January 2005 Entries

Finally,  proof that direct deposit payroll can work.  Thank god they don't have a competency test for setting it up.

There's nothing like the joy of sitting in on training.  The ceaseless fight to suppress yawns and avoiding the temptation of nodding off.  I suppose I will be tired right out by the end of the day and will easily sleep the night away.  Hopefully I don't dream about green screen applications.

Will there be another payday scandle?  Will the accountant actually figure out direct deposit to my bank?  Stay tuned for more exciting accounting news.........

So I've started this new job and even during the interview, I was told that the application being built was slated for a Fall 05 release. Based on what I knew that the program was required to do, I figured that we'd make that date working the minimum daily hours. Today I heard how people were seriously concerned about making the deadline. Hmmmmm. After hearing that I decide to reminice on the past three weeks productivity and keep an open eye for "little" blackholes for time. Here's this week so far: <ul>   <li>(Every) Monday  morning meeting on the progress/status of development.  Not much to report I was told, so it...

In my prior job I was know for my willingness to create very advanced TSQL queries.  I have written queries exceeding 10,000 characters in length without any WHERE clause.  I know this because we stored the queries in a database table which had a VARCHAR(8000) column, and I had to change it to be TEXT.  The same query had CASE statements embedded three deep and derived tables embedded three deep, but it was because I need to flatted data in ways the data structure never was intended to. Now I'm writing simple financial reports (Income Statements, Trial Balances, etc.) and, due to the fact we're using Data Dynamics' Active Reports,...

Shannon Noll Aussie Idol runner-up in 200(3?). I was down there when he sang this on the show and saw it on TV. It's not too often that modern artists send a tingle down my spine, but this did it. <A href = "http://www.click2music.com.au/streaming?promo=tvc_vid&amp;id=32200">What About Me?</A>

I got to work five minutes early yesterday morning and found that I was the first person there. This would normally be no problem except that I'm leery of disarming the alarm system since my instruction on doing this was conducted by a person who admitted to consistantly setting it off. With that in mind, and no desire to deal with a security company or the cops, I waited for the next person to arrive. One would think that they would be there very shortly due to the start of the day. Well I was so wrong again. Fifteen minutes later, and only ten minutes late, a couple...

Last Friday was my first pay day.   On the first day of my job I spent some time with the company accountant to ensure that the direct deposit of my pay would work without a hitch.  Hell I even double checked this.  Sure enough, my pay doesn't show up in my account.  Turns out that she missed one portion of my account info, subsequently leading to my bank refusing the transfer because it couldn't find the account. So this morning when I get to work I mention this to her and received the very stern comment that "I asked you to verify the information that I was using...

Once again I'm going to indulge in the systematic and destructive analysis of my new workplace and coworkers. The 3rd Party......I remember when this was an event that started shortly after the bars closed (the 1st being a pre-bar get together and the 2nd being the bar). Now the 3rd party is a group of intelligent (hopefully) and specialized programmers making things that I, and other application developers, would rather spend $300 dollars on than go through the hassle of creating it. My new development team coworker (why there is only one is another diatribe entirely) has completely ruled out the use of 3rd party modules or controls for...

I've been working with the software and the data structure at my new job for a week now and, although some things about the job are nice, today placed me right in the middle of a relationship quagmire. The data structure is ID based, relational and, for the most part, normalized. Today I started writing queries for the first report to be built in my newly created data driven reporting structure. I chose to build a very simple product listing report first to find glaring errors in my new code as quickly as possible. So this report is three columns of data; code and description fields from one table...

I have successfully completed week one of my new job. The people at the company are very nice, leaving a welcome card and sweets on my desk the first morning and buying me lunch that same day. I've been placed in the office of purgatory until the desk ordered for me comes in. So I am way off in the back corner of the office far from anyone at all. They're wise planning has the new desk arriving some time next month, so I'll be working by my lonesome for quite some time. The first two days of work were mostly meetings to learn about the company, the...

After five glorious months of reduced stress (and reduced pay cheques) I am officially back in the work force tomorrow.  I'm not overly excited about the company, or the work itself, but perhaps I've judged the book by it's cover. The similarities that I recognized, when I was talking with my new boss during the interview process, are the largest concern that I have at this point.  This company is at the exact same spot that my previous employer was when I started there 4 years ago.  They are rebuilding a legacy application (green screen) with a new technology.  The company is not very large, subsequently the development team...