Mostmobbed on Twitter

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Serendipity

Today when I've arrived in office and I've seen Jack and Big Boss, after some minutes I've got a strange mind association:


What the... The true form of my bosses ;)

Occam's razor

A few day ago I was protagonist of a chain of dramatic events of my work life, and naturally the author of most of those events was Jack, my boss. The chain of unlucky events started with the proposal to go to Pycon conference in Florence (http://www.pycon.it), a very interesting manifestation with Python as main object of discussions, which Jack immediately labeled “the language for non professionals”. I told Jack that I was interested in going, and I proposed him and Prince Charming to go together, at this point I was waiting for a nonsensical or sarcastic answer from Jack but with my big surprise he told me that our society will pay tickets for us (!!), he also told me that those days will be considered working day for us, and hence we’ll be paid! Wow I was very excited at first, but unfortunately only later afternoon of the first conference day is working day for me because Pycon will be on the weekend. So Jack got me as ususal.

The second event that excite me very much was that we got gadgets from Red-Hat - JBoss for our certification! Wow I immediately grab a T-shirt with Logo! What is a developer without an informatics logo on his t-shirt? ;). Well, we took some funny photos, Jack proposed to be the photographer and in one of these photo there are me, Prince Charming and Big Boss, but Big Boss made me a pair of horns ( funny man..., this is not a good sign in Italy ) and Jack immediately posted it on this blog; then they took the T-shirt away from me. Until that point business as usual, I'm always in mood for jokes, but that fool posted on the blog with as tag my real surname and offending remarks, and Google indexed that tag in a few seconds, so, while Jack was laughing hysterically, I got terrible calls from my fiancé... I forced Jack to remove the tag, but it will remain forever indexed in Google, like a tattoo...

The truth about Open Lab

Here it looks a splendid place where to work. but look in the picture the horrible conditions in which the webcasts have to be recorded!

JBoss gadgets..

We have become JBoss certified without even asking for it, the hardest certification process of all times, and we even got gadgets by mail... the girls refused to wear them, sorry.

The worse demo EVER!

A couple of weeks ago we received the usual bothering phone request for a live demo, this usually comes from lazy and sloppy companies, which instead of trying things out, want somebody else to evaluate things for them, which is just nonsense. Actually it is not even the companies directly, it's some overpaid and actually actively damaging "consultant" (called useless consultant from now on). The first thing I told the guy is that conference calls and remote desktops sharing always have technical problems, and that this things usually don't work out well, why don't they just try the damned software? But he insisted, ignoring my warnings.

Then he sent almost a book of "specifics", smart questions like "can one access Teamwork through the web?" or "does Teamwork have reports" (having reports made sense when before the web, in pre-history, IBM AS400 applications were incapable of giving feedback in real time). This specific requests were just so silly that it inspired writing a blog post about it, which actually was quite successful. The heart of it is how silly the useless consultant is.

So I said: ok, now that I've put him in public shame, the guy and his crappy corporation will leave us in peace, and finally they'll buy some horribly expensive ActiveX 1982 "project management" software which fakes the web and runs in InternetExplorer 5. No! The guy was non pissable: he still wanted a demo, and still carefully avoided trying anything out. We agreed that we had just to do a short demo, ignoring the specifics.

Still, he kept sending new documents, always shorter and more nonsensical. I did SHIFT-CANC with all that junk mail.

The day of the demo came; the guy sent me a phone number to call, which was supposedly a free 800 number for international calls. Of course, it was only free from the US, and actually it was the wrong number. I suddenly remembered that I had to leave the office for a personal irrelevant matter, so I left Roberto there to do the demo. The rest is what I have been told by the guys in Open Lab, when they recovered from the hysterical group laughter state in which I found them when I came back.

So it went like this: the guys started calling again and again, Roberto tried to instruct them about the desktop sharing session, but it seemed that there was nobody there listening. When finally Roberto managed to get some attention, with the background noise in Open Lab of our 24/7 table-tennis tournament, he overheard skeptical laughs coming also from the remote session; evidently nobody was taking the demo seriously, and even they understood that the useless consultant was just useless and clueless. So, as we were also paying for the call to this crappy company, Roberto simply asked "so what you want from us?"

The guy (the useless consultant) at the other end was shocked by the question which supposed the presence of some intelligence on his head planet, so of course the answer was vague "well, Pietro [me] knows what to talk about" - to which Roberto answered "but Pietro is not here"

At this waiting for Godot exchange, Roberto overheard at the lazy brains end several people getting into a state of unstoppable laughter: so many things had gone wrong, and they were shouting "And Pietro is not there! And Pietro is not there!"

The useless consultant suddenly interrupted the phone call. That is when of course I came back (Gino holds that it is not by chance, and that all the time I disappear when there is any real problem).

Ok, it was all a waste of time; but we did have a good time at the end of it!


P.S.: After this all-time worse demo, believe it or not- the useless consultant wrote back! Calling me Giancarlo instead of Pietro (in what state must his mind be while writing to "Pietro Polsinelli" and calling me Giancarlo, a most unlikely name???)! And asking for customer references (still work on our part, and still avoiding trying the software). Maybe they pick bizarre suppliers in order to have a good laugh now and then? The world of IT is just toooo bizarre...

Gino self-mobbing

Last week Gino had remote access to Prince Charming' machine (a new PM); so he wanted to play a dirty joke on him, putting a soft-porn picture as desktop background. Today when the girls working with Prince Charming went to open his desktop for debugging, Gino was watching hidden and laughing. The first thing the girls said "What an idiotic desktop. It must be the usual not-funny joke by Gino" :-D

The generous manager

In an unprecedented impulse of generosity, I’ve decided to give Gino permission to participate to a useless and outdated congress on Python, the language for non-professionals.
I also remarked that he was going to get a full paid day with expenses covered, but checking we saw that it was on Saturday, anyway…

Breakfast at Tiffany's

As usual today this morning we've went to the bar for breakfast. Jack and Big Boss were in good mood, I don't know why, but that put me in a suspicious mood.

They seemed to endlessly achat about boring staff, and they kept talking above my head. They weren’t stopping getting more and more pastries,, I've thought that they were much more hungry this morning than usual…
All our colleagues went back to the office, and I've waited those two guys, but I've made a big MISTAKE.

When I've went to pay my breakfast Jack told me : "Hey Gino, I hope you've got some extra money because I and Big Boss have forgotten our wallets in the office ahahah, what coincidence ahaha! Thanks for now bye!".

So I was left there and had to pay a total of four pieces of cake and four coffees and cappuccinos... I don't spend so much money even when I go out with my girlfriends, and they are expensive…

Gino still with us..

In a daring move to get finally rid of Gino, I gave him the practically impossible task of improving my own made Java multi platform installer. For months and months, he pretended to be working on the stuff, while actually as usual spending his days in the toilets and the chatting with Olive Oyl, one of our new lady “workers”, who is so desperate for distraction that will talk even to Gino.

All the managers of the company were complaining about this total waste of company’s money, and I was confirming all the time what a disaster Gino is; all this took us long breaks over cappuccinos and homemade pastries.

So when we finally released the new installer in hundreds of downloads, I started collecting statistics of the successful installations (as our software unshamingly calls home like all commercial software does), in order to show the disaster and get Gino immediately fired. But for still obscure circumstances, actually the share of successful installations has improved dramatically. So I had to hide and alter data, and keep a quiet, low profile about Gino and all that “time wasted” talk.

Will need another reason… .

Gino Vs. Motorbike round one

Sorry I didn't post for a while, the level of mobbing has been so high that even going to the toilet was a luxury.

Three days ago I had to go to a customer, in town, so Polyglot told me:"I’ll lend you my scooter!": that seemed fine.

When I went to Polyglot to get the scooter keys, he started describing a list of starting procedures for the scooter, some of them quite absurd, between mythology and sci-fi, but I know that man so I wasn't scared, at least then...

I went out of the office, and recognized immediately the vehicle: ok it wasn't new, actually the dirtiest bike I've seen in year, but that bag with old shoes on the saddle, what did it mean?? After some discussion with Polyglot that was telling me to throw it away in the first trash box I saw, I convinced him that it was his responsibility...

Got rid of the Dadaist shoes, I tried to start the bike with the electric start, but it was broken, ok, no problem, I went with the kick starter. Man!!
It just didn't want to start: I kick started many motorbikes, even 4 strokes cross motorbikes, but Polyglot’s scooter no way!! So I returned in the office and told him the facts. He watched me and seemed to think, then suddenly:"AHAHA, I must be without gas!!". So to get to the customer ActionGirl (our secretary) called a taxi for me...

Ride the lighting

Yesterday I’ve put my life at risk, seriously. My colleague had a glass of water on her desk, and accidentally she hit it and water went down from the desk. I tried to dry it but didn't succeed, so water was falling down from the desk on a high voltage cable!!!! I jumped down under the desk and start to dry the water, after some minutes I told myself: "What the hell am I doing??". In that moment Boss passed there, but the only thing that he was capable to do as usual was to “manage” the operations with useless advices and in the meantime by mistake, he hit me repeatedly under the table...

Does Boss Work?

Today early morning I was chatting for a few seconds with ActionGirl, the secretary, about some work matters, in that moment I saw Boss going around the office without any visible reason. At mid morning I was helping a friend on messeger because she had some problems with some Java stuff, and in that moment Boss passed behind me ( very dangerous... ) without a valid reason. In the afternoon Bohemien called me because he wanted to discuss some Mac development stuff, because now I'm working on that platform, so we started to discuss Mac qualities in general, and I saw Boss that was watching us and again doing nothing useful. Last but not least, when I was sending an Sms's to my girlfriend, Boss was standing in the middle of the office, standing up with no light in his eyes... was that man working or was he pretending to be doing something, without any real aim in life?

Gino simply never works

Today I met Gino 4 times: early morning, he was in the aisle, chatting with our most pretty secretary. When I passed behind his PC, he was chatting with friends (girls) on the web. Then I crossed him on the stairs, he was chatting with Bohemien about the qualities of most expensives Macs (???). Lastly, I found him sending SMSs from his cell phone to some other girls.

He simply never works.

Half microwave effect...

After some days of cooking, CEO passed by my work area, and was "disgusted by the mess". She suggested to Boss to "elevate" me to a better position...
Well Boss after saying "of course CEO, I was thinking the same thing" (he always says that to CEO, whatever she says), actually just thought to substitute one of my monitor (the violet RGB one) with an old LCD!!! Whoa!! Marvelous now I've a CRT one and a LCD, naturally they have different dimension so when I move my eyes from a monitor to the other I get a headache. Also my desk now is pending on the right side, so Big Boss told me:"Well you can adjust it: simply push it up with your back from under the desk and fix the pin on its right leg at the right height", yes, quite right observation, if I happened to be an elephant...

Microwave effect

Last day when I arrived in the office I noticed that on my desk there were two monitors! Wow double monitor is a good thing for a developer, but the 'little' peculiarity of mines is that they are old crappy CRTs! Ok, I could pass on it. But when I started to work I noticed that the second CRT has a strange RGB calibration, I tried to adjust it, but the better result was a quite violet luminescence of video, and when I say “better result” I mean the best result that you can obtain by that CRT box, not to talk about initial frequency of them, one it was calibrated on 60Hz and other one 50 Hz, if I didn't immediately adjust that I would be subject of an epileptic crisis! Another funny (yes I bring it about with a little philosophic manner ) particular was that my desk was starting to bend under the weight of two CRT monitors and two bricks (no joke!) under the monitors used to reach a regular height... Well after some hours of work I started to focus on a quite scary characteristic of CRT monitors, the radiation! Geez, I am in the focus of two electronic guns that point to my head!!!

Job interviews

In our company, due to declining productivity, we decided to hire new workers. Our interview style is a mixture of Joel on software interview guide and Abu Ghraib smart techniques for teaching democracy to non-americans. The most brilliant interviewed revealed his study techniques by several slips, when he was calling SQL joins "joints", to which we reacted by asking to roll and share. Another noticeable interviewed, when asked the most trivial question about Java, told us "well dude, if you wanted a senior guy.. you know, I really like that Java thing.. now I'm working on Access, and that is very hard, too.. the Java thing would be nice.."

So we'll get rid of Gino soon!

Bloody sunday

Last Sunday I had to work, for an electoral application serving real time for a local election; precisely the condition was that customers could call me if they had problems, but the only one that had real problems was myself... . After a big Saturday night, I went to bed at about 3:00 a.m. I was awaken by a silly SMS, at 7.30 in the morning!! A customer wrote that I had to call him to explain some functionality of the product that I had to maintain; I thought that it was a bad joke, maybe of my boss, so I went back to bed, but after 4 minutes he phoned me, and believe me when I say that he didn't know what he was talking about... After 12.00 the customer called me again to signal a single character mistake in the main page of application. 'Okay, no problem, my fault I’ll fix it immediately!' was my answer. After 1 hour CEO sent me an SMS asking me how things were going, and I was proud to tell that I had everything under control. Big Boss phoned me after the CEO’s SMS to ask me the same thing, and I was VERY proud to tell him the same thing. 16.30 Hell on Earth: the customer calls me to signal that the table in the first page of application (yes you got it right, the same page of the wrong little letter!!) was completely, definitely, drastically, dramatically wrong!! OH Geez!! I phoned Big Boss immediately to communicate the situation. The first thing that Big Boss asked me was:" What kind of monitor do you have at home, the one you just got?" after 1 sec of embarrassment I answered "Samsung 2232sw 22''", Big Boss replied: "AHAHAHA I'm in front of a wonderful 245Bw 24 better than yours!! HAHAHA", and hanged up, without giving me any kind of help. At that point I thought : "Please, reboot the universe...". I've tried to download locally the db on the company's laptop, but after some seconds I discovered that someone had changed password in the database settings (I later discovered that it was Boss)... My last chance was to go in the office, phone to Polyglot (another a-bit-off founder of the company) to tell him that a global catastrophe was happening, but he told me:" Don't be afraid, it's regular with that customer! We'll meet in the office later, keep cool! Bye!" Geez, keep cool? I didn't have enough valium. In the meantime my girlfriend had arrived ( yes I've succeeded to bring her back, until then...) but I had to go so I told her an impressive statement: "My dear, I've got to go, its my duty! See you soon!" (I've tried to call her since… no success). I got the car but found a terrible jam on the street. The customer wanted the application fixed by 19:00, and he told me that at 16:30, when he called me again it was 17:50 and I was blocked on the street, so I told them:" No problem my colleagues are working on the problem now! When I arrived in the office it was 18.30 and I was alone, after some minutes Polyglot arrived. I started my Pc, and realized that the network was down!!! Damn!!! The cleaning woman!!! She unplugged something!! I succeeded to put my pc back online with an air cable... It was 18.50 and customer called again, I told them: "Sure, about 20 minutes..." We started to work on the application, after 30 mins nothing was fixed. Finally at 19.45 it was fixed and deployed!!! Whoa!! The customer kept calling, giving me false alerts, just out of fear. I realized that the only thing to do was to wait till client calms down. So I put a Divx "Bourne Supremacy" because I didn't have "Mission impossible", much more appropriate.
At about 9 p.m. Boss called me: "Everything is going fine, ain't it Gino? Just as I told you!". I tried to tell Boss, what had happened, but he had already hanged up, with "Now go home, don't waste our extra-time pay just for sleeping there".

Points of view

Starting some weeks ago I noticed that someone tried again and again to sabotage my pc and my desk, but I couldn't find who was the smart one... Today whe I went to the new toilet on the first floor; from the top I can see my desk, because we work in an openspace, and I noticed Boss getting to my pc, and starting to do a mess on my desk and pc cables! So I realized that the "smart one" is him... I just said "ahem", and he turned round, waved to me friendly as if nothing had happened, and went away saying "Gino, come'on, back to work, you time waster". Now I always check where he is before leaving my desk..

Improving performance

Today I realized for the nth time that my PC is extremely slow, so I tried to set some environment parameters in order to improve performance. The Ide was the big problem: it was so dramatically, obscenely SLOW, requiring a HUGE amount of resources. In the meantime, Boss passes behind me, and starts raving that the problem was the Ide configuration, so if I wanted to resolve something I had to modify that certain configuration file with the right parameters, so he snatched control of my PC and started to modify the configuration file of the Ide (really dangerous if you don't know what are you doing...). After he finished to mess up my Ide's configuration file he told me : "But what the heck! You must have compromised somehow your PC's performance, it still doesn't work. What shit did you put on your PC?! You're a rookie!! Ahaha", and left.

Ok Ok, I can admit that I'm a rookie, but the actual amount of Ram in my PC is 1 GB: I checked this after Boss went away laughing. Geez! Only 1 GB for a Java developer! A secretary has a PC with more memory than me, but the most relevant particular was that when I restarted my Ide I gotthe message:"Error in local thread main please check configuration file an error in configuration."

Mouse' balls

Today, getting back to work after a forced rest, I noticed Gino brushing the desk with the mouse I supplied him some months ago. What the hell is he doing? Aha! probably he is not confortable with a luxury usb optical mouse; it is too light and too rapid in the movement for him; luckily I still have a “hard balled” serial mouse. Lucky Gino!

Human machine interface

When I arrived for the first time in the office they gave me a mouse with left button half broken, but with a bit of practice I succeeded to make it working. After some day Boss came to my Pc, tried to use my mouse and then said: "But what did you do to this mouse it doesn't work!! Holy shit!! " and went away. After him, Big Boss came to my Pc, but when he realized that my mouse didn't work , well he told me:" Hey, but how can you work with this mad thing!! I'll give you a working one now!!", Big Boss seemed very generous with me, but if my old mouse had the left button half broken, my actual mouse has the left button COMPLETELY broken...

Never leave the office. Never!

I just discovered that Gino, during my leave, is using my double monitor, my armchair, and my headphones.

Anyway today I called it to ask how things were going, and first thing he told me “Oh don’t worry about the monitors, I always clean with polish when I’ve finished with them”

Remote Access

When I realized that I had to get some forced days in bed, first thing I called Gino asking for setting-up a remote connection to my office PC.
First he asked me which console I’d like to use, what kind of x terminal and then he tried to convince me to use a text-only terminal session. Good boy! He is a Linux fanatic! After half an hour discussion, I had to call Jack, he told me just “OK”, and in a minute I had my connection.

Now I’m in the bed with three pillows under my knees, three under my back, a pillow on the stomach and my laptop on like the Mayan astronaut. But at least I can mob monitor my slav employees work!

Travelling for work

Today I heard that there was to do some job abroad: I was very happy, because I like very much to travel and if they’d choose me, it would be cool. I have heard that they had gone to California a while ago. Whoa! That would be cool: I love sunny beaches, warm weather, san Francisco to visit.. . In the middle of the afternoon Boss came to my desk, , and started to babble about sacrifice and duty... well, at the end of his boring speech he told me: "Well, I was very generous with you boy! I accept to travel for 12 hours because I'll go to California, and I suggested to the CEO to send you to Malmo, it'll be only about 5 hours of travel! Yep, I'm a very generous man, I know, don't tell me nothing, it's a pleasure for me to be an example for you. See you in two weeks, bye!". The first thing that I started to think was: "Malmo?? Where the hell is Malmo??", after 1 minute of Google Maps I discovered the tragic truth: SWEDEN: the coldest country after North Pole!

Windows

This week I suffered very much cold in the office, I don't know why, but that damn window over my head is always open, and when I say always I mean ALWAYS! For example, when I close it until I stay at my workplace is all ok, but when I go to the toilette when I return I find that demonic window open again!! I don't know who is the author of this joke, but it sure that he knows very well that I hate cold!

Good ideas

I’m still lying in the bed as stockfishes stay; its, of course, Gino’s responsibility.
When he showed me those stupid poses of ugly martial arts, he started begging me to try them: “this is soo healthy for you”. I had no heart to refuse, also because I have to seem ‘illuminated’ I accepted to descend at the same level of my slav employees.

And the consequence is.. today is the tenth day of horrible back pain!

Bohemian rapsody

Yesterday I worked with graphic designer Bohémien. I gave him scripts for the Java application, because I had to make script for Linux and Mac too, and Bohémien works with Mac, like all true graphic designers (Boss says I reason by commonplaces, I wonder why). We tested very hard and after some malfunction I started to hate that creepy Mac shell, I mean, why Mac must have its Java embedded? Why can’t I set my jvm? Linux it's more flexible and powerful; anyway the scripts didn’t work. Today Bohémien arrived in the office and came to me, he had a beautiful Mac Book Pro under his arm, and told me: "I made it!! Your script and my appleScript work perfectly!!". In order to demonstrate me what he said, he opened his Mac, and I started to remember my ex- Mac that I resold on e-bay at half price because no one wanted to buy it. After that sad memento I asked to Bohémien: "Hey! Very beautiful Mac Bohémien, I presume that it's was very expensive to get!" and he answered: "Thanks, but I made a very big deal! I bought it on e-bay: a dumb one sold it for about half-price!! Ah ah ah, what an idiot!!!!".

Gino's contract

When CEO was about to change Gino's long term contract after five days, she asked me what I thought about it: "Well", I said, "it won't make any difference to Gino; he is surely not just going to buy a house right now, so just go with it".

Real IT manager

I must say that there is a vague resemblance.

Some work for Gino's

Software documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing. (Anonymous.)

Following this deep and wise remark, I gave Gino some documentation to write.

The man in front of me

Today after lunch, while I was trying to resell my new MacBook Pro on e-bay, I noticed a new 22'' inch monitor 16:10 inside its box. I started to think about my 'new' monitor, and I asked my colleague in front of me why that monitor was lying there in the corner, my colleague answered me that it had been there for a month, and it was destined to him, but he didn't like dual monitors, so he left it there. So, when I just formed in my mind the thougth “I’ll take it”, Boss passed by and said in a whisper “forget it”.

Shell is the law

Boss called me for a new task other day (yes, I have an incredible number of assignments), he told me that I had to do some scripting for an Java application to be installed on Linux. Wow, it's the most interesting task for now. I started coding immediately. After some tests, I gave all to Boss for the final verdict. Man, you can't understand my surprise when I heard Boss saying:" Damn: where are the damned .bat files???". I tried to explain Boss that under Linux there are no .bat files, and after a while he seemed to get it, came to my PC, where I’m running my most loved Linux GUI, and said: "Ok, I perfectly understand that!! Then, where is the application icon? And where is the control panel, the myComputer icon? And what is this wallpaper crap? It seems a dog's shit!!".

Murphy's law

Today CEO came to my desk (and this usually is a bad thing), and she told me that for the good of Company they had to change my contract with a limited time one... damn, I must accept for the good of Company... Man! I've got a new definition of 'long term contract', 5 days!! Murphy's law came to my mind:"If anything can go wrong, it will, and usually at the most inopportune moment". After this 'good' news, I started to think about my new notebook, my new car, but the most terrible thing was the house, telling my fiancée and above all, I had to return the diamond ring... After a few minutes Boss got to my desk and told me: "I inform you that you have been chosen for an important task, software support for the next election, and you must work unpaid for a few Saturdays and Sundays monitoring the application. Remember: it's a very critical application. Have a nice day!". Only in that moment I remembered the complete Murphy's law:"If anything can go wrong, it will, and usually at the most inopportune moment, and in the WORST way...".

The Contract!

Wow!! It's amazing: they got me a long term contract! I got so happy, I invited all my friend for a three days (and night) party, free food and beer for everyone. I also went to order my new notebook, a marvelous Mac Book Pro. While I was at it, when I went to get my new Mac I fixed my new Car. But the most important thing that I can do now is to buying a house for me and my fiancée so we can get married!! Wow I'm so excited, that Boss can now mob me as much as he wants, but he won’t ruin my good mod!!! Great, great CEO.

Joy of living - Gino's quarterly review

At work life can get really hard at times (so that's why I take days off so frequently, particularly Fridays). But there is one thing, one great experience that can immediately make me feel good and love my workplace: it is when I think of Gino's quarterly review. It was such a complete and unworsenable disaster, that I just can't stop laughing when I racall it. Beautiful, just beautiful.

Shortest long-term contract ever

About a week ago Gino ended his trial period, and he got a long term contract. Not because we wanted to give it to him, but purely by mistake. He seemed very happy about it, so I got into action, called the HR dept. and made them close the long term contract and issue a short and low pay contract in place. Gino could easily make the company pay a huge amount of money for the contract breach, but of course we easily made him believe that the change was in his favour, even the lowering of wage.

Our new class header

/**
* @author Jack Boss
* @problems, complaints, insults Gino Employee
* write freely to gino@mostmobbed.anonym_.com
*/

Faking work

Recently Gino had to provide some Word documentation, and he seemed to be working on it, but the bandwidth usage (I always monitor what he's doing) showed he was contnuously surfing on the web.


But then I found out how he was doing that: he was using this software which fakes word usage, but actually you are surfing, and with a simple F1 press you can switch between the browser (real) and a wordlike appearance:
It even fakes the app bar appearance:

Quarterly review

In our company every three months there's a quarterly review, the last one was very interesting, in particular for Boss.
It started very seriously, in fact it was quite boring. All my colleagues were very serious and Boss and Big Boss looked very interested. When my turn to speak arrived, Boss started to make loud jokes with Big Boss, but I didn't get distracted from the review. As I started to speak, the noise produced by Boss kept growing. When I got to about half way through, Boss obliged me to speak about a determinate section of my work; I complied, and this was a big mistake. Boss has modified some code on that section (introducing several bugs) and all the application started to crash, and with the flow of on-screen exceptions Boss and Big Boss started to laugh more and more, but I kept going and finished it. So at the end Boss and Big Boss were rolling with laughter, and they didn’t get a thing of my technical explanations. The strange thing was that after me when another colleague started her review, they were again very serious and pleased. Sometimes I think that Boss and Big Boss don't understand my work, they just don’t get it, so that’s why they start to make jokes on me and my work..

Ridicolous martial artist

Today when Boss arrived in the office we started to speak about a most important stage of martial arts which I'm attending tomorrow. He started making fun of me and my "ridiculous hobby", and after that he started moving in strange senseless and compulsive mode, while telling me:"This is martial arts!". After a while he stopped, and went back to his workstation; I turned round, and saw Catherine (our CEO) watching amazed. She said nothing, and went away. Sometimes I wonder whether Boss is going a bit crazy.

Urban ninja - back blocked

So today I passed by in the office and there was Gino. He was going to a ridicolous martial art training, so I shown him some basic movements, as he seemed to be lacking even the basics of the art. But something in my back started hurting, and in order not to depress Gino, I pretended that I was fine. Now I'm at home, blocked in bed by back pain. There's something cursed about that guy.

Censorship

The CEO called me again this morning, this time less happy: she overheard the "dog shit" code name, and she asked me about this "idiotic idea", which lowers morale, and where it comes from. I hinted at Gino's, and she said "Ah: that Italian man", probably implying that being italian he must have some macho personality problems. Then she told me about strange things happening recently, like she found a working cellular phone under her car in the parking lot, which she has been using since.
I told her that I will act immediately to make employees use a proper terminology. So I'm so scared now that even these posts will be censored from now on. Holy s.!

Dalmata is the name

The CEO just called; when I heard it was her, I started to panic: with this Gino business, she was going to ask about productivity. But instead she was calm and happy, and said how much he likes the "dalmata" name I proposed, and that she heard about the wiki initiative, which was good, and that I seemed to have become the drive of innovation; I thanked and told her that these things come just natural to me, so I deserved no reward. She answered that a raise was forthcoming.

New project for Gino

We've given Gino a new assignment: create a customized version of a Linux O.S. that should run on his new cell phone. Now for this kind of work the name is essential, so I took a few days off in order to meditate and create a good name. So now I'm back and the name is "dog shit", which is inspired by the logo of Gino's most loved Linux'distribution. I was going to tell Gino, when he came to me with the silly name of "dalmata". So just to make him happy, we'll call it internally "dog shit", but the official name will be "dalmata".

Cellphone part 3 of 3

Today in the office while searching for a new cell on the web, Boss came and told me that he wanted to apologize for the accident with my cell, so he wanted to repay me somehow. He started to speak about my new cellphone that he had bought me, a cool, very cool smart phone! So I thought:" Oh jeez! He's great, he got me an IPhone Touch! Cool.". After some minutes he started to babble about a phantom open source phone, telling me:"I thought that it would be perfect for you, because I know that you like that Linux shit...".

Cellphone part 2 of 3

Three days ago I called Boss to show him my work, well I hate to admit that sometimes he is quite fun, but he doesn't know when to stop with his damned jokes... When he got to my PC he started to comment my code with "But what the hell is this shit!", and after that he took my cellphone (it was on my table as usual) and pretended to throw it away; the very problem was that the cell flew away through the window for real. Well, at that point Boss REALIZED that that was just too much, so he told me: "Hey man, I didn't want to throw away the cell for real! Come on, let's go out for a coffee". Okay, okay, I saw he was sincere, so I accepted the offer. When we went to pay the coffee ,Boss said:" Damned!! I forgot my wallet, can you pay for me?".

A great chance for learning

I’ve recently learned about the new Sun’s open source phone . So I thougth that it would be a unique opportunity for our developers to have just that thing to play around with, develop on it, and maybe we’ll use it as a platform to sell more software. I've ordered one for Gino.

Hampering productivity again: the damned wiki

Some days ago I was meditating about how to improve the company’s communication, and while Gino was babbling about some silly ideas as usual, I was struck with the idea of using a wiki for just that. I told Gino, and he was immediately enthusiastic at the idea. That is usually a sign that the idea is not so good after all. Anyway we started transferring information from comfortable word documents to ugly web pages, and we realized progressively that it was not such a good idea. It’s Gino’s touch: whatever he likes, rottens quickly.

Cellphone part 1 of 3

Last week when I arrived in the office I put my cell on my table as usual. After some hours of work Boss passed behind me (potentially dangerous to have Boss behind you), saw my cell and without saying anything, took it and started to frenetically open and close the slide. I continued working, thinking that he was smart enough to stop before breaking the phone. After a while, he put the cell back on the table and went away, without saying anything. In the afternoon I received an sms, I tried to open my cell's slide but it didn't work anymore.