Sphere of Archives

October 4, 2000

The Deer Hunter

It's my favourite part of working for a new-tech high-tech company -- the team-building event! This time it was a scavenger hunt. Not a frenetic chase like "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", and not a weird one like that one with Roddy McDowall, and not as bad as that one for really stupid people on the Internet. More like that corporate plan to keep kids out of trouble. The teams had cameras and colourful flags, and we had to drive around town and take pictures of things and collect other things. And then came the adult part: meeting at a bar for pitchers and pub fare.

I was leader, driver and photographer for "Eric's Vikings". Everyone respected my authority. I'm not sure what was the exact moment when the others just let go, to be resigned to their fate. Was it the first 50 km/h turn out of the Nortel parking lot? Was it the first double-lane change? Or the following sharp U-turn? In any case, I got us where we needed to go, with five minutes to spare. In total, we spent two hours "hunting" and four hours drinking beer at Don Cherry's.

Oh, and my team won by one stinking point.

October 5, 2000

RIM Job

I'm so lucky to be needed. The voice mail sounded a stressed, but maybe that was the guy's accent. He wanted me to go to a meeting already in progress with Research in Motion to discuss a network configuration. It was my lunch half-hour and I wasn't prepared, so I ignored it. An hour later, I got another call from someone higher up the chain of command. He would really appreciate my joining them at the meeting. I pretended I had just gotten back from lunch. I'm a busy person. I have priorities. So I agreed to go.

To tell the truth, I was unnecessarily tense. These RIM people are recently departed Nortel employees, but I got an impression from management that I had to withhold whatever proprietary information I could. And these are ex-Nortel experts. A few months or a year ago, they had the access to the same information I have now. My big fear, which I have at every important meeting where I'm touted as the "guru", is that some know-it-all will stand up and say, "WHY do you do things THAT way, when everyone KNOWS... ?" (I just work here. [sip coffee slowly])

I sat in the meeting room for noon until 5 p.m. At the end, I handed out my business card, exchanged e-mail addresses, shook people's hands, and left the meeting with a whole bunch of action items due the next week. Secretly, they hate me.

October 6, 2000

The Scarlet Letter

Things suddenly got worse. Months ago, my "friend" the network administrator, asked to use my address so that he could receive a package without his wife knowing. I figured it was a harmless, one-time thing. Maybe I should have been more wary. He had done a similar thing with my phone number, giving it out to strangers without my knowledge. The first call from a prostitute was amusing, and it was a little in-joke between ourselves. But after the second one, I told him I wanted it to stop, and it did. So, I was only mildly alarmed when I saw weeks later that he still had my address and phone number taped to his computer monitor, presumably for easy reference while he surfed chat rooms. Nothing had arrived since that one-time package -- a needle-point of flowers and "I love you" at the bottom -- from a Minnesota woman he had met on the Internet.

But yesterday, another letter arrived. It was pink, with a heart sticker on the back, probably scented, and addressed in Vietnamese to the network administrator. I considered just throwing it away, or forwarding to his home address, but I decided to give him a chance and brought it to the office. I told him that I didn't want to receive his letters and packages anymore. He became quite agitated. As it turned out, several packages were already on the way from this woman and other people. I said I would throw other packages out. "No, no no," he pleaded, "just give it to me. I'll send e-mail to all my friends and tell them not to use that address." I spent a second considering how many people he includes as "friends," then decided it was better for my sanity not to know.

I haven't received a package for him this week. If I do, I'll forward it to his wife's office.

October 12, 2000

Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts

We're paranoid. I'm paranoid. Is he slacking off? Do they think I'm slacking off? Does he know what he's talking about? Do they see through the act? Is he really the only expert? Why can't there be another expert? Can we make this project work? Will this be the day I screw up?

I alternate between sipping coffee and biting my fingers as I scroll through the various design documents on my screen. One of the project manager's stops by my cubicle. That's unusual. Naturally, I think there's bad news, but he's just checking in. I show off the overly long document I'm writing for the project, but he doesn't look interested. He wants to know my confidence level; I can do confident. Then I send the report to the managers, and wait for the barrage of terse comments.

October 14, 2000

Deep in the Diefenbunker

My mother is in town. Our plan was to go to the Cold War Museum, the head south to Packenham for tea, then Westport. Instead, we spent most of the day in Carp. We got up late and went to The Great Canadian Bagel for breakfast. By the time we got to Carp, it was 11:30.

We found out the Diefenbunker doesn't open until one, so we went to the local farmer's market. My Mom said that if she lived there, she'd be at that market every day to buy fresh vegetables. There was the usual honey booth, along with various woodwork stalls, but there was also a cooper, and a man selling steaks. It seemed like few people were buying, though. We went to The Rooster for a quick, tasteless lunch. It was a quiet place, except for three people sitting at the bar with us -- an old woman talking about various people in the town with her son or son-in-law, while his wife chewed her food silently. We paid the bill, then rushed to bunker.

As a building, the bunker is truly banal. The colour scheme is battleship grey, with the occasional pale yellow or blue corridor. Most of the decor is reminiscent of the 1960s, even though the bunker was in use until 1994. And it seems large, mostly because it's like a maze filled with similar doors and similar little rooms. But the concept of the bunker is fascinating -- a 30-day cocoon allowing our nation's political and military leaders to formulate and execute Canada's response to a nuclear attack. Throughout the tour, I was imagining what that response could possibly be. And to think people use to work there every day, trudging down that blast corridor in the morning with their Tim Horton's coffee steaming. All over the bunker are art pieces from Canadian artists. Some critique the Cold War, while others try to re-create the atmosphere of those times.

The tour went on for over two hours. We were directed to the gift shop -- Cold War trading cards, Beefy-T shirts with the Diefenbunker logo, and, yes, of course, maple syrup. With most of the day gone, we drove to Packenham to get a cup of tea at the Tea House. The restaurant was closed, and my mother had no interest in the 5-span stone bridge, and we didn't want to look at more crafts, so we continued on to Almonte, the birthplace of b-ball inventor Robert Naismith. Almonte, population 4,400, looks bigger on the map. Just another one-street town. After eating tasty canneloni at The Superior Restaurant, we returned home.

October 16, 2000

I Want To Be a Lab Rat

I suppose it's the scientific method that makes medical professionals say rather shocking things in a matter-of-fact way. I pondered that as I booked a consultation for laser eye surgery through my new optometrist. He had finished his oft-recited speech comparing PRK and LASIK, and we started discussing risks and statistics. I had quoted some numbers from a U.S. web sites. I felt a mixture of pride and terror as he compared the restrictive American medical regulations to the "wide open" experimental practice of Canadian eye surgery. He said the Americans get their new procedures from Canadian clinics. But he downplayed all the statistics, both positive and negative, that I had read about, averring that the LASIK procedure has only been around for five or six years, and no-one knows for sure what can happen in the long term, or what the success rate is.

He checked my prescription and my pupil size. Not only am I myopic, but I seem to have astigmatism in my lenses. That means my "whole optical system" is not good. I have to ask the surgeon about what impact that will have on the operation and the outcome. So my consultation is on November 9.

October 20, 2000

Pawn to Bishop's Three

I am impressed at the level of co-ordination that must have been required to replace one person making a horrible mess of a situation with another person, in a way that makes the first guy feel ecstatic about it, rather than ashamed. The situation involves planning and creating the infrastructure for demonstration rooms in the new building. In the overall picture, this is a series of minor details, such as how many fibre optic cables are required, and where the equipment racks will go. Unfortunately, the network administrator was put in charge of this part of the project. Negotiations with a new group had been dragging on for weeks, and the situation had devolved into an e-mail war. Once again, his usual reactionary tricks -- refusing to compromise, hiding behind management, misinformation, deliberate ignorance -- were jeopardizing what could be a profitable relationship with an important group.

I admit I was highly entertained by this development, particularly since I had no part in the project. Sure it's bad for the company when these things happen, but it was just so funny to observe him every day as he ranted about this new group's absolutely unreasonable requests and shady political maneuverings. Under the guise of spell checking his e-mail for him, I got to see his inept attempts to push every decision, no matter how minor, up to a managerial level, so that on paper he isn't responsible for anything. I saw how he put words into people's mouths and giving a false impression of agreement by using "we" when he really meant "I". Maybe it's the royal "we". The most galling thing was seeing my name used without my consent in a list of people who supposedly support the administrator's position.

Yesterday, my manager sent an e-mail to me, ordering me to attend the next meeting regarding these demonstration rooms. The network administrator couldn't make it. The project co-ordinator had a more important meeting to go to. I would just be taking notes, he said, and his manager (our C-level) would be there if any decisions had to be made on the spot. I'm not a complete idiot. This sounded very suspicious to me. My manager knew very well from the start that I didn't want to get involved. Now one of my feet had been put in the door.

The meeting went well. Everyone was pleasant. I was given a list of action items, a strange thing to give to a mere secretary, no? At the end, the C-level introduced me to members of the new group as the new operations contact for the demo rooms. There's the other foot.

When I got back to my cubicle, the network administrator greeted me. He had a big smile on his face. He slapped me on the back. He said he was so glad that I was handling the situation instead of him, because he was just so overworked dealing with the whole lab infrastructure. Yeah, right. Who would have thought the Peter Principle would apply to a person so soon in his career? I was a little taken aback by his enthusiastic embrace of public failure. Maybe it takes a while for these kinds of things to reach his brain.

October 21, 2000

A Traitor to the Cause

I bought vegetables today. Social pressure wore me down. It started with the Truly Huge recipe book, which is mostly fruit and vegetable drinks. I was able to resist. Then last week my mother bought me "The Good Cook Book" by Yves. She went through the recipes with me, pointing out easy ones to make. She left the book standing on the kitchen counter. Whenever I went in there, Yves would stare back at me, his accusing eyes following me as I stepped from the fridge to the microwave. "Why aren't you a vegetarian yet?" Shut up, Yves.

So I made a list. I walked through the produce area, got some cucumbers, some carrots, a bag o' salad. I felt like a traitor to myself, to other carnivores. "I've got water on my hand from the wet carrot bag. It's not coming off! This can't be happening! Noooooo!"

>October 24, 2000

Getting Tangled Up in the Wireless Office

The department's new wireless office phones arrived today. This is the launch week, which means productivity will go down.

Yesterday, there was cake with a gray Nokia 6000 phone formed from icing on the top. The colour of the phone was the cause of some consternation, as I learned from overhearing a conversation between the chef and the Deployment secretary. Gray is a hard icing colour to come by, and the chef was suggesting a different colour be used. The secretary had to put her foot down. She reasoned (obviously based on experience) that if people saw a coloured phone on the cake, they would expect their phones would be that colour, when in fact all of the phones would be metallic gray. And when they got their gray phone, they would demand (again, based on experience) that they get a coloured phone casing, which would not be forthcoming. Such are the hard-nosed critical decisions that must be made in a high-tech office.

Today, free pancakes were served for breakfast. Two volunteers from the labs, British exchange workers, were grilling them. They were bored, but they got their picture taken. I was the only one at the counter (it was 7:45 am), and the first thing I did was complain about the serving size -- one pancake -- so they made more for me. Then I asked what kind of pancakes they were making -- potato, buttermilk, whole wheat, Bisquick. The Brit at the counter didn't know what Bisquick is. He said they were flour pancakes.

I got my phone this afternoon, but half the department got theirs in the morning. They spent the next few hours listening to all the types of rings, calling each other, going to internal web sites to learn about new features. Everyone gets a headset, so that they can work on circuit boards or whatever, and still use the phone. In a few months, the desksets will be taken away, and chaos will ensue.

October 29, 2000

Men of Knowledge, Men of Power

The shell of the new Woodline tower is nearing completion. Today its power system was connected to Woodline 2, which required a 10-hour power shutdown. It was a simple, menial task, yet I got some fun out of it.

A planning session was held on Wednesday afternoon. My manager, the project prime and lab primes, the LAN administrator and I were there, accompanied by a few interested people from the department. It was a straightforward plan, broken down by lab areas, and responsibility for devices that are sensitive to power bumps. As I said, a boring meeting. So the manager decided to have some fun and to make the LAN administrator sweat. What would he do to prepare the LAN for the power shutdown? What sanity tests would he perform when power returned? The administrator babbled for five minutes, and after some prodding eventually said he would turn off the switches and hubs (uh-oh, the boss doesn't agree), and would ping the gateway when power returned (whew). So he would come in Saturday night to check the LAN? The administrator hesitated for a minute, then said yes, he could come in. I felt bad for him, so I said I would do the work if the administrator provided me a detailed plan, and I would call him Saturday night if there was a problem. He was delighted.

Then again, I can be an asshole. Late that afternoon, the administrator approached me and asked me what he needed to do. Here's how the conversation went:

I couldn't believe how easy it was to make him convince himself such a boneheaded thing was required. And then I got his plan. He would unplug all of the hubs and the switches at 4 p.m., then he would be out of town Saturday. In other words, after he disables the entire LAN, he will be unreachable. What a joke! Here are his two worst attributes on display: his incapacity for critical thinking, and his desperate need to appear busy if not useful.

On Friday afternoon, in the final hour before the power shutdown, the manager and I were going over last minute details of the preparation. I told him the LAN administrator's instructions, and my part in it. He started shaking his head. "So you're the one who's causing trouble," he said. "I told him not to do it, and then he talks to you." Then he called the administrator up and after several minutes, he convinced him to do nothing.

Saturday evening, Woodline 2 was eerily quiet -- no lights, no whining cooling fans, no humming computer screens, no people. And then the technicians switched the power back on and turned on the rectifiers. I watched as the red digital meters incremented. Then there was a thunderous roar as the MTX switches and air conditioners in the Captive Office came to life.

November 2, 2000

Heaven and Hell

It's been a bad week for me. Suddenly a bunch of systems aren't working. Was it the power outage and something wasn't shut down properly? Was it the software upgrade I did on Monday? Was it the reconfiguration I did because the databases were incompatible? Or is it something else that isn't my fault at all? In any case, the users are starting to get snippy.

But things are suddenly rosy for the network administrator, who got recognized by the Chief Engineer for, um, well, no-one is quite sure. Apparently the reward, consisting of lunch with the Chief Engineer and a seat at his table for the division Christmas party, is for successfully delegating work to competent people for some minor public relations stunt. It's wonderful that the big people are starting to recognize the work our department does, my manager said to me, but unfortunately they're rewarding the wrong people. I think it shows how out of touch the upper managers are with the day-to-day work of the lower people.

November 3, 2000

The Portal of Evil

The Portal of Evil. Don't ask why. Just go there.

November 5, 2000

Back to the Old House

I don't want to go back to the old house
There's too many bad memories
Too many bad memories

-- Back to the Old House, The Smiths

After six months, I was forced back into the gym. I couldn't do much at home because I sprained my thumb, making it painful to wrap my hand around the free weight bars. If I were in the NHL, the coach would say I'm "day to day" and the trainer would be working with me every day to make my boo-boo go away. There's no sympathy in the tech world.

There wasn't much of my usual anxiety heading in there. The story is old now. It was a little crowded for a Sunday morning. All of the bikes were taken and some of the rowing machines. I kept entirely to myself. Do I have a "gym face"? I have no idea, since I avoid looking into the mirrors that surround the room. Does "exhausted" count? It was just a great day overall: sunny, cool, the slightest breeze, and after exercise my body had that wonderful heavy, sleepy feeling that makes it easy to relax. Cats must feel like that all the time.

November 6, 2000

Spheres

A surprise at Starbuck's tonight. Some amateur astronomers had brought their telescopes and were giving free views of Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon. I saw the cloud bands on Jupiter, along with four of its larger moons, saw the rings around Saturn, and got a super clear view of the Moon's seas and craters. I chatted up two of the astronomers, talked about their equipment and their areas of expertise, and the complications of watching stars in the city. Now I have to get a telescope.

November 11, 2000

Dim Sum, Dim Sum

Ken's family and Jason and I went downtown to the Cenotaph to hear the Remembrance Day speeches. Ken and Jason were both in the army, so I assumed they were obligated to go. We got there at eleven when the first cannon shot was fired. A large crowd had already gathered, so we were stuck watching a sea of heads, listening to distant machine-like voices and tinny music over the loudspeakers. I spent an hour there standing stock still while the army buddies scoped the crowd for babes.

And then it was off to the Yangtze for a dim sum lunch buffet. I saw the two guys I went to the Maritimes with there, Jason and Ray. While the other's got a table, I chatted with these two. Jason's taking a break from his post in London, England, and the start-up where Ray works (SS8) is doing well. I had just missed one of my co-workers who left five minutes before. Then one of the waitresses came buy with a cart, so I re-joined my group. Jason bragged about his recent transfer to a fantastic new job, with a great boss, and a department full of beautiful and intelligent people. He'll be doing the same work though. It's the same as preferring one Top 40 hit song over another. Meanwhile, Ken is ordering and I'm eating: "Anyone want the last pork thingy? No? The last shrimp roll? The rest of the soup? What is that? Does anyone want that?" It was an ugly scene. So Jason starts talking to no-one in particular about his trip to Japan, Ken's wife is looking tired, and his cousin is daydreaming. That dim sum sure was tasty.

November 11, 2000

Mr. Clara, I'm Confused

Let's get this straight. The network administrator is not my superior in any way. He is not my manager. He does not have a higher job classification. I don't know how people got the idea that I am under his authority. We aren't even in the same department. We are just co-workers in the operations support group (Er, I mean 'team'). His manager is my acting manager, until the vacancy is filled.

Let's go further. There are three kinds of organizational power. From strongest to weakest they are personal, expert and referential. The network administrator has some personal power -- among his Vietnamese friends in other divisions and companies; he has no friends in the operations support group. He has no expert power, except with people new to the department until they ask him for something related to the network. He has some referential power, simply because he is the sole person responsible for keeping the LAN up... for now. He use to be responsible for buying hubs and switches, too, but he delegated that to interns such as myself long ago, and he has forgotten how to do it.

Contrast that with my situation. I don't have much personal power, but I have lots of the other two because I am the only one who knows how to make certain critical systems work, plus I know how to administer the LAN. Officially (that is, in my job description), I also back up the network administrator when he is on vacation or indisposed for a long period. I used to take that job seriously, until I found he didn't get one work-related phone call or e-mail for a whole week.

Is it clear? Crystal.

November 12, 2000

Pursed Lips Sink Dips

I signed up for a personal training session or something at the Nortel gym. I told the front desk secretary that I wanted to get in "game shape" for hockey. My personal assistant would be Karen, and I had to be dressed to work out.

This morning, I arrived a little early to warm up. Then I went to the assistant's desk in the gym, where Karen was studying. She stacked here sheets of differential equations to the side, and we had a little talk on my history and goals. Maybe I wasn't communicating very well. I showed her my log from the session I just started last week, and she assumed I had only started exercising last week. Then she said I was doing too much. I mumbled about being weak on stamina, and she learned I rarely did any cardio work. Karen had her work cut out for her. I mentioned in passing that I had hurt my thumb some time ago. She stared at my thumb with a disgusted look on her face, as if it were a boil. I imagined her thinking, "You jerk! You said on the form that you weren't injured." Then the inquisition started: "You injured your thumb? How did you hurt it? You don't know how you hurt it?" But it was feeling better now. Still, whatever trust she had in me was gone forever.

She directed me to ride a bike for ten minutes while she put together another routine. Now I have a "Day 1" and a "Day 2", and I promised to do a half-hour of interval training on a bicycle. She told me to "go heavy." Then we went around to the various stations so that she could check my form. We confirmed that I was doing everything wrong, and over the course of 30 minutes Karen's facial movements ranged from mere annoyance to tight-lipped silence. At the end, she told me to do the routine for six weeks, then to come back for more if I want it. Then she hastened back to her desk, leaving me in the middle of the gym holding the clipboard and the little number 2 pencil. I looked at the clipboard. I looked at my watch. I looked at the clipboard again. (sigh)

November 13, 2000

We Know Where You Live

People from my TKD club won't leave me alone. One of them called me at home, first to get my address to send a "Thank You" card, and second to ream me out for not going to class. I told her I really was thinking about it, almost every day. I blame work; she understands.

November 19, 2000

Who's Got Super Skills ?

I went to the Senators Superskills Competition today. It's a charity event, and all the money goes to the Ronald McDonald House. Used hockey gear was being sold. Foolishly, I patiently waited as other people shoved each other to reach the clothing racks and equipment tables. In fifteen minutes, the racks were mostly empty. I didn't even get close to the tables. I think most of the stuff was over-priced, too. Fifty dollars for a game jersey with intact Gatorade stains and the lettering falling off. Fifty dollars for a pair of hockey gloves. Thirty dollars for a used stick. All sales final. Most of it went.

Then I spent an hour being fascinated by the team performing drills in an open practice. The players were obviously having a lot of fun (coming off last night's win against the Panthers). It was just amazing to observe the way they skated and passed the puck.

The skills competition was even better. The team was split into two and had a friendly contest on puck control, speed skating, passing and scoring. Each side also had seven children from the area, and they did the same contests. Andre Roy cracked jokes on the big screen, and Colin Forbes did some physical humour. A woman in the crowd yelled out Daniel Alfredsson is sexy. Alexei Yashin got more cheers than boos. Roy won the hardest shot test. His first shot was 100 km/hour, after which he did crab poses at the other team. His second was 101.7 km/hour. Shawn McEachern again won the fastest skate around the rink at 13.7 seconds. David Oliver won the accuracy contest hitting four targets in four shots. And Patrick Lalime made some fantastic saves.

November 19, 2000

"Go ahead. Throw away your vote."

The Green Party left a pamphlet in my door. Of course, the paper was recycled. I was considering voting Green as a protest, but after reading why "We, the People, have lost control", I'm definitely edging towards either the Bloc or Natural Law.

The factoids presented in the flyer just show that the Green Party is as eager as the mainstream parties to lie in order to promote their exclusive agenda. Half of their points are global issues, where Canada is just one player among over 150. The rest are rhetorical statements that try to hide the larger picture. Then there are two statments that cry out 'loser party': that the party has been "fighting for change" since 1983, and that the party "does not accept donations from unions, corporations or associations." I imagine their candidates are sitting on street corners as I write this. Harris' anti-poverty laws (or is it anti-poor laws?) must really cramp their funding drive.

November 23, 2000

Correction

I had been wearing glasses since Grade 5 or so. I was really getting fed up with them: fogging up in winter, fogging up in rain, fogging up in fog. They kept sliding down my nose, or falling off. They got caught in my clothing when I took off my shirts and sweaters. They left dents in my nose. They left grooves on my ears. They made my eyes look big. Green mould grew under the soft pads. The tiny screw on the right arm kept unscrewing and had to be re-tightened every week. The dependency was worse, since anything beyond a hand-span from my eyes was blurry. When I went swimming in a lake, I had trouble seeing the shore. I couldn't suntan and read at the same time. I got prescription sunglasses, but they never fit right. I couldn't read my alarm clock in the morning (but then, who can?). If I dropped the soap in the shower, I had to grope around to find it. I shaved by feel.

Yesterday, I had laser surgery. I had been thinking about it for years. I did some reasearch, consulted some doctors, saw other people who had had it, and decided I wanted it, too. If I had had my way, this would have happened last month, but the laser centre where I booked my appointment was very busy. I waited a month for the standard initial consultation, which happend last Wednesday.

The consultation is probably the most important part of the operation for the clinic. First, the nurse measured my eyes. She made topographical maps of my corneas with a conical device that reminded me of the Time Tunnel. Then she measured my glasses prescription. Then I sat in a small room and waited for the surgeon. He explained the procedure step-by-step. He talked about all the things that can go wrong, all of the risks of each operation, and what expectations I should have. At the same time, he was confident, and said I was a good candidate who should have no complications. Then I went into another room, where another nurse gave me some papers to read and sign for next week. I got a money order (personal cheques are not accepted). I booked the first of four post-op check-ups with my optometrist.

I had to book a day off work, since I wouldn't be able to see very well the first day. I told my manager and some co-workers. They sounded surprised. I joked that I was also getting breast implants the week after. My manager said I couldn't have the time off ("The surgery's at one? I want you back at your desk at one-thirty."), and I said I didn't want any special treatment and would apply for a braille keyboard.

Yesterday was the day of the operation. I arrived an hour early, as instructed. The secretary for the laser centre wouldn't let me past the security door until I handed over the cheque. Once inside, I spent the next 90 minutes sitting in the waiting area. It went by pretty fast. I saw other people being led to the operating rooms, then leaving without their glasses. Then my turn came. First, another set of topographical maps of my eyes was made, and compared against the first set. Then a nurse went through the forms that said I understood what was going to happen and all of the risks involved, and she made sure eveything was signed. Then I was taken to the operating room.

The room was rather austere. There were a few posters. There was a shelf and cabinet on one wall. In the middle of the room was high bench, next to a large rectangular machine that must have been the laser, and at one end was a scope on a metal swivel arm. Another nurse was there. She was sterilizing the equipment. She gave me a series of drops to freeze my eyeballs and to kill pain. Ten minutes later the surgeon breezed in. He was happy because someone had cancelled their appointment, so the clinic was back on schedule. Then he did a walk-through of the procedure again. After that, he went to the laser and calibrated it, and then it was time to start cutting.

He did my right eye first, because it was worse and would take longer. First he put a screen over my left eye, and taped my right eyelashes away. The he used a small forceps to push them further apart. He put more freezing drops on the eye. Then he used a marker to place orientation dots on the protective eye cover, to help him replace the flap when it was lifted away. He attached a suction ring to the eyeball in order to keep it from moving. At that point, my vision went black. Then he got the automated blade ready and made the flap in a couple of seconds. When he pulled it away, it looked like he was lifting a piece of plastic wrap from my eye. He positioned the laser over the eye, and turned it on. It was like looking down a narrow tube with a red light at the end. The laser made a loud tapping sound as it burned the cornea 20 times per second. With each pass, the tube made a 20-degree rotation, and over time, the laser light went from a distorted blob to a smooth red circle. The surgeon kept saying things like, "Good. It's going great." I imagined it was a charade for my benefit -- "It's going great... (Nurse, hand me the blood pack and a sponge)... We're half-way through... (get the sutures ready)... How are we doing?". The machine beeped twice, and it was moved away. The corneal flap was replaced and smooted out with a tiny sponge, and then a protective contact lens was placed over it. And it was done. The whole thing took maybe two minutes.

The same procedure was done on the left eye. I suddenly felt nervous. There was no turning back now, and maybe my luck had run out. Then it was over and I sat up. The surgeon asked me to look at the clock on the wall, which I could see clearly. There was a milky haze, but he said it should clear up in a few days. I thanked the surgeon and shook his hand. When I got back to the waiting area, I made my follow-up appointment for the next day.

When I got home, I found I couldn't do much with the hazy vision. I couldn't read. I couldn't see the computer screen. I spent the rest of the day listening to music and putting drops in my eyes at regular intervals. By seven o'clock, the haze had cleared to a point where I felt confident enough to go for a walk. There were halos around the street lights, but I could read house numbers and watch the constellations. How long, I wondered, before I take it for granted?

I went to work the next day. As I was leaving my apartment, I had the feeling that I had forgotten my glasses, then remembered I didn't need them. Halfway down the stairs, I realized I had forgotten my cell phone, security badge and clip of business cards.

Back at the clinic on my lunch break, I again waited, but only 30 minutes this time. The surgeon checked my eyes to see if the flaps had wrinkled up, and if I was the one percent of peole who develop an infection. Everything was great, and he said I was doing very well. He had me read an eye chart, and told me my vision was now 20/25, and that it would get better once the haze clears up. He removed the contact lenses, and severely reduced my medication. He said I could do pretty much anything I was doing before, but warned me not to rub my eyes for the next few days.

I returned to work. My co-workers surrounded me and started asking me all sorts of questions about the procedure and the results. Some of them said they were now thinking about getting the same thing done, but had been worried about the risks because of some medical horror stories from the States.

November 27, 2000

I Demand a Recount

I voted for the green party -- no, the other green party. Really, it was a no-brainer. The Communists were slipping in popularity, and Natural Law just hasn't been the same since the Great Leader left the party to work on other projects.

Here are the results, courtesy of CANOE.

December 5, 2000

Sens Win!

I got a free ticket to watch the Senators play Buffalo at the Corel Centre. Good seats, too, in the first tier behind the players' bench. It was part of a PR campaign by one of the contractors working on the new Nortel building. The department got ten tickets to share.

My one regret is that I only got a brief look in the Senatorium. Things weren't as overpriced as I had expected (T-shirts for only $26). I drove there with a co-worker. He likes hockey, but he isn't a fan. I knew more about individual players than he did, and he lived in Montreal for a year. We were supposed to meet the rest of the group at the Hard Rock Cafe, but we found out later that they had gone to the Royal Oak tavern instead. Brush With Fame: I thought I saw Eric Weinrich standing in line at the Hard Rock. He looked very similar to the player recently interviewed on "NHL Cool Shots", except he was wearing thin wire-rim glasses.

We got beer and poutine at a counter, since there was no room in the restaurants, and then we spent five minutes trying to find somewhere to sit, ending up standing at an empty counter. They only served Canadian and Coors Light draft, and it cost $5.50 for a glass, $11 for a double. We got the doubles, which were served in Slurpee-sized plastic cups filled to the brim. Some Calgary businessmen stopped by us, and asked about the teams.

The game was terrific. The commentators on "The Team" said to expect a dull game, and that Buffalo would win 4-2. On the contrary, it was quite good. Ottawa won, and didn't choke in the third period.

December 7, 2000

Feedback Loop

It's time for the annual performance review with the new (one year) Priorities program. It's supposed to happen at least twice a year, but people are just too busy, and asking people for feedback is generally asking for trouble, given the whiny nature of engineers. And really, it's very similar to the old performance review system, but the acronyms are different.

There are four forms to fill out, and one of them is a customer feedback form, which employees are supposed to send to customers, managers, and peers to get constructive criticism. I think I'm the only person intending to use these forms, because my manager stopped by and was very interested in how I was filling them out, and who I was sending them to. I'm sending one to the network administrator, and my manager joked that he's expecting to see my forms with the admin's name on them. While filling out the forms, I realized I hadn't done much all year -- just one big project that keeps on growing, breaking down, growing some more, breaking down again, etc. My review is Thursday. If I'm lucky, it'll be at Don Cherry's.

December 14, 2000

"No value can be placed on the work you do."

The year-end performance review went pretty well. It was supposed to be at 9 a.m., but both my manager and I were busy all day, so it didn't happen until 4 p.m. My manager looked at my list of accomplishments and said, "Is this all you did?" He added a few more things to the summary before rating me on each of them. He glanced over the rest, and signed it. We spent some time talking about the network administrator. His review is tomorrow, and based on the manager's comments, he's going to get hammered pretty hard, but not fired (yet).

Anyway, this review is just an exercise. The bonus for this half of the year were decided a while ago, and the next one won't happen for a few months. The equation for the increases can get rather complicated, and involves group-wide performance in a way that minimizes individual failure. Everyone appreciates that.