Sphere of Archives

January 4, 2000

The Game's Afoot

My manager offered me a full-time position today. A full-time person was leaving the department, and people were going to be shuffled around. And that leads me to think that he wouldn't have offered me a full-time job until someone else left. He really wants me in the department, but, I suppose, not enough to ask for a budget increase.

The new job would be even more technically-oriented than my present job. If I had any background in electrical engineering, the job would be right -- managing radio frequency usage in the labs, TDMA, CDMA, cellular simulation, and so on. Unfortunately, I'm a business graduate and former journalist. I'm supposed to be a network administrator or a systems consultant. My first reaction was that I was absolutely not qualified to do this work. But then I thought about who I was replacing, and I realized that even if I screw up royally, I could probably do a better job.

I should have updated my resume over Christmas. Then it would be easier to do a quick search around the company, put myself in a better bargaining position. Instead, all I can do is ask around.

A few close associates offer me advice. They say that with my talents I could get a job anywhere, but when I press them for examples, they cannot provide any. That's typical. I think they're trying to be polite, and to rationalize talking to me in the first place. Face the facts. Every job I've gotten was because of luck, not my resume.

January 6, 2000

Focus

I was sitting in a meeting with the other Operations manager, discussing changes to a LAN under construction. He's a much different person from mine: more open, more approachable, wittier, less pressured. But the work there is easy, with no real challenges except for deadlines and budgets.

I tried to ask for a salary increase for the new job. My manager steadfastly refused. He held over my head the one big project I did, the project no-one else would touch, the project that was two weeks late, the project that ultimately failed because the customer had incompatible equipment, as an example of why I shouldn't get more money. He said I didn't have the expertise to do the job well ("So why hire me?" I ask myself). He said he couldn't justify going above the minimum offer mandated by the company.

What could I say? I had no other tangible prospects, just some rumours from polite co-workers. The one person I openly approached for help just said that money wasn't important in the long run, and then she said some of her closest friends were already millionaires, as if that should raise my hopes. So I took the job at the minimum salary. When I told some of my co-workers, they looked at me as one would look at a fatal traffic accident -- "Oh, that is so sad." One of them took me aside and we spoke for an hour. "You're too nice," he said. "You have to be a bastard when you deal with him, or you'll get hammered... You know [an ex-intern who worked for the department]. When he left here for another department he got $47,000, plus a $2,000 signing bonus. Now he's going to the States. Do you know how much he's getting? 60K U.S.! Do you think he could do what you do? Do you think he could do that LAN in the other building? He doesn't have the guts. Oh, you're too nice."

Now I'm locked in for two years, and every day I have to prove myself worthy. There are few people to support me. They're too busy trying to stay on top of their own jobs. But then I think, it won't be Oz. It'll just feel like Oz. Maybe two years will fly by, and I'll emerge a better person.

January 8, 2000

You Are My Enemy

It's Saturday. As usual, I spend half of my weekend in the lab, unpaid overtime. I'm there to practice call processing, since I always manage to screw that up. The guy I'm replacing is there, too, training for his new job. I try to ignore him. When I ask him something, I'm more curt than usual. His employment record is my competitor. His legacy is my obstacle. Everything I do will be compared to his work. And he doesn't have to help me. My manager said as much yesterday.

Then I go for lunch alone. I eat a burger and watch the hockey game. I think about my plain future.

Back at the lab, I do some more tests. I learn the basics of how to use a signal analyzer. I play video games on the Linux PC. I think about what I have to learn to exceed expectations. Expectations are based on whatever project I worked on last. It's always a steep uphill climb. At four o'clock, I leave, resigned.

January 10, 2000

I Can't Stay Mad at You

I felt a lot better today. I slept well, only hit the snooze button once.

Work was pleasant, too. I spent all morning in the lab, instead of at my cubicle where I'm an easy target. One of the users even recognized me, or at least recalled that I'm associated with that other guy. There was a problem I sort of knew how to handle, too, and that made me feel almost competent.

I spent most of my time working with my predecessor trying to fix the problem. I guess he's not so evil. Am I evil? But then I always try to have exact change for coffee... In any case, I left work less stressed than I thought I would be.

January 13, 2000

Chinese Beatnik

I'm teaching English to the new guy in my group, the one I trained a few weeks ago. I feel a bit sorry for him, because he misses all of my cultural references. He cramps my conversation. So I'm not teaching him spelling, or grammar, or how to use a copula verb. I'm teaching him useful stuff that will take him places. Example: On the white board in his cubicle, I have written:

   What's happenin', cool cat?
        Everything's copasetic, man.

Now when he greets me, he asks, "Eric, are you copasetic today?" And I say, "Hey, man, it's cool."

January 24, 2000

Believe It!

I almost trashed the web site. I've been too busy at work to even think about updating it. I contemplated deleting everything and just putting up my resume, like the clones in my L.U. MIS class did. (They would say their sites were "professional." I'd say they were dead.)

But I didn't do it. I'm hanging on. And I know the seven or eight people who come to this site are appreciative.

January 26, 2000

"Hello, little mobiles!"

A consultant visited our department to teach us about radio frequencies and how the whole digital mobile call process works. He's from Nashville, Tennessee, and he used to work for Nortel until he got tired of being underappreciated. Now the company pays him more money to do what he was doing before he left. The Dilbertism is true: He doesn't work here, so he must be smart.

Anything can be made fun by adding an American. This consultant anthropomorphised everything. As he explained the digital paging process, he gave every device a little personality and a conversational voice. the pleading mobile ("Here I am!"), the gruff base station ("Shut up. I got your message."), the helpful global positioning system (who just wants everyone to get along). But this play made everything easy to understand, and I was captivated by the performance. I imagined a dramatic (though quickly tiresome) soap opera for the mobiles ("You think I love you, BSM-1? Ha ha ha! I just wanted your frequency. Now, get out!").

We spent the whole afternoon in the lab, making calls and using a tracking tool to watch all of the messaging. I could only think that this guy must be bored out of his mind by the work. He's been doing this since the eighties, after all. Maybe the travel is good, being in different environments, and so on. Inevitably, I ask myself, "Could I be a consultant?" Of course, the answer is "no." I don't have the patience to repeat verbatim and in an exhuberant tone what I told the last group in the last city. Then there's the "girl in every lab" situation. I don't want to get into that.

January 27, 2000

Whey Ehwee?

When is someone considered trained? Toilet training, for example, only takes a few weeks, right? Car driving can be learned in a few intensive days. I learned everything I needed to know about web pages in a few hours during a summer course. I feel I need to ask because it's been a month, and the new guy still doesn't get it.

Okay. Let's put this in perspective. When I was given the job of doing load and installs on the MTX switches, I got minimal training. One guy did it a few times while I watched and took notes. After that, I was on my own. Fast forward two years to today. I spent two weeks showing the new guy how to do things. I gave him the procedure manual I created. I gave him detailed instructions. I made myself available for questions and new problems after the training period. And still he comes into my cubicle with basic questions that have really obvious answers. Sample conversation:

Another example: one day I was busy in one of the labs, while the new guy was working on the switch. Not surprisingly, he came upon some big stumbling block, and tried to find me. I found out later from my co-workers that he spent several minutes running around the cubicles asking in his thick accent, "Whey Ehwee? Whey Ehwee?" The emergency? "I can't find this peripheral on the switch ..."

Is it him? Is it me? It's him, right? Good people have suggested that I let him fail, just stop helping him. Should I say something like, "I know you will find a way to solve this problem," and then go back to my work? Because I seriously doubt he will. Then he'll be fired and probably have to go back to China to work since he doesn't speak English very well, and then he'll nurse a grudge against me, and become a staunch Maoist and use me as an example of the evils of rational capitalism in his counter-revolutionary speeches on "Good Morning, Beijing."

January 28, 2000

I Want to Fly

Another Customer Satisfaction Survery (CSAT), more proof that my manager's manager (C-level) hates us. The two lab operations departments did spectacularly well (again), while the computing operations department showed mediocre levels of satisfaction. Yet almost all of the bonuses and customer satisfaction awards go to the computing group. Because the C-level loves them. He eats lunch with them. He visits them in their cubicles on the third floor. He goes outside to the smoking area with them. I've seen him on the second floor a couple of times, but only on his way to speak briefly to my manager. He doesn't say "hi" to me when I say "hi" to him.

Several of my co-workers are fed up. One has been working in the same job for three years, and every year she "exceeded" management expectations, but she never got a raise. Another has also done very well in performance reviews, and has been waiting for a promotion that won't come. They blame my manager, his manager, and the division for missing all of the opportunities to make their workers happy.

So the best people are leaving the lab operations group. But it isn't just in operations. It's a division-wide problem. Nortel makes it easy for people to leave. Wireless has made huge profits for the company, but the top engineers continue to leave for better challenges and better pay in other companies, sometimes the competition. I don't think lawsuits citing "aggressive headhunting" are going to stop it, either. Nortel does the same thing, except other companies don't whine about it in the newspapers.

January 31, 2000

x_agent_x: WUS UP?

For the first time in my life, I entered a chat room -- Yahoo!'s on-line interview with Jon Stewart, the host of The Daily Show. It was part of the hype for Comedy Central's "Indecision 2000" election coverage. But after half an hour lurking in the room, I felt dirty.

I haven't been following the party leadership race, so I couldn't think of any good questions, not that I could squeeze them in between a whole bunch of teenagers verbally abusing each other and Yahoo! for not giving them instant gratification. Ten minutes in, I get a solicitation from A1_hotbabe to join in a chat with her "sexy friends." Sorry, A1_hotbabe, but I don't think things would work out. There are too many differences between us. I have a career in Ottawa, you're a search robot. I like order and solitude, you'll do anything for a cookie.

February 1, 2000

Aquarius

February 4, 2000

Ice and Wind

I've skated on the canal a few times now. Tonight was fantastic. It wasn't too cold, and the night was clear enough to see the major constellations. At the Dow's Lake pavillion, there was a packed crowd of parents and their children and groups of teenagers putting on or taking off their skates. I couldn't find a seat, so I was forced to put mine on while standing.

But once I was on the ice, there's no crowd. There were a few dancers doing pirouettes and jumps. I zipped by the slower skaters on my way to the Laurier bridge. A strong wind blew across the lake. Artists were gathering snow and water to prepare their Winterlude scupltures. Typically, I wondered if I was skating the right way. I know I wasn't, because I read up on the proper technique. For the most part I stood fairly straight. Occasionally, I got low, and then I really flew. I imagined I was a big league hockey player on a breakaway. But that delusion didn't last long.

February 5, 2000

White Dog on Fire

Half the people in my department are Chinese. One of them sent me my fortune.

February 5, 2000

You Are Seven

Saturday afternoon, and I'm at work, and there's a serious problem. I am leading a load and install team today. Someone in another department did some shoddy work, so we can't do anything. I send the rest of the team home. Then half an hour later I find out what's wrong. But I sent everyone home already. They're high school students who catch the bus across town. I don't think it would be fair to make them come all the way back, so I decide to do all the work myself, the work of three people. After a few hours staring at the computer screen, my eyeballs started to sting. Nothing a pot of coffee won't fix. Over the next ten hours, I took breaks by filling in forms. That's how I relax. I took a whole bunch of on-line psych tests. I found out I'm close to average. And that is so weird. Check out my scores.

February 10, 2000

I Do It For You, Baby

Every two weeks she visits. She calls me, to make sure I know she's there for me. "Eric? It's Karen. Can you come today?" I'll be there. J'ai l'habitude. When I get there, the lights are turned down. She's putting Indian sitar music on the CD player. The equipment is ready in the centre of the room. I take off my watch and my glasses. I make a joke about how busy I've been at work. She looks up and smiles. Then she walks behind me and shuts the door. I get into position on the bench, and then we start.

After a minute, she starts talking about the weather. It helps her relax, I guess. Then she starts rubbing my arms, squeezing them. I remember the first time we met and she started grabbing them, telling me how impressed she was. I was taken aback at first because I don't think they're anything special. And she always comments about my shoulders. "What do you do to get them so thick?" She knows it boosts by ego. We talk about my gym routine. I admit I've been slacking off, and silently promise to start going again. I want to impress her. I should start doing those morning bench presses again, maybe some bent-over rows. Then I chide myself for being an egotist. I start loosening up. She's got great hands, a gentle touch. I'm hypnotized. I obey her commands, let her take control.

Fifteen minutes later. It's done. She slides her hands slowly down my back, and then breaks off. She waits by the door. I push myself off the bench, fumble through my pockets for the money. She asks if she'll see me again. "Of course," I reply, as I reach for my watch. I exit the room quickly. My body is tingling. My hair is messed. I stride through the office foyer, up the stairs, and back to my cubicle. Only a few people know about us, and what we're doing. Everyone else thinks I've been to lunch.

I really like those chair massages.

February 17, 2000

I'll Go Jedi on Your Ass

My brother sent me this stuff some time ago; he thought I would appreciate it. It's been a while since I practiced my sword fighting, so I welcomed the chance to use these traditional light sabres. What? You want a piece of me? You really want a piece of me? You got it ! Use your mouse to parry and thrust.

February 24, 2000

The Swiss Chocolate Almond Coffee Conspiracy

It's been said that everyone has a price. Mine happens to be $1.16, the cost of a large cup of specialty coffee.

The way people behave under stress intrigues me. The network administrator has started taking me to the cafeteria for coffee in the mornings. I listen for half an hour to his monologue. Favourite topics:

• "He [our manager] doesn't know anything about Red LAN"
• "... because I'm a bastard"
• "That's why I always have a back-up plan"
• "Don't get involved with that [enter project name]"
• "Do you think I'm an asshole?"

The reason for these monologues is the latest super-urgent projects starting in a few weeks, on top of our regular work. In our division, that means unpaid overtime and grudging thanks if the job is done well. Plus, we're working with relatively new technology. It's so new, even the people who are designing software for it don't know how it works. They pushed that responsibility onto our department, and my manager eagerly accepted. The network administrator doesn't want to get hammered for almost certain failure, so he is avoiding as much work as he can. Unfortunately, it has to be done. Doubly unfortunate, I'm the only other person in the department capable of doing it.

But here's the political tight rope. I want to please the network administrator because he's helped me so much in the past with my career. So has my manager. They both depend on me for certain things. But these two are opposites in most respects. I just nod my head, say something non-committal, and do the work quietly in the background. Maybe I like the punishment.

Tomorrow, I'm going to call a manager in another support group and request a job interview. I have to get to work early, so I can leave a voice mail on my manager's phone, in case he is called for a reference. Hopefully, he'll be too busy to deal with it right away, and most of tomorrow I'll be busy. (But he always hovers around on Saturday, too.) I feel a bit like a rat -- disloyal, ungrateful. He promised to hire me on January 4, and I said 'yes', but today I'm still a low-ranking intern and my hair is getting grayer. Does the verbal agreement still hold? What if tomorrow he says the hiring requisition came through? Can I suddenly object? And what would be the consequences if I did?

Then I think, "What will he do? Fire me?"

February 28, 2000

Betrayal

Today started well enough. I slept well and awoke early. I didn't cut myself shaving. I read the paper. When I got to work, the network administrator started talking to me in a hurt voice about a report I sent to our manager on Friday. The manager wants daily reports on a certain project. In this latest report, I mentioned that our original plan may have to be changed slightly. At the time, I thought it was a minor point, but the network administrator took it as a personal attack, mainly because for the past few weeks he has been advocating this plan while vociferously putting down other options. All of a sudden, he said, I had put him on the spot. Then he said, "Eric, if I don't give you any details, you can't put them in your report, right?" "That's right," I answered. And we haven't spoken since.

But that's okay, because I had that job interview today. It was just an informal "getting-to-know-you" meeting. The interviewer gave me some more details about what the department does, and showed me around the lab. This department is Global Technology Support, a new group formed with the new corporate culture in mind. They support external customers with every product Nortel sells - switches, routers, servers, and many new machines that do such weird stuff that they don't have generic names yet. But here the "product" is really a concept or a solution that combines a whole bunch of products. The group "goes live" in April. During the interview, the guy was spouting off a bunch of product names. They didn't mean anything to me, but I widened my eyes and expressed amazement nonetheless. He must have known I was faking it, since I couldn't possibly know what he was talking about. The stuff is just too new.

The biggest shock, though, was the position of the position. Under the old Nortel classification for jobs (banding), an intern is considered a Band 0. Even though I'm an intern, my official level of responsibility is probably Band 3 or 4. This new job would make me equivalent to a Band 6, the same level as the senior people where I currently work! I'm getting stressed just thinking about it.

So, if the GTS people like me, I will get asked for a second interview, this time with the senior manager who will ask me "all the HR stuff."

March 1, 2000

Taken Aside

The operations group is experiencing yet another massive upheaval: another department re-organized, another outsourced, another change in management, another batch of resumes updated. Even though it was still talked about in whispers, it had become common knowledge that I am one of those people about to leave. There is still a hiring freeze on, so there seems little chance I'll be hired on full-time in this group, and I suspect people already know I was unhappy with the previous senior manager's perceived incompetence. So I was surprised to find out the new senior manager wanted to talk to me. I assumed he wanted to talk about organizational behaviour (why I was leaving), an extremely rare moment when the people at the top decide they want to hear from someone at the bottom.

Little did I know his intention was to convince me to stay. I have always thought I was barely scraping by. There is so much stuff I don't know about, that they could easily get a better qualified person from somewhere else. It felt weird being showered with compliments in a cubicle slightly less anonymous than my own. I had gotten used to taking whatever work was handed to me and being ignored. He asked me what I thought of the organization, what changes would I like to see, if there were other people in the group feeling the same way. What do I think of so-and-so? He asked about what kind of work I wanted to do. Had I been offered a job anywhere else? If certain things happened, would I stay?

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I kept thinking this was some big conspiracy. The only reason they want me is because I do the work no-one else wants to do. At this time there is no-one to replace me, and they don't want to spend the time and money to find a qualified person. The organization could be gutted of whatever expertise it contained, and it will take several unproductive months to get new people oriented. Self-interest rules. After I write the documentation, I'll be expendable again.

March 6, 2000

Unquenchable Desire

I want it. I need it. My bus clock is ticking, and it's saying, "Upgrade." Oh, all the components I could have in my new system: Athlon 600 MHz processor, 3-D Voodoo graphics card with TV out, 1 Meg modem, 20 Gig 7200 rpm hard drive, 50x CD-ROM, universal serial bus, infra-red keyboard input, hi-res 17" monitor, ergonomic mouse, 512-bit sound blaster and huge Dolby speakers. But then, what to do with my other PC? A Linux firewall? A file server for games? A web server for porn? A smart coffee table? I could be living the geek dream.

March 8, 2000

Moving Target

Taken aside again. My manager made a verbal job offer in the new department that he will lead. I was half-expecting this to happen. The ego-boosting part was that the offer included the salary I asked for in January plus a signing bonus, but at the time my demands were considered unrealistic. I don't know what happened in the last two months to change that. Again, I'd be doing more engineering work in an environment I know little about. And again, the expectations and pressure would be high.

I told him what the other department was offering in the way of responsibility and challenges. He responded that there is more to a job than the functional position, and implied that this group couldn't offer me anything more than money. I agreed, but I couldn't say that. I had to maintain a negotiating position.

March 13, 2000

Extreme Measures

It was 8:30 am. I had just stepped away for a minute to talk to someone. When I came back, it was already down. The cursor was frozen. Input/output wasn't working. I tried the computer version of CPR -- Ctrl-Alt-Del -- but the CPU would only cough "Kernel file missing." I called for emergency support. The automated answering machine told me my call was important, but I got put on hold anyway.

The tech support paramedic didn't arrive until after 4 pm. I walked into my cubicle and saw him sitting there, trying to load software while the computer's innards stared at me. You know it's serious when they have to remove the casing. I left again. When I returned in the morning, my computer was gone. All that remained were the ripped-out cables lying across the desk and drooping over the edge.

Later in the afternoon, I was allowed to see my PC. It was on life support in the Tech Support area. The casing was still off. The paramedic gave me the prognosis: boot files deleted, bad internal cabling, and a hard drive that was too small to cope with today's information demands. The paramedic shook his head. He could reformat the hard drive, but the machine was just old. There was nothing he could do. The other paramedics agreed. It would be best to put the PC down.

I was stunned. All of my data. All of my software preferences. All gone. On the way back to my hollow cubicle, the network administrator consoled me. Don't worry, he said, we'll get you a new computer. 400 Megahertz. You'll like it a lot.

March 14, 2000

Shasta Mastah

I can hardly believe it myself. The Shasta equipment for the big project is set up, configured and in a working state one week ahead of schedule. And I did most of the work. Will I get most of the credit? Ha! Still, seeing all of those green lights gives me a feeling a pride, the same feeling a mason must feel when he looks at a wall he built. I couldn't help letting my eyes wander for several minutes over the beautiful documentation I wrote.

Now an engineer from the Texas office will fly to Ottawa to test the configuration. I already spoke with her on the phone to request some assistance on a tricky problem. The project prime asked me if I would be available to assist her during the week, and provide her with whatever she needs. "Well, I'm a man, she's a woman," I said. We laughed together at my sexist comment. But I had already done a search on the Intranet. She's married.

March 17, 2000

Texas Twosome

Day two with the Texas Twosome, two women who are helping a project team get set up for a multi-city (multi-continent?) test. Both are shorter than me. Regena is the friendly, out-going type with big hair and Texas A&M sweaters. She knows almost everything about this technology. Chen is Asian, quiet, and trying to learn as much as she can. Both were impressed with the work I did on the Shasta configuration. They were expecting a mess, but they only had to make minor changes, and they sent e-mail saying so to all the managers involved in the project. So, they spent most of the day doing actual work.

The department went to Don Cherry's for lunch, to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. This was the women's first time in Canada. Though it was above zero and sunny, during the stroll to the restaurant they shivered in the cold, especially when the wind blew. They ordered iced tea when they were seated, grimacing when they found out it was instant. Then they made jokes about whether they should order Tex-Mex type items from the menu, knowing they would be pale imitations of what they're used to at home. The women were surprised at how much beer the rest of us drank before going back to work. The pitchers kept coming. I guess it's just not done in Texas.

I tried to start up a meaninful conversation. Chen kept to herself most of the time. She's worked in a number of offices in the southern United States. Regena is a Dallas Stars fan. She got her picture taken with the Stanley Cup when it was displayed at her Nortel Networks office. And she is a motorcycle fanatic who regaled us with the story of searching for the right engine (350cc, propane-fueled. "It burns clearner, but you take a power hit."). They said all of the Canadians they had met were friendly. They did not say Canada was clean. The tourism bureau must be slipping.

March 18, 2000

"Yes, it is a scary movie, isn't it?"

I saw "The Ninth Gate" today. It was not scary. It was barely supernatural. It was a dramatic piece about rich and powerful humans and their obsession with the Devil. The plot revolves around the search for ink drawings supposedly made by Satan, which create a portal to Hades if placed in the right order in the right location. I would expect the road to Hell to be a little simpler, say a one-way ticket to Los Angeles (use your Air Miles!), or a "Bring a friend" kegger in the local witch's basement. Is this why Satan gets a bad rap, bad customer service? Is he priced out of the market by Southwest Airlines? The scenery is beautiful. Johnny Depp acts well as the book collector on the run, Frank Lagella is evil in the way evil should be, and Emmanuelle Seigner is captivating as the taekwondo artist/succubus, and Lena Olin reveals the benefits of using a StairMaster regularly.

March 20, 2000

Saved

It's all politics.

The group that assumed from the start that the operations group was incompetent (instead of waiting for the evidence to accumulate) and so decided to configure a Shasta PDSN by themselves was scrambling today. The test date is looming, and nothing worked. So I was called in. After two hours of trouble-shooting, I got a basic system up, ready for the next phase of configuration, which itself takes about half-an-hour. Everyone was impressed.

Well, not everyone. The network administrator feels hurt because he doesn't know what's going on (although that was his choice from the start), and people are coming to me for assistance with networking issues, instead of him. He isn't copied on some key e-mail about the project (visibility issue), or worse, it gets forwarded to him after the fact (respect issue). I offered to give him the same training I am offering to the lab users, but he refused. I think he wants to maintain an image of competence regarding the equipment, and showing up for a "lunch and learn" session held by the intern would shatter that reputation. Probably, I'll end up giving him a private, secret training session in the near future.

Politics.

March 26, 2000

"Ask not for whom the CPU hums.
It hums for thee."

First some history. In January 1997, I was on the edge. I bought the latest and greatest CPU, a Pentium Pro (180 Mhz, all I could afford), from the Lakehead University computer store. I was the second person on the campus to have that processor. My MIS professor had bought one hours before. And like my professor, I bought the latest OS -- Windows NT 4. It was a race to see who would get his system up first. Two months later, Intel started selling Pentium IIIs, which had all the functionality of the Pentium Pro, plus an expanded instruction set for multimedia.

Yesterday, I bought "The Ultimate Internet PC for the Digital Age," or at least this month. No, I did not drool over the specs. I've been here before. I knew the routine. I went into Computer City unshaven and world-weary. I wanted a video card with a TV-in port so I could watch television on the PC (my computer monitor is bigger than my TV). The salesman sounded impressed when I said I would install it myself. I also refused to take the $250 service agreement for "free" parts and service. What a scam that is. Oh, but what the gods of computer upgrades give in power, they take away in compatibility. There are no ISA slots on the AMD motherboard, so I can't install my flatbed scanner.

1. AMD Athlon 600 MHz with 128kb integrated L1 and 512kb L2 caches
2. 128MB 100 MHz RAM
3. 30 GB Hard Drive
4. 8X DVD ROM with MPEG2
5. CD-RW Drive
6. Diamond Stealth III S540 AGP 3D Graphics Card, 16MB 100 MHz Video Memory (but I replaced it with a All-in-Wonder video card with a TV-in port)
7. Creative Labs Sound Blaster 128 Voice PCI Audio Card
8. 56K V.90 Modem
9. Internet Keyboard and Internet Scroll Mouse
10. 1 MB Home PhoneLine Networking/10 Mbps Ethernet Port
11. 4 USB and 2 IEEE 1394 Connectors
12. Logitech QuickCam
13. Microsoft Windows 98, Encarta, Word 2000

I spent this afternoon moving to the new system. I installed all of Baldur's Gate, plus the other games, and I transferred all of my files from the old PC. Then I wiped the old system. No more Windows NT. No more Linux. Just Windows 95 and every office suite and shareware program I had downloaded. After, I felt so clean.

March 27, 2000

FNG

AT last, I am officially a full-time employee of a faceless international corporation. I will drink deeply from the cup of corporate-matched RRSP contributions and skip lightly through a rain of overtime sheets.

I wish it were that poetic. I went through the company orientation for the third time. There were some changes -- less food at the snack table, poor coffee, no applause for the "service partners" speaking for various functional groups. The high point for me was the awkward "Get Connected" scavenger hunt, whereby strangers ask each other personal questions to find commonalities, and then report these coincidences on the forms provided. "Who went camping last weekend? Who has gone bungee jumping? Who has green eyes? Who has the most children?" In the course of ten minutes, I wasn't able to fill in much of the form, but I did manage to offend two people by asking inappropriate secondary questions. Oh well, I've already forgotten their faces. The orientation finished at 11:30, so I drove to Woodline and went to work. Today is like every day.

March 28, 2000

Surfing a Wireless Web

The computer operations support department had over a year to set up an experimental wireless LAN in our building. They got as far as buying the hardware, and then somehow the project died. They still charged overtime. So it was handed to our department yesterday. We were given a week to get it running. As luck would have it, we're already finished. Two days! The LAN administrator was really excited about it.

It's a nice system. A special hub is the main piece of hardware, and it fits in your hand. Everything else is done through special PCMCIA cards. Our first test was surfing the web. It was as fast as my desktop, but probably because we were the only ones on the system. I went to Suck.com, and then we went to a Personals site and searched for my future wife. No luck there, though.