you really don't want to know

So I had a plan today. It sorta went well, but not as expected.

I finished putting my motorcycle back together last weekend, took it for a test drive, and promptly realized that the battery wasn’t holding a charge. Tried trickle-charging it for six hours, but to no avail. Need a new battery.

The plan today, was to jump-start the bike off my car battery, and ride it over to the dealer in Mountain View to get a new battery. This in itself is a little harrowing, since, every time I came to a stop in traffic or at a stop sign, I had to turn on the choke to keep the revs up, so the bike wouldn’t stall. Not a huge deal, but it’s one more thing to concentrate on every time I’m preparing to slow down.

I got the bike to the dealer, and left it idling (with the choke on…REEEEE!!!!) in the parking lot while I went in to make sure they had the right battery. Once I made sure, I went out and turned the bike off to stop it from screaming. Came back in to pay for the battery, and realized I had left my wallet at home. FUUUCK.

So I went back to the service department to get a jump start so I could go home. As I was gearing up, one of the sales guys came up to me, and asked if I’d gotten what I needed, so I told him what was up. He said “oh, well here, let me just loan you the money for the battery, that way you’ve got one less thing to worry about on your way home, and you can come on back to repay me.” I was astounded. This guy doesn’t know me from Adam, he’s seen me in the shop twice, but we hadn’t really said more than a polite hello to each other. And he had already pulled out his wallet and was holding out more money than I’d care to admit the battery cost. Did I mention I was astounded?

I hesitantly accepted his generous offer, and assured him I’d be right back to repay him. Went in to purchase the battery, and he followed me in and said “and if you haven’t got cash, you could just bring a checkbook, that’d be fine too.” And, of course, I slapped my forehead and started rummaging through my bag to see if I had my checkbook. Which I did. So, I very sheepishly returned the cash to the nice gentleman, and paid for my battery (and valve cover gasket, and brake light switch) with a check. It’s been so long since I’ve needed to write a check, I’d almost forgotten about the whole concept.

So, I went out to the parking lot, took the seat and side panels off my bike, and replaced the battery right there. Started up like a champ, cranked nice and strong. Put on my helmet and gear, and rode home extremely conservatively to get my wallet and (also-forgotten) EZ-Pass. Then headed to work, arriving 1.5 hours late. Thankfully, I had notified the boss early that I’d be delayed. Like a good little boy.

Did a few things right today. Did a few things wrong today.

So there’s this FNG who started a few weeks ago (that’s Fuckin’ New Guy, for the uninitiated). He’s a dweeby asian kid who refers to all CSS hacks by their “official names,” as if the rest of us would have a clue which of the 10,000 existing hacks he’s talking about. He might have them all memorized. Which, you would think, would make him an invaluable asset to the team. You would think that, wouldn’t you?

• In his first week on the job, he was chronically late.
• In his first week on the job, he screwed up an update to a client’s site, failed to make a backup of the files he was replacing, and forced me to re-do all the work that had been done in the several weeks since the files’ last backup.
• In his first week on the job, he told me he’d “prefer not to” work on a particular task I had for him, because the files contained ugly code that required some cleanup.
• In his first week on the job, he sent the following message to a client:

I’ll have it done before 4pm when I get to it.

I would like to request that change requests get complied [sic] into more
substantial bundles rather than a bunch of tiny little urgent changes
demanding immediate attention; a lot of scattered urgent small changes
disrupts my workflow, is more error prone and thus takes longer to do
quality control on, and the barrage of e-mails pulls my attention away
from other projects; switching back and forth between these tasks
takes time and effort.

Thanks.

…now, in his defense, he was spot on. Completely right. However, this is one of our largest clients, one of our most temperamental clients, and the sort of client who will bring their business elsewhere if they don’t like where things are heading. You approach such requests with the utmost diplomacy, or you shoot yourself in the foot. To speak so bluntly, out of turn, within your first week on the job…is a colossal client-relations nightmare. I didn’t want to do it, but I reported him to the boss.

In three weeks, he hasn’t figured out how to adhere to a consistent schedule. I’d like to bring to your attention the fact that I am making this observation. Me. The guy who can’t get out of bed the same time every day. The guy who’s allergic to alarms, deadlines, structure, etc. I’m unreliable. But this guy, clean-cut and upstanding is he seems, is just no good at this “day job” thing.

Today, the boss mentioned that the FNG was coming in early, around 10 (he usually comes in for an afternoon shift). He came in at 1:15. He left at 3:15. My project manager enlightened me to the fact that the boss had called him and woken him up at about noon. My PM was like “yeah, if you work in a drop-dead-casual web design shop, and your co-workers are saying ‘damn,’ you might want to admit there’s a problem.”

I don’t think this guy’ll be around much longer.

Just FYI, these are the vehicles in the garage of the dude down the street.

Porsche 997 twin-turbo

Aston Martin Vanquish

1964.5 Mustang Convertible (picture isn’t accurate, but it’s close)

Norton Commando

Plus…three-bay garage. In Silicon Valley. The land on which said garage is built is worth more than a million dollars, not to mention the rest of the house.

My brother sent me a link this morning, to this dude who re-crafted his Mac Mini in the Steampunk style. I didn’t realize a name for the genre existed, but I’d always hoped to find that name.

For those of you who have watched the movie Wild Wild West (yes, it was a crappy movie, but it wasn’t a total loss), and thought those steam-powered contraptions were totally genius and creative, well, now you know. Brass fittings, knobs, tubes, wood, etc. Basically, imagine what a computer would look like if it were invented by someone in Western America in 1850. I’ve seen similar items in Back to the Future Part III, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Time Machine, and various others. I love it.

Anyway, once the site above has recovered from the Digg Effect, check it out. The care and craftsmanship are awesome.

There’s another genre that’s always intrigued me, but I don’t think there’s a name for it. If you’ve ever seen Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, you’ll know what I mean. Picture fly-boys in their modified Spitfires, lots of zeppelins and floating cities with huge engines/propellers keeping them afloat in the clouds. It’s the type of thing that imaginative 1940s kids would dream up in class, and doodle in their notebooks, because that’s what they thought the future held. But in the case of Sky Captain it’s a story written and told in 2004, from the exaggerated point of view of someone in 1940. And filmed/produced with today’s production values. I love that shit, and I wish they’d make more creative movies like that. Hell, even Dark City had a bit of a “post-retro” feel to it, what with the automat and all.

Rambling. But intrigued.

Apparently, in order to be a “gardener,” or a “landscaper,” all you’ve gotta do is get yourself a pick-em-up truck, a lawnmower and a gas-powered leaf blower or three. Really. I live in a neighborhood in which everyone has their own landscaper, and each of the dozen or so of them are equally equipped to blow your leaves. While listening to their iPods.

Me, I’d probably fire them after the first day. I mean, if I can’t find time each weekend to sweep (yes, sweep) the driveway, and rake (yes, rake) my little lawn, I figure there ain’t much sense in paying someone an exorbitant (I’m guessing, I don’t know) amount of money to waste a bunch of gasoline because they can’t be bothered to lift a rake or a broom.

Plus, y’know, nowadays the dissatisfied housewives of the world don’t have much incentive to lust after the gardener, since he’s invariably a fat, dirty, unappealing dude who doesn’t get much exercise. So what’s the point?