The dojo baby is now 2 year old. She is such a cutie. She is finally talking more than a word or two. Monday she insisted I wasn't just Suz (pronounced Sooooooooooz) but I was Mommy Suz. Whenever she comes over, after hugs it is "boop the nose" time.

mini-meara:

Consuela, I'm glad your sister is okay!

Ugh, msbelle. Get out of there.

Oh hey, the io9 interview with Pete went live? I didn't know. I was stuck in the hell that is known as sprint planning. And I get to do it again tomorrow! I think wandering out for extra coffee is in my future.

Well, there's astronaut ice cream. Is that still a thing? And Dot's, or some name like that? You could get it out of vending machines, I want to say at movie theaters. Never tried that one, but the freeze dried stuff I liked.

Suzi, what a lovely tradition. The dojo baby sounds like a doll.

Consuela, that's seriously disturbing. May she find a safer and more reassuring route.

msbelle, may you find a new job where you love being there as much as they love having you on board. This place has sounded extremely toxic for a while.

Oh god, my boss is having a meltdown and going completely schizophrenic on me and clamping down into control-freak territory like she does when something else in her life is spiralling out of her control.

I was given a project months ago: plan Children's Vegetable Garden. This will be used by the Education Department in all of their programs. So I coordinate with ChEd on what they want theme-wise, and they leave the specific plant selection to me. It's already the end of March, and I need to put in the seed order and start propagating, and I need grow lights. There's also not enough room in the greenhouse, but the Education Center has an 11' wide south facing window. Everyone, including Boss, agrees that this is a fantastic location to grow the plants, for cuteness and immediate educational value, right there in the classroom.

Boss is afraid we don't have enough grant money ($9,000) to spend $120 on grow lights. I investigate the marijuana lights in the basement with our facilities manager, and we and the Ed department agree that they will blind any kid under four feet tall. I explain Boss' concern about finances. Facilities manager says he'll donate the grow lights and take the tax write off. Problem solved?

No.

I explain the sitch to Boss, and she says that she has a line on a dude who might have grow lights to donate. Yay, but couldn't you have mentioned this before? Then apparently she went to the Ed Dep. and the Facilities Mgr and flipped her lid about who the hells idea was it to grow the plants in the Ed Center.

So, she seemed perfectly happy to grow the plants there with the free blinding lights dug out from the basement, but suddenly deems that there is/will be enough room in the greenhouse if the lights have to be bought by us or the FM.

So, that's confusing.

And then there's her insistence that there is room for everything in the GH, in which case, lights would never have been an issue.

I managed to leave work without bumping into her again. I'm hoping she'll have cooled her crazy over the evening, but I'm still dreading some kind of sit down tomorrow, like I've been undermining her authority.

She gave the project to me.

This is not our project, we are working in service to the Children's Ed Dep.

WTF?

Any advice on how to deal with a crazy control freak who is assuming responsibility that, in the end, is not hers?

I don't know if this was mentioned but 10 of Michelle Shocked's next tour dates were cancelled. It looks like the one that wasn't the person who could cancel it is out.

I'm kind of interested in seeing if her response ends up being a grudging, insincere "my words were taken out of context" type apology or if she's going to double down and go on tour with the Westboro Baptist Church.

Double down, Michelle, double down!

Msbelle, you and that job are no fit. You have enough other places to get stress. I hope you can simplify this.

I learnt how to capture HTTP headers of an authentication request this morning. Its stuns me how badly some people can ask questions.

We had our company wide go git 'em meeting today, and it added to a bit of the presentation I gave yesterday, and I decided to talk to my boss about encouraging an atmosphere (or plain just FORCING people--I'm easy) in which people can raise risks as early as possible, instead of diving down dead ends and spinning their wheels. I raised an example where I had had to guess questions to ask the developers about what might be wrong, so I could chaperone them talking to the person who can address the issue. The person upstairs. The person they've been email with daily. And the person to whom they didn't want to say "Actually, I don't get that. Can you explain?"

And then developer #1 handed off to #2, and #2 did exactly the same thing. It's flawed to expect the analysts and project managers to speak for developers. They need to be able to say things out loud in order to brainstorm and problem solve outside the arena in which they are not getting results.

So I named names and explained that to my boss, and that our current solution (not managing the developers at all) wasn't working. I now need to write it up with timelines, and I'm sure incompetent developer will never trust me again, but when she tells me at the penultimate step to deployment that she doesn't understand the assignment? SPEAK SOONER. You are the experts, and when it first doesn't make sense to you is when everyone else needs to be aware. Not two weeks later when you've run out of excuses for missing your deadline again and again.

Documentation. Go new company values!

Julie,

I gotta tell you that the "marijuana lights" phrase made me stop and reread your post 3 times. I have so many questions about that...but not helpful.

Here's what I do when I'm dealing with crazy cakes:

a) appear conciliatory and apologize for misunderstanding

b) repeat and write down instructions

c) repeat, "Oh, it was my mistake I thought I had authority to solve this problem and I didn't want to trouble you unnecessarily if I found an acceptable solution."

d) can you explain why you would prefer that solution to this one? Perhaps I am not seeing the big picture: how does that solve this problem?

e) I am concerned about time because we need to plant these seeds soon. Do you think your proposal will help me get started on this soon?

I'm kind of interested in seeing if her response ends up being a grudging, insincere "my words were taken out of context" type apology or if she's going to double down and go on tour with the Westboro Baptist Church.

The first one.

>[link]

Although to be fair, it looks like she's not blaming anyone for misunderstanding, but herself for not making it clear what she was saying.

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