The Handshake
It’s official now:
It’s official now:
We would all understand ourselves a lot better if we could somehow separate the influences on our mental state and analyze each one individually. Of course, this is futile even if it were somehow possible.
My recent quiz has been about this week, which has been pretty terrible by any measure. I think it might have been worsened because we’re so so close to coming home. I remember getting pretty irritable before we came home last time. But I know on an objective basis this has been really bad conditions.
The system gurus who designed our new architecture only tested our stuff for one month of activity. Upon the second month closing, a lot of stuff blew up in strange, unique ways. I am the only person locally who has done the research on the root cause and understands how to fix the problem.
I feel like this situation is kind of a hand grenade being tossed around and some people do not want to get close enough to the issue to take any heat.
This is not a computer programming problem or something from my end. People act like it is. This is a process problem with a technical but logical solution. But, the logic I’m applying here is engineering logic, troubleshooting, like you would employ when you fix someone’s computer or something.
The people adept at this activity cannot see how it isn’t obvious, but my observation is that there is another group of people who just don’t follow that thought process. They look at things differently, which is an asset until you get cornered into a pure troubleshooting situation.
As I have said about geometry proofs and programming in general, a troubleshooter sees a problem as a limited world with a finite set of moving parts and tools. You isolate the problem and then look at your toolbox to see what you can throw together. I compared myself to a surgeon yesterday coming out and saying, “I did everything I could do.” In a limited world, you can reach the end of your tools.
I am writing this now because I have dropped an 859 line file into this miserable bulk uploading system we have. If this file goes through I will drop another <100 line file, then we will do some extra processing and I will have thousands of lines to drop, most likely. This should really all get done today.
The file was just picked up. The system is running at 400% the maximum expected lead time. Busy day.
Hopefully something successful will come from this, or I will have bad news to break this evening…
Who would have known the best Turkish translation of “Retail Finance Fees” is in fact “Other Products and Services”?
SAP is a vastly complex, configurable, but also strict system. We (a very Global We) have put an overlay atop this system that makes it much less configurable but still very complex. We’re virtually disallowed to create new “material” codes (finance fees are a material in SAP land), and the ones we have suck. We don’t charge finance fees from my area, but we need a code to get other stuff charged.
Luckily, we’re not an English locale, because we DO have control over the localized translation of each product description. So, as long as your customers do not receive English printouts from SAP, you can translate the items into any description you want.
The last two weeks have been pretty crazy. We made it out for another trip (the picture captioning backlog is now epic, poor Kristin), but the bread of that vacation sandwich has been very difficult. We basically have the books closed now for the first time in the new system, and from the financial side things look really good. We have to get some people problems fixed, though.
You don’t have to look too hard to see the outpourings of a desire to come home. From the weird foot removal dreams (signifying perceived inability to move, according to Dr. Internet) to the sudden desire to clean out my desk just now, my mind is wrapping things up a lot sooner than the company is getting around to it.
I think feeling the project begin to unwind is a big part of all this. There is still work to be done, but it’s responding work rather than anticipatory work. I was enjoying the planning side of things, and I feel like any responding work I do is taking the opportunity to learn away from someone who will do it after I’m gone.
That’s a hard thing to communicate here once you get a measure of experience and knowledge. The role of ‘Trainee Fire Fighter’ does not exist; you go from ‘Idiot Who Can’t Extinguish Fires’ to ‘Expert on Fire Fighting’, and they’d rather use the Expert while he’s here and start over with an Idiot at the last possible moment.
We have a pretty exciting two months coming up, which eases a lot of this unease.
Hopefully to close this issue permanently, please check the attached customer codes for a general block and/or a block on 06.
If there is a general block, please unblock general, reblock 02 and 03, and unblock 06 as described below.
If there is a block on 06, please remove this block.
Attached File: All Blocks.xls
Sometimes, in the depths of techncial SAP work, you just can’t say it without saying the same word 500 times.
“This is part of the Q3 results appraisal wherein the attached excel spreadsheet would replace the earlier file, the difference being the fact that we are not asking for commentaries from all OUs for all cash flow movements during the quarter. But we would need commentaries for working capital movements more than $100m to comply with DFJ requirements for which a the DFJ Working capital template would be sent on WD9.The change in the process is to avoid duplication of efforts in filling the commentaries.”
“Retail Peacocking”
Source kept anonymous and not me.
The art of establishing seniority and importance through subliminal or indirect methods. Often used to deflect responsibility. Unknown in most other business units.
I always rolled my eyes when people said I would stop noticing the calls to prayer after a while. It took me a pretty long time, but I do think it’s happening now.
In that kind of weird self-contradictory way, I just heard one and was surprised about hearing it, which I guess is backwards proof I’m not hearing them as much. It’s also Friday, so I think they crank the amps up a bit for the sabbath.
“If extrapolations continue at the current rate, panic will reach theoretical maximum by 2020.”
“Al Gore markets new ‘extrapolation offset’ financial products, which reduce an individual’s or organization’s extrapolation exponent by one power each. Underlying math unknown.”
“Boehner Commission uncovers Al Gore’s secret extrapo-dollar boondoggle: a gold idol of himself playing bongos riding on a flying tree, dubbed the log-o-rhythm.”
“MIT researchers confirm: pizza cheese gooeyness probably not the best independent variable on which to base important extrapolations.”
“90% of in-print school history textbooks currently blame cheese gooeyness for all problems since FDR.”
“Teachers unions picket against replacing textbooks or changing cheese curricula: ‘One decade should see twenty raises and one curriculum change.’”
“Pizza Hut CFO: ‘If thinning out our cheese will save the world, we’re fine with that.’”
“Burger King launches pizza business venture with flagship product ‘The Real Man’, boasting thicker cheese than ever seen in a street-legal food product.”
I’ve never been able to describe fully the linguistic intention behind my “pencilheads” moniker for those folks who just drive you nuts in a relentless attempt to find accuracy, meaning, and/or fault in every insignificant figure or fact.
But I did think of one thing:
The problem being a pencilhead is the same problem seen in all forms of sharpening: if you worry too much about staying sharp, you stop worrying about removing too much material.