ironSoap

I’m worried. You may have heard that my brand new company is preparing to reduce 10% of their workforce by the end of the year and while I don’t have any specific reason to fear that my position is on the chopping block, I don’t have any reason to think it isn’t either.

Why would a company hire a guy and then lay him off a few weeks later? Well, I hope they wouldn’t, but since these layoffs seem to be based on positional elimination rather than merit-based consideration, it could be as simple as someone saying, “This group was important before, but we decided their work could be done by someone else.”

The worst part is that usually I don’t fret too much about layoffs. Normally I wouldn’t really care. Fine, fire me, get me severance and some time off to find a new place. I can get a job, I think even in this economy. People always need Ops guys. Someone’s got to make sure these systems stay up and running. They don’t get to fall over and drop service just because Wall Street is hosting the Greed/Remorse Olympics this year. The problem now is that I love this job. Reading Valleywag you’d think people were tying nooses in their cubes, but everyone here has been warm and helpful and positive in the face of some pretty tough situations.

I’m worried not because I’m scared I’ll be unemployed but because I’m scared I’ll lose this job. It’s still early to make these kinds of calls, I know this. But after two companies whose products and culture failed to interest or engage me, I feel home at work more than I have since late in my tenure at the City of Tracy. Which means, sadly, this is the first time since then that I felt like leaving there was the right decision.

So yeah, I don’t want to leave, but there’s nothing I can do to convince them to let me stay.

Something Happier

By popular demand (ie Ryan keeps pestering me) here are my opinions on the new season of TV. I haven’t watched nearly as much as in previous years, so I’ll also roll my opinions of the returning shows into the thoughts on the new ones.

• Fringe - I like the show but I missed the first few episodes due to a TiVo programming gaffe. I watched a couple later episodes and decided I liked what I saw but was frustrated enough to not make it appointment-TV. I figure I’ll let it play out and if it survives a whole year I’ll catch up on DVD.
• Raising the Bar - Something od about my taste: I think the “Law” parts of Law & Order shows are the best parts, but I have yet to find a show exclusively about lawyers that doesn’t make me want to jam a rolled-up legal pad through my nostril and into my brainpan. TNT’s new vehicle for Mark-Paul Gosslear’s hair is no exception and I couldn’t even make it through the pilot.
• Gary Unmarried - Going beyond the usual pain of awkward anti-chemistry in a new sitcom cast, the writing was flat and the premise was weak. I made it through the pilot but couldn’t make it stay in my Season Pass list.
• Do Not Disturb - Worst. Manmade thing. Ever.
• The Mentalist - Far and away my favorite new show, it took a bit to get over the fact that it’s just USA’s Psych without the father and not played for laughs, it manages to take the intriguing premise of Psych and do away with that version’s show’s disposable nature.
• How I Met Your Mother - The curse of the early season on HIMYM remains with the first few episodes being a bit weak, but the most recent near-wedding episode was fantastic. This show is far better than it’s relative obscurity suggests.
• Heroes - I could write a whole essay on what’s wrong with Heroes, but if you happened to catch the recent Entertainment Weekly cover story on it, they touched on most of my complaints: Life or death stakes are a joke, the time travel plot device has (as predicted) derailed both the best character and the overall story arc and each time the show starts to display some promise it bungles it with lazy writing and the typical traps that plague most network TV shows. I’m committed until the end of the Villains arc, but if it doesn’t get a whole lot better very quickly, I’m out.
• The Office - Still funny, still appointment-worthy, it seems to struggle a bit under the weight of its Jim/Pam legacy. As Nik pointed out, there would be nothing wrong with having them just be happy for a while in the backseat but the need for writers to constantly create conflict when none need exist is casting a grim shadow over the slow progression of the season and I fear a carnivorous aquatic creature hopping moment may be imminent.

So. Where was I?

Ah yes. I was writing. Blog entries and various other tidbits of collated words designed to keep people more or less in the loop. The loop being, of course, a belt loop. Possibly a loup like one might use to examine a piece of jewelry, but I’m not sure why I’d want to keep anyone in one of those.

Here’s what is happening and so you don’t get disoriented, I’ll resort to the warm comfort of bullet points.

• I work for Yahoo! (exclamation mandatory, no lie) now. I realize that for the first time that simple sentence binds me under a thorough blog policy mandated by my employer and I could, like, get fired for writing about them or me or work or anything probably. But I’m willing to risk it because a) it’s the first time I’ve been able to tell people where I work and not have them give me the 1,000 yard stare and a blank nod and b) I really want to talk about Yahoo! related stuff and, well, I can’t unless you have the appropriate context and disclaimers. So, contextually: I work for Yahoo! and if you catch me saying “[Yahoo! Product] is super fly!” you can cast appropriate scorn and derision upon me for being a corporate shill. Also, disclaimers: I now work for Yahoo! so my words and opinions are my own and do not reflect any official Yahoo! position. Sometimes, they don’t even reflect my own position and I just say stuff to be weird.
• For example, “Kumquats are partially responsible for the recession and I’d like to propose a ballot measure to have them strictly regulated and heavily subsidized by our government. Also, made into pies.”
• Since I’m sort of an “Eat Your Own Dog Food” kind of guy, I’ve been spending the last few weeks re-acclimating myself to the Yahoo! site and associated products. When I found Google years ago I basically latched onto it and never looked back. I don’t know how I got the image in my mind of Yahoo! as a mid-nineties dinosaur that had no further relevance for an insufferable snob elite internet power user such as myself, but there it was. Turns out that in a few weeks of re-evaluation they are: Nearly indistinguishable from Google in terms of relevant search results; Possessing of a customizable home page that, in some ways, surpasses Netvibes; Serving as one of the few legitimately tolerable remainders of the misguided “portal” craze.
• My job isn’t flashy at Yahoo!, but it is important. I’m responsible for making sure the other stuff you use the site for stays up and running. Basically Not Mail. But Sports. Finance. News. That sort of thing. In practice it’s almost identical in execution to my last job only I’m not dealing with the unique masochism of telephony technologies which is a phrase much like ice cream cooking.
• Eventually my shift will be 10:30 to 19:00 which will—I hope— allow me to skip most of the traffic in transit to and from Sunnyvale. For the duration of my training, I’m working earlier like 7:30-16:00 or so. What that means is that for a couple of short, blissful weeks I can take the special Yahoo! East Bay Shuttle that goes from a Park and Ride about ten minutes from our apartment directly to Yahoo! HQ. I love not having to drive in traffic, but I love letting someone else drive in it for me even better. It’s a sensation I can best describe as “dreamy.”
• Nik and I celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary last week. Because I had arranged for the time to be available as vacation from my previous employer, I stipulated (lightly) that I would very much like to have it off at the new job even though it would literally be me taking vacation during my training. They accommodated the request which I thought was cool of them and Nik and I had a very enjoyable time off.
• We also made a long-delayed trip to the Shark Tank to see a home game as part of the festivities and we were able to use some of a gift my parents had given me for my birthday (remember that? January? Anyone?) to score the best seats I’ve ever had for a Sharks game. Section 102. Row 17. Right on the ends. It was glorious. The game would have been a triumph for the seats alone, even if it had been some 1-0 snoozer. But instead we were treated to the most exhilarating game I can recall attending. Dramatic see-saw scoring, fisticuffs, a full 5-on-3 penalty (killed by the Flyers), 40+ shots taken by the Sharks and an incredible OT victory. It was so great I was giddy. It was like this: “Man. I’m really giddy.”
• One thing we didn’t enjoy was having to deal with our apartment complex’s maintenance crew. And by crew I mean one overweight guy and his skinny underling who does all the work. This marks the fourth time they switched out our washer because the “renovated” one that came with the unit broke in under six months and they replaced it with a circa 1972 model that had—I’m not making this up—faux wood paneling and was louder than a herd of bison playing rugby in the laundry room. They brought a new model in and forgot to take the safety rod out so we ran it through a few cycles (they did a few of their own to test and make sure I didn’t forget how to twist a knob or something) and the result broke some pivotal component that allowed it to spin during the crucial spin cycle. So they had to interrupt our anniversary to haul up and install a new washer. It was very romantic.