Cursed out Communists in front of Rob and Brian today. Rob keeps thinking when I call myself libertarian-leaning I mean liberal. Not the same thing. Being on the right himself, he considers anyone--well, he once brought up Lieberman in the John St office, calling him too leftist. Jeff, a classical liberal, and I, a libertarian- and right-leaning moderate (with the score to prove it) pointed out that Lieberman would never have gotten onto the ticket if he had been too far left leaning. I pointed out his position on Iraq’s continued flouting since 1997 at least, and Jeff and I agreed that he was a left-leaning moderate.
11:52:52 PM  #  comment []

Walking downtime

We keep a list of “down time” on client site to be able to show periods when we were in an enforced work-stoppage on our main goals because something in the app or environment was not ready for whatever we planned to do with it.

There is one person in this certain departmental complex whom I call the “walking down time.” Whatever his level of skill, he presents himself to us as if he has very little, always asking for information or palling around in a very pathetic manner. I find him a somewhat—no, extremely—lickspittle and parasitic, or rather sycophantic. “You guys are the best, the best.” Of course we are. We don’t need reminding. I can hardly understand one word in four, which is not usually a problem as I try to be tolerant (for I am known to speak too softly and too quickly), but he interrupts my train of thought, which really infuriates me.

In the last two days he’s started touching me. I think I can assure you with reasonable confidence that anyone who has met me knows within ten minutes that I am not the kind of person who touches or brooks being touched by someone on two months’ acquaintance, let alone two weeks’. The second time he did it I almost shook him off, as he was doing it while insulting me. Cleaning up his English a great deal, I still heard something horrifically like “I never met anyone who use a Macintosh, most people who have Macintoshes, are no good technical.” Then he laughed as if to dismiss his assholery, then touched me again, as if to reassure me. I ignored him, thinking, Were that the case, you should get one, asshole.

To encourage him to leave or to bother Rob or Brian, I started singing along with the Alice in Chains playing on iTunes as I worked. Sap. What an album. or EP. or whatever it is. “Oh, who?” I ignored him, staring at the screen, humming back deep in my throat with the melody, tapping away. Rob answered him. “I’ve never heard of them.” I can assure you that if you knew who they were, I would probably stop playing them now, and reconsider my high valuation of them. He started asking Rob and Brian about their work, distracting them from their job. I started singing louder over his questions.
11:41:39 PM  #  comment []