joshkelahan.com

March 8th, 2009.  That would be today.  I sit here today wishing that it 2009 were over.  So far 2009 has been a thorn in my side, one thing after another seems to draw my attention from that which is more important.  Sure my friends and family are happy and healthy, and that should be enough for me, but its not. I don’t really think its enough for anyone.  Never before and never again will the moments and instants align to create a day, this day, the exact way that today has unfolded.  Despite its uniqueness, I wish it were tomorrow. Why? Because I don’t have anything to do today. I don’t have anyone to talk to today.  Next week, I will sit at work, wishing the week away despite having someone to talk to, at the job that I once enjoyed, that I at one point was actually excited to do, that was always unique, that was interesting, and allowed me to learn something new – my job over the past few months has become increasingly more routine, a place where I cannot learn anything new, and for lack of a better word, depressing.  And so, I sit, wishing it were tomorrow, and that tomorrow were next weekend, and so on and so forth, slowly wishing away time.

Lets go back to a different time, September 2008.  Things were less bleak then.  We had just hired a new CIO at work. The state of things had, for the first time since I started, an aura of hope around it.  Soon the chaos of decisions made would be gone, and in its place would be order, driven by common sense and logic.  And so, in steps a new guy, with a new plan – to provide the masses with a level of support unforeseen before – noble plan.

Strike One: Anyone having anything to do with helping the masses, became a direct supporter of the masses. Before, my job predominately consisted of me doing reasearch, designing, programming, and implementing new ideas – working with different people, on different projects.  Only a very small sliver of my time was devoted to actually helping the masses.  My job is now only technical support. I hate it.  If it doesn’t help to fix a problem that someone currently is having, I can’t work on it. Tech support requires no thinking, no strategy.  It is not a good use of my computer engineering degree.  I am not the only person that this happend to, and its not the worst thing that could of happened, so I try to look on the bright side. The bright side being that I still have a job. Others were not so lucky.

And so, September turned into October, and the excitement of my paper being published and me off to Portland to present it took over everything. But my employer didn’t acknowledge it.  Did anyone say, “Hey here is a guy that got a paper published, that was asked to present about it. Maybe he’s smart, and should be doing something more than just setting up printers for people that don’t know how.“  There was no acknowledgment.  I still have the same crappy job.

I had high hopes for 2009 when it started.  Then my primary hard drive on my computer died – a time-consuming pain in the ass.  But the bright side, was it gave me time to install that fancy new Blu-ray drive. Cool!  The blu-ray drive doesn’t work, and work continues to go down hill.  Mid-February rolls around, and I am just discusted with 2009 as my tv starts to die.  When I turn it on, I can hear that annoying high piched noise that TV’s make, but nothing appears on the screen.  Sure I could probably get it fixed, but why bother.  I made the decision to get a new tv instead.  Yes it would cost more, but it would be new, and exciting, and might just turn around the bad luck I had been having.  I was so excited the day I arrived. It’s an amazing TV.  46 inches of glorious 1080p high definition.  I had to get the blu-ray player too so I could watch all the cool movies in HD.  It’s totally awesome!!!

A week later, I was submitting my “leave report,” which is kind of like a timesheet, but you only have to fill in the days you were abscent, and when I clicked to open it up, I was greeted with a message stating that there was no record of me in the system.  Um what?  So I called payroll, and asked if there was something going on.  Obviously, I have worked there for 3.5 years, I should definately be in the system.  Strike Two: This is how I had to find out that I have been switched from a salaried employee, to an hourly employee.  So I called my boss and asked, what the hell.  He responded with: “I knew this was going to happen, but I didn’t know when.” WHAT!?! He knew it was going to happen but didn’t bother to tell me?!? This is a bunch of bullshit.  In August of this year, I would have been here long enough to start getting 22 days of vacation per year, instead of the 15 I was getting. Now that I’m hourly I get 10.  Clearly this is a reward for 3.5 years of hard work and loyalty.

Last week I took over on a situation where another person, in the same job as I had dropped the ball, and the user was becoming more and more frustrated that he couldn’t get his job done after over a month of this other guy working on the system.  My boss asked me to intervene.  I talked with the user, about the symptoms of the problem and came up with an attack plan.  I told him his computer would be fixed before the end of the week.  When our first plan of attack failed, I ordered an new part from Dell, and told him that it would be Wednesday or Thursday at the latest.  On Thursday morning, he called me, angry and frustrated that he still wasn’t able to get his job done. I calmly said that as soon as the part came in, I would swap it out, and everything would be good to go.  When I returned from lunch that day I had several messages from my boss. The user had put in a formal complaint against me for this not having been taken care of already.  An hour later the part came in. Apparently, it had been held up at the loading dock (who could lose a battleship), and so it took an extra day to get to me.  I swapped the part, and the user is happy.  But I still have this formal complaint against me.  I did my job, I cleaned up a mess that a coworker couldn’t do, and I am the one that gets in trouble for it.  Where is the justice in that?

So yesterday I had a dentist appointment. Everything went smoothly. The cleaning took about 10 minutes, but then I had to wait for the dentist to look at my teeth.  He wants me to get my wisdom teeth out. He’s been telling me that for 3 years, but they aren’t bothering me, so I don’t understand the point.  I woke up today, and went to use my real computer, when I found that the partition table on my hard drive is unreadable. Huh? Why?  I restarted several times, and finally my computer decided to a.) work or b.) not work.  Yeah, my computer won’t even post now.  It looks like the SATA controller is shot.  I really wish this year would end….