v3.0 - Why the Hate?

Morning Folks!

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Let me start off by saying yesterday was by far the worst day of my professional working career. To make matters worse, I acted in the most unprofessional way to the situation and feel quite bad about it. Let me explain.

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For starters, a little background information. One of my many roles is the lead for our call tracking system for our North Americian Call Tracking system. This system is how we keep in business as it performs Contract Administration, Asset Inventory as well as tracking service requests for customers. All of this came about because:

a) I said I liked doing web stuff (this system is web based)

and

b) I said I liked working with databases (meaning at home with mysql)

So there you have it, now you have your team lead for the call tracking system that everyone relies on.

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That said, I am also the person who coordinates testing, builds a developement box, collects a list of bugs and future enhancements all the while performing my other jobs here at the office. Where I find time to write every morning is beyond me :)

So we were late getting the test release out the door due to the whole "Merger" of our company. I ended up putting the test release out this past January when it should have been out around Octoberish 2004. That is all fine and dandy as it only put the production release out by a few months. So I send out numerious emails to people asking them to test the new system and report back any bugs they find. After a few months roll by I get one report. I begin thinking this will be the smoothest release of our system ever. I begin to make preperations to put it out into production. Now, keep in mind I did a bit of testing on my own just to ensure the system was operational. I don''t have a lot of time to sit around and babysit people to ensure they test as well. I would like to think I work in a mature, professional environment where babysitting isn''t needed.

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In case you haven''t guessed it yet, yesterday was the release of the new version into production. I don''t think it was so much the issues that came up that set me off, it was more of the lack of effort and the surplus of blame that caused me to finally snap and yell. If you can''t take the time to beta test the damn product, then don''t ever EVER come to me with a problem you have or a suggestion!! This system is used by virtually everyone on our team. The fact that 2 people out of the entire team did testing is quite disturbing and a little upsetting. Yes, I blew my cool and snapped. I spoke up for something that falls on MY head, not theirs. A bad release doesn''t look good on me and for that I blame everyone else who didn''t give a damn and let things just slide. These are the ones who won''t even get an ear from me when new suggests or enhancements come out. They can kiss my ass for all I care.

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Now that the bull shit is out of the way, I can get on with my musing :)

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So, how was everone''s evening? Mine was fair to good. Katie had to work and had an equally bad evening as I did during the day. We pretty much went to bed wanting to be rid of the day and looking forward to starting a new one with clear minds. I hate when she has a bad night at work and the fact that I had a bad day at work didn''t help matters. All I can say is thank God it is a new day :)

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I played World of Warcraft for a bit last night. Ok Ok! I played a lot last night. I played a lot but accomplished very little. Oh well, such is life I guess :) Hopefully tonight I can get online and do something productive and meaningful. Or maybe I''ll just sit back and watch some TV, who knows.

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Other than that, I didn''t do a hell of a lot yesterday. I came home from work and pretty much went straight to bed where I slept until Katie had to goto work at around 5:30. I got up, had something to eat and just waited for the day to end so I could be rid of it. Sounds depressing doesn''t it? :) I assure you, it was worse than it appears.

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So here I am sitting at work AGAIN wondering what the hell I''m doing here AGAIN. Perhaps today will go better than yesterday. Perhaps today nothing will go wrong and I can make it to the end of the work day and feel like I actually accomplished something. Perhaps a comet will hit the earth near here and make me radioactive so I can have super human powers.

Nah

No way I''ll have a day where nothing goes wrong. The super powers would be cool though.

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Well gang, that is all I have for today. Tomorrow''s musing should be much more uplifting. Remember, its always the other guys fault and you''ll never do wrong :)

Cheers,

Al