Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Why Do I Do This Stuff?

It's that time of year again. The time when we examine the events of past year, list the things we hate about ourselves, and vow to change.

Ostensibly it's about trying to make the conscious decision to steer your life in a better direction. Overweight? Let's lose it! Unlucky in love? Time to find that "one true love!" That bucket list burning a hole in your brain because you were too lazy to write it down? Time to write it down! (Maybe you can work on the actual crossing off of an item or two next year...let's be realistic in our goals, after all...)

Having a son makes me reflect once in awhile on life circumstances. It doesn't hurt that the job change...and such a drastic change, having moved to New York City while my family is still back in Pennsylvania, with my wife in the same industry that I left...gives a radically new perspective as well.

Age has given me more mistakes to reflect on; for example, I see the times I martyred myself in the workplace thinking this was a way to "get ahead," to gain respect for my dedication to the job. Extra hours expecting nothing in return. Either I was doing it wrong or that's not how the world worked because the employer didn't give a damn when I left. In fact it's my understanding they replaced me with someone less experienced at the same approximate pay.

I've started thinking in terms of legacy. That's the type of morbid thinking that enters your head when you go back to an empty apartment at night after an hour on the subway; I wonder, if something happened to me, who would know?

After having left my previous employer with barely any recognition of "sorry to see you go," I wondered what I would leave behind. When a cog breaks it gets replaced. You don't know anything about the replaced cog. It was unimportant. It doesn't leave a mark. Unless it really exploded off the axle and scratched the shit out of the surrounding area, so the next repair guy is like, "What the hell scratched the shit out of this?" But really, who questions that? Unless the scratches look like Jesus or the Virgin Mary or some neat writing that summons demons or something. But that's off topic.

I also think of my parents; I don't know what they were like when they were kids or teenagers. And much of the stuff that might be interesting to the later generations doesn't seem so interesting at the time, so your memory shuffles it into the mental trash bin. I'm still not sure their favorite toys weren't made of sticks tied together with rags or some other Little House on the Prairie idea of what passed for fun back then.

Today we have more tools than ever to indulge in our narcissism. Cameras in everyone's pockets. Entertainment available at a few clicks. Outrage delivered by Twitter. Everything in our lives, for better or worse, documented by not just our government but by ourselves.

But what does this say about us? Are we nothing more than our FaceBook farts (usually shared meme images and rants about political figures, little more than the impulse to shout ME TOO to our circle of social media friends?)

To that end I want to be more creative, or at least try making something that lasts longer than I will in the world.

I've tried doing a few things so far. This blog, for instance. Very few people ever read it. My wife rarely sees me in real life as we're apart for work, but I don't think she ever reads my musings online. And my view stats demonstrates that most of what I say isn't of importance to others. But recognition isn't why I'm doing this.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get paid to write brain droppings. Realistically that isn't going to happen. What this does do, though, is highlight some of my thinking process and act as a snapshot of things I find important enough to comment on over time; my son, should he grow up wondering something about his father, can go back through these writings and see some of what his father thought and enjoyed (and what ticked him off.) It's not complete, but it's something. It's definitely more than my parents left for me to read. My little guy will have something to look back on. It doesn't hurt that this is a convenient place to leave notes to myself either.

I wrote a novel; the manuscript never generated enough interest for an agent to pick it up, but I still managed to finish a novel-length manuscript. It's been a little time...I'd have to look up how long it's been. The important thing for me is that I wrote it and the manuscript is on my computer. It actually exists. And maybe someday I'll be motivated again to try querying more agents.

I have managed to keep my self-imposed schedule creating my podcast, Geeking After Dark. It's nothing fancy; there's no varied feedback so I can't really use it as a reference for what to tune or try to improve. But I still kept up with it. Each week, one episode recorded, lightly edited and uploaded. There have been times when I ask myself if I want to continue working on it because it does seem like a lot of work for so little payoff and there have been a couple of times when I want to quit. Then I go ahead and do it again anyway.

If you're keeping count, the creativity bin has a podcast, a blog, and a manuscript.

I did have progress in creating  a utility using the Go language; I scrapped it when there was a push to move to another platform altogether in the company, then that push was scrapped and I never picked it back up. The reception to the utility was lukewarm and I decided that if I was going to write something again it would have to be useful to mostly me and it had to be something that I wasn't hoping would have some kind of encouragement from others to buoy my enthusiasm to completion.

I feel like this isn't enough, though. I'm not leaving enough of a footprint to say that I was here. So this would be as good a time as any to consider options. Some things that have been on my mind...

  • Write another novel. I am not a writer...oh lordy I'd love to make an income writing novels. Realistically it's not an option. But it is a possibility. People love possibilities. At a minimum I can write the story to see if I can flesh out what is bouncing in my head.
  • Write another application. There's a couple things I could work on. Programming is weird...I keep shying away, feeling utterly stupid and overwhelmed at mediocre work. Then I keep going back to it, wondering if some simple task is something I can tackle. Sometimes I think the biggest challenge is the fear of simply failing, so not doing it is the best way to avoid yet another failure. Oddly enough this is also the biggest obstacle to writing a novel manuscript.
  • Work on YouTube videos. I have a channel, as everyone with a Google account does by default. My channel has languished,  but I am always watching videos from Ryan Connolly (Film Riot)  (if you haven't seen some of his work, you really should check them out...) and wishing I could do more to learn about film editing and compositing. I don't have great equipment, but maybe I could do something fun.
Those are the big ideas I've been toying with. I think I'm going to ponder a bit more this week and come up with a "plan" of what I want to pursue, if anything, in earnest this coming year. Then I'll hopefully get through the year and promptly forget what I wanted to do. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up writing a variation of this blog post in another year...

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Stephen King Just in Time For the Holidays

I am writing this a few days after the fact; I'm trying to recall the highlights. It's not even been a week and already the details are starting to slip from my sieve of a memory.

My father is a bit of a superfan when it comes to Stephen King. We've been to Maine to visit the Bangor area and try to recreate the setting for many of King's works. We've passed by his home (complete with people dressed in constructions gear having lunch at odd hours...I recall the distinct impression they were not really doing home improvements...)

While Dad is a superfan, he's not crazy. He collects King's works. He reads articles about King, watches movies based on King's works and of course buys King's short stories and novels.

The newest King novel, Revival, also marked the kickoff of a book tour. That tour happened to start on November 11th in New York City.

My parents had just been to the city for my birthday a week prior; if you have been to the city, you know that even a weekend trip can quickly drain a bank account. I knew my parents had some interest in seeing Mr. King. I had thought they were planning on coming into the city. But when I asked about the book signing after they had returned home from my birthday Mom said that the budget just couldn't cover it.

I had already emailed requesting the 11th off in anticipation of my parents coming into the city for the book signing event. Instead of reclaiming the day, I decided to go to the Union Square Barnes and Noble and try to get the signature for my father.

"I'll get up early and head to the bookstore and if the line goes around the block, I'll say, 'fuck it' and spend a day doing some shopping or relaxing." That was the last thing I said about the book signing to a coworker before heading back to my apartment on the night of the 10th. I remember him saying that I shouldn't have much trouble..."Stephen King isn't a huge name with young people today, you shouldn't have any trouble getting a decent spot in line if you get there early." I figured he was right.

I set my alarm for a quarter to five in the morning. Ugh. I was damn near dragging myself to the subway station that morning. It was a cool morning, kind of cloudy, but fortunately there was no rain or snow.

My first feeling of setback came when I arrived at the subway station; perhaps because it was early in the morning, perhaps because it was Veteran's Day, perhaps it was because of a Mole Man attack, I don't know, but the R train took seemingly forever to arrive. In reality it was probably 15 minutes. When you're used to the 5 minute rush hour schedule and you're already feeling the effects of waking up extra early, that 15 minutes feels like an eternity.

I made my way to the Union Square subway station and emerged onto the bustling sidewalk. I then passed some nice people handing out free papers and some vendors, trying to get my bearings and remember where the book store was positioned in the square. As I approached I could see some people standing along the facade. Expected; I figured there would be some early-morning people, the same people that would get in line at one in the morning for a Black Friday sale. Having checked the website in the morning to double check information, I saw that a 350-wristband limit was set for the event; I figured a few people in the front of the line wouldn't kill my chances at getting a band.

I drew closer to the building and saw people not just standing in line, but laying in sleeping bags and reclining in folding chairs along the sidewalk. But then I saw it wasn't just adults; kids were sleeping in the sleeping bags. Families. "Holy crap," I thought. "These people are hardcore."

The line filled the front of the block and wrapped around. Okay, I can deal with that. I kept hiking around the block.

...only to see the line continue around the block again. At that point, I was starting to feel a twinge of worry and remembered what I had said the previous night.

The line ended directly behind the Barnes and Noble. I mean, I was literally on the back end of the block from the store; about fifteen feet in front of me a delivery truck was hauling pallets of Nooks into the store loading dock. I had the words echoing in my head repeating my promise of leaving if the line wound around the block, but I figured it was early in the morning, I had shuffled my way through a forty-some minute commute, so it was worth standing around a bit.

It couldn't have been more than a minute before I was joined by some more fans in line. I'd like to say that I remember everyone's name, but that would be lying. I suppose I could have covered up for this by making names up, but that would be dishonest. Well, there is one person whose name I remember, but that was for a separate reason. The point is this small group gathered in my immediate area and we became line-buddies.

I'll sum them up thus; one was a friendly, slim Hawaiian-looking lady, a little more than my age. Another was an older and friendly woman from Pennsylvania, and also joining the group was a younger woman possessing very white teeth who had bussed in from Pennsylvania as well, leaving her fiance' to fend for himself for the day. And then there was Optimist Tom. He was from Jersey City and was ever the energetic optimist.

There was some friendly banter about King books and movies mixed among the pleasantries of social exchange. We confirmed with each other some of the details of the signing; 350 bands, which some in the group declared was silly, since they were certain that Barnes and Noble had handled larger events than that without problems. Indeed, a dark-haired woman who said she was an ex-employee from that very store confirmed they had larger events. I asked if it was a bad sign when a person who used to work there, and had contacts with management and other workers at that store, wasn't able to get a band.

We had another two hours before the store would begin handing out bands, and another 3 hours after that before Stephen King was expected to arrive and start signing. One of the group declared how much it would suck to be number 351 in this still-growing line, and we all heartily agreed.

The irony of this wouldn't be clear until at some point in our waiting a Barnes and Noble employee walked the line and then declared that a guy in a hoodie, about three bodies in front of me, was the 350 person cutoff. A big guy in a dark suit was left behind at that point, as if they were guarding the guy from being mugged by jealous signature-seekers.

I remember suggesting we move the guy they said was 350 back about ten people in line. That would make the line of people getting in for bands a bit bigger.

I sent a message to my wife asking what she thought...should I give in? Tom insisted that we were close enough that there wasn't much reason to give up. "They could have miscounted," he said. "Or they'll expand the line. It's up to Stephen, man. Besides, they say these things to thin the herd and discourage huge lines. I'm staying."

My wife texted back that we'd have nothing to really lose in staying around; we were so close to the cutoff, that it was still likely that a small miscount would mean walking away would leave me wanting to kick myself. That, combined with the psychology of having a small group of still-optimistic linebuddies commiserating together, made me stay in line and tough it out.

The line moved in bunches; we speculated they were pulling people in batches to get their bands. It didn't take long for rumors to spread; at one point they were taking standbys. Moments later, that wasn't true. An employee traveling the line said they had only 350 books and that's why we were limited. Another said it was limited by Stephen King's people, and his handlers were limiting the signing event attendance.

More than a couple of times I felt like it might be worth giving up...but remembering that this would have meant so much for Dad kept me there. It helped to have the linebuddies there too, bolstering spirits with stories of spending time trying to get autographs from celebrities at broadway shows. Tom kept insisting that he was going to have his "nephew", a young black boy sitting in a folding chair behind his father and who kept his nose buried in a football game on his tablet most of the time, learn to make puppy eyes at the store management in an attempt to get into the store. They had to let his (white) uncle Tom in with him, right?

It kept spirits up. Even when the little boy thought we were strange.

As we rounded the corner ("Hey, look guys! I can almost see the last corner to go around to see the store doors!") someone noticed that someone in the line had posted to eBay a "guaranteed signed copy of Revival, with wrist band and promotional event posters, a bargain at $400!"

This got the dark-haired ex-employee very mad. There was nothing illegal about doing this...we suspected there were more than a few people who were paid to get this book on behalf of someone else...but she went up and complained at least twice to store security (loss prevention, I think the badges clipped to their lapels said?) about these horrible bastards who were taking spaces away from actual fans selling his or her book on eBay...before actually getting them signed! The NERVE! It was also a testament to the way we use technology now that I was still far back in line but stood swiping at pictures of the signs posted in the front of the store as part of the sellers proof of event. There ended up being at least 2 books from this event posted on eBay, and they were around the $350 to $400 range; I don't know how much they ended up going for, if they sold at all.

We were all sort of lamenting the fact that we were so close to the cutoff. Younger girl wondered if she had just taken the earlier bus, would she have made it? If she didn't spend time prepping her hair, shaving a few minutes off the travel time? Tom, from Jersey City, said he stopped and gave a homeless guy some money and he had dawdled a bit coming in...did that extra few minutes cost him his spot? I wasn't sure if he was kidding, but given his plucky positive attitude I couldn't rule it out. I lamented if I had been a few minutes earlier, maybe I wouldn't have had to wait 15 minutes for the subway; I could have made an earlier one, and that five minutes would have been enough to have been in front of the cutoff for a guaranteed band. Dammit.

But we were still in remarkably good spirits as a group. Tom kept giving us hope. I kept thinking we were in that horrible spot where the cutoff was so close that if, if, they decided to take a few more people, I'd be in that group. Or maybe we'd see Stephen King, and I could at least snap a photo for my Dad. Needed to be able to tell him that I tried.

I think that was the most important part. I had taken a vacation day, I was there, and I needed to be able to tell my Dad that I gave it my honest to goodness best shot at getting this signature. He deserved it.

I was surprised, though, at the number of people who had beaten me to a spot in line. The rumor traveling the line was that people had lined up there at 2:30 the previous fucking afternoon. That would mean that by the time they got their signed book it would be nearly a day of waiting. And they had families in line. Some in our linebuddies group drew a line at having kids sleep out on the sidewalk in NYC overnight. These were definitely hardcore fans, a notch above what I would call Superfans. I considered my Dad a superfan. I don't think he'd camp out all night on a sidewalk to have less than a minute of facetime with Stephen King.

Granted, this was a special book tour stop. King was signing in NYC. Not reading. Not visiting. No posed photos. No personalized signing. You were in line, you were marching forward, you went on stage, he said hi (if you were lucky) and you were hustled out. I looked at his upcoming stops on the book tour; the next day he was in Washington, DC, where King would do a reading and brief Q&A but no signing. Some pre-signed copies would be given out at random, and you had to buy tickets. The next night, the 13th, was another "not book signing" in Kansas City with some randomly signed copies given out at random. The 14th he was in Wichita, and again it was not a book signing with desperate fans hoping to get one of the random copies given away. The 15th King was in Austin, Texas, and it was finally a signing event. Ticketed. And it said that one person cannot buy multiple tickets for people other than themselves, and had to purchase the ticket in person. His last stop had King near his home in Maine on the 17th, and this was a book signing as well. Basically, not every event was a signing event, and NYC being a kickoff and signing was pretty good luck for me to even be close to achieving.

But really, 2:30 in the afternoon, the previous day? Those were people I would think King was afraid of meeting. Had I known there was a proto-lineup starting that early I wonder if I would have figured it was futile to even try getting there in the first place for the line. Ignorance of these...uber-fans...probably got me in line in the first place.

Another bit of debate in the line involved how long the event would go on. We knew King was slated to sign starting at noon. Some said he would sign until four; someone else said he'd be only around until two. Supposedly that was why the number of wristbands were so limited. This still gave Tom hope-fuel..."Stephen may let other people in if he has time. It's really up to him how many books he'll sign, you know. Not the store."

Once we reached the door, we were cut off. There was probably two people in front of me at the point when the security people and Barnes and Noble staff announced that they had reached the 350 cutoff. I remember these two guys...they spoke and dressed as if they were from a stereotypical old-timey Italian Brooklyn neighborhood, with smoking, hoodie jacket, large cross hanging from the neck and heavy accent, where one was allowed in and the other argued that he was there for his friend because he suffered extreme anxiety, and they had to go together. I think he somehow snuck in because he disappeared. Really they were pushy jackasses. But if there's something I discovered living here, it's that being a pushy jackass doesn't win you friends but does often give you opportunities.

This was the biggest test time. Store security came out and told us everything short of "go home." Of course, they couldn't really tell us that, because as I recall from Occupy Wall Street if you weren't blocking people trying to walk along the sidewalks and you weren't blocking access to other businesses, the sidewalks are more or less considered public space. If you didn't mind sitting on little circles of blackened, hardened bubblegum and spots of sidewalk that may or may not also have dried spit and urine, you're allowed to just sit there.

One of the exchanges had a security guy telling us point blank, "There is no standby line. There is no reason for you to form a line."

To which Tom replied, "But we're going to anyway!"

At one point the security people said that we were not going to get near the event. The store even posted signs that said the fourth floor was cut off, and if we wanted a book located on that floor a bookseller had to assist customers. But we were not going to get near the event. Subtext: go home.

"Was this from Stephen's people?," asked Tom.

"This is from management."

"The book store doesn't know what they're talking about. Stephen will tell us to go home."

Oh, Optimist Tom. At this point, our group had largely taken turns going in and buying a copy of Revival. One of the sweet older ladies turned to me and asked if I'd go in and get a book. "You don't want them to come out and say we can go in, but you have to have a book, and you didn't have a book, do you?," she said. I was tired and aching from waiting several hours on my feet (I debated sitting for a spell, but I really didn't want to get that hardened gum crap on my pants...) but, as she pointed out, I could return the book if things didn't work out. I remembered I had a B&N gift card...I figured I had nothing to really lose in getting a book. You know, just in case. So I did.

I hobbled back out to what remained of the line. Most people had given up and left, so the line had dwindled until it extended only to the end of some scaffolding that terminated before the entrance to a store next to a restaurant that was called something like the Red Line or Red End. I don't really recall the proper name, just a red canopy that extended over part of the sidewalk.

"At this point," I said, "We can keep waiting and hope we get in, we could go around back and see if Stephen King is coming in that way...maybe get a picture of him. Or we could leave." I think this sentiment was kind of stirring in many who were left outside, after having been told repeatedly by store employees that we were not going to get in and that was the end of the story.

I remember Tom was getting kind of antsy. He had left a couple times from line to talk to his friends that were farther back and to use the bathroom in different stores. He disappeared while we were under the scaffolding to look around the back of the store and see if Stephen King were coming in through the loading dock entrance.

It was at this time that an employee came out and said they were taking 12 more people.

A member of our linebuddies club squealed with joy. Someone tried to have them get Tom, as he would no doubt be back soon, but management wasn't having it. They counted us out and ushered us in. And funny enough, before letting us up the guarded escalator, they asked if we had a copy of the book because we needed to have one to sign. I had fortunately listened to their advice.

They ushered us up to the fourth floor and made us stand in the back next to a life-sized LEGO Batman. I know...strange. but nonetheless we were there. We made it.

The store never quite seemed to have everyone on the same page. We were asked twice if we had wristbands. Er...no? You had someone specifically bring us up...why do you not know that?

Multiple times while down in line we were given different stories of what was going on; where limits came from, how many books there were, etc. The left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing, and this confusion was part of what I think Tom could use as hope-fuel. It was funny as hell to me to hear him say the store didn't know what they were talking about and surely Mr. King would have final word, and hopefully he would take pity on the people standing outside.

We were all sad upstairs when we speculated on Tom's fate. We hoped that he had met King in the back of the store entrance, maybe got a photo with him. There was an irrational sense of pity and we told ourselves this story to comfort ourselves, that we didn't abandon a fair-weather friend.

After standing around for ten or fifteen minutes, we were told to move up to the end of the line for the book signing because they were bringing up another batch of people. Another batch! The line was moving pretty fast, too. King wasn't dawdling. A book slid in front of him, he wrote his name, and in barely enough time to acknowledge the fan with a courteous howdy, the book was handed back over and the fan was ushered away to the 3rd floor escalator. I had never seen the seats empty so quickly; Stephen King may be getting older, but damn, he was a fast signer.

It took several minutes before the next group of people arrived. I looked over and said, "Tom's here!"

There was a cheer from our group. Loud enough that surely the people in the front probably wondered what happened. Tom jumped up and down as we waved; "Hey guys! I got back and the line was all different!"

"We tried to save you a spot, they wouldn't let us!," said one of our buddy group.

"That's okay!" he called back. "It wasn't your fault!"

I turned to the younger girl in the group and said, "He's the most optimistic son of a bitch I've ever met. He's the only one that I'm fairly certain returned to see that much of the group had been taken in, and instead of being crushed that he missed the opportunity, he doubled down that it meant he would probably get in with the next group he was certain would be brought in." And sure enough, he was standing on the fourth floor with us waiting to get a book signed.

From that point it was rather straightforward. Photos were allowed until you reach the stage. No flash. No posing. No personalization. Stephen King said think you to me...not sure why, but I remember replying, "No, thank you so very much!" as I headed towards the exit.

I was sad that my parents couldn't be there. I knew my father would have loved to see King, despite not being able to have a conversation of any meaningful length with his favorite author. I wished he could have been there with me, but I knew he would never have wanted to wait as long as the uber-fans had waited. Also, by the time I was sliding the book into my bag and heading for the exit I had been on my feet at least five hours. My parents would never have been able to tolerate that; my own feet were howling in pain and my appreciation for the suffering of restaurant staff reached a new level. I couldn't imagine what my father's feet would have felt like; sure, could have folding chairs, but that's just another hassle of something to carry around the streets. Everything's a tradeoff.

So Dad...I got it for you. There were so many times I was told to leave, and that this wasn't going to happen...but perseverance paid off. Or just ignoring the people running the store paid off. Maybe a little of both.

Merry Christmas.

This was where we were initially placed to wait once inside the store. An employee said it was supposed to go in the toy section, but was a little too "unsteady" on its feet to be near kids.

One of several photos I took...

Camera phones apparently don't yield the best results...



Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Upgrade GoLang Linux ARM (Raspberry Pi) to 1.4

"Well, this is weird," I thought, running the upgrade steps once more on my Pi. "Why is it 1.3.3?"

I had run the upgrade a few days ago and a go version cheerfully burped back the 1.4 version. Now it was downgraded.

I re-ran the usual steps...

cd go/src
hg pull
hg update release
./all.bash

...and it still laughed and repeated the 1.3.3 version. Why did it downgrade?

I went to Twitter and asked why it would happen. Someone replied that 1.4 was in git, not mercurial, but then added that there was a tag for "release-1.4" that wasn't moved to "release." 

I'm guessing at one point it was. Then they reverted. I'm not very bright, so I want to upgrade it anyway.

I didn't feel like dealing with the weird aborts I was getting from Mercurial...:

mv go go.old
hg clone -u go1.4 https://code.google.com/p/go $HOME/go
cd go/src
./all.bash

What happened then?

me@mymachine ~/go/src $ go version
go version go1.4 linux/arm

I changed out the Go subdirectory because I already had other parts of the environment...path variables, for example...already set, so the rebuilding of the source code should work.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Don't Be the Workplace Martyr (Because the Workplace Don't Care)

I was talking to someone recently who mentioned that they would be probably be working in the office over the weekend. Again. He had mentioned before having to work over past weekends. Maybe you've met this type of person before. They work weekends without pay or compensation. It has to be done for the good of the department or the company. He or she may also be the last one to leave the office most days of the week; there's always stuff to be done, and if they don't stay it's going to lead to some dire unspoken consequences.

I used to be like that. I worked in a school system where I didn't have to come in the weekends (thank $DEITY!) but I did stay late to finish things up. Oh, the sacrifice! I would stick around to work on things despite being on salary, sometimes looking down on the unionized staff in Maintenance or the office staff who, when break time came, they were off clock. If you approached them you were asking for an eye roll and they would speak to you in a voice that was so heavily burdened that you'd think you just threw their universe out of whack by speaking to them about something work-related.

I was dedicated. I was paid crap, compared to market rates. That's how the school was...it reinforced my sense of martyrdom. I was working hard for the intangible reasons. It made them respect me more, working for the good of the organization rather than the pay (because the pay was below market so I sure wasn't doing it for that...). I was reliable. I made us look better as a department. I was important as an asset to the organization. It made me a good person that others could look up to as an example.

I was clearly delusional.

Part of this was conflating my identity with my job, then further conflating my job with my employer. There have been recent articles discussing the importance of loving your job, but not your company, because you don't know when your company will stop loving you. And no one is so important that a company won't be able to function without you.

Working in the school, I didn't often see people leaving...mostly because the majority of employees in schools are both protected by unions (I wasn't) and they had contracts for set periods of time, so when they want to get rid of people they did it with more politicking than efficiency. And sometimes it was absolutely brutal; people would jockey to get a good position for themselves before gathering together to lament the people that weren't able to get into a position that wasn't eliminated or a department without forced retirements.

I left the last position after 11 years or so of service to that district. Despite the extra hours I had put in, there was no noise made for my departure. No goodbye party. No lunch thing. I remember my last act being placing my ID badge and keys on a table in what served as the makeshift server room and saying goodbye to myself one last time before shutting the lights off and walking away.

It really felt like no one gave a damn.

And you know what? They're still chugging along. They hired someone to fill my spot kind of quick (guess I was easily replaced) supposedly with a similar pay, despite me having to work a decade with a degree to my name to get that amount. I doubt anything I did had a lasting effect.

A decade of my life...working on some small projects here and there...extra time put in without extra pay...and it amounts to nothing.

(Side comment: it's no secret that a lack of overtime pay also hurts employees trying to get ahead financially...)

My current employer is great; they offer perks like free snacks and lunches, they buy employees the tech they need to get their job done rather than the decade of having to try to make outdated scraps into something half-usable, and they offer a Christmas bonus and present for employees. But as a company grows, they also have had people leave...the first time I had to deactivate accounts, I was greatly affected by it. I'd never had a situation where one day someone's there, the next I'm locking them out and the company kind of acts like they didn't exist.

But the company goes on. No one is irreplaceable.

There are still times where I will be there late. Sometimes I'm working on something. Usually because there's a couple of things I wanted to get done and got tired of having to push it to the next day. Other times I was doing something that took about %20 of my attention so I'd babysit the process (upgrading a system, installing some software, running an AV check...) while watching something on our super fast Internet connection while drinking something from the free drinky-fridge. If it was after what was reasonably considered working hours, anything coming in as a trouble ticket, unless it's dire, is considered kind of optional. My employer isn't a slave driver, I was doing it because I didn't have something more pressing to do.

There are also times (much less-so in my current department, more for SRE-related tasks) when you would have to work over the weekend. Usually this was for an alarm situation (something is really broken, or some dickhead script kiddie is home from school and has nothing better to do) or something big and scheduled like a data center move. Most cases these were scheduled or, in the case of being "on call," was done on a rotation.

My employer has been cognizant of the idea of "work-life balance."

My previous employer wasn't.

And that's where I was delusional. I let my job define me. Kind of like the old days, when you see a strong middle class family whose head of household was defined as a Xerox man or an IBM man. The company was your team, and they cared for you and provided for you and your family. Today, you're lucky if you keep the same job for more than 5 years.

Working on weekends, voluntarily, when your boss isn't expecting it of you and you aren't compensated, and you're doing it repeatedly...that's a sign that you need more people working with you. Or you don't know how to properly get work done in an allocated time. Either way is a failure condition.

To be clear: there are times when it's valid to sacrifice for your company. These times are infrequent, and you typically have some recognition or support for doing this with actual results. Or it makes your life easier because you're making up for time you were out during the typical workday. Situations vary.

But if you are doing it because you claim that you've been overwhelmed all week, and there's still a load of things to get done, you're possibly:

  1. Overloaded. The company/organization needs to hire someone to help with the workload.
  2. Disorganized, and can't get things done efficiently enough to keep up.
  3. Being taken advantage of. After all, you're paid to work X hours. If you don't get overtime, you're giving work for free, and that devalues you and your skills (unless you're somehow compensated by owning part of the company...)
  4. Asking to be taken advantage of. Hey, you work extra for free? Soon it goes from being an occasional thing to an expectation. Don't be shocked. You conditioned others to treat you that way.
I've seen other people in situations where they worked their asses off for an organization, only to become embittered when they leave and the organization doesn't really care. Those people tied their identities to that employer, then were shocked to discover that their extra work in the practical sense meant very little. They were just another cog that was quickly replaced.

I fell for that delusion and I try not to anymore. The extra work I do...usually tying up loose ends at the end of the workday...isn't because I have to do it. Rarely am I swearing at the expectation of putting in extra uncompensated time. Because I understand that I need to do something with a little more meaning that will also outlast me, since at any time my employer can terminate my professional relationship.

For the most part I think my attitude has reached a healthy balance between "I want my boss to like me and I really love my job" and the people who I grew irritated with when I was trying to get something done and, for example, needed a door unlocked only to find staff in a lounge staring at the clock because "IT'S BREAKTIME WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?!"

I'd like to think my employer likes me. I'd like to think I do a satisfactory job for them, and that they appreciate what help I can offer to other employees. But in the end I am me. I work for an employer. And I am not the company. You would do well to find that separation as well, for your own work/life balance and sanity. Maybe that's part of what happens as you get older...it's part of growing up and seeing the world with less optimistic lenses.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Golang Update to 1.4 Went NOPE (Error!)

I recently tried to update my Go installation from source only to have it fail. Fortunately the fix was simple, and the error message was surprisingly helpful.

me@mysystem ~/go/src $ ./all.bash
# Building C bootstrap tool.
cmd/dist

# Building compilers and Go bootstrap tool for host, linux/arm.
go tool dist:

The Go package sources have moved to $GOROOT/src.
*** /home/me/go/src/pkg still exists. ***
It probably contains stale files that may confuse the build.
Please (check what's there and) remove it and try again.
See http://golang.org/s/go14nopkg

It even included a link to the explanation page!

I didn't have anything of consequence in that directory. It was as simple as

rm -rf $GOROOT/src/pkg

...then re-running the compile script. As a beginner just playing around, it was simple. If you actually have projects with stashes of stuff in that directory, copy the ones you want to another location and then delete stuff and re-run the script.

If nothing else, this is a reminder that Go is an evolving language and is going through a mildly turbulent tween years on its way to adulthood.