This week has been probably the most aggravating week in my lengthy career as a public-sector bureaucrat. The sheer amount of stereotypical bureacratic bullshit, passive-aggressive power plays, and examples of the worst impulses of humanity I’ve had to deal with have been somewhat overwhelming, and may have led me to send some more-aggressive-than-is-entirely-professional messages via the office email system.

I started out despondent, and have moved straight through frustrated and into pissed as this has gone on. I’ve done a lot after work hiking and a bit of self-medicating (two dollar craft pints at the grocery store bar FTW, especially when the bartender comps you the occasional beer) to try and push through it. It’s kind of worked, though the tension is really working on the body; huge knots in the muscles in my back/shoulder/neck; I’m actually pretty sure my right shoulder is a good inch or two higher than my left because of it.

I honestly don’t want to really think about it anymore, but until the contracts get awarded and the budget actions get done, I’m stuck doing so.

I also found out that all the work my team and I have put into developing new code for the big standardization of accounting lines effort is getting put on the shelf until at least 2022, which honestly really means that all the work was for naught, as two and a half years from now (if we’re lucky), the target system, having been updated with a few dozen “hot fixes” won’t resemble the system we were building for anyway, so we might as well toss the last couple of years’ development in the trash.

I really feel like blowing a whistle someplace – we are emphatically not being good stewards of the taxpayer’s money. What’s worse is that I seem to be the only one bothered by this.

Little on deck for the weekend; not much in the way of unspoken-for money (thanks, school supply lists!) anyway. I’ll probably dig into getting the mixes right on the tracks I have recorded, and the eldest will be home for the weekend between her intensive three-week and the regular semester, so it’ll be nice to hang with her a bit. Might even manage to sell a guitar, which would be nice, because I could use the cash flow.

Oh, in program notes news, I’ve started adding links back. Check to the right –>

Speaking of tunes, here’s the randomly generated playlist out of Spotify; not bad, with plenty of deep cuts:

1. “Spring Rain” – The Go-Betweens
2. “Down in the Park” – Gary Newman/Tubeway Army
3. “I Love You, Suzanne” – Lou Reed
4. “Tumult Around the World” – Titus Andronicus
5. “Hologram” – Tacocat
6. “Gentle Tuesday” – Primal Scream
7. “I Don’t Remember” – Peter Gabriel
8. “Ghosts of American Astronauts” – Mekons
9. “Tap Dancin’ daddy” – Taylor Hollingsworth
10. “Money” – The Flying Lizards
11. “Lonesome Tonight (live)” – New Order
12. “Another Girl, Another Planet” – The Only Ones
13. “Ring Me Up” – Divinyls
14. “Dogs of Lust” – The The
15. “You’re Dead” – Norma Tanega
16. “(I’d Go The) Whole Wide World” – The Monkees