My commute home yesterday took 24 goddamn minutes.

Which, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't seem like a lot of time.

But given that my morning commutes are generally fifteen minutes...

That's a fuckin' eternity.

And before anyone out there says "nInE mInUtEs IsN't ThAt LoNg, cAlM dOwN"...

Listen here, you little shit.

Go plank for nine minutes.

I'll wait.

But also, it was the strangest thing: everyone—and I mean everyone—was moving so damn slow. Add to that the fact that the weather felt like a goddamn CPU cooling fan exhausting the bad stuff from a case...

Well...

It just made me feel like the simulation couldn't adequately cool down and was running super sluggish.

Meh. Anyway.

Yesterday was... surreal.

The entire thing was mostly just building up to what I'd expected to be the shitty crescendo of an application demo for boss man.

And I say "shitty crescendo" despite the fact that I have full confidence in the developer attached to the project.

Past trends indicate—and this was the fourth demo attempt—that boss man can and will find something wrong.

But in this case...

He didn't.

He had questions, sure, but...

He was mellow.

Ended it with a shrug and an, "Okay, cool. Great job."

Broh what the fuck.

Not complaining.

Not remotely complaining.

But it started to give off seriously familiar CPO initiation vibes. Because during that process, the group is set up from the start to fail, as part of some kind of fucking twisted, herpy derpy learning process.

Now don't get me wrong: I completely understand that failure can be a great teacher.

Shit, the Kobayashi Maru is a test where failure is the actual point. And in that context, it makes sense.

I think the main thing that helped out was that the developer lead was there, and gave a very helpful suggestion:

"You said this is the fourth time you've done this? Just show him what you fixed, then."

Bruh.

Now granted, the advice seems obvious.

But.

Past demo efforts, boss man made it clear to "treat this as if I'd never seen this before".

Meh.

Demo done, one more to go.

And this next one, I'm not remotely confident about. The attached developer isn't great, and I'm not sure if it's because there's a skill issue, a personal issue, some combination of the two, or... something else?

But he's not quick.

Argumentative about direction.

That second part, I could possibly see as a benefit. Since different perspectives can yield a greater product and all that jazz.

However, when the client says "paint it blue", you don't paint it white because you feel a blue house is silly.

(Which it is.)

You paint it fuckin' blue.

Quick non sequitur: Wow. Chugach got a multimillion dollar contract to do work on San Diego Naval Base. Alaskan company doing work in California is... I dunno, that's strange to me.

Demos aside, week is almost over, and I'm thankful for that.

Although... opening up my inbox this morning planted a nice, steaming surprise on my lap.

(Mama bear, if you still actively read this, consider it my feedback. I'll not say anything in the workplace; I'll just sit down, shut up, and color.)

Back at the start of the year, the folks in my row were given an assignment by our lead.

Document these two applications, you've got until May. Go forth.

So we did. Work was completed within a couple weeks for the first one, and I think still ongoing for the second one (but to be fair, focus on the assignment has definitely waned since the first project was done).

Following on from that, we were assigned user guide creation. We were the target audience, and they were (to my understanding) to be used for quick reference by anyone that was either new, or just hadn't had enough exposure to the thing.

Work was complete in fairly short order.

Eventually, those user guides were aggregated into fewer slide decks and put up on our training portal.

Numerous issues arose from that, but the end result is this:

Start all over. With new, refined guidance.

So.

I'm mostly fine with this.

Definitely happy for better guidance. Common thing I like to use is, "I'll draw you a boat, but it's on you for not specifying anything more than 'a boat'."

Here are my issues with it. Counterpoints where understandable.

• The user guides are all done in PowerPoint. I hate PowerPoint. It can be used to great effect (shout out to NCIS), but generally that's not the case. My personal preference is a well-crafted Word document with hyperlinks throughout, since user guides are akin to instruction manuals, which... generally aren't flash cards. [Counterpoint: These are being uploaded to the training portal which uses PowerPoints.]
• Bonus issue to the first issue: PowerPoints very rarely look good. Especially when they're done in the Government sector. They're all generally the same, following a gross blue and gold bar at the top and/or bottom, and then a lot of white space. [Counterpoint: "Yes, Shaw. They look same because it's called a standard." [Counter-counterpoint: The standard sucks. Reinvent the wheel.]]
• I don't recall such a tight deadline the first time around. Could just be my foggy, whiskey-soaked memory, but I felt the first effort was more of a "when it's done, it's done". I still hustled to get it done, but the freedom of more time was satisfying.
• This last one is particularly problematic: consistent (enough) writing styles.

Gonna jump outta the bullets for that last one.

People are different.

Their clothes are different, personalities are different, voices are different.

And those voices? Generally, they carry over into your writing; sometimes to particularly amusing effect. I've met countless folks over the decades whose first language isn't English.

And those same unique traits to their take on English?

It carries over into their emails.

Legitimately not remotely bothered by it. I embrace it.

It's adorable.

And more importantly—in that context—it is them.

Now, I'm sure I've read books over the years that were written by teams of people. And I'm sure in those cases, any idiosyncrasies in the writing were dismissed as "Ope, guessd the editor missed that one."

But those books?

I didn't know those people.

I didn't know their voices.

However, I do know this team.

And their voices.

Given a pile of documents, I could prolly figure out which things were written by which person with confident accuracy. And that's including my own work.

"Yeah, but you already knew which work was yours because you did it."

Shhhhhhh... shhh...

Sh.

As a reminder: foggy, whiskey-soaked memory. I don't remember what I did last week with any real clarity, let alone months ago.

For the record: my voice is chaotic. When among those I'm comfortable with, it runs the gamut from stoic to full-blown neurotic.

When among those I'm not comfortable with... I generally turn into a robot. Hell, one of my past CO's told me that my writing was "sterile, like being at the doctor's office".

Man.

I miss that lady. Hope she's doing great.

Mama bear did give out that refined guidance, and she included possible angles of attack for how to get it done.

And none of them are wholly acceptable to me, lol.

To be clear: I'm not saying she's wrong.

I'm saying that my fucked up smoothbrain won't let me... share.

So I guess...

I'll do everything?

It's not by any stretch of the void a difficult task, nor would it take more than a day to get it done.

Translated and shortened requirements:

• Make it consistent and
• Tailor it for children

Not like, literal children, but...

General... knowledge... level?

Anyhoo.

It's Juneteenth.

Which means there should be very few—if any—non-contractors in the building.

Which makes me super happy.

Equivalent of working on the weekend without actually sacrificing one of those holiest of days.

...Except you, Sunday. Fuck you. You know what you did.

Gonna go ahead and get started on the assignment.

A wee bit excited about it, but also slightly anxious.

Last time I tried to set off and do something on my own, it got summarily shut down.

...More or less.

Fuck it, though.

CHARGE.

(Also: Steve got upset he wasn't being mentioned much, so... shout out to Steve.)

STEVE.

+1 to the day, and it hadn't been going too long.

Yesterday was... inconsistent.

Everything was mostly quiet until just before a regularly scheduled meeting was set to kick off.

And then I got messaged by a customer.

They were having an issue, and after I asked around the shop for some help on the issue, initial theories was that it was just a superficial glitch.

So we tasked one of the developers in charge of the project with looking into it.

The meeting kicked off, and I discovered a new keyword to avoid in future meetings: MVP.

MVP in this case, meaning minimum viable product.

And also, in this case, it seems there's been some misuse of the term.

Because boss man absolutely zoned in to the conversation every time it was brought up, and he very heavily scrutinized exactly what was involved in any given project's MVP.

...Which is his right, of course.

And it was this laser focus that actually gave me some vindication.

As I've mentioned in recent history more than once, I've been feeling like I've been losing my mind.

I'd take notes on things, and then when it came time to revisit those notes, they'd be questioned.

But in this case... I was correct.

One of the projects I'm responsible for is a proprietary drop box tool; the main purpose of which is to smartly transfer files to the place they're supposed to go.

My understanding of the MVP for this was that we'd start small: basic upload functionality with a tiny number of hard-coded document types.

But when we revisited this project last week, I was wrong.

Initial release was a dumb uploader where you drop the file and it goes to just... a pile.

I didn't see the value in this since the options for that are myriad, up to and including DOTS, which has been around for... a while.

But, I don't like to rock the boat. So, I shut up, put my head down, and colored.

When the project came up in yesterday's meeting and the dumb uploader MVP was revealed, the boss man's reception... wasn't great.

And he actually brought up DOTS as an alternative to what we were working on, which... well, that made me feel a spark of happiness.

Still, nothing changed other than a refactoring of the project to go and explain away what we were doing.

Meh.

It's fine.

From that session, we rolled nearly seamlessly into the next meeting.

It kicked off at 1138. I think it was about half an hour or so into the thing before I heard something that immediately sapped my mood.

"This is gonna be a long ass meeting."

And it was true.

An hour after it'd kicked off, another participant—a stakeholder—came over and joined the meeting.

...Which more or less led to the meeting starting over again.

And I had nothing to offer to the group, so I just... noped out.

I've no major problems with the vast majority of folks in the shop.

...Not for a couple months now.

But one thing I absolutely cannot tolerate is socialization during meetings.

Which I realize makes me the odd man out.

Since if we don't throw some social elements into the mix, meetings become boring.

Unpleasant.

But maybe that's the point?

Humans (generally) don't like doing unpleasant things. We avoid them where we can, and minimize them where we can't.

So my suggestion? Stick to the business—as shitty as it may be—and power through it until you're done.

Rip off the band-aid, as it were.

Things move too slowly here.

Much too slowly.

And as I typed that, I heard her voice reminding me that "we save PDFs—not lives—here".

Which as I've said before: fair.

But that doesn't mean we have to save the PDFs slowly.

Which is another argument against hours-based work: whether I get it done now or tomorrow (or next year), I still get the same paycheck.

...Which is quite possibly the shittiest carrot on a stick.

Anyway.

After I left the meeting, I went back to ask the developer if he'd managed to figure out what was causing the issue the customer complained about.

"Uh, no, actually. I had something else I needed to focus on."

I can hear his voice in my head saying that.

And the cadence at which he speaks is so slow, it's exhausting.

But there's nothing I can do to push him forward, so I nodded in understanding and went back to work.

...While he walked past and went to socialize with another coworker.

What. The fuck.

And to be clear: this isn't me chalking up all the time someone spends away from their desk to be socializing.

Because this is an office setting.

With cubicles.

And I can hear you.

I can hear you talking about the yard work you're doing.

What you did for the weekend.

What you're going to do for the upcoming weekend.

And that's your option.

But when there's an outstanding issue that you need to work on...

FUCKING WORK ON IT.

Finish it!

Wrap it up!

Man.

Having typed all that out, I feel like a supreme asshole.

But you know what?

I am an asshole.

I own that shit.

But I'm also driven to complete my work. As quickly as possible, as correctly as possible.

And the bonus to being quick?

Even if you do make mistakes, they're corrected just as quickly.

And it's become increasingly clear to me why boss man is the way he is.

I'd taken his wild timelines of projects to be nothing more than angry hyperbole.

But... no.

Super low hanging proof of that would be another project that I'm involved with.

It's an incredibly basic application that should've taken maybe a month.

Maybe.

But per the code repository as history, we're coming up on the year mark since it was started.

And I'm very quick to get things posted in the project, be they bugs or tasks.

And these are very tiny items.

And it could be days before I see them implemented.

Weeks.

And yet every day I go to the project and refresh it, nothing's changed.

This morning was different, though: saw a change in there.

But, to keep the universe balanced, once I started digging deeper, a relic from a past version of the project had resurfaced.

Like.

Why?

How?

I'm about to say something completely batshit crazy.

I'm kinda starting to miss the Navy.

Yeah, it was stressful. To the point of more than a handful of suicidal ideations each year.

But by merit of the costume I wore/paygrade I occupied, if there was something I needed done, I could do it.

Now granted: as a supervisor, I should've delegated things.

And I did.

But if those things weren't getting done by the delegates, by fucking god, I did it myself.

Kinda like The Little Red Hen.

Here, though, I'm crippled in my capabilities.

I write the narrative, and it's up to the others to execute on it.

Which would be fine, except the others are also shielded from boss man's attitude when things are taking too long.

I don't think I've ever heard him come down on the dev team.

Which is...

Meh.

In other news, it looks like the DoD is sending more military to support the ICE Capades. Though calm down, everyone, it's in a limited role.

Allegedly.

These service members, drawn from all components and operating in a Title 10 duty status, will provide logistical support, and conduct administrative and clerical functions associated with the processing of illegal aliens at ICE detention facilities. They will not directly participate in law enforcement activities.

Hopefully, then, they'll only be sending every branch's version of YNs/PSs/LSs, since... y'know... those are actually administrative types.

Bah, who am I kidding?

The DoD is absolute shit when it comes to sending the right people for the job, and I can already picture the individual augmentee requests trickling into folks' inboxes.

While I was at my last command, I remember seeing around half a dozen or so (minimum) of those over the years. Earlier ones were a bit more ambiguous as to the nature of the IA, but towards the end of my time there they became more obvious.

They were looking for bodies to send down to Texas in support of border control.

And though we never ended up having to send one of our own bodies down there, it started becoming challenging to figure out the right excuse reason to get them out of it.

Thankfully, my team was small.

Which lent itself to being the best reasoning not to send them.

Especially when other commands on the list had dozens of bodies to throw at the problem.

And having come from one of the commands on the list, boy howdy let me tell you: there were a lot of bodies that were absolutely unnecessary.

lol.

Yeah, I'm an asshole.

Subscribing to DoD contract details is an absolutely crazy way to start my day.

Booz Allen Hamilton, McLean, Virginia, has been awarded a not to exceed $96,076,412 firm, fixed price and time and material letter contract for civilian mariner wireless network installation and sustainment services.

$100M.

To install and maintain Wi-Fi and Starlink on ships.

Maybe I should be re-focusing my energy on government contracts instead.

Because...

Holy shit.

Around 1300 I decided to go sit in the car for a bit to decompress.

As I pick up my phone to start doomscrolling, I see that I've got two missed calls from Crystal.

Fuck.

I'd completely spaced on the 1030 appointment and went to a meeting that had zero value.

Shot her a text urgently apologizing, and got a response back that all was fine.

"What's the rest of your day look like?" she asked.

"Just killing time until end of day at 1400, then going to the appointment."

And then I got a missed call.

And another.

Looked it up and it was the dentist I had the appointment with.

Turned into a voicemail.

Wondering where I was at for my 1300 appointment.

Wait.

Wat.

There's no fucking way.

It's literally marked on all my calendars as 1500.

They thankfully understood the mistake and let me come in late.

So I double-timed it back to the office, grabbed my shit, and bounced.

Got to the dentist and got seen relatively quickly, where I was told that it wasn't an odontogenic keratocyst, but something called an ameloblastoma.

Large, multilocular OKCs, particularly in the posterior mandible, can mimic ameloblastomas. Ameloblastomas are benign tumors but are locally aggressive and often cause significant bone expansion and tooth resorption, unlike the minimal expansion often associated with OKCs.

Stellar.

It's not the thing the Navy told me was; it's worse.

Headed home from there and checked all the stuff I'd missed throughout the day on my phone.

And one of those things was particularly amusing.

One of my coworkers, who'd gotten in pretty early and then just not come inside, had left a message:

His badge to get into the building wasn't letting him inside.

Buuuuuuuuuuut...

As we'd all later find out at the morning meeting, it wasn't his badge that was at fault: it was the singular door he'd tried to enter through.

To paint the picture: there are two doors that we can choose to use on that particular side of the building.

Those doors are about... four feet from each other.

One door—the one he tried to use—leads into the stairwell that has the phone lockers.

The other door leads into the hallway, and—most importantly—is separated from the other door by a single pair of doors.

So what happened—what I'm assuming happened—is that he tried unsuccessfully to badge in through the one door, and then decided his access had been removed.

Now, coming from someone who takes sublime pleasure from doing the absolute bare minimum... that is some exceptionally bare minimum energy.

I had a pretty good laugh about it as I pondered the mental image of the guy barely trying and completely failing.

Because I'm an asshole.

In other news, applied for five more jobs.

Couple of technical writing jobs, a tech support job, and a couple jobs for the city; the most noteworthy of which is a program manager for the city aquarium.

Not gonna lie: didn't even bother heavily tailoring my resume for this round.

Because both lazy and pessimistic.

Which is particularly sad, since that lazy pessimism isn't gonna do me much good in the overall candidacy area... thing.

I think that largely, the reason I don't really care to polish the turd is in large part due to all that time in the Navy.

In 20 years, I went through numerous training courses to get qualified for the jobs I'd been ordered to do.

And in all those cases—save one—the courses meant jack shit, because I ended up either:

• Getting trained to do the job when I got to the command or
• Got assigned to do a completely different job

So taking that life experience and applying it to modern life: I really don't think these jobs require more of me than I can quickly learn in a day or two of on-the-job performance.

Or Google.

Or both.

And it's funny: there was a time just a few years ago...

I've got/had a friend that worked as a contractor at ManTech. We met back in 2016 while on the job for a training course I was involved with. Years passed, and I transferred. She stuck with ManTech for another year or two before she got hired on by the Navy.

Where, last I checked, she was a GS-13.

A GS-13 salary in the federal government typically ranges from $90,025 to $135,471 per year, depending on the specific step within the grade and the locality pay area

That seemed like a pretty solid goal.

So I half-heartedly started working my way in the direction that would find me getting one of those positions.

And slightly redoubled my efforts within the past couple years as my contract neared its finish.

Found a bunch of jobs on USAJobs that really meshed with my abilities.

And then...

The Big Orange turd won the election.

Hiring freeze.

And almost immediately, email after email about posted job offers being paused, canceled, and rescinded.

I'm super thankful I had my friend as a connection to get me the job I've currently got.

Will always be grateful.

Since as I've said multiple times in so many different entries that you can't read because no pagination: I'm a goddamn man child with finances.

Other things, too, but especially finances.

Had that not been the case, I would've retired from the Navy with enough money to at the very least maintain my current quality of life, bolstered with the pension and disability payments.

/sigh

Anyway.

It is what it is.

It's within my control to make course corrections and fix the trajectory of where I'm going.

I just need to stop being such a lazy douchebag.

Or, failing that, tighten the belt and make due with the modest income from my current pension and retirement.

Meh.

Silver lining unlocked yesterday, at least: will have a reprieve most of next week from my largest stressor at work.

Cheers.

The Alters has a really neat premise that's right up my alley:

The game follows Jan Dolski, a worker aboard a mining ship that has crashed onto a remote planet. With the assistance of his fellow alters, alternate versions of himself, Jan must find a way to survive the scorching sun and escape the planet.

And for a few hours, it was amazing.

And then things started getting hectic, and my clone bros were anything but self-sufficient.

"I'm done here, should I do this?" they'd constantly ask.

"Yes, dude," I groaned, "Just fucking do whatever."

By the time I decided to just give up on the game, I'd already gotten to the point where I had three alters of myself running around the base: the miner, the scientist, and the botanist (who could also perform double duty in the kitchen).

Of all the alters, I think I had the most in common with the scientist.

Not because smart, but because of his overall personality.

There was a point where the scientist recommended crunch time, and my character was against it because unfair.

Or another where the scientist argued against giving the alters the day off because, I dunno... we're trying to outrun the rising sun that'll fry us with lethal radiation.

But despite the seeming kismet meshing with the scientist, shit just went downhill.

As I said above, the alters ended up getting really needy. A lot of their problems I could understand, but there were far more that were just... c'mon, man.

Anyway, benched The Alters and went back to Death Stranding so I could immerse myself back in that story in preparation for the sequel coming out in ten days.

Other than that, it was a super quiet weekend.

Big Orange had his parade, and from what I watched of it: it was incredibly underwhelming. The soldiers looked like they didn't wanna be there (understandable) and the overall tightness of the event was lacking.

Especially when you look at the ones thrown by the dictators over there in China and North Korea.

...But then again, when you live in China and North Korea, the consequences for being anything less than stellar are themselves pretty stellar.

...Just in the other direction.

YouTube has started recommending more and more of the movies that it's got, and they've offered some very welcome distraction.

A few weeks ago it was Down Periscope.

Last night, it was Blast from the Past.

Brendan Fraser plays the most absolutely adorable goob, and I gotta say... I really wish we were all more like Adam.

Wholesome, kind, and just generally chill and naive.

Meh.

A girl can dream.

YouTube also recommended, amusingly, the clip of V's emergency broadcast speech.

If you've not seen V for Vendetta, I highly recommend it. Hell, even if you have seen it, I highly recommend it: it's become an annual tradition of mine to watch it each fifth o' November.

And though we've not gotten to the point of the folk of those in the movie's Britain, it's not completely out of the realm of imagination to think we're also not too far away.

Anyway.

Continued looking for other jobs over the weekend as well. Even dropped in to LinkedIn a couple times for no real reason, and was amused to find that one of my connections had made a post saying, "If you bash people for getting a certificate, disconnect from me."

Now.

I won't bash folk for certificates.

I personally think they're largely a waste of time and money, but I'm generally not in the business of yucking other folks' yum.

...Except balut. That's just objectively gross. I'd considered hyperlinking that, but if you don't know what balut is, I'd strongly recommend not Googling it.

But.

I still think they're a waste of time and money.

And while I was in the Navy, the only one that really "mattered" was Security+.

Back around the whole CTO/IT rating merge happened, there was this whole "IT of the Future" or ITOF thing. If you had certain NECs, they effectively became meaningless. And if you had other NECs, they got downgraded to a lesser one unless you took a couple Microsoft certifications and got your Security+ certification.

Needless to say, but I'm a stubborn dipshit.

I used up all my vouchers for the two MCSE certifications the Navy gave me, and just barely passed the Security+ one after going through a couple bootcamps.

And then you know what happened?

CompTIA realized there was no money to be made for lifetime certifications, so they redesignated the OG Security+ to "Security+ GFL", with "GFL" standing for "Good For Life".

...Except it's not.

Yes, I still have the certificate. You can even validate it through that random third-party website.

But employers make it explicitly clear that they're looking for Security+ CE.

Where "CE" means "Continuing Education".

Which translates to "You need to do extra work each year to keep it valid."

To satisfy the CompTIA Security+ Continuing Education (CE) requirements, you need to earn and submit 50 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) within a three-year period. These can be earned through various activities, including training courses, higher education, work experience, and industry certifications.

So.

More of your time. Wasted.

More of your money. Wasted.

I've encountered so many people with such massive email signatures showing all their pretty li'l certifications.

And you know what?

I may respect those folks and actually like them as human beings.

But when it comes to basic IT, they're dumb as rocks.

One of the most egregious examples: I had a Master Chief that had a slew of different industry certifications in his signature. He asked me how to put a graphic in a PowerPoint presentation.

You can handwave that away in any number of ways, but: when you can't even be bothered to Google the answer, I think that speaks volumes.

So you can only imagine my frustration, then, when so many of these jobs I'm looking at not only require the CE version of the certificate, but also a degree and X years of experience.

Granted.

I could've easily fixed myself while I was in.

Did the dance.

Got the cert.

Got the degree.

But again: that's time I didn't want to waste.

And so now, I guess... I'm paying for it.

Meh.

Happy Monday, y'all.