The start of week three was a good day.

I had a meeting with the S**** project folks early in the day. People brought the information that we needed for planning but a key person didn't come so we figured out what to do next time and finished early. A few people actually smiled at me and asked me questions, some of which I could actually answer. The next meeting we'll start doing the work I'm supposed to be doing which is a relief. Of course then I'll see if I can actually do the job I'm supposed to be doing.

I had lunch with a waggle of Widgeteers. Everyone seems fine, not much new except another person quit that I worked with. The horrifically scheduled projects are progressing. There's a goodbye party Thursday night for my former coworker.

**I had a rant written in here about the idea being circulated that Widgets management "just figured out" what a poor job they have done in training and staffing programmers. I thought it might be a little too "hot" for this forum but it's available in it's entirety if you buy the full subscription to this blog. ;)**

Lunch tomorrow is with a guy who was my manager for a while at my job before Widgets, at a mainframe company (Not Big Blue). He's a contractor at Laws Are Us now, trying to get in as a captive.

In the afternoon I had my first one-on-one with my manager. He told me he was going to explain the goal writing/evaluation system and then embarked on a twenty minute critique of the system. There's a lot he doesn't like about it. Then I made an observation that caused him to launch into a long critique of how projects are managed where he gave me the whole history of how things were done in the past and how they got the way they are now. He's very good at explaining why things are the way they are without talking about individual people.

We managed to squeeze in some discussion of what I was doing. He wanted to know if I could pick up more projects and I thought I could (since I have too much slack which I didn't tell him). My coworker is doing about seven and I have two right now.

Then I asked him if I was supposed to be time tracking. He said "Oh, you're not? That's not good." He showed me the system and sent me the link and gave me some numbers to charge to. We agreed that time tracking was the most irritating thing on earth and changing jobs just to get out of time tracking is an entirely reasonable thing to do. Later, after I was unsuccessful in logging on, he figured out that the department never bought me a license or set up an account for me (which is why I wasn't getting those damn emails from the system). So now I have to wait for someone with a license to leave and then I get to enter all my time all the way back to when I started. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

The free fresh fruit of the day was.....apples. I hope it's pears on Thursday.

Tomorrow: commonly asked questions

What do people wear at Laws (yes, clothes, but what clothes)?
What hours do people work?
Is it possible to not get lost?
Why do I have to wear the dumb employee ID all the time?

If you have any more questions, comment or send them to me.