Another Break

Once again, I haven't been writing as often. The world is in such a state that I sit down to write a blog and then something else happens and I'm left speechless or dumbfounded again. I have probably sat down to write a blog at least 10-12 times since the last missive, only to be unable to focus on any one topic long enough to get my opinions out! There is just so, so much right now.

• Regarding the cops shooting people: This is not an easy case. Until you've been in the dark, responding to a potentially violent situation, with unknown factors, and a bunch of fear and adrenalin pumping through your veins, you have no idea what it is like for a policeman to intervene in any situation. Do they make mistakes? Of course they do. Do they then regret it and do something (potentially illegal) to make it right, either for themselves or those affected -- quite possibly. They are human.
• Regarding people being shot by cops: In each case of a police shooting someone (mostly, it seems, black people this time around), the videos I saw showed those people to be acting belligerently, responding with violent comments or aggressive actions when asked to do something by the police, and a bunch of passers by who watched and filmed rather than intervening, resolving, or helping the situation. 
• When my wife and I were driving to PA from Montreal a few years ago, our vehicle and another one were pulled over by the same cop for speeding. My wife and I sat calmly in our vehicle waiting for the cop to get to us. We kept our hands visible and we spoke in a calm manner with the cop. The other couple were making fast movement, talking back to the cop, getting out of the vehicle and walking up aggressively to the cop as he spoke with us. And, gee, we got off relatively easy, he put our over the speed limit number down to something that would give us the smallest fine possible, and he sent us on our way with a nice anecdote. They got to stay with the cop for much longer, got a bigger fine, and pissed off the cop with their actions. I wouldn't be surprised if he added a few miles to the speed he estimated they were traveling just to give them the biggest fine possible. Moral to this story: HOW YOU ACT TO AUTHORITY FIGURES MATTERS.
• Regarding cops being shot randomly: When, at any point in history, has violence being met with more violence solved the problem? People taking it upon themselves to shoot random cops as they sit in their cruisers or walk their beat will just make the cops more jumpy when they have to respond to any calls, making the likelihood of another accident or brutality issue to happen. Why can't the calmer heads prevail?
• Regarding Extremists shooting the Charlie Hebdo staff: The Koran does not actually prohibit depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. Just like the Old Testament and Bible (from which the Koran is derived, of course), the Koran prohibits worshipping false idols. This has been stretched to mean images of the prophet in recent times, but originally did not. I mean, there are a bunch of paintings specifically depicting the Prophet Mohommed that have been done throughout history and hang in various museums and are on walls of holy places. This is just a case of Extremists who want to make someone pay for their lot in life and have chosen Islam as their focal point.
• Regarding judging all Muslims based on extremists: Fox news correspondents have once again been really maligning the Muslim religion and showing their ignorance. I know, I know, big surprise. My response, similar to many others, is this: We don't judge all Christians based on the actions of the KKK, white supremacists, the Spanish Inquisition, or the actions of those who went to the Holy Lands during the Crusades, so why do they judge all Muslims based on the actions of a very, very small minority of those claiming to be Muslim? (And, to boot, of radical sects of Islam that ignore whole swathes of the Koran in order to preach the hate and violence these groups espouse.)
• Why does Fox News refuse to admit that the majority of Muslim groups denounce these extremists? Their commentators specifically ask that question and then refuse to show or admit that there are dozens of groups with official statements that denounce these acts. Fox News refuses to show the outreach of these Muslim groups as they try to show the other (majority) side of the issue. Yet Fox News refuses to provide fair and balanced reporting when it comes to this. Why?
• Regarding Republicans taking control of both houses of Congress: For the last six years, the Republicans have gone out of their way to block as much legislation as they could, including their own legislature that the Democrats/President happened to agree with, in order to make this current President look weak and ineffectual. The end result was that the economy has improved, jobs are way up, and the country's standing among the world has improved greatly. The Republicans then told Americans that the President sucked and that they, the least effective Congress in history with an approval rating of 13% should be re-elected. The Democrats, rather than telling the American people the real story, showing the job growth, stability in the economy, and how much their policies had worked, bought into what the Republicans were selling, did not want to be associated with the President, and ran confusing, scared re-election/election campaigns with no focus. In the absence of truth, the American people bought it as well and re-elected/elected the Republicans and gave them control of both houses! What should have been a slam dunk for the Democrats became a solid win for the Republicans. How did that happen?
• As an aside: Why do the Republicans think that the Democrats, now in the same position they were just a few years ago, won't do the exact same things to them that the Repubs did to the Democrats and filibuster and block everything possible? It worked for the Republicans, so why not do it right back at them? I would bet that is what the minority whip is telling everyone. The biggest thing the Repubs need to prove is that they can govern... well, don't let them. Block everything.

What a lot of these issues have in common is a totally all or nothing view of the world. Why must a select few take this all or nothing stance and then espouse it from the rooftops? How do so many of the disaffected glom onto these idiots and join their cause? Whether it is politics or violence, we should be looking for the calmer voices and helping them to prevail. We need to think and act for ourselves, rather than listen to what the select few say. We need to think before we act. We need to research to help us think. We need to be smarter about everything.

Work Until You Bleed

If I promise a deadline or a project, or if something happens that causes me to have issues with getting it done on time, I'm more than willing to work overtime and on weekends in order to get the project done on time or as close to it as I can. However, when it is someone else's issue(s) that causes the delay, a lack of support, an arbitrary deadline that someone else has imposed or agreed to on my behalf without discussing with me, or acts of God or similar, then I get frustrated if I have to work OT or weekends in order to, in essence, cover someone else's butt.

My current contract has been too much of the latter lately.

• People who have no knowledge of the tasks involved have been promising due dates to the end-client without discussing with me first and there is an abject refusal to change the dates when I bring up objections.
• My main reviewer has taken a couple of weeks off (2 in the last 6 weeks), plus individual days here and there, which has caused my processes to come to a screeching halt. When asked about the time off, I was told, "She has a family." Yeah, so? So do I. What they mean is, she has young children. My response is, again, yeah, so? She can get a babysitter, she can work off-hours, or she can get a reviewer to fill her place while she's gone. Which leads me to...
• If another reviewer is willing to step in, then the primary hates all of his changes, edits, and decisions and makes me redo a lot of work needlessly.

We have had three days in the last two weeks that were completely lost due to new discussions about the format and structure of the documentation I am producing after I (and my two project managers) thought it was all agreed on and settled. That's 24 hours that could have been spent moving the project forward instead.

This week, in particular, has been bad on a number of fronts:

• More formatting discussion on Monday, which led to the entire rest of the day spent reworking the structure of the document instead of doing more writing.
• Tuesday started with a sudden hardware failure which required most of the day to overcome (involved two trips into the main office and a bunch of IT support from two different companies to get up and running again) plus a dentist visit in the middle of all of it.
• Thursday I woke up to a flooded basement, which had to be dealt with immediately, before stuff was damaged or destroyed by the water.
• Friday started with a login/password issue that IT refused to fix and that is still a problem (but that I got a work-around for).

The dentist visit I was already expecting and planning to work OT to cover, as it meant that I was away from work for about two hours. The flood was really my issue, so I was comfortable with working some OT to make up the time lost dealing with it.

The rest of the issues were either out of my control (hardware failure and IT issues setting up the work-arounds) or someone else's issues (the unending desire for others to make me completely reformat the entire document). It is this time that I begrudge having to work OT for. If the IT people could have set up my substitute PC correctly the first time, and if the IT at the other company would have helped me get the proper software reinstalled and re-set up correctly in anything close to a timely fashion, I wouldn't have lost most of one day. If the people in question would stop futzing with a working document's structure, I wouldn't have lost that day. And a third day was lost because one of the same IT departments refused to assist with the login/password issue that was partly caused by the hardware issue from a few days before. That's a whole lot of OT caused by other people's problems, and that I detest.

The net result of all of this is that I've had to work nearly double the normal work hours this week in order to try to get the document done. I missed the Friday due date, but as of right now, I have 95% of the document done and can get the rest done tomorrow for a potential Monday release. Since coming back from vacation, at which time all the documentation seemed on target for each due date, mostly due to other people's issues and concerns, I have had to work some or all of every weekend (5 so far), plus a bunch of OT.

There is an old adage that I enjoy, "Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." However, due to the nature of the work, the bad planning, the lack of a cohesive review process, and the constant struggle to get everyone to agree on a basic structure and format for the project has caused an emergency on my part. This has turned into a 60 hour work week for me when it shouldn't have been needed. Had the review process been smoother and had the format been agreed to three weeks ago when I thought it was, I would have made yesterday's due date without any issue. The basement flooding (3 work hours "lost" in the morning, made up that evening) and the hardware issues could have been overcome without significant issue, or may not have even been an issue, had everything flowed the way I expected and the way the group had agreed from four weeks ago to yesterday.

I'm only just over five weeks removed from the end of  my vacation, and yet I feel completely burned out due to all these issues caused by other people. My health is suffering from the constant work without relaxation. While I was always impressed by my stoic friends who have to work daily or a lot of OT due to the nature of their jobs or needing to work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet, these last five weeks have reaffirmed my esteem for them and their ability to keep going.

I just finished another eight hour day on my Saturday, with more hours expected tomorrow. My next deadline is Wednesday for a third, completely new document. I see more OT in my near future.