The Zoo over Ambuscade Street

I just had to fight the urge to append an email I sent out with "HAHAHAHA SUCKERS!"

Some background: I, very early in my tenure here, got suckerd into working on NMCI stuff for our branch. Over the years this has morphed into a Huge Amount of Frustrating Work. In the coming month or two it's going to morph further into So Much Freaking Work that I Can't Even Drive Home.

This email I sent out just gave four poor, unsuspecting, volunteered souls a huge chunk of that work. Except they're going into it cold, since they don't have the two plus years of background data to work from. Work that involves things like "OMG, I need five billion pieces of information by last Tuesday or things Aren't Going to Work, get it done now!!!"

And as much as I like the concept that your lack of planning does not create emergencies for me, that just doesn't apply with NMCI. Their lack of planning really does create huge emergencies for me to deal with.

And now I have a cadre of unsuspecting minions. Power will be abused, I suspect. I'll need some sort of amusement.

I just had to locate a notebook that a coworker left over here yesterday. On the cover, along with assorted doodles, is the following quote:

"I work for the Navy! And sometimes I do the same work 2 times for the Navy!"

Priceless, and so, so true. Izzy and Vork are probably the only people who'll appreciate the profound hilarity in that statement.

Everyone reading this should know very well that I like talking politics as much or more than the next gal, but there's one kind of politics I hate, loathe, and avoid like the plague it is: Office Politics.

I hate 'em. Shut up, leave me alone, and let me do my work, I say. Up to this point I've been able to get away without playing the political game, because I have no interest whatsoever in any kind of promotion. I started out much higher up the management chain than I ever wanted to be to begin with, I have no real need to go higher.

The reason for this is simple: management has to deal with people and budgets and paperwork drills and spend 90% of their time in meetings. I want to tinker with cool stuff, break things, and figure out how to fix it. This is commonly treated as low-level "contractor scum"-type work.

As I mentioned last night, we are very likely going to be getting some Really Cool work that has the potential to be Really High Priority, especially if Really Bad Things Happen because government contractors who design weapon systems have Issues with Paradigm Changes (-1; Buzzwords). Really cool. Really really interesting, the kind of work I wanted to do two years ago when I started here.

But...in order to do this Really Cool Work, I'm going to have to fight tooth and nail, using every dirty trick I know (and that really isn't many) to ensure that Fu-Master doesn't get it all. He'll get some of it, that's a given, but I don't want him to have it all. Partially for selfish reasons, but also in part because this is going to be Really Important and it needs to be done right. Also, Fu-Master + Navy crew on a deployed ship = scenerios I don't even want to imagine. Nastygrams from their Captain to our Captain would be the least of it.

So, I'm going to be in Office Politics Hell for the next couple of years. I'll be coming in early, working late, and very likely coming in on weekends as well to get the jump on things if need be.

But if it means I get to do Really Cool Stuff, it'll be worth it.

(I also convinced one of my contractors to not worry about his resume too much, since this is coming. He's bored too, but this is the kind of thing our team should be doing. I have a really good team, with an amazing array of skills, and I don't want to have to replace any of them. We need more Unix skills, though, so I may be working on that in my spare time. Anyone know of a good use for a SPARC workstation?)