On cascading failure...(or murphy's law)

As I sit at my desk on a sunny day, I'm contemplating Murphy's law, which states that whatever can go wrong will, at the worst possible time. :-) today, would seem like that day.

I came in this morning to merge and commit some changes to the library, and then do about 3 hours of administrative/clerical stuff that needed to be done, helping out my programmers as needed.

Yeah, about that...

For some reason my subversion client decided to stop talking to the server. Is anyone else having this problem? no. Also, I.T. ran their checks on our mail files today, so I can't send or receive any email until I get rid of 200MB of backlog on my notes file.

And I broke the build, and I was a complete asshole to Joey earlier. Kid just wants someone to PLAY with him, for goodness' sake.

* * *

What's really eating me is this book I've been reading, called Microserfs It's supposed to be a hilarious look at the whacked out lives of geeks in Silicon Valley during the 1990's, but instead, but I see no humor in it. It's MY LIFE on those pages, and it scares the hell out of me. It's about nerd stereotypes--poseur, uber-smart waif, flaky tech evangelist, oversensitive genius, cynic, burnout slut-fem--trying to find their way, knocked around in the corporate world from the pinnacle of tech--Microsoft--to the slums of Silicon Valley Venture Capital.

It gets to me because the things that are supposed to be funny--OCD programmers working insane hours, forgetting what sunlight looks like, nerd culture decoupled from realty, inability to deal with life--are part of MY life sometimes, particularly right now. These are pitiful situations, but in each moment I have to re-examine how MY JOB is just like them.

I rarely stop reading a book, though there was one--"Year Zero"--that I really should have, but I'm stopping this one. It's spiralling me into depression, basically, right when I'm at my moodiest.

* * *

Parting shot: Part of me is just a selfish asshole only-child, lacking the consideration of others in the least. Sadly, it's the part of me that gets things done and makes us money, so it must be tolerated

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