…because that sounds like fun. Trust me, though, this piece comes with a happy, or at least encouraging ending.

In case readers don’t know, after more than a decade adjacent to the industry (working as a functional and process resource supporting development), I took an actual position in an information technology directorate earlier this year. I’m not entirely sure at this point it was the right decision, but it made sense at the time.

As is the case with most jobs, it wasn’t quite what I expected (though this one was farther off the mark than usual), and after eight months or so here, I haven’t gotten all that much closer to a place of comfort or at least establishing a rhythm I can work within. I’ve been spending some of the spare brain cycles I have left (that aren’t dedicated to managing dysfunctional processes or trying to squash imposter syndrome and depression into manageable little boxes) working to figure out why I’m finding things the way I do. I think some of it has to do with local organizational issues (find me offline if you want to talk specifics someday; I’m not going to vent this spleen online), but a larger part of it has to do with the default culture of the software development and information technology industries, which I’m starting to get a picture of after spending most of a year entrenched in it.

Some of these thoughts came to me almost immediately upon arrival, others germinated later, with special attention being paid to my experiences at that conference in Oklahoma the other week, and also due to the unrelated experiences of a friend, which deserve special mention, because she’s a rock star (more on her later).

So, three paragraphs in, here’s my thesis: the information technology industry is pretty damned male centric, and awfully “bro” on top of that, from the people in the jobs to the terminology used. Coming from my previous employment discipline (contracts and procurement), things are very different, and that’s taken some getting used to, even if I’m not thrilled with the fact that I have to get used to it. As you might expect, I’m not exactly your typical bro – I’m the guy who got sand kicked in his face by the alpha males of the world growing up, which has colored my worldview on a fundamental level. Once the fat kid with glasses, always the fat kid with glasses, at least a little bit. I hate to use the word “trigger”, though occasionally, some of those deep-seeded feeling seep up.

My organization, at least the leadership of it, is all male, and a lot of the interaction is fraternity-eque – so much so that I, who finds himself on lowest difficulty setting so to speak, notice. Compared to the average, we’re probably more diverse than the mean, though there’s a
boys club” undercurrent that’s hard to ignore. The business side of the organization is much more diverse (to the point that in some workgroups, white males are an actual minority) in terms of gender and ethnicity, and as that’s where I’ve lived for so long, coming over to the frat house was a shock.The conference I recently attended was also an interesting experience; a sea of white guys listening to other white guys briefing powerpoints, for the most part. However, the thing that really struck me was the breakout session I attended regarding agile development, which the public sector (for whom I work) really wants to get into and appropriate, even if the public sector org structure (which is often locked down by legislation as well as tradition) doesn’t always allow for it.

I’m used to a certain “agressiveness” in business culture (what with all the golf metaphors and Sun Tzu in my old business text books), and I’ve adapted, even if I like to complain. As the kind of software I work with supports business, that sort of thing slips into this side of the business a well; even if it tends to skew a little nerdy (code cowboys and “my kung fu is strong” sort of stuff). “Agile”, though, while it’s a great, adaptive way to building tools utilizing teamwork, trust, and flexibility, can’t help to come across as awfully jock-frat (at least in the circles that I’ve run in), what with it’s borrowing all of it’s operative terminology (particularly the almighty scrum) from rugby (the most hypermasculine sport I can think of culturally), there’s going to be a lot of cultural transmission, down to the whole “us vs. them” model, and disparaging comments about how projects that ultimately fail, usually because they’re populated by impure Scrum-buts that haven’t totally assimilated (not that there isn’t some truth to that theory, but in some circles, it comes along as really cult-like).

I’m not disparaging a valid design philosophy; it’s great for a lot of things, but tends to get applied wrongly in places where it doesn’t fit, leading to failure (and accusations of not having properly drunk the Kool-Aid*). Or maybe I’m just put off by all the hyper-masculine rugby hooligan videos in the presentations…

I am, however, going to close this think-piece on an optimistic note: that rock star friend of mine, Andrea, of Corgibytes, is out there politely raging against the machine, trying to make things better for everyone and more diverse in the information technology workplace. Having just had a baby very recently, Andrea and her “business/life partner” Scott represented their company at a recent software development conference, and rather than compromise their family and work balance, took their infant along with them to the conference. They got some pushback (as she gets a lot, simply by virtue of being the CEO of the company in an industry where that’s not common), but had a successful experience, especially through Andrea’s presentation during the program, …So A Baby Walks into a Tech Conference: confronting maternal bias in the software industry”, which I’ve embedded below. Take a look…

The response she’s gotten to this presentation has been amazing and encouraging, and the conference is looking at making things more accessible, and providing child care at future events.

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes me feel better about the world, even if my little corner of it isn’t always encouraging.

______________________________________

*-I’m thinking of one guy in particular, a contractor who spent most of his presentation on “agile” berating the government for not embracing his interpretation of the process wholeheartedly; he simply couldn’t understand the idea that the government, the bearers of the public trust, supposedly, can’t just shuck off all the checks and balances built into the system overnight. We’re probably not a good fit as a client for him, honestly. We’re slow to change, we get it. However, there are usually good reasons behind why.

So, after a hell of a week where I’ve been way too much like management, I took a day off of work, because, well, I have the time and I deserve it. Slept in, hung out with the spouse, went out to lunch and did a little shopping.

The spouse got it in her head that she wanted to pick up some used Disney Infinity stuff (not sure why, but she wanted to play the game with the collectible figures). So we bought the game, a couple of figures, and the base you put the little things on used at Gamestop.

…and spent the afternoon going back and forth to Gamestop to get the damned stuff to work. Word to the wise if you want to go that way – read the fine print on the bottom of the base (regardless of how the product is labeled), and don’t get one that says “XBOX 360” unless that’s what you want. They’re all identical except for the Xbox ones, though they all use USB.

Anyway…tunes:

1. “The Princess Who Saved Herself” – Jonathan Coulton
2. “Black Diamond” – The Replacements
3. “Someone Keeps Moving My Chair” – They Might Be Giants
4. “I’m Gettin’ Nuttin’ for Christmas – Jonah Night
5. “My Bionic Eyes” – Liz Phair
6. “That Particular Time” – Alanis Morrissette
7. “Take Me Away (live)” – Avril Lavingne
8. “Ballad in B” – Syn D’Cats
9. “Straight To Rock City” – Rock Sugar
10. “The Well and the Lighthouse” – Arcade Fire

As you’ve likely been made aware through various passive agressive posts here and in social media, or personal comments from me, I spent last week in Oklahoma for my organization’s annual IT Training Symposium. Traditionally, this organization has had it’s conferences in enviable places like Florida (for certain values of “enviable”, speaking personally), though thanks to stuff like this, management decided to tread carefully, so we ended up at a government-owned conference/training facility in Norman, Oklahoma, an outer suburb of Oklahoma City.

the place looked like a bunker or perhaps a minimum security prison from the outside, all gray concrete and small windows, surrounded by well-manicured, if not exactly attractive lawn – here’s the view from my cell hotel room window:

Inside, it wasn’t all that bad; it felt like a relatively typical hotel catering toward business travelers (the Government contracts management out to Marriott), except for the fact that it was very difficult to leave, as the vast majority of us, in the interests of managing costs and appearing frugal in light of recent linked-above events, made use of a shuttle bus to and from the airport, and did not have rental cars. The place ran nightly shuttles to local shopping centers (i.e. Wal-Mart and chain restaurants) or, one night, to a nearby casino on the reservation. Of course, there was an extra fee for these, and very little flexibility in terms of scheduling, and the destinations were, as you could say, lackluster. Most of us just made use of the on-site cafeteria-style restaurant for dinner (as breakfast and lunch were included in our conference fee, and thus, deducted from our per diem entitlement), which wasn’t bad, but variable in quality and price (a regular pasttime over the course of the week was comparing what each of us were charged for what was essentially the same meal).

As one does at these sorts of things, we spent most of the day in a ballroom watching powerpoint presentations, attending breakout sessions (nobody showed up to ours), and networking. However, as I soon came to understand and confirmed with my fellow attendees, this “symposium” really wasn’t for me; it was for the field services teams, spread far and wide across the planet (we have offices on five continents) setting up users’ equipment and manning the help desk. This is their chance go get together and complain to each other and maybe get an audience with the CIO to air grievances. I’m a mid-level headquarters guy; to them, I am at best, a benign presence, and at worst, part of the problem (I spend my days trying to stay out of the CIO’s office, because it means I’ll just get more work to do). Having worked help desk in a former life, I know what these guys deal with, in terms of clueless users and pressure to turn over phone calls, so I spoke their language, but honestly, I spent most of my time talking to them explaining what my job is and how if I do it right, they’ll never know I exist.

There was, at least, a few social events with free (bad) beer. I got to meet a bunch of folks face-to-face who I normally speak to only on the phone. At a couple of these, some of us bonded, forged relationships, and solved the agencies problems over a couple of mass-market fermented beverages. These events were held in a courtyard built in the middle of the property, not too far from the duck pond. The ducks are used to getting fed by visitors, and a few brave avian souls came over to see how the pickings were. As you’ll see below, one of them brought the kids, and it became a game of “ducks dodging drunks” for a while. Thankfully, nobody got hurt:

As we were largely stuck on the compound, all were eager for the supervised work release professional development field trip down the interstate to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and museum on the site of the bombing at the Murrah Federal Building back in 1995. It was nice to get out, and it’s a really well-put together memorial and museum. I’m glad I got the opportunity to visit, though it wasn’t the most cheerful place to go after eight hours of powerpoint. I took a few pictures outside on the grounds, including this shot of the reflecting pool and “field of empty chairs” representing those who died in the bombing. I was impressed with the way they put it all together, with the memorial park and monument laid out economically inside the former foundation of the building (the wall you see behind the chairs *is* the foundation of the Murrah building):

Otherwise, I really didn’t get to see much of the area; I was hoping for famed red clay and prairie scenery, but I pretty much only saw flat suburbia from the window of a bus. I did catch a couple of interesting shots from the windows of the bus, included below:

An honest-to-goodness oil well:

…and a monument to local celebrity:

I left on Friday morning, boarding the bus and sharing stories of shared misery (and oddly, stories about the late Dave Brockie of GWAR) on the shuttle ride to the airport, to find that when I printed my boarding pass at 7:30am, my 8:50 flight to Chicago was already delayed until 9:30 (and never got off the ground until almost noon). Luckily, I managed to book a later connecting flight, but I still ended up stuck in the the World’s Busiest Airport™ for a couple of hours before getting back home several hours later than expected.

It was, as they say, a trip that happened. Minimally useful, and a change of scenery and time zone, but all in all, I’d have been fine with not going at all.

Hey, it’s Friday, which means music. Lacking any good randomizers, I figured I’d go non-random this time, and list some songs about wizards, given yesterday’s post. Not all of these are Harry Potter, but it’s my list, I don’t care, because wizards are a great topic to mine for music. I’m sure other people have suggestions that are way better, and that’s cool – I’d love to hear more. I know some filkers out there whose binders are full of tunes that are awesome…please share them!

I left the Humdingers off, largely to recuse myself due to self-interest, although I’m just there to play along. Consider that stuff a given.

1. “human hosepipe” – harry and the potters (link)
2. “my dad is rich” – draco and the malfoys (link)
3. “I wish you’d be my witch” – mudbloods (link)
4. “ode to harry” – switchblade kittens (link)
5. “la la luna” – hawthorn and holly (link)
6. “muggles” – mikey mason (sorta link)
7. “the magic of the wizard’s dream” – rhapsody featuring Christopher Lee (link)
8. “journey of the sorcerer” – The Eagles (link)
9. “alone” – witherwings (link)
10. the necromancer” – rush (link)

Of course I have comments. I left them below separately, so as not to wreck the format above, because I’m anal like that. I’ll leave the bad formatting for the stuff below. Again, if anybody is actually reading this, drop your suggestions below! I’m always down for more stuff to listen to.

1. my favorite hatp tune. No other reason.
2. this one makes me laugh
3. great pop song we covered once live. total earworm.
4. first hp song I ever yeard. My friend Karen used to play this band on her college radio show becaue the name made her laugh.
5. fun little go-gos-esque thing. Full disclosure – I’ve played this one on stage with H&H a couple of times.
6. bonus track on Mikey’s Dodecahedron, and a cover of Lorde’s “Royals”. works for me.
7. Christopher Lee. ’nuff said. He was the closest thing in the world to a real-life wizard, and was the very definition of metal
8. No lyrics, and made most popular as the theme to a sci-fi series. Don’t care. love it.
9. Another great little ballady thing. Mandala’s prety great live, btw. catch her if you can.
10. Yeah. Rush. Cool, I guess, but I’ve never been that kind of Rush fan. Included here because I couldn’t come up with a proper Zeppelin tune. Could also easily substitue more Christopher Lee.

Have a good weekend, all!

So, the Blibbering Humdingers got called out in an article on mtv.com today, as #7 of “17 ‘Harry Potter’ Bands That Would Put The Weird Sisters To Shame”.

As a sometime/adjunct member of one of the “top 10”, I guess I should be honored (and I am, given the company on the list – luminaries like Harry and the Potters and Switchblade Kittens) that I managed to get myself (kinda) on (an anciliary media stream somewhat related to) MTV, only 20 years or so after such a thing was in any way relevant. Seriously, though, Congrats to Scott and Kirsten (seriously, I really don’t count here – I’m just the bass player looming rhythmically in the background sometimes) for getting recognized in the piece; it actually kind of is a big deal, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer or more talented couple of folks.

Anyway…it’s kind of cool to be adjacent to greatness; another teenage dream checked off the list in my 40s. As much as it sucks sometimes, I made myself a pretty neat life.

Of course, now that this happened, Taylor Swift will surely pick a fight with me on Twitter. Bring it on Tay-Tay, I’m pretty sure Katy Perry has my back.

Given the baseline of the American school system, it’s kind of atypical that I never read To Kill A Mockingbird in high school – I *think* I touched it in college, but for whatever reason, I don’t have any more than a collective unconscious impression of it from that period; and I know I’ve never seen the movie that really colors a lot of people’s impression of it. That chanced, though, a few moths ago when I read it as an adult, through relatively fresh eyes. While the popular cultural perception of Atticus as a beacon for equality was there in my head (as it couldn’t help but be, given the cultural significance), it didn’t always come across on the page. While I got the general vibe that Atticus was definitely interested in the rule of law and a sense of justice and minimum standard of rights for every person, he never struck me as a crusader for equality. One can see how young Scout lionizes him (as an primary school aged child would certainly do to her father) as such, but the words that come from Atticus’s mouth don’t necessarily portray that. Compared to his peers, he’s progressive in the sense that he’s willing to give Tom Robinson a fair hearing in court, but still tends to exhibit a kind of assumed superiority, if in a more noblesse oblige than “lynch ’em” fashion, over all sorts of folks in Maycomb, be they black, poor, or female. Sure, Atticus does the right thing in the end for Tom, but it seems to be more out of a sense of almost parental obligation as someone of superior breeding and privilege rather than any belief that he and Tom are on the same level.

You know what, just go ahead and read this piece over at gawker/jezebel; it describes it pretty well.

I haven’t read Go Set A Watchman yet, and despite the controversy around its publication (which is, admittedly, a bit shady), I plan to once I come up in the queue at the library, because the bits I’ve heard about it are interesting, even if the book was, as is largely suspected, the first draft of a novel that eventually became Mockingbird, rather than a strict chronological sequel.

The story of a grown-up Scout Jean Louise coming to terms with the discovery that her childhood heroes aren’t as untarnished as her memories dictate is a powerful, universal one. This happens to all of us as we get out into the world and experience life; the world we came from when we were kids simply doesn’t look the same when we’re looking back through a couple of decades’ experience; it’s smaller, a little dingier, and many of the ideas held dear simply don’t work when compared to the wider world of our experience. Again, while I haven’t read it yet, I suspect that the folks back home in Maycomb don’t quite know what to make of grown-up Scout, either, as the lessons she took from her childhood experiences aren’t necessarily the ones her caregivers expected, although make perfect sense given the combination of experiences she actually had.

Such is the way of the world, as it was and ever shall be. I’m honestly curious to see how the release of the new work will affect the way the classic is taught and understood. The lessons to be drawn won’t be the same, certainly, but that doesn’t mean that the new lessons or understanding are in any way not valuable.

Seventeen years. Still sticking around. Either you’re actually into me or a glutton for punishment. Happy anniversary.

This video has nothing to do with our relationship. Admit it, though, you’d love it if I could do those high kicks with the bass…

It’s Friday, and it’s long overdue. Sleep has still been fitful all week thanks to all kinds of stressful crap, but you know, I’m dealing. For all the crap being thrown my way, I’m mostly dealing with it to the point where I don’t always *look* like I’m on the edge of cracking to those on the outside. I take victories where I can find them.

The biggest events in my life this week has been having to “speak bitch” entirely too often to get professional people who really ought to know better to do their damned jobs, and finding out that in a little over a week, I have to go to Oklahoma City for a conference, which might be neat, other than the last minute nature of the trip, the fact that I’m going to be stranded in a convention hotel without my own transportation, and per diem in OKC is pretty pitiful, especially when it’s further reduced because of “provided meals”, so I won’t even make any money on the trip. Yeah.

Of course, I’m also not thrilled that I’ll be spending time in the place where this idiocy went down this week. Of course, I work about three miles from where this completely different idiocy happened the other day. I can’t win for losing in the racist geographic proximity olympics.

Huh.

Weekend is totally booked as well. Probably too booked, but it is what it is. Maybe we’ll find some time to celebrate tomorrow’s anniversary of seventeen years of wedded bliss. I would love to get some date time in, even if it’s just dinner and Ant-Man. I hope we can make it happen.

Anyway, here’s some tunes. Pandora, because I don’t have my MP3 player on me. Pandora never used to have this many ads. And apparently I need to rejigger my algorithms, because this mix is not working for me at all:

1. It’s My Life (live) – Bon Jovi
2. Tighten Up – The Black Keys
3. Alone – Falling in Reverse
4. Clint Eastwood (live) – Gorillaz
5. Primadonna – Marina and the Diamonds
6. Sigh No More – Mumfort and Sons
7. Dirty Paws – Of Monsters and Men
8. Train in Vain – The Clash
9. Dust in the Wind – Kansas
10. Shoot to Thrill – AC/DC

So, sorry for bringing you all down…I’m Eyoreing a bit today. Hope I can get past it.

Given my current collection of life experiences, the next time find myself at a western-style equestrian competition, I will be completely justified in saying “This Ain’t My First Rodeo”

This post is brought to you by my recent, lamented discovery that I have to go to Oklahoma in two weeks for a work conference.

If you happen to keep an eye on my social media feed, you’ll notice that I ran into some last minute trouble with my main bass this weekend. Saturday night I plugged in the five-string Jazz bass and felt more resistance than expected, followed immediately by markedly less resistance; the sure sign of an input jack popping it’s connection. This sort of thing can happen when the nut loosens up and the wire starts twisting around the jack, which is what looks like happened here.

Luckily, I never got rid of my old 90s Ibanez four string, so I was able to rely on the backup for the church fill-in gig I had Sunday morning.

Fixing an input jack is a trivial, five minute repair (and almost four of those minutes involve waiting for the soldering iron to heat up), though after a few bad experiences in the past, I’ve mosty shied away from DIY electronics repair. Of course, taking the instrument to the good luthier in town always involves several days in turnaround for even something as trivial as thi, even though they do try their best, and do routinely excellent work (he’s the “good” luthier, so he’s in demand), and when I called Guitar Center, I found the tech was on vacation.

Argh.

Finding myself in this position, I decided that maybe it was worth giving DIY another shot. Thanks to investing 9 bucks in a new soldering iron (my old ones are old giant 300w sci-fi pistol affairs, or really old, corroded, and, as I discovered, missing) and a couple of quick searches for a good instructional video and a couple of primers on soldering basics, I managed to successfully effect the repair in about 10 minutes, making a pretty damned clean join I’m quite proud of, and probably saved myself a few bucks (I figured I’d pay somebody 20 bucks to do this) and definitely some time, and can do it again myself next time.

Plus, I got to feel handy and invincible for an hour or so afterwards.