#Repressed Anger #ThisDidn'tActuallyHappen

Today's bad idea: answering all work questions with Duran Duran lyrics.
This was triggered by the lyric "I'm on a ride and I want to get off / But they won't slow down the roundabout."

If I knew more people in the office, they might ask why I was there, and I'd claim "Watching over Lucky clover.  Isn't that bizarre?"

But, my team shifted office space during the plague, so no one there would know me well enough to shrug it off with "Who really gives a damn about a flaky bandit?"

Nerf and Theft

(During a Zoom meeting.)
Meeting co-ordinator "Hey, UIM, is that a Nerf gun behind you?"
(UIM unmutes, nods, grabs the Nerf gun, and holds it closer to the screen.)
UIM: "Yeah.  Doesn't work.  Five bucks in a thrift shop."
Developer: "I saw the orange bit and thought it was a traffic cone."
UIM: "No, in my family, we steal those.  We don't pay five bucks for them in a thrift shop."
------
Some of the responses when I texted this to family members:
My brother, Shell: "Stop revealing family secrets."
My other brother, Stringer: "I have two of them in my shed."  (He did not clarify whether he meant cones or Nerf guns.)
My cousin, `Backer: "Of course we don't- we already paid for them with gas taxes."

#RepressedAnger

"Look, on my best day, I am a chaos gremlin, but most days I am a vicious vengeful bridge troll.  So, maybe you want to start listening to what I'm saying, instead of making me repeat everything three times by asking questions that I specifically answered in the previous sentence."

#RepressedAnger #Lyrics

Thank you, so much, for causing me pain.
Thank you, so much, for hurting me again.

Your bad design decisions fall upon me like cold rain.

Thank you, for all the pain.

Could you fix your data, by chance?

I never wanted to join in this dance

Of the Masochism Tango that you constantly advance.

Please fix your {bleep}, perchance?

from the back files: sharing one's emotions at work.

From: UIM
Sent: Monday, October 26, 2009 3:06 PM
Subject: sharing one's emotions at work.
"If only we can modulate the waves of depression that UIM emanates, so that we can encode information.  Expect to be used as an inbound NIC when the devs are ready to test the TCP/BLAH protocol. "


(Current note: writing it today, I might name it the TCP/BPD protocol.)

Truths and useful phrases from a previous boss.

"Thank you for your two cents, but I'm afraid you've got change coming back."

"Go sell that crazy somewhere else."

"If the high point is the tree catching on fire, then I just won't bother with Christmas."

"Yeah, that's it - we smoked the pooch right there."


"I don't want anyone horizontal on those couches.  When people go horizontal, stuff starts coming out of them."

Coining words at work

Other Team's Lead: “You coined the word ‘suckage’ today.”
UIM: “I did?”
(pause)
UIM: “Was this when I blanked out while talking to {The Head of the Development Group here}?”
Other Team's Lead: “I do that all the time.”
UIM: “No, I mean, literally, I have no recollection of that five minute slice of time.”
Other Team's Lead: “You said, ‘Everything sucks!  The suckage is everywhere!’ “
UIM: “Thank you.”

Workplace environmental variables

For whatever reason, during a discussion with the team's project manager:

Project Manager: "Just don't do the Time Warp dance."
UIM: "But, {name}, it's just a jump to the left."

Within a minute, he IMs me the lyrics.

Prompting my response via IM:
"Yeah, I know the lyrics.  Strangely enough, I was not going to utter the phrase 'pelvic thrust' at work until I was forced to do so by circumstances outside my control."

#RepressedAnger

"Have you outsourced the data correction to particularly slow and decrepit mules?"

#RepressedAnger

"Are there any other similar enhancements to the datafeed which you've been planning, such as catapults full of pigeon guano aimed at our homes?"

#RepressedAnger

"There are not enough animated-gifs-of-Darth-Vader-force-choking-an-incompetent on the entire internet to express how enraging this is."

work discussions: we are so metal‏

(Installing and configuring local code repository.)

Boss: “Well, we’ve gone as far as we can with these instructions, and now we’re following our own track.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I hear that as ‘We’re rolling off the rails on a crazy train.’ “

Boss: “Somewhat true.”

(Later)

Boss: “I’m not entirely sure this will work.  So, hold my breath.”

Me: (singing) “As I wish for death.”

My Poor Boss, Part 2

Boss: “We have to report what our goals for 2015 are, and before I send anything upstairs, I want to make sure that I include anything you think we need to do.  Have you any suggestions?”

UIM: “Conquer Belgium.”

(Pause).

UIM: “It’s got to be easier than convincing our vendor to change things we don’t like.”

Boss: “And have you asked the Belgians how the feel about this?”

Colleague: “Well, Belgian society has a great deal of tension between the Walloons and the Flemish, so you really wouldn’t get widespread support, anyway.”

from the back files: -tbstone head and a graveyard mind‏

From: UIM
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 6:39 AM
Subject: RE: excel spreadsheet - seemingly wrong symbols

When I got in this morning, the bogus symbols again had ISIN values.  I have blanked those ISIN values out again.
=================================================

From: {Cow-orker}
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 7:33 AM
Subject: RE: excel spreadsheet - seemingly wrong symbols

When _I_ woke up this morning, I had myself a beer.
=================================================

From: UIM
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 7:34 AM
Subject: RE: excel spreadsheet - seemingly wrong symbols

Well, the future roots are uncertain, and the end is always near.
=================================================

From: UIM
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 8:19 AM
Subject: derail -tbstone head and a graveyard mind

{Cow-orker} does make the excellent subtle point that most of my work-related e-mails take the general attitude of blues song, like:

“Boom Boom Boom Boom, gonna shoot book quotes right down.”

“Vendor files don’t do me no good.  Drop their bogus symbols, I wish they would.”

“Last night in the Ops Room, sitting round with my mates, I fixed daily futures charts, because settles came in late.  Now, weren’t that a man?”

“I write forty-seven miles of e-mails, wear a CAT-5 cable for a necktie.  Got a brand new house on the roadside made of discarded monitor boxes.”

-UIM

As Jedi RobMo said once, “Scuse me, while I kill this guy.”
=================================================

From: Frage
Sent:     Friday, November 05, 2010
Subject:               from the back files: -tbstone head and a graveyard mind
You rock.
=================================================

From:    UIM
Sent:     Friday, November 05, 2010 3:34 PM
To:          Frage
Subject:               from the back files: -tbstone head and a graveyard mind
Well, as Muddy Waters once sang, “I want you to rock me, baby, like my SQL database got no primary key.”
-UIM
Blues scholars were puzzled for years about the meaning of this.

from the back files: two time winner of the Buckeye News Hawk awards

From: UIM 
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 6:30 AM
Subject: two time winner of the Buckeye News Hawk awards

Yesterday, before the 2:30 meeting, I made a reference to {cow-orker} about Les Nessman taping off the walls  of the office he should have had. In turn, she recalled that last week one of the local radio stations replayed the "Turkeys Away" bit from WKRP.  (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0742671/ )
I felt the need to check YouTube for it this morning.  I can't watch it without feeling nostalgia for my early days at this company.  (There was a time or two, our Head DB Admin  would look at Ops after some CEO-related agony, and say, "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.")

-UIM
I do not feel nostalgia for 1978, however.  I was broke, powerless, and nothing made any sense, then, either.