Cubicle-American
Formerly “Work…Sorry, you are not unique”…because I didn’t like that title anyway
Cubicle-American
Week of 12/12/16
NOTE: I changed the title because I couldn’t think of a better one and the original was much too negative.
12/12/16
1332 — Long day with all the calendar entries and documentation. But it’s getting done.
1414 — Working with our Computer Security team is a blast. They keep us in line with what they allow access to. For EOY, we need it everywhere for practically everything. This whole week is going to be a bitch but worth it if we can get done early. We’d be 2 full work weeks ahead of schedule. Our SQA team owns 2 test environments and kicking our butts about the updates. Now that we have the post ahead dates for them, we can start updating those as well. One thing after another.
1537 — WHY CAN’T PEOPLE DO WHAT THEY’RE ASKED TO DO!!!???? Several emails were flying around and none of them had all the people they needed. I sent many responses, copying the people that should have been included originally, and folks STILL DIDN’T READ IT! It’s incredible to me how hard it is for folks to follow simple directions. This is BULLSHIT!! We’re all under stress to get things done but paying attention should be at the top of the list. SMDH!!!
1615 — Unbelievable. Ok…now a new date needs to be added in all our lower (testing and development) environments. Just now found out that my guys have to make the change IN EVERY APPLICATION WE’VE ALREADY DONE!! I seriously think people need to make up their minds so it doesn’t create more work for us.
1629 — Out.
12/13/16
0829 — Another day filled with the same stuff. It’s all good, we’re ahead of schedule with the holiday updates but I’m still waiting the loan costs. I was assured they’d come today but we have until next week…I’m not telling the customer that. Just responded to an internal customer regarding adding certain information to an exempt file; the info in the file are skipped when collections runs their overnight process so the member doesn’t get fees taken out automatically. This particular request says the member has retained a lawyer so this fight will be interesting to watch. A light meeting day so far. One of which will be about new compile changes for COBOL z/OS (mainframe). I see no reason why we have to attend this, our compiling procedures are updated internally. I think management just wants to prove they provided training to put it in our faces when we bitch about not getting any training.
1155 — Lunch time…small Nutrisystem pizza and a snack. Just took a survey for our intranet. So many questions that don’t pertain to me or how I use it. I’m betting that most folks only use it for job announcements and time keeping. Outside of that, there’s nothing else I’m interested in. Took me over an hour to do just one set of holiday updates. Still another environment to go; it’ll keep me busy for more than an hour. Then, more updates. Fun!
12/14/16
Well….today’s entry was written on 12/15 but I forgot to write anything yesterday. Was on a training call all day while doing a shitload of entries, validations, and programming for the upcoming holidays. Along with that, we finally got the loan cost amounts and I was able to push that program to another test environment…now it’s in someone else’s queue.
Actual 12/15/16
1334 — Same training call as yesterday but it was over at noon. I highly doubt I’ll see this application (deals with forms and their information…don’t ask) again and rarely if ever support it. Still doing validations for the holidays and catching up on other small things. Been a challenge this week to keep up but a good week nonetheless. I’m so proud of my team for kicking ass this week with all that’s going on. Best developers I’ve worked with in my 26+ years in IT. Most are grizzled old farts that have been with the company for > 20 years but they still kick ass.
1347 — Been emailing with my youngest all day. We weren’t speaking for a while due to a generational spat. I ended up reaching out via text to see if she was ok and she responded…everything is back to normal. She’s become just as bull headed as I am and it leads to trouble. Strong resolve though and tough as hell. She just got rotated to a new department at her company as part of her manager in training program. One of her emails this morning said, “they really picked a dumpster fire of a group to start me on”. We can all relate to that. She’ll be fine. Her management wouldn’t have put her on it if she couldn’t handle it. Shows a lot of confidence in her ability. Oh…and the spat? I had posted a video on Facebook that was Jay Leno randomly interviewing young people, millenials, asking them simple current event and history questions. To a person, they didn’t know anything. So, the caption on my post just said “Sad”. One of my cousins, a hardcore right-winger that also happens to be an educator, left a comment saying our education system was so bad that it spit out kids like this and he thought it was all setup. I disagreed with some curt comment on millenials. My daughter then proceeded to digitally plant her foot in my ass via text and, after a few exchanges, we took a break from each other. Neither of us backed down…nor would we ever have. The blood boils strong in our family.
1615 — Day slowed down…actually I’m burned out and didn’t want to do anything more. Around 1600 I got to talk with one of my dear friends on our Production Control team. We caught up and schemed on how badly a General Ledger (GL) f-up this year would probably get heads rolling. However, I think we have all the right people on it this year. The major f-up from last time was completely our fault. We didn’t follow our own procedure and shit hit the fan in a big way. So…it was decided then that our Comptroller office will be doing it all and we’ll just record when it’s done. No one has a clue how much we hate doing anything GL related. It should be done ONLY by their office and I’m confident they prefer it that way. Screwing up EOY GL in anyway is probably the biggest offense we have here or close to it. Saw another dear friend who was here for his retirement party. Even though I said in prior posts I wouldn’t use people’s names I must here. Luis is one of the most beautiful, giving, knowledgeable, people I’ve ever met. We’ve known each other for 10 years and I’m gonna miss him. He helped teach me DB2 mainframe programming and always had plenty of patience. He’s certainly one of the most beloved people here. I wish him endless amounts of happiness in retirement. Still 18–20 years left for me and I’m 47.
1630 — Out
12/16/16
0814 — In
1054 — If you ever get in a conversation with someone from Cameroon…be prepared to hear them talk in circles.
1233 — Had a meeting with the Comptroller team about when they want to start closing the books on 2016. There’s 3 test environments we’ll be starting on next week and the live system (PROD) will be done in mid-January. They’ll be doing all the keystrokes since there was a minor issue last time with us doing it earlier than procedure stated at the beginning of this year. I think most of the business units really prefer doing PROD updates themselves and we’re happy to let them. No matter who does it, we still take most of the blame if anything screws up. Reasons such as “the network is messed up”, “the application is messed up”, “the sky is blue messed up”, anything else is “messed up”…and I’m being kind with language at this point. There’s always an us vs them mentality between IT and the business. Rarely is there much comradery. This time…there has been due to the gravity of totally f’ing up all the 2016 general ledgers. Not something I want my team, especially me, associated with.
1415 — A good friend in Computer Security is working on my access to a back office application that’s part of our financial backbone. I just need to do a bit of verification and can jump back out. There are such things as ACF2 violations which happen on the mainframe to let you know that you don’t have access to something, usually in PROD. A profile in the background gets some sort of update allowing access to whatever. Once you don’t need it anymore, the access gets revoked.
1615 — End of the day and week…a very good week. I have to be up early on Sunday for a quick validation of code installs. Shouldn’t take much more than 10 minutes.
1630 — Out.
12/18/16
0452 — In. Waiting for some code to deploy to PROD, probably another 10 minutes. Then the exciting part begins! Check to see if the code makes it to the correct library then go home. I shouldn’t be sarcastic at all but at this time of day I can’t help it. We have a bridge line (conference call) open with just a few folks on it. The guy doing the deployment is cool. He used to be a vendor rep, then he jumped ship and came to us. An absolute genius he is. He administers and modifies our deployment application, compile procedures, and probably could solve world hunger if paid enough. A lot of respect for someone that has such vast and thorough skills…and really does give a damn about helping people. I do as well, just not at 4am for what amounts to 5 minutes of work.
0513 — Done and out.
