Saw a good suggestion from Marty to have a Traffic Asshole of the Week feature, so I’ll start that up and try to keep it going. I usually have no shortage of candidates for the position, so it may be more than once a week. But maybe not. Let’s just try this out and see how she goes, shall we?

The Traffic Asshole of the Week will be anyone who has trouble properly working with their automobile. This could be someone who can’t drive, someone who can’t figure out the rules of the road, or even someone who can’t comprehend the concept of parking.

There were three candidates for Traffic Asshole of the Week just yesterday, so let’s run them down in ascending order.

In third place, and probably in the Traffic Asshole Hall of Fame, are my neighbors, who were, once again, parked in the fire lane and effectively blocking me from my parking spot.

In second place is a guy in a U-Haul truck that I saw on my way home from work yesterday. At the intersection of highways 26 and 217 (for those in the cheap seats, these are two really busy, terrible commuter freeways), there was an SUV parked in the emergency lane with its hood up. U-Haul truck guy, towing a Mercedes behind the truck, decided it would be nice to stop and help SUV guy, so U-Haul guy parks the truck in the fast lane and gets out. As I passed, the U-Haul was sitting there, driver’s door hanging open, with the U-Haul driver talking to the SUV driver. Good job, buddy.

And in first place… I came out of work, ready to go home last evening, when I was greeted with the sight of yet another SUV owner who doesn’t know how to park. Check this shit out:

Hey, doesn’t that look a little close? I thought so, but I figured I’d just sort of squeeze my ass in my door and call it a day. But when I opened my door…

…I found that the guy had actually parked so close that I couldn’t even fit my leg inside. Next time, leave me a fucking can opener, asshole.

This just goes to prove that SUVs are the bane of human existence. Not only are they resource guzzlers, but they are driven by idiots and soccer moms who never go offroad and never actually have to haul anything. (My parents bought his-and-hers Ford Explorers, and they’re well aware of my feelings about that.)

If you’re going to own an SUV, at least learn how to park it. Yes, that may mean you get out of the truck and see that, “Oh, shit, I didn’t park very well.” Get back in the truck and fix it, shithead. “Whoopsie!” and walking into the store (or wherever) doesn’t make it so I can get into my vehicle. Oh, and understand this: Your SUV is not compact, so don’t try to park it in a compact spot. It’s not going to work. Learn to fucking park, or don’t drive the SUV. It’s that simple.

I realize that the whole September 11 attack thing was a really tragic, terrible occurrence. Am I the only one in the world who thinks society would be better served by remembering but moving on? It seems to me that folks seem just a little too emotional about the whole thing.

For example, New York wants to build new stuff on the site of the old World Trade Center twin towers. I think that’s great - a positive action moving forward with a memorial statue or something on the grounds. But there are all these protesters who are concerned with the fact that the new building may not use the same foundation as the old building… What difference does it make? It’s called a new building, not rebuilding the old twin towers. There are limits to my abilities to respect tragedies like this, especially in regards to people who are so emotional they can’t rationally contribute to a positive comeback.

Oh, and (admittedly selfish, but) let me say how tired I am of hearing about it on the news. Seriously. Move on.

As mentioned previously, Jenn’s birthday is coming up. I, as always, ended up ordering stuff from Amazon. Now, usually Amazon is pretty good with their packaging. They throw whatever it is into a plain brown box (porn style, right?) and it’s a mystery what’s inside. Is it your whole order? Half the order? One thing? A bunch of things? Who knows? Knowing that, I figured I’d be okay shipping everything to our apartment. Add a little pre-birthday mystery to the gifts. Imagine my surprise, then, when I see this (which Jenn has pulled in from the doorstep):

Hey, Amazon! Thanks! I wonder what’s in that box?!

Morons.

On my way home from work yesterday I noticed a cop in front of me in an unfamiliar car. On closer inspection, it was a Washington cop. What are Washington cops doing patrolling 20 minutes south of the border? Or is it a joyride? Misappropriation of resources? Hmmm…

I saw that Marty suggested a new potential feature, Traffic Asshole of the Week. I think that’s a pretty keen idea, and no sooner had he recommended it than I had multiple candidates in a day. So I’ll get on that next.

Well, I just rolled out the new Corillian web site and it’s pretty snazzy if I do say so myself. The graphic artist here did the graphics and animation; I implemented that all in code and hooked up the back end stuff. Now it’s cleaner and faster than the last site, and way easier to maintain.

I went home last night and Jenn went to one of her meetings, so I played Playstation until my thumbs started to hurt, which, surprisingly, wasn’t as long as I thought it was going to be. I’m getting better at both Soul Calibur II and Amplitude, though I have to say that at this precise moment I’m more sucked into SC2. Loads of fun.

My boss has requested that I stop sending him emails that have the word “fuck” in them. Heh. That’ll happen.

I printed out the practice test questions for my next Microsoft test and this time it looks like it’s different than the other tests I’ve taken. This is more “here’s a case study, now answer questions about how you’d implement their solution.” That’s going to suck ass when it comes to actual test time because it’s going to be nigh unto impossible to see the case study and the question on the screen at the same time. I don’t even know if the test software will allow you to do that.

Anyway, I’ll be studying that stuff soon.

Once I finish that test, I’ll have an MCSD.NET certification. I’m not sure whether I want to go another two tests and get an MCDBA or not. I’m really, really sick of studying in my free time, and I’m not sure what, if anything, it’ll end up getting me. Here, probably nothing. Maybe it’ll open up doors at other companies. I’ll think about it.

I think I need to put a ShimmerScreen in my house. I don’t know where, but somewhere. These things are cool.

I’m feeling restless today. I have a lot of work to do, but it’s all shit I hate doing (reads: Portal Server). They need to make motivation in a pill form so I can get a prescription for work. I’m having issues, man.

I haven’t found anywhere else that carries the dining room set I want, so I may just end up ordering the set online, even though it’s a little spendy, and call it good. I’m tired of searching around; I’ve found what I want, I just need to get it.

Jenn’s birthday’s coming up on the 16th and I’ve been shopping for stuff, but it’s hard to shop for someone who doesn’t know what they want. I ended up getting a list from her and buying mostly stuff on the list, but I’ve always been of the mind that a good gift is something you want but don’t need, and is probably something you’d never buy yourself but would love to receive. Hard to do that for someone who doesn’t want anything. I think it’ll work out all right.

Man, I realize as I sit here typing that I don’t have jack to say. Like, I mean, aside from the traffic lately just pissing me off (it’s Oregon, people, it rains here… figure out how to drive in it!). Maybe I’ll come up with something better later.

Or maybe not. You never know.

Here’s my issue of the day:

I’m working on this huge project - a full Knowledge Management Initiative - within the company, the prime result of which is the rollout of SharePoint Portal Server 2003. I’ve been working on this project for… I don’t know, like nine months now. It takes pretty much all of my time.

At the outset, Microsoft was paying some contractors to help us organize things, define requirements for what needs to be done, and implement the stuff. That was good, because I’m the only Corillian developer working on this thing, and it’s a pretty huge task.

Bad project management reared its ugly head and we ran out of contracting hours with the folks organizing things. Twice.

What did I net from them? A couple of 90% complete web parts. A half-complete requirements document for a portion of our extranet and a mostly complete infrastructure document for our intranet. Nothing about the front end. Nothing about the programmatic elements that have to be developed.

These people spent hours in meetings with the key players in the company gathering requirements. What happened to all of that work?

Bah.

Just goes to show you can’t count on anyone but yourself.

[Side note: I just got an email in my inbox from one of the guys in my department that begins, “I have received approval to approve the following…” Approval to approve? Does he read the shit he sends out?]

So, anyway, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. I’ve been going back and forth trying to gather requirements on my own, but it’s been difficult at best.

It’s sort of like writing a paper in school. Your teacher says you need to write 200 pages on some nebulous topic that you don’t particularly care for or have anything to say about. No guidelines on points to cover in the paper, no discussion of style or structure. Go. That’s what this is like - “You need to roll out a new extranet and an intranet. Go.” Huh?

I’m sure I’ll look back on this (at some point in the distant, distant future) and say, “Holy shit, I’m still working on this project?”

Seriously, though, I know I’ll look back on this thing and say, “Wow, that was a huge project and we (reads: I) did a great job rolling that sonofabitch out. Glad that’s over. Moving on to bigger and better things now.” But that day is a long time from now and it doesn’t seem to be approaching at any measurable pace.

Supposedly this thing needs to be out in “Q4.” Um, yeah.

I was listening to my iPod this morning, set on random, and it only seemed to play either German music (in the original German, like Nena’s 99 Luftballons or Falco’s Vienna Calling) or music about rain (like Tina Turner’s I Can’t Stand The Rain or Eurythmics’ Here Comes The Rain Again). It was sort of eerie.

I passed my test yesterday, and it was sort of interesting because they had stopped giving scores on the Microsoft certification tests, but I got a score. I passed with a 913 (700 being the minimum passing score). Assuming all of the questions are equally weighted, that means I missed five of the 55 questions… but since that doesn’t quite work out to 91.3%, I don’t think the questions are all worth the same. Regardless, they also broke the score up into topic areas (like different points the test was trying to cover) and I got “strong” ratings on all of the areas (ratings range from “strong” to “needs development”), so I’m feeling pretty good.

That leaves me with one more test before I get my MCSD.NET certification. The next one, Analyzing Requirements for .NET Applications (or something like that), I haven’t had the class for; I only have the practice test. I will have to look over the practice test to see how the questions look. From the title of the test, I’m thinking I may be able to muddle through.

But not tonight. Tonight, in celebration, I’m taking the night off from studying and, since Jenn’s out at one of her meetings, I’ll be playing Playstation. Oh, yeah.

You know, this morning driving in to work I had a lot more to say. I don’t even remember what now. Man, such is the way my life’s going anymore. I can’t remember shit.

My boss was telling me that he may not be able to post his thoughts as cathartically on his blog as I do on mine because he “might say something he’ll regret.” I dunno about that. I mean, it’s your site, right? Why be censored? There’s gotta be somewhere in the world where you can just be you without having to factor in what everyone else thinks, otherwise you’re living in a prison. I mean, if the company wants to fire me because I say something they don’t like, well… I guess in that instance I’d decide that working for the Third Reich is not quite where I needed to be. But that hasn’t happened (yet) so let’s hope it never comes down to that. Right?

I’ve been getting random job-offer-related spam lately in my inbox (how can you take a job offer that gets mass-mailed seriously?). For those recruiters who are sifting through sites and wanting me to come work for you, here’s the deal:

You have to offer equal or better benefits compared to what I’m getting now. You definitely have to offer better pay, and probably significantly so since changing jobs is a big pain. The position has to be a permanent, full-time position - I don’t do contracts since I don’t like guessing whether I’m going to get paid again, and I don’t do part-time because I do need to pay the rent. I’m not interested in relocating unless you’re really paying well, and by that I mean I’m not relocating if I can’t get rich off you or have the potential of retiring 10+ years early. Moving around for the same amount of money just won’t cut it. And, finally, I am getting certified as an MCSD.NET. That means I’m working with some pretty recent technology and am doing well with that. I really don’t want to go back to programming VB6 stuff or writing low-level shit like device drivers, nor do I feel the need to work in Windows 95 or even Windows 98 anymore. If you’re not in the now, don’t bother spamming me.