Office Christmas Party

We had our office Christmas party held last December 14 and I think our HR did a great job with organizing the whole thing. In my years of working for the company, it has been different every time. Last year, it was a show type environment wherein there was Elvis impersonator entertaining us with his rendition of Elvis songs while we were eating lunch from the buffet. Afterwards, there was a hypnotist that did a splendid show of "mind-controlling" a bunch of my colleagues. That was fun.

This year, the theme was Candy Land. HR transformed the office lobby into a candy decorated venue. They said it took about 4000 pieces of edible chocolates and candies to do so on top of the candied apples stren all over the place. Now, that's too much sugar for me. But it was nice. There was no entertainment around but lunch was also good. They had set up the lunch to be in a family type environment wherein everything was on your own table shared with 7 other colleagues.

After lunch, everyone went to the lobby to enjoy the sweets. I only got one piece of chocolate and that was it for me. I guess seeing all those sweet things out there just made me feel full. I wanted to indulge some more but the little man on my shoulder cautioned against it.

We have our own team Christmas Party coming up but that's another tale to tell.

And Again....

It happened again. The same people that caused the issues to our database environment for the last couple of months did the same mistakes again. Not just for this week but for last week as well. And it's only now that I found out just because some user asked some questions. It's really bad if the questions are raised from the users themselves but they're the best indicator of what's going on. It's their data.

But as I said, the same folks who had caused me and the user community a lot of grief the last couple of months did the same thing all over again at the start of this month. I raised the question to them if this is going to be an ongoing thing every month since there has been no real break for me since the first time it happened. Of course I was being sarcastic but someone just had to voice something out.

The sad part is that management is shielding this group from the enduser community and I'm the one being pounded day in and day out by the users. Like I'm the one to be blamed for the whole mess. Right now, I feel numb on that. Two months of pounding can't really hurt anymore after awhile.

I get an email from Monster.com on job openings everyday and I have to say it's been looking really tempting as the days go by. I hate to start the job hunting process though since I know that I will follow through the whole thing if I start it. Maybe I'll just wait a few more poundings.

I guess you can call me a masochist.

Thanksgiving in Orlando, Florida

I spent Thanksgiving Day in Orlando, Florida. The office had hold off the rest of my vacation days I have left for the year. I have a total of 7 days left and it's almost the end of the year. Normally, it has to be used this year or end up losing them next year. In my case, it was an exception. They carried it over for next year. On top of that, they gave me the whole week of Thanksgiving to rest.

But it didn't came in that easy. I was recalled to the office on Monday to fix some things for one of our client. But after that it was smooth sailing. I left for Orlando Tuesday night and arrived Wednesday late afternoon. A total of 17 hours driving time. But that gave me a lot of time to ponder on things.

I immediately went to the Universal Studios park that afternoon to check out the rides. I started with the MIB ride which I thought was cool. I did that twice since the line was not that long. I also went to the Jaws ride which was a disaster since they had to close up early due to a technical failure. That's 30 minutes of wait time down the drain.

After dinner, I decided to get the much needed sleep my body has been craving. I slept like a log that night but woke up bright and early to be in line for all the other attractions in the park. The next few days was just awesome as I lost myself to the attraction as well as the expenses incurred.

I drove back Saturday morning and didn't get back home until Sunday afternoon. It was tiresome but was really worth it. With all the new expenses I have to pay, I am more motivated to go back to work again.

All for the wrong reasons.

I Spoke Too Soon

I spoke too soon. Just when the dust started settling down at the office, another "scheduled" change was implemented over the weekend which had me on the phone last Sunday as I try to provide direction on what needs to be done to what. At least this time, another team has been affected with the change and they are up to their necks holding their fort. Now they know what I have been feeling the last 3 months.

It's the middle of the week and everything seemed to be panning out nicely for me. I have the occasional issues here and there but nothing that I can't handle. Most of these are overflows from the other team and most of what I have to do is to verify that the flow is going in as it should. Unlike before where I had to check the whole process.

The sad part is that this whole exercise will be done again this weekend. The good news is I have a list of those things that I have to watch out for. The only problem now is that if there will be any undocumented issues popping up. I can feel goosebumps on me already.

And they have the Christmas party scheduled next week.