Turning tricks

Following on Wednesday’s post, I can report that there was a wide spectrum of participation in Halloween costuming yesterday at the office.

In keeping with the Harry Potter theme, a number of people dressed in Hogwarts regalia. A few superheroes—or villains, maybe; I’m afraid I get a little confused. Two Harley Quinns, but no Jokers. Some people just put on a mask or cat or mouse ears and called it quits.

My manager hauled out his dinner jacket. With his stubble and untied black tie, he declared he came as “last night’s bad decisions”.

And I ratted and sprayed my hair (which drove me mad all day), slapped on weird eye makeup and put on some swag from a conference two years ago:

Yes, I was a mad scientist.

Well, there was a costume contest, with folks voting on three categories: best group (six people in ordinary dress but with bad passwords hanging around their necks—like “password1”, “666666” and “admin”), most creative (someone with a metallic mask/helmet jobber; I could not tell you what he was, but he couldn’t drink beer at the happy hour) and blow me if I didn’t win “funniest costume”.

I seriously didn’t think I was in the running, but there was actually a prize:

It’s an Amazon gift card. Unspecified amount, but if it’s enough to cover the cost of the hairspray and ratting comb, I’m happy.

And when I got home yesterday, I washed my hair, used a fistful of conditioner on it and very carefully combed it out.

Boo, y’all.

STOP PRESS: The gift card is for $50. Huh.

Strange creatures

Apparently, Halloween is a big deal at my current employer. Not in the sense that the IT department at my old job made it: populating an atrium with ghouls and skeletons, and splattering blood and bodies in the server room is impressive. But we don’t have that kind of space, and you wouldn’t want to block off any of the kitchens; don’t want to come between devs and their coffee or Red Bulls.

Monday the SVP worked her way around the two floors we occupy, strongarming people by reminding them that this year’s theme is Harry Potter, and that—while a costume isn’t mandatory…

She did the same again Tuesday at the weekly business unit call.

Story is that last year someone came as Horton. As in Horton Hears a Who.

My plan is to do a variant on my mad scientist schtick.

I spent last evening watching YouTube videos on how to make your hair look like you stuck your finger in a light socket. I frankly don’t know how I’m going to make it through the day with my hair ratted and hairsprayed. But I do not want to get on the bad side of the SVP. 

She’s coming as Professor Snape.

Peeling away

Some time ago I was playing around with the close-up filters on my camera (they’re cheaper than a macro lens), and I noticed that the cucumber peel I’d dumped in the old cottage cheese tub to take out to the garden had kind of wilted into an interesting shape.

You may not find it amusing, but I kinda do.

(And yes: I do need a lot more practice with the filters.)

Getting colder

So, evidently there’s another Frozen movie. I know this because a couple of weeks ago I went to Target and this was the first thing I saw walking in:

You know what this means, right?

Time to let it go.

Gratitude Monday: getting it done

Comparisons are odious, but I’m going to make one anyhow. At my previous employer, nothing happened in a timely fashion. Unless your time scale is geological.

One example: I sent our CLO an almost entirely-boilerplate non-disclosure agreement (the boilerplate being hers, with the addition only of vendor names and brief insertions relating to the statement of work) for approval. Two weeks passed, with multiple emails and voicemails to her; I was just about to stand in her office door when she called to say she saw “nothing wrong” with it.

I get it—she’s both CLO and CFO; she has a lot on her plate. But that makes her a bottleneck in some very important areas, and two weeks for any kind of response is just beyond the beyond.

But it’s symptomatic of an organizational culture that sees no reason to rush about anything. And it explains its lack of appetite for innovation of any sort. (Also contributes to the mindset of my ex-colleague’s “oh, there’s no point in setting deadlines; we never meet them.”)

Well, those people and that mindset wouldn’t make it past the first 45 minutes at my current company. I’m copied on emails about bugs and customer issues; there are at least ten to 20 of those a day. And they get immediate attention—the engineering director looks at the issue and responds; it’s either fixed or it’s put in the backlog. Some of the more complicated issues generate long email threads between engineering, product management, customer support and others. They take this stuff seriously.

And somehow they’ve inspired me to do the same. I have to say that it’s annoying as spit to have your train of thought interrupted by some customer who can’t log in to the portal or has found a bug. But that’s part of the job—the job I love.

Wednesday, we got an email from a sales engineer in Europe who used to have full access to the portal, but now doesn’t, and he had to give a customer demo today, which requires all bells and whistles. We figured out that he has two types of account profiles—the one that used to give him full access and the one that doesn’t, which now appears to be the operating account. I hesitated to authorize a third account, while the other two are swirling about, but: customer demo.

Eventually we logged the issue (which I’ve found in some other accounts) and I sent an email to the provisioning group to give the guy specific access entitlements. I didn’t hear anything back on Thursday, and by Friday I was getting worried. Around 1700 I IM’d the engineering director to ask if the Service Desk works over the weekend, because the SE needs access. He wasn’t sure, but suggested I could call their number and get someone to provision while I was on the phone.

I did that and Service Desk did it (guy said they were going to get to it that day anyhow, but I’d marked my Wednesday request high importance and used the word urgent in the text; I am not really impressed with their understanding of urgent) and I emailed the SE asking him to check over the weekend that he had full access; if he had any problems, I’d check emails and get on it. Well, he emailed me on Saturday to say everything was fine, and I did a happy dance.

I swear I have never been so excited about a customer demo in my career.

And I am grateful to be working in an organization that is both mission-driven and gets stuck in to get things done.