepping back and taking a managerial rather than technical role. As problems occur, I need to let the guys sort them out and just ensure that solutions are found rather than solving them myself. Looking back at some of my managers in previous jobs, I recall gloating quietly to myself about my superior technical knowledge compared with theirs. Indeed, managers subconsciously became somewhat of a target of ridicule, because they were just so damn *thick*. I mean, how could anybody not understand the concept of a buffer overrun in C code, or a faulty ARP table entry? Sheesh!

Now I’m starting to see myself in the same light. The guys I’m working with are good, and their problem solving skills impressive. They leave me beginning to feel a little bit like the dumb bunny that I always saw my managers as. Not that I mind any more - I’m spending less and less time pouring over code now and more time thinking about architectural and design issues, as well as actually *how* to get the work done. It’s a quantum leap in my way of thinking. I just wonder if the guys working under me are starting to see me in the same way I used to see my bosses - just another PHB who doesn’t get it
Now I’m sitting up on the 21st floor watching a spectacular sunrise over Sydney’s CBD. Such amazing colors of orange, red and green. Maybe the early mornings aren’t all bad.

It’s not all bad

One of my fellow Worldfesters, Jose, has taken the plunge and is moving to Sydney next month. He’s got a dream job lined up already and just has to get accomodation sorted out.

It’ll be good to have an old friend nearby!

Another 5am wake up this morning. I’m home early, and knackered. Time for an early nap methinks…

Stressed

I’m feeling like crap tonight. Work’s definitely getting me down. I’ve got one group who scapegoat my team for everything that goes wrong - even when it’s their own fault. I’ve got another group who are either incompetent, bone idle lazy or both. Responsibilities coming out of my arse and no resources to deal with them. I have work going back to last September and stretching forward to next July to try to squeeze in. And to top it all off I’m having to get up extra early - 5am last Friday and tomorrow, 4am Thursday and next Tuesday - to finish off a job that my predecessor started 7 months ago and never finished.

My sleeping patterns are completely fucked up. I’m having to use ear plugs to sleep because the slightest noise from the road, a dripping tap or Brian rolling over wakes me up. During the day I feel completely lethargic. If I have coffee I’m edgy and scatter-brained. If I don’t I’m sleepy and have a tendency to sit staring into space.

90% of my time is spent thinking about problems at work and how to solve them - whether I’m staring blankly at the TV, pumping iron, eating, showering or shitting. The other 10% of my time is spent wondering why my quality of life is the worst I can remember despite having more money than I’ve ever had before.

Every time I see a beggar in the street, I just want to kick the shit out of them. I’m more cynical than ever about people and the world, and my thoughts are getting darker each day.

I came home early from the gym tonight simply because I couldn’t get into it. Not because I was tired or puffing, but because I couldn’t concentrate on what I was doing, so just gave up.

This can’t be right. I need a vacation or something. I’m not expecting any sympathy from work. The main jack-of-all-trades has just left for a 4 week European vacation, and my boss is off to the snow for a fortnight starting next week.

Brian and I went to Canberra on the weekend. We were sitting in a cafe on King Street on Saturday afternoon, waiting 45 minutes for our breakfast (some scrambled eggs and toast), wondering why life felt like shit. I pulled out my phone, ordered a rental car and a hotel room, and an hour later we took off on a 285km trip south to our nation’s capital. For the first time in months I felt alive - doing something spontaneous, not linked to work or the regular routine that has become our life. We stayed overnight, ate out and hit a club, then toured Parliament House, the city and Telstra Tower the next day before getting back in the car and returning to Sydney that night. That was a great break. I only wish we’d done it on Friday night and had a whole two days away. Maybe I’d be feeling better now.

I’m off to Adelaide for a long weekend on the 21st. Don’t know what I’m going to do until then.

Live 8 is a waste of time

I think I must be the only person in the world who believes this, but I can’t see the point of Live 8. The organizers, a bunch of self-important aging rock hippies who think they can change the world by singing some twenty year old tunes to a crowd of alcohol and drug-crazed louts, are attempting to convince us that they can convince the leaders of the G8 contries to cancel the debts of the poorest countries with such an affair, because they held a concert 20 years ago and felt it achieved something.

What crap.

The original Live Aid concert, its record, CD and DVD sales, spin-off concerts around the world and subsequent merchandising efforts were set up to achieve one thing: raise money. This money would be used directly to benefit poor communities by buying them food, building schools and houses, and supplying water, etc. This was a great cause, and it worked. Why? Simply because all they had to do was put on a good show, and people would go out and buy their shit, safe and comfy in the knowledge that by buying it not only were they satisfying their own selfish desires for entertainment by getting what amounts to an authorised bootleg of their favorite band, but that they were doing a great deed by giving somebody else their money that they would have given to some big corporation for exactly the same thing in other circumstances anyway.

This time it’s different. The concerts aren’t there to raise money. They’re there to put pressure on the governments to change their way of thinking. I feel pretty confident in predicting that if a million plus people marching through the streets of London along with several million in other cities demanding that the world’s richest nations don’t bomb iraq and kill thousands of people - many of them their own - all for the sake of protecting rich tycoons’ oil-based piggy banks didn’t achieve manage to stop a blood bath, then there’s no way that having a great big singalong broadcast on MTV is going to convince the same people to just hand back all the money they’ve secured in Iraq by cancelling Africa’s debt.

Get a clue guys. If you want to make someone change their ways, you’ve got to convince them it’s their benefit. All stick and no carrot doesn’t get you anywhere. Work with the corporations who will be around for the long run and who own most of the debt, not the politicians who most likely will be retired on big happy pensions within 6 years.

Back to work…