Sphere of Archives

January 2, 2002

Post-Vacation Stress Syndrome (PVSS)

I'm back home. The plane ride was good, very calm, went by quickly. My friend Ken picked me up (he wanted to use my Costco card) and dropped me off. I immediately set to clearing the driveway of melting ice. The front walk was covered with ice, so I salted it. There were icicles above the door; the snow on the roof over my bathroom had melted. Then I went to buy food, but I met my neighbour Steve first. I noted the sun going down as we chatted on the street about his business venture (drilling holes for water and gas lines), which is going so well that he has bought a second truck, and he may be getting an office building, too.

Got the food, got my mail (junk mail and bills), listened to the single blank message on my answering machine, checked my e-mail (none, nobody likes me). Everything was fine, except it was a little chilly, so I checked the thermostat. It read zero (uh-oh). I flipped the little switches, and nothing happened (double uh-oh). A call to my parents didn't provide any new information. In the end, I called the gas company for a repairman. While I waited, knowing I'd have to pay $100 just for the privilege of having him stop by, I contemplated living without heat this winter. He replaced the dead furnace motor, and said I was lucky to have caught it before the temperature dropped and my pipes froze. The cost of my first expense of the New Year -- $612.

But it wasn't all bad. I spent more time in my laundry room than I ever have before. I am going to put some rough shelves in there.

January 4, 2002

Money, Money, Money! Where Is My Money?

Things were bad last night. The package for the "Les Volieres de Mont-Tremblant" time share I accidentally bought arrived over the holidays. Reading it just reminded me of what an idiot I am. Adding to the head-banging fun was the maintenance bill for 2001 ($360 + tax), and my designated week (Week 10, a good week), plus a friendly warning that if I don't pay in a timely matter that I will be in default and the company will repossess the contract. I thought I had paid it when I originally signed up. I just lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling empty. The only good news is that there have been "some inquiries" about the ad I placed on VacationsOnly.

Today, instead of working, I checked up on my finances. First, I called the Les Volieres customer service number this morning. The woman there said she would look in the records. It didn't seem so bad. I can always rent it out, or bank it. Next, I called my mortgage agent, who said I should call the Bank of Montreal directly to check what rate I'm getting. Then I tried calling my penny stock broker in Toronto, but both lines were disconnected. I should probably be a little worried, but I have paper records of the transactions so I should be able to use any broker. Unless, of course, those little venture companies have gone out of business. That would mean I'm screwed.

January 8, 2002

Civ3, My One Weakness

It's a serious shortcoming. I can't stop thinking about Civ3. Hours pass by and I don't even realize it. I start after work, and suddenly it's seven and time for supper. And just when I'm getting back into it, the clock says it's just after midnight. All I can say is, "At least I'm not as bad as ..."

... my friend Ken.You might have seen nicotine addicts who have just quit. They rub their yellowed fingers, unconsciously flick their eyes to other smokers' cigarette-laden hands. Ken is like that now with his computer. Once, as I was leaving his apartment, he turned on his computer to play. It was a little after 1 am. "I've still got a few hours before I have to go to bed," he said, adding, "I don't start work until nine."

January 10, 2002

Financial News

I finally found out what happened to my stock broker Arlington Securities. They're facing a disciplinary tribunal on February 4, for not meeting Ontario Securities Commission guidelines, and they are going to be de-listed. I called the OSC to ask what I should do. As soon as I said "Arlington", the woman on the line interrupted and told me what was going on. She said I should get official stock certificates to prove my ownership (I've already received half of them), and then I just have to get another broker.

My thoughts turn to Gerry. Is he selling Kirby vaccuums door-to-door? Will he get a job with another firm? He still has my number, so I'll probably find out eventually, unless his license has been revoked. Imagine the call:

EC: Hello?
Gerry: Eric, it's Gerry Salmon calling. How are things going at Nortel?
-- uncomfortable silence --
EC: Augh! I've just been shot! (click).

January 11, 2002

Send Me to Karma Hell

After months of lurking on Plastic, I finally responded to this story. Now I have two karma points! This is the most affirming moment in my life, besides being hired full-time, or maybe birth.

January 13, 2002

Calming Water Fountain Makes Me Want to Pee

I bought a calming water fountain today. I had to re-arrange my whole livingroom so that it would look good and be visible and contribute, but be easy to maintain. I considered putting it in the bathroom, but there isn't enough shelf space. Anyway, I don't want to be calm in the bathroom. So it's working. Typically, the manufacturing is not perfectly level, so I had to fix that. Then I carefully placed the yehua stones -- little smooth, round, mass-produced pebbles -- on the ledges. You might think it's for aesthetic purposes, but I found they're function is to prevent splashing. So, now I can sit in my chair with my cup of tea and copy of "The Hockey News", hearing the soft burbling and drip-drip-drip in the corner.

January 14, 2002

Free Waterbed

My neighbours Steve and Carolyn gave me their waterbed. They were just going to throw it out. It's sitting in pieces in the spare bedroom now. When they said it was free, I just assumed something was wrong with it, but they said no, it was just being replaced. I guess all of their friends already have waterbeds, and that's why they asked me to take it. Or maybe it's cursed!

January 27, 2002

To Post or... Ahhh, who cares

I can't believe I last posted on January 14. Just think, all this time and I haven't told you all about exciting stuff like...

... Ken's wife took his Civ3 CD away. She intervened and hid it somewhere (probably not in the apartment). She said he was addicted, and it was for his own good. He gave me ten dollars to burn him a copy, but it failed because of copy protection (Shhh, it's on Gnutella). Then he considered buying another copy, but in the end decided that would just make things worse. A few days later, he was at my house, officially to work on his cabinet, unofficially to "show [me] how Civ3 is really played." I laid on the floor while he gave a play-by-play of his strategy.

... the Canadian board game that never ends. A party with friends resulted in Trivial Pursuit. Listen to me, kids. Friends don't let friends spend FIVE AND A HALF HOURS establishing their level of ignorance relative to each other. At least I had a bottle of wine with me.

... the Nortel gym is closing as part of the company's cost-cutting measures. No more back massages. When they closed the knick-knack store, I did nothing because I don't buy knick-knacks. When they raised the prices in the cafeteria, I did nothing because I don't eat there. But now they're closing the gym, and ... oh yeah, I haven't been there since August. Maybe they'll sell the weights at bargain-basement prices as they did with the unused office furniture and lab equipment.

... the stocks I bought from Arlington Securities are almost worthless now. Who knew? I'm selling them for whatever I can get as soon as my BMO account is opened.

February 2, 2002

The Auditor

It's sad when American from the deep south are stranded in Canada. They become despondent. They complain more often about the cold. They say things like, "I can't feel my face" and "Brrrrrrrrrr!", to which I reply, "Stop your whinging, Yank! You don't know what cold is." So it was for Kevin, one of the auditors checking security on the Woodline R&D LAN. A light blizzard meant his flight home was cancelled, and he didn't want to leave his downtown hotel room on his own.

Some of my friends and I took him downtown -- lunch at Las Palmas, beavertails in the market, foozball and air hockey at The Honest Lawyer. He might have enjoyed it. He spent most of his time sipping dark ale and watching other people. We made plans to go out in the evening, but he didn't return my call.

February 5, 2002

Entertaining!

Another late night on the 1xEV-DO project. It still doesn't work. There are software issues ("We don't support that. Or that. That will be in the next release."), documentation issues ("We put the wrong procedure in the manual. Try this one."), and the occasional hardware issue ("The card is dead."). The project is a week-and-a-half behind, and somehow everyone is relying on me to get things working. I don't know how that happened.

What makes it worse is that the Ottawa lab is in a little competition with the Calgary lab to get the first system up. There is an IP expert in Calgary who doesn't know anything about the hardware and software, but sends out e-mail about networking and protocols that sound authoritative, so the managers here listen to him. And always responds to my e-mail bulletins by pointing out subnetting errors, which is good and I appreciate it, but it's all he talks about.

I don't know what's going on with the Ottawa team. There are three project managers -- purchasing, design, testing -- and they give me new action items at every weekly/daily/hourly meeting. For some reason, I can only guess bad communication (I hesitate to say incompetence), their staff keep calling me about purchasing/desing/testing issues, rather than talking to the managers. And gradually it dawned on me. They expect me to set up the entire network, including their test beds. They want me to document everything to pass on to other groups in the company. They want me to help determine which test cases should be run. I'm just a support guy. I'm getting headaches from caffeine withdrawal because I never leave the lab.

So, after another 10-hour day working solely on this project, the manager for testing took me out to dinner at a little Italian bistro in Centrepointe. I let him do the talking. He told me about his years at Ericsson in Montreal, and his recent move to Nortel in Ottawa. We discussed what could be wrong with the network, and what could be done. More action items for me -- ARGH!

February 7, 2002

Standard Deviation

The 1xEV-DO project I'm working hit another little snag. This time, it's the Nortel and Airvana teams butting heads over who's software does and does not meet the standard. A routine status meeting/conference call turned into a working meeting as I listened with my mobile phone while typing new instructions into the computers. The the conference call was tied into another conference call of another on-going meeting so that more people could join in the debate. People from Calgary, Ottawa, Boston and Dallas were having a great argument -- our software meets the standard, your software is non-standard. But it turns out they both meet the standard, but they do it in different ways, hence the confusion. With that issue sort of resolved with "We agree to disagree", they moved on to who would fly in to Ottawa next week to support/provide training on the system. I'd say at least fifteen to twenty minutes of the next hour was spent trying to justify why every team should send someone to Ottawa, and that they must arrive there at the same time. So next week should be lots of fun.

February 8, 2002

Test Case 1: Order Pizza

I don't know why engineers cheer so loud when the technology suddenly works like it's supposed to. Or maybe it isn't supposed to, hence their whoops and claps. The 1xEV-DO system, on which we've been working 10 to 12-hour days for the last week, is finally up. The first data call on the system used MS Messenger to chat with one of the engineer's friends somewhere on the planet. I suggested we should order pizza off the Internet. They laughed, but I was serious.

February 12, 2002

Just... One... More... Test Case

Don't you hate it when all I talk about is work? But I haven't been able to do anything else. I've been working 10 to 12-hour days and on weekends. At least I'm making some headway. Today the visitors from Dallas, Boston and Calgary showed up. We got to work right away -- checking configurations, checking software, checking hardware. Someone was always on the phone to one support group or another. To satisfy the IP expert in Calgary, we decided to "simplify" the system by removing all but the most necessary connections and hardware. We spent about six hours troubleshooting it, resetting everything, putting sniffers on the network to monitor the data packets. Finally, we gave up. The reason it failed: no-one knows. It just didn't work. So, we went back to my original configuration which at least allowed a call to come up. Suddenly, tweaked it a bit, and things started working again at a basic level ("We can ping!"). I thought, this is going to make that guy in Calgary really mad.

The big problem was that the system allowed pings, but didn't allow basic stuff like file transfer or web browsing. It should have worked. The next hour or so was spent trying to debug that. We decided to quit for the evening and go to the Greek Souvlaki restaurant. We had our coats on, when one of the testing engineers decided to try one more test, based on his experience with the 1xRTT project. And it worked! Suddenly everything was working perfectly, at super fast speeds. Dinner was very light-hearted, as a result. The engineer decided he would send the e-mail announcement after dinner, so that the timestamp on the message would have more impact. He said, "Tomorrow is going to be crazy. Everyone will see the e-mail, and all of these managers will go to the lab and want a demo. They'll want to see a call come up and do web browsing. They don't know anything about 1xEV-DO. They just want to see web browsing. All morning it will be like this."

February 14, 2002

Two Thumbs Up

I hope this is the last late night in the lab. It was the longest day ever for 1xEV-DO -- 15 hours -- but everything is done. The team had a late dinner at a Thai restaurant with lousy service. Then it was back to the labs. The important test cases have passed, the documentation is ready to send to the other labs tomorrow morning, and the procedures are familiar to everyone on the Ottawa team. Now comes the next stage, which is setting up the full network in labs across the continent as it was originally planned, and that will be spread out over the next two months. At last, I can coast again.

February 21, 2002

The Move Is On

It's official. The building where I work will be closed this year, probably over the summer or early fall, and everyone will be moved "quickly and economically" to the huge Carling campus in Kanata. The lab where we're going is currently occupied by another group, and from what I've heard, no-one has yet informed them about this change in plans. There has already been at least one heated argument as technicians were installing early some equipment from the old labs to the new one.

I don't know how I will be affected. Certainly, the drive will be a bit longer. I hope to get a window, or at least a view of the mezzanine area (ceramic tile, potted trees, Tim Horton's coffee counter). But the little things matter most in the long run. Do I really want to hang out in the common area and use either one of the two pool tables, or the table hockey game, or the Star Wars video game? Will I really want to read technical documents while sitting in an Adirondack chair in the sun-filled meeting areas? It's hard to say.

February 26, 2002

Network Down

Today was an interesting day at work -- low lows, high highs. The first thing that happened was I checked my voice mail, and listened to a message saying a system had gone down. I checked it out, and found out not only was it down, it was dead. And they had scheduled a demonstration in front of a company vice-president from Texas and some managers in three hours. A half-hour later, as I was working on finding the cause and fixing it, I got a call about another system going dead. This group also had a demonstration in front of the same group of managers. There goes my easy breezy day.

Long story short -- there were hardware failures on a few key pieces of equipment, plus a general software failure. I put the first group on a temporary system so they could do their demo, while I replaced cards and upgraded software. I just ignored the second group, because they know how to fix the parts that usually fail. And then the people in another lab far away called me to help get their system up. By the end of the day, my mobile phone was hot, my ears were chafed, and I was getting a headache from caffeine withdrawal.

February 27, 2002

Hurry! Hurry Hard!

I thought department teambuilding was verboten, unless each individual paid his own way. That policy meant the simple act of going for coffee with someone became the new process for inter-departmental bonding, and no-one put more effort in than was absolutely necessary. Today's teambuilding was an actual event. We played curling at the Neapean Sportsplex for two hours, then sat in the bar and drank beer for another hour while watching the Tournament of Hearts on television. Once again, each one paid his own way, but it was a cheap $10 for everything.

I'm not a good curler. I throw it too soft because I don't want to throw too hard, and my stones always curl far to the side. Although I wasn't given the little trophy for enthusiasm/team spirit (because the awards ceremony is all politics), I think I did pretty well. I think I was the only one yelling "Hard!" as the two middle-aged sweepers on my team gave up on my rocks. A petite Chinese woman won the Best Female Curler award (the manager had taped a paper skirt over the plastic man on the top). She had never curled before, but she got three points in one end, giving her team a win. The best part was that I didn't have to go back to work.

March 2, 2002

NASCAR Dreams

It was a friend's birthday today. We took him to TOP-Kart in Hull, because he loves NASCAR. He brought his own helmet. I had never been before, but my friend Ken had. He said it was fast-paced and exciting, but the arena is full of gasoline fumes that caused him to get sick and vomit at the end of his ride. He insisted several times that it was the fumes, and not motion sickness. Another friend, Jason, was there, too.

We got in our suits, put on the required hairnets and helmets. We were joined by another fourteen people. Then an employee gave a little safety spiel, told us what the flags meant, and what would get anyone kicked off the track without a refund. I know, blah blah blah. Then we got in the little go-kart cars, and off we sped.

At first, I was unsure of how fast I could go without flipping the car. I went pretty fast, and the worst thing that happened was my wheels skidded when I took tight corners, causing me to lose speed and precious seconds. I got caught behind car #1, an old man driver who wouldn't let me pass as he was supposed to. For three circuits I had to follow him because he drove down the centre of the track. When I finally did pass him, I considered giving him the finger. And then I was behind this woman in car #5. Same story, except I only had to follow her around one circuit. After that, things went pretty smoothly. At the end of twenty minutes, the four of us gathered in the bar area to compare notes. I complained about car #1 and the old man that must have been driving it. The driver turned out to be Jason. How embarassing... for him... because I still beat him.

Ken got sick again. I had to pull into a supermarket parking lot so he could puke behind the trash bins. Then, after I dropped off Birthday Boy, he puked again in full view of a couple eating dinner in front of their picutre window. His dry heaving went on and on, for almost ten minutes. Those darn gasoline fumes, he said. Okay, maybe he felt a little motion sickness, but it's mostly the fumes, 90 to 95 percent because of the fumes.

March 19, 2002

I Am Underpaid

My manager admitted it this morning in my performance review. In a private meeting that took less than ten minutes, I found out that I'm a core part of the department with critical skills, that I'm in the group of 85% of the department that is doing well (and not the 5% that will be fired), and that I'm doing the job of Job Classification Index 3 (I'm currently JCI 1). My manager wished he could give me more money, but in lieu of that, I got some stock options priced on Friday. Only a few lucky people in the department are getting them. On the down side, Nortel stock took a tumble yesterday, so they're already worthless. On the good side, their valid for three years -- maybe my luck will change.

March 21, 2002

Winter Is Finally Here

This is fantastic weather! Four days of driving snow, glare ice hidden by snow drifts, Texans demanding isolation pay ("This is the most snow I've seen in my entire life, I'll tell you what."), and the odd power outage. Good times.

March 27, 2002

Soft Sell

Got a visit from the RainSoft Man, the RainSoft Man. Got a visit from the RainSoft Man, RainSoft Water Filtration System Man.

But this time was different from that time share fiasco last year. I've grown up. I'm better now. I just repeated the mantra to myself over and over through the entire presentation: "I have no money." As a result, I was a little more skeptical of everything. First off was the falacy that this was a mom-and-pop international corporation with sienna-tinted homespun values ("Our founder... is 79 years old. He's still on the board."). Riiight. But there was no time to think between the lines. It was on to the super-scientific tests to prove my current water delivery system was, in the presenter's words, "hard... poisonous... cancerous... a time bomb", as in, "Stand back! This glass of water is about to explode!" Riiight. He poured some of my crappy water into a bottle, and then he hooked up his portable purifier (not the kind that I might have installed in my home, mind you, but one very much like it... promise) to my tap and poured some arctic-pure water into another bottle. Then he added some unknown chemicals to each. I don't know what these chemicals were, since he referenced them by some industry brand name, and not the infinitely more useful periodic table. Naturally my crappy water failed the test, while the super pure light water (IBM is a customer!) passed with flying colours. The other tests were the same, but with different bottles of chemicals, each with more stunning visual results. The taste test was probably the best test, and I did note that the filtered water was different. Too bad for the sales rep that I don't confuse "different" with "better." One annoying part of the presentation was that he kept asking me to smell things, despite my repetitive claims that I can't smell. (It's true. I might stink and I wouldn't know it.) Certainly the presenter showed consternation that his mark... I mean, client... is disabled. I guess it's like selling clothes to a blind person.

The last half of the presentation was a series of sweeping generalizations and fallacious dichotomies. I was shown 25-year-old copper piping from some water system somewhere in the world (perhaps India?), and was expected to equate this with the human body. I was told that drinking my "hard" water every day for a year is the same as drinking a block of cement, and that cooking with this water (over time, mind you) was similar to placing a cinder block between my stove element and the pot. My favourite part, though, was the scare tactics with real news stories from the US and Canada to back them up. Sure the stories are almost ten years old and deal with the Toronto or Los Angeles systems, but does that mean they still don't apply to Ottawa's system today? According to the sales rep, absolutely not. So yes, my drinking water is slowly killing me (I might only have fifty years to live!) with carcinogens, contraceptive pills, and hospital blood. Yes, hospital blood. Hospitals (okay, hospitals in Toronto) dump blood in some rivers. The rep was not impressed when I claimed to be a blood dumper too, when I cut myself. I also noted that the drugs in the water supply was a common urban legend that keeps popping up in newspapers around the world, most recently in the LA Times.

The wrap-up was a quick note of the prices. What disappointment that there wasn't a tidy and brightly coloured brochure. Instead the sales rep scribbled some numbers on some tatty lined paper. Bleah. On the good side, that made it easier to say no. No. Nuh-oh. No way. Watch my flappy lips saying "no." N-O. Can you read what my hands are saying? No.