Blah.

My life’s not working out at the moment as I had planned it to be working out right now. Most of it is coming along nicely, however, there are a few aspects of it that I thought would’ve been different.

My job, primarily, is what I’m talking about. To put it bluntly: I’m not enjoying it. Or even more bluntly: it kind of sucks. It’s a glorified tech. support role. It was sold to me as something else. I was told it would be tech. support and development work. I wasn’t really sure at the time what that meant: I suppose my naivety was to blame. Yeah, sure, there’s development. There’s plenty of opportunity for me to brush up on my Microsoft Access skills supporting five-year-old database applications. There’s plenty of opportunity for me to write annoying little VBA snippets that semi-automate behemoth Excel spreadsheets.

Initially I took the challenge as it was: a challenging learning experience. While I haven’t learnt all there is to know about Excel, Access or the whole awesome Microsoft Office experience, I certainly know enough now to be handy in writing solutions based on Microsoft’s Office suite of applications. Hell, I wrote a fucking share portfolio snapshot graph application in VBA on top of Excel. I think that’s something, don’t you?

The problem with that last project wasn’t so much the difficulty of the algorithms as it was the difficulty in understanding exactly what the fuck I was meant to be writing, who it was for, how the output was intended to be presented, and so on. My boss is a nice guy, but he’s the only boss I have. He runs the whole show, and he’s shit as an IT manager. He comes up with ideas with no concept of what it takes to implement them, but expects them all to be done yesterday. So, you can imagine what kind of awesome fun I had with this guy while trying to develop software for him.

But, you know, I rolled with it. I learnt something there about how to deal with adults who want things they can’t have and don’t understand why. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s stressful and at times downright intimidating to have that kind of thing hanging over your head. You never knew when he was going to have another flash of inspiration and decide to triple the complexity of your application.

Not that I was writing anything super-complex. I haven’t even graduated uni yet, though. While I am capable of researching things and solving problems all of my own accord, I don’t yet understand how I’m meant to determine what’s appropriate in the eyes of my employer in terms of the problem solving process and the various metrics associated with it. Time, complexity, depth, breadth; you name a metric, I don’t know it. This is why big business run graduate programs. I should be doing one I suppose.

Though, that’s another thing I don’t know if I can really get into. Big business. I hate the corporate scum-sucking that goes on. Everyone runs around in pretentious outfits wearing ridiculous strangulating ties, black long slacks in the middle of summer with long-sleeve shirts, and uncomfortable non-breathing leather shoes. They sit at a desk in an office, push paper, answer phones, and generally do … what? I don’t know. I hate the image, and I hate looking at myself in the mirror when what I see is myself becoming some corporate bitch. Though it makes my parents proud to see me all grown up and shit, but I suppose that’s the era they’re from.

You know what, I have a theory. I reckon people work better when they’re comfortable. I’m talking about all aspects of comfort: environment, clothing, seating, computer, whatever. When people are in a good mood they do good work. Stuffing everyone into the corporate mould and spitting out oddly-shaped people stuffed inside uniforms of drab pale shirts and standard-issue black or grey pants is not a way to raise the spirit of the people.

I think people should have a sense of self-importance about themselves simply for the sake of maintaining their own self-esteem. On top of that, people should respect themselves and dress appropriately. I do not think that everyone should be limited to dressing in the same 70-year-old combination of slacks, button-up collared shirt, overcoat and tie. Hey, chicks can wear what they like. Why can’t guys?

If you’ve read this far, good on you: seriously. There’s a lot of angst in this post, and I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.

The other night I got totally trashed on Jim Beam Small Batch – though I asked for it. Didn’t eat all day, chugged it down like it was water, and expected an hour or so later to be sweet for a night out in the Valley. Turns out I actually spent an hour or so lying on the floor of a bathroom in my own vomit, alternately crying and yelling about how much I was sorry for ruining my friends night and laughing my brains out about how funny everything was. I was in another world. I’m not eager to do that again but jesus that Small Batch is good shit. I had mine with Coke but you could easily drink it straight from the bottle its that smooth.

Anyway, that wasn’t really the good bit. Did I trick you? Haha. The good bit is I will soon be under the employ of the man behind Dependable Technologies; (let’s hope he doesn’t get any hits from my blog and reads the above paragraph) which is a one or two-man outfit that specialises in, well… you can read it all for yourself on the single page website. This is exciting because as you may or may not know, I am all about that kind of thing. Doing intelligent support work for clients who have real problems, not replacing batteries in wireless mice for people who are too lazy to do it themselves (because “that’s what IT is for”).

I think I’ve said enough now. Oh wait, no. I’m trying to do my tax using the Governments’ super e-tax programme, and it wants to connect to the internet and download my Medicare info, but consistently fails with the helpful message “Unknown exception, please contact the IT helpdesk on… ” At least this year the website is compatible with Firefox. I couldn’t believe that this time last year their website had the audacity to tell me that my browser was out of date because its ident/signature didn’t match exactly that of Internet Explorer. Oh wait, yeah, no, it’s the government. Of course I can believe that. At least things are better this year ’round. Still no Linux e-tax application though.

Sorry, enough ranting. Carry on with your lives. I mean that sincerely.