[Long rambling whatsit going on here, either spin on, or grab a snack for the ride].<\/p>\n
Hey, so here we aaaaaaaaaare.<\/p>\n
Been a long damned time, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff to cover, so I’ma just jump right on in.<\/p>\n
I have a new job since the last time I blogged, which is kinda pathetic (the blogging is, not the job – the job’s good). \u00a0In late July, I finally moved to a group that’d been forming like a storm cloud for a while. \u00a0Lots of lightning and thunder, and that crazy warm wind that runs parallel to the ground, and makes you feel like you could make conduct the storm if you thought about it too hard. \u00a0That fantastic moment when you’ve seen the lightning hit, but haven’t heard the Earth-shattering (tree-shattering, more like) ka-freakin’ BOOM as the air closes in around that flash.<\/p>\n
That lightning strike was a new organization starting up. \u00a0Couldn’t talk about it for a long darn time. \u00a0Still can’t talk about much of it, which is the nature of the game, I’m afraid. \u00a0I’ll give you as much detail as I think I can safely get away with (without boring you to death, or having to fear for my job).<\/p>\n
We turned the lights back on and fired up some gear to see what was (or wasn’t) still operational. \u00a0Lots of the gear was broken, lots of it had been erased, and lots of it was just. plain. gone. \u00a0People hadn’t received last paycheques, hurt feelings, ten years blood sweat tears, blame-storming, etc… \u00a0You get the idea. \u00a0I know what that can be like, I’ve been on that end of the stick<\/a>. \u00a0Some of those folks came back to help reboot. \u00a0Some of them are in the wings, helping out, and some of them are off trying to use the same technology under the same company name even though they don’t ow-… \u00a0let’s not get into that.<\/p>\n So we did a test for “Studio” of a bunch of shots. \u00a0A bake-off. \u00a0Seems our output was good, ’cause our front doors were suddenly rattling with work for a different film that will be in theatres in a month or so (which is good, ’cause that means we did something people will see soon, instead of waiting for the bake-off film to hit theatres in almost a year). \u00a0We finished our work on Friday\/Monday for First Paid Gig, and have the smallest amount of time to re-rig things before the next “twice as large as the last one” job begins. \u00a0We’ve got a lot of work to do this week, so I’m hoping I’m at least somewhat coherent while getting this stuff done.<\/p>\n When I was working at previous company, people would ask me what I thought of the “new job,” and I’d say “It’s uh… it’s okay….” and make noises about how I was still trying to figure out where exactly I fit in, how they were planning on using me, etc. \u00a0I think my main problem there was that I didn’t actually know<\/em> why they’d hired me, other than I had a lot of experience getting Windows XP machines to do what I told them in a large-scale due to my days at EA working with\/under\/around the Mighty Mighty Jan Chojnacki<\/a> (Dr. Device to those of you on B3ta). \u00a0Mostly, I was someone who would say, over and over and over “That’s not scalable” whenever someone started talking about a way to throw people at a technical problem. \u00a0Scheduled 10hr work days? \u00a0Weekends scheduled? \u00a0On call 24\/7? \u00a0Some of the users didn’t know the first freakin’ THING about using computers for business? \u00a0Friends of the family being promoted instead of let go, even though they were proven again and again to be ineffective in their jobs?<\/p>\n All I can think about is this when I hear that particular solution to technical issues<\/p>\n