Tag Archives: harsh reality

I didn’t come here to make friends

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Disclaimer: Multiple usages of the word Fuck, a few Damns, and I may have said Shit once.

I work in the IT world as a director. I run team members from Arizona, to Colorado, to Pune India. The reason I’m good at my job is because I don’t go to work each day with the mindset that I’m going to make a new friend that day. I’m a deadline oriented guy who is driven to meet goals and obligations I’ve set for myself and my team. I actually used that same mindset here on this blog when I built it seven years ago.

I didn’t make any friends yesterday.

We are on this project to remediate servers and currently we are stuck on two boxes for a product team that controls terminal downloads. We were given the task late in the game to in place these boxes to 2012 because they failed to find a way to push them over to new 2016 boxes. It’s a long story, but suffice to say that apparently my name is on the side of the building and it became my job to look after the entire fucking infrastructure of the whole damn world. That’s fine, even though I’m director of Release Management twice and file load Broomfield, if you want me to hold the very fibers of the world together I can do that too. I have two hands.

I asked for a weekday window to do this work. I was denied by product and was told we need to do this over the weekend, particularly Sunday since God isn’t busy that day. Sure boss, it’s your world, and I know my guys can do it so I told product yes. This was all dependent on us getting the development box upgraded and getting sign off yesterday though. I swear I’m going somewhere with this, just stick with me.

So we spend all day working through an issue we hadn’t seen to beat the status call at noon. Over the past year and a half my guys have done over 150 boxes in place and we hadn’t seen an application or software yet treat 2012 any different from the 2008 OS, but the stupid fucking application wouldn’t run its service and we were stuck. So we were knocking at it, one team on the call with the vendor, the other team was working with me trying reinstalls and such.

We hadn’t found a solution by the time I got on the noon call, so I asked for another hour. We still hadn’t found an answer by 1 pm, so I braced myself and got on the call anyways.

The product manager immediately starts digging in that we need to “no go” this weekend release and even named the call “Showstopper.” Keep in mind that I have till the 16th to close this damn project, and if you’re bad at math that doesn’t give me another Sunday window. I pointed this out to him and asked if we could continue to troubleshoot and get Saturday support tomorrow on testing from his product testers.

“Well Jason… there’s only five business days and you guys don’t even have a solution in sight.”

I About Lost It.

Are you fucking kidding me man? Only five business days, well aren’t we lucky that Korean Jesus gave us seven damn days in the week. The seventh day being the one you already wrangled me into forcing my guys to work, so don’t give me this bullshit about business days when we’ve already moved past that window.

I politely told him, in my normal forceful way, that it behooves is all to allow the trained technicians we have to find this solution. It is also only 1 o’clock, let’s give them time. We aren’t calling this yet.

Fucking kidding me, tapping out in the 3rd round when we have 9 to go? I’ll never be a follower of that weak mindset.

10 minutes after the call we found the solution on one site and performed the solution on the following after.

Never say die.

So yea… no new friends this week. Get the fuck outa here with that shit. And I have to work another Sunday.

Fuck me.

-Opinionated Man

Love

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I miss you everyday and wonder what you are doing.

I replay the time we spent together and the warm feeling you gave me.

I wonder who you are with now, who might be loving you.

I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever see one another again.

Are you with someone else? Are you cheating on me!!!

Next time I have $100, I’ll spend it on you.

I miss this bottle of scotch so much…

-OM

44.1

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They say bad news sometimes comes on good tides. I sit upon the sand of my mind and hope the waves don’t crash over me. Behind my back is the sound of the happiness I’ve found. I’d like to hear that sound just a bit longer before you take me in, take me back. Something has always told me that life is a fixed deck. From broken hand clasp to cold forgotten streets, somehow I’ve survived this long. If the years I’ve been given were but a memory, I’m happy for that time you gave. I’m not afraid to admit I’m scared. But I’ll spit in the devil’s eye when I see him.

Jason

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Strange

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So this was kind of strange.

I had a small bump underneath the skin near my lower eyelid yesterday. It was pressing against my eye socket bone and was painful to blink. I massaged it and the bump moved away and down my face – which was scary by the way. But at least the sharp pain went away, it then became just sore yesterday.

The soreness wouldn’t go away fully and I talked to my Pop, who is a doctor, but he wasn’t sure what it was and he doesn’t live near me.

This morning my cheek was still sore so I massaged some more, near where the small soft bump should have been and I found it pressed against my cheek bone. It moved again and now it’s disappeared in the soft part of my face and all the soreness is gone. I think it was either a stye or a cyst, but I’m not sure. I also don’t know if I should go see a doctor this week to see if anything further is going on. I don’t like hospitals much, but I’m like any human being… I’m Googling… and that’s not always a good idea.

Makes you more scared.

At least my face feels better. I hope it was a orbital dermoid and harmless.

-Opinionated Man

Blogging

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7 years ago I chose this platform as my home base.

I could have chosen YouTube or Facebook and gone for money off hits and ads. I could have used powerblogging for many different things. Instead, because I’m a numbers guy and it fascinates me, I went for views and subscribers. Not because I wanted to compete with anyone, there’s far more popular social media users out there, I did it for me. To see what I could do.

They told me “you can’t make a popular website off writing about yourself.” They were wrong.

You can write anything about anything and as long as you have a presence, as long as you give a damn… you can build anything in this netherworld.

You just have to work it.

-Opinionated Man

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Random Facts

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I know I’m posting a lot. I used to do that a ton, you’ll get used to it… or you won’t and you’ll leave.

We’ll both live.

I found a new barber in my new town and I’m happy it is so close! I got to hear a conversation near me about politics and it made me laugh inside. You never want to offend someone that is either cutting your hair or working on your teeth. That’s gotta be the dumbest thing possible to do because they have you in your most vulnerable situation. Well, I guess there’s also the time I got my colonoscopy and I warned the young nurses I was a virgin and to be gentle before putting me to sleep. They laughed… but come to think of it their laugh was a bit evil…

I haven’t rented a home in over fifteen years and I’m reminded now how much I hate it. Landlords really have you by the balls don’t they.

-OM