Yikes

The only person in my chain of command at work that I consider a decent person has just quit.  She is being replaced with someone who had the reputation of being very strict.

Chris Andersen, who has been in my chain of command for 4 months, is methodically interviewing all first line management to get a full job description of everyone that works under him.   He has not yet interviewed my Boss.   This includes all contractors as well.

We will be retiring or putting systems in VMWare so that we can reduce headcount.   There are many legacy systems that can just be stopped.

I will think positive.  And if they let me go, the only complication is my debt. 

Being the company that they are, I wonder if they will make staff reductions in January, so that they don't have to pay those people their annual bonus, which comes due in February.

The Benefit of a Good Night's Sleep

I have been getting a Reflexology massage each friday for 2 nights now, right after work.   Then I go and buy some Fiji Water, and drink it all that night and the next day.  Fiji water taste wonderful to me, so it is easy to get myself tyo drink a lot.

The reflexology treatment breaks up the toxins that have settled in the body.   so the water is necessary to flush tem out.  Otherwise, they just settle back into the body at various places.

My feet look 5 times better than they have over the last 5 years because of these treatments.

And I sleep well on Friday nights

It had been a hard week.   I mis-managed my meds again, and this time it was serious.  I forgot to pick up my refill of Xanax on the evening I needed too.  So I went 2 days without Xanax. 

One the second day, I felt depressed, groggy, slow moving and clouded thoughts.   What made it serious is that I could not figure out why I felt this way.   I could not remember about the Xanax right away.   I finally figured it out, and sacrificed my lunch-period to go get it.  I felt better quickly.

When I awoke this morning, my brain had figured out a big design issue in the project I am doing that I did not have a clear idea of what to do.   I had partial ideas, but I just didn't pay attention to thisd because I was 100% involved on the part I am creating now.

I have seen this pattern regularly.   When I get a good night's sleep, and sleep about 12 hours, I get wake up with really good ideas about whatever is bothering me or is an issue for me.

My peer at work, who I have been callling Sam, is such a pain in the ass.

I have been focusing on the display pportion of the WebApp I am building because I had to do that first in order to create displays that I could put in the design document.   So I have not yet created any datasbase tables. 

I did create a Java Bean that will be associated with a tabble this next week.   Typically, you create the table, then the bean.  Because of this, my peer assumed that I was doing somethign wrong.  In our last project meeting, when I spoke about starting the SQL next week, he blurted out:  "You know you have to create tables before you can write the SQL".   I said "Of, course".   I didn't realize what he had been thinking.   I thought his comment was really weird.   Why would he say such a thing?   Then I reconstructed his bias.   He has probably told this to our supervisor and my other peers.

Sam is poison to any group.  He is "me first" and considers everyone else beneath him.  As you talk to him, you can hear him snort-exhale in such a way that it clearly indicates he is annoyed.  He consistently lies about his progress, claiming successes that don't exist, and points out others failures behind their backs.

He is still working on phase 1.   It is not yet completed.   I an wondering if our supervisor will demand that it be done and deployed before the end of the year, so it can be put on his A&D.  The head of User Acceptance Test has been incommmunicado for 2 days, so something may have happened.   She is the one that is keeping it from being deployed because she won't let Sam lie to her.   Sghe catches him at it, and finds the errors in the code that he says he has fixed, and has not.

As far as Sam is concerned, if you don't know it is not perfect, then it's perfect.   That's all that matters to him.

I keep imaginging myself in my yearly review next January with my Boss once again giving me an "Almost meets expectations" or whatever.   As long as I have that review status, I cannot transfer to a new job.   I envision myslef saying "I quit" as those words exit his lips.    I see this as a day dream every few days.   If I get as "meets expectations", he still has a hold on me until I successfully complete my current assignment.   That's reasonable to me.

But he will be soryy when I am gone.   There is no way Sam, or any other typical -programmer who will be able to maintain this application I am creating.  It is Huge, and only someone real smart will be able to figure out how it works, and all the inter-dependcies so that they can make changes and not break it.  Being smart has no value in my division.   Being able to function when you are half-asleep is seen as far more valuable.   Putting in 16 hour days using only 1/3 of your brain is considered very admirable - they call it working hard.

What will Monday bring?

As I have stated in previous posts, my work group is in trouble.  The Program Managers (PM) are not cooperating - they are not opening charge numbers for us to use.   My supervisor had uis change to use ALL available numbers - 2.5 hours each only.

I had predicted we would run out.   I have only enough charge numbers for next week.  I have alerted my supervisor.   I suspect he will just put it back on me:  "A competent engineer would find charge numbers to use",  He said that before when it took months to get a new laptop.   It's jusdt an insulting way to say he is not going to escalate it.

Maybe I should ask if I can recycle back through old charge numbers.   If I had enough chaqrge4 numbers to get me through to 2013, then I could definitely re-use old chaqrge numbers, because the
2012 data isw not convenient to access.  The PMs would not know I had laready charged 2.5 hours to these numbers.

Only 3 members of our group are authorized to use Expense.   That leaves 8 of us, that are probably finding themselves in the same situation as me.

I wasn't pasying close enough attention to this because I have been working so hard.   The time reporting tool only allows me to see 50 charge numbers at a time.   When I deleted the charge numbers I used in November from my "available pool", then I was able to see the end coming.

So what will Monday bring? Will my paychecks just stop in a few weeks (meaning I have to take time off without pay)?  

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Addendum - I got enough charge numbers to get me through December.  In 2012, it is my plan to reuse charge numbers.  the fact that I run out of charge numbers at year end correlates with the Post titled "Yikes".

Staff Changes will be soon.

The Boss cancelled his Staff meeting yesterday.   He holds it in late mrning Wednesday, so that it will be immediately after his meeting with his Boss.   Normally, when he cancels, he announces it himself.   This time he had an admin do it, which means he was engaged in something really important.

Today, he took a day off unexpectedly.  HE NEVER TAKES TIME OFF, except to go visit relatives in the old country.

There was a change in leadership 2 layers above him 4 months ago.   I am hearing complaints about the change to the Agile Software method.   The Agile software method makes our group obsolete, because development staff are permanently assigned to one system.

So either I will be laid off, transfered, or given x weeks to find a new position in the company.

We'll see.

Transition At Work

There is a power struggle going on in our division at work.   The previous head of the division is gone, a new one has come.   The new one is a champion of the Agile Software Development Method.  As soon as the Program Managers (PMs) heard that the old Div. Head was leaving, they started boycotting our governance group - meaning that they were not opening a certain type of charge number so we could use it.

This has gone on for months.   I was just doing what I always have with my charge codes, but now I got in trouble.   I got in trouble because there are fewer charge codes to use, and so tha amount I used got to high on one of the codes, and the PM noticed.   So my Boss, through some kind of weird activity he likes to pull on me, taught me to fly under the radar - charge to anyone who will let you, but only 2.5 hours.

So all these charge coees I thought I could not use (according to the old rules the Boss taught me) are now available to use.

I have 170 of them.   You need to use 16 of them a week to get 40 hours.   So this method gives us only 10 weeks.   What happens then?    I am not being given 16 new charge codes a week.    I am getting less than one new charge code a week.  Much less than one.   We will run out.

My Boss told me he is going to send letters to the PMs who are not cooperating that if they do not open their charge codes, the System Engineers will cease to work for them.   But the SEs need charge codes to work.   Most SEs work in an area in which they are experienced, which means they typically are working for the same PMs again and again.    Do these SEs have alternative work to do to get their 40 hours a week?   I don't think the analysis has been done to verify this.    The work-stoppage could be an empty threat.

In the meantime, I look forward to using the Agile method - it will breathe new life into my career

I find it interesting that I got written-up by HR for refusing to do something I thought was wrong-biased against me.

But My Boss can do this on a large scale.   He's made a lot of enemies.   I don't think this will go well with the new Division Head, but perhaps my Boss has gotten permission.

Scheming Work Practices

Let's say my boses names in Mark, my peer is Sam, and mypeer/requirments-provider is Roger.

I got formally written up by Mark when he engineered a stunt with Sam & Roger to force me into having to make a quick estimate that I would not be able to perform.  What they did was not acording to the code of conduct, but since Sam & Roger both gave testimony that contradicted mine, nothing happened.

Mark claims me treats everyone in his group fairly and equally.  But he shares management private information with Sam & Roger, and they use it against me.

I wrote an emiotional response to Mark & HR, and in that I stated that if he continued to treat me nagstively, It would just cause me to work slower.

He set up a test to see if I was doing that overtly.   He told Roger & Sam that this text was being done.  Sam did everything he could to make me not reach that goal.   He constantly asked me to do stuff, then he destroyed the results of all  work.   He asked first, giving so dumb reason, so I said OK.

I got written-up a second time because it took so long to create my assignment.   It came out in the review (which fortunately was mediated) that Sheraz deleted my work.   Mark screamed "WHY DIDN"T YOU TELL ME?"   I said nothing, I could not respond to his yelling.    Mark laughing mocked a demand I made of him in this review that he apologize for making false claims publically about my performance.   The mediator was very mild, byt did point out that I was correct, he thought something took 2 years when it could not have been even a full single year.  MARK fumbled, but did not even appear sorry, he just back-pedaled, giving lesser amounts than 24 months.   Then when it got to the issues of sharing code with Sam, The moderator said:  It should just be a simple matter of SCM.   Then I blurted out:   We have no source code control tools.   We asked for them, and were refused.    I have mentioned how this was a probablem throughout this entire project.   The Moderator then said:   Then that would be extremely difficult.

Mark has been taking days off. He has never done that, except to go see his extended family. I think he is beginning to see the fuitsd of the harvest he was sewn.

I am now "challenged" to create a software tool independent of Sam.   I am glad not to be working with him.  Roger is providing requirements.   Just like befiore with Mark, most of the requirements aren't writtn down, and thus are interpreted differently over time.

This came up when Roger reviewed my design document this week.    He increased a requirement.   That increase would double the work to be done, and the schedule.   He typically gets upset easily.   He gave one strong response - not quite demanding, but insisting that this be done in the current schedule.   I explained clearly why this could not be done. 

He agreed, which is strange.   I think he knows I am going to be let go.    So once again. managment private information has been shared with people that should not have been.

There has been a change upper management, 2 levels above Mark.   The timing is perfect for layoffs.   Now that the strikes are over, if upper-management needs money, there is no place it can come from (because of a failed business merger that cost the company 4% of the bottom-line).   The only thing they can do is reduce head-count.

The new guy has been on-board for a 3 weeks, and I have not recived a single communique from him.   I am pretty sure they brought in this new guy to reduce head count impartially.

Our entire organization has been under attack from Project Managers (PM) for months.   They are supposed to open charge-numbers for us to use for our overhead (we are a pure overhead group).   Mark keeps saying that he is going to  fix it.   The person who used to back him up (who is gone now - 2 levels higher in management) was his ace-in-the-hole.  

Lots of people don't like Mark.   I don't like Mark.    The fact that so PMs are with-holding funds from him is not a coincidence.  It's a boycott.

Slow Learner

I have been ill for about a month, but his only been this week that it occured to me to check my tempoerature.  It was 99,9.   So I check the temp multi-le times a day, and use tylenol.    These first 2 daqys are much better.   I wake up with more awareness and strength,

But today something strange is back.  I am seeking text dispplays on computer displays as if they have depth within the screen.

I used to only see this when I was playing video games online, and I was real tired from playing for a long period.   And there is a new difference.   The text remained parrallel to the screen.   THis is not true anymore.   On some of the text, the first character appears close to the screen, but the last character of that sentence appears deeper into the screen.

This has always happened when my brain has been pushing to hard.   So I will try to keeo a balanace.

How to make sure the JWs never come back

Do the Jehovah's Witnesses come to your front door once a month?   They feel that all of them should be missionaries, and proclaim repentance, otherwise they are in part responsible for other people's sins.

If they annoy you, I know what you can do.  I discovered it by accident.

I shaved one Saturday, and I knicked myself under the ear.   It was slowly bleeding.   I did not know it.   No one was home to tell me.   I began doing chores in the garage, with the garage door open.

Two Jehovah's Witnesses ladies came up to talk to me.   By that time, there was a lot of blood on my neck, and it was staining the collar of my T-shirt.   They had expressions on their face  like they were seeing something really distasteful.

I told them I was not interested in their message, like I always do.  Then I went inside, and looked in a mirror, and realized how much I had bled - and cleaned myself up.

I have read some JW literature, and blood plays a bick part in their doctrinal interpretation of scripture.   JWs typically are real squeamish about blood.   They won't accept blood transfusions even if they are medically necessary to save their life.

Then I noticed that they never came to my door again.   It took me awhile to figure out the connection, and then I really laughed

Skin

It's time to record more medical information so that my family knows what I am going through, but also to preserveit for future generations who may have similar issues.

Something is wrong with my skin.  

There was an interaction with my hair.   I would get ingrown hairs alot, always have.   I tried to end it with frequent washing, that did not help, even with medical grade soaps.  I noticed this happened more when I let my hair grow longer, or if I grew a beard,   I had a beard for years, but stopped because the ingrown hairs on my face were frequent and painful.

As I grew older, I started to get the ingorwn hairs on the parts of my body that were not covered up by clothes.   It was actually happening everywhere, it was just slower in the covered parts, except in at the joints, where the skin would rub againts the skin a lot as I moved, like just above the knees.   My forearms looked pock-marked, there were so many healed sores upon healed sores.

So I began to remove the hair from my body.   It is called epilating.   I have a special machine to do it.   Loks like a shaver.   It is a very slow and tedious process.   You don't get all the hair off in on pass.   Each pass only gets about 1% of all the hair passed over.   So get it all, you have to pass over it one hundred times.   It is extremely painful, especially on the head.   I am not a good candidate for laser hair removal because my skin and hair are almost the same color.   And since hair removal is considered cosmetic, it is expensive and there is no insurance coverage.

It has taken a year, but most of it is gone.  

I am keeping my eyebrows because I don't want to look like a reptile.   The eyebrows are one of the worst places, though.   I do not get ingrown hairs in the eyebrows.  But the amount of salt and dead skin that falls into my eyes is much higher thah average.  when the salt hits my eyes, it feels like acid - very painful.   So when you see I  have a moist forehead, and I am squinting or rubbing my eyes, you know why.

The salt is from my body cleansing its inner self.   It comes out with sweat.   It comes out of pores.   I generate a lot of salt.   I did NAET for awhile, and we identified salt as a big deal for me.   My hair body hair has never been healthy.   I could grab a pinch of chest hair and pull it out with not much pain.  I have been manually pulling the hair away from my groin for decades.  I think the hair that comes out easy is not as alive as the rest of the hair. 

When I seat heavily, you can see a distinct saltline in my clothes with the sweat dries.   Several times in summer months I would look at the hair in my underarms, and the hair would look WHITE.   Each strand was caked with salt.   This hair would just fall off when I tried to touch it.

Now that most of the hair is gone on my forearms, the ingrown hairs hardly ever happen.  But something new has taken its place.   I am constantly shedding skin on my forearms.   it is like I am always peeling from a sunburn.   If I rub a part of my body with my thumb, back and forth, the top layer of skin comes off very easily.   As a result, the pockmarks on my arms are almost all gone now.

I am still getting frequent sores on my forearms and legs, but they are different now.  They are scratches.   I have realized that I am scratching myself as I sleep.   I scratch my knees and thighs with my hands, and I scratch my ankles using my big toes.   I have ordereed a few pairs of cotton gloves to help with this.   The scratching happens no matter how short I cut my nails.

This is also causing problems with shaving.   I  am constantly cutting myself now, especially when I shave my head.   I shave only once or twice a week.   I have to give time for the hair to grow long enough for the epilator to be able to grab the follicles.  Today, there are at least six cuts on my head that I am waiting to coagulate to I can get dressed and go outside.

My ears create so much wax, it blocks the ear canal to the point I cannot hear.  Ear wax is either dry or wet.  Caucasians typically have wet wax.  The ENT specialist called my ear wax "soupy".   I have realized that I shed a lot of skin on my ears, and have for most of my life.  The dead skin gets funneled into the ear canal when I lay down.   I'll talk more about my ears in another blog bpost, another time.

During the day, the scratch wounds on my arm re-open, or a new one is created.   I dn't even feel this when it happens.   I just start seeing blood on my fingertips, or on the things around me, before I figure out I am bleeding.

The B O S S

I can't believe what is happening at work.    Let's call my Boss Zeus.   My Peer will be Sam.  Another member of our group is Roger.

Sam and I have been working on the same Project.   Sam has refused to take code from me since 19 MAR.   Sam and I have a lot of disagreements, and things became hostile (that was my doing - I had had enough).

To make peace, Roger was tasked with merging our code.   He sat on it for 3 weeks, and then just gave up.   He just passed it to Sam without telling me.   So I tried to negotiate well with him.   In order to do the task, he had to look at every single file in both code versions, and pick out code to move.  He didn't do that.

He wouldn't give his code to me until today because I had been hostile with him.
So today I find during testing that he didn't put in some of my changes.

I was quiet about that fact that Sam broke his agreement with me AGAIN.
After he merged code, there was supposed to be a review my me, and code fixes, and then go into User Acceptance Test.   He skipped the Review part.   I let him do it.

So when I saw the bad behavior in the code, I investigated, and saw that essential code changes I made are not in the merged code.   So I raised a stink about it.

Guess what.   I am still the bad guy.   Zues still puts the pressure on me to "Hurry up and Review it".

I mentioned the fact to Zeus during a staff meeting that Roger had not begun the code merge.   Zeus kept making noises like "it will be in test soon, just a few days".   He never said anything to Roger about taking a long time, even when I broached the subject in Staff meeting.

Zeus claims to treat all his employees the same.   So not true.

I need to exit this company ASAP.

And I am getting the feeling that the reason Sam acts like he does is because he really doesn't know much about software development.   I don't think he can read and understand software written by someone else.   I don't think he can tell well written code from badly written code.

The Man who could do no Wrong

I work closely with Sean.   That's not his real name.   He is an immigrant from  a culture known to be aggressive.    This man will NEVER admit a mistake, under any circumstances.   It took me a while to figure this out.   He is a master at rewording, redirecting attention and managing others perceptions.

My relationship with him is electronic.   We work together closely, but I have never seen him.  On rare occasion, we speak over the phone.   His use of English is poor, and his accent so heavy, I can barely understand him when he speaks.

My Boss and Sean are from the same culture.  My Boss is very effective at using fear as a motivational tool.

Recently, my Boss was using me as a sounding-board to cause others to respond in fear.   It might also have been directed at me, but that was a huge mistake on his part.   The pressure nearly drove me out of my mind.   I had to give him feedback within two weeks because he had engineered two management-motivational sessions at my expense.   When I challenged him 1-on-1 about how he crossed the line demarking ABUSE, he back-pedaled like crazy.

One of the things my Boss said twas that these "events" were meant more to motivate others in the group.

Sean has frequently gone weeks, even months, when I have no idea what he is doing.   Sometimes my interactions with Sean would depress me so much, I just couldn't interact with him in any way. 

He has even gone so far as to declare that the project we are working on is "DONE".
This was so bogus, I thought he was insane.  My Boss would not step in and correct his weird behavior.   I didn't even know if my Boss believed him or not.    So I started the next step, I set up a meeting with our company-internal customers to demo what we had.  He went so far as to ask me to begin giving him information for a new project.  I even did some of that.

That got my Boss' attention.   He quickly cancelled that meeting.    When I asked why, he said "We are not ready".   I told my Boss that this was the first I heard that my Boss didn't believe Sean about being "DONE".   I learned from my Boss that Sean was on vacation.   He made his DECLARATION, and then quickly left, so he wouldn't get any negative feedback.   Sean didn't even do me the courtesy of telling me he was going on a long vacation.

I can see why he chose that time to do it.   It had been 3 months since I communicated-coordinated with him.   I was done dealing with him.  He must have decided that it was time to take command.   He has tried several times to place himself as in some way superior or "in-charge" of our combined effort, even though he is just a contractor who has only been with the company for less than 2 years, and I am an employee with 12 years in the company.    Sean is in his early twenties, I have 30 years of experience.

So, knowing that the Boss knew the truth, I confronted Sean when he got back from vacation.   He said, "What happened?   What changed?".   He was presenting this as if I must have done something to make the project become UNdone.  I told him that I never agreed that we were done.   So Sean said:   Haven't you been doing the tests and audits to verify we were done?   He said this like it had been an assignment given to me.  I told Sean:   Why would you assume that?   I told him that it was not his place to decide if we were done.   Our Boss was the only one who could do that.

He finally showed some contrition in that he knew that this was not a correct state of being.   But then he put it back on me.   He wanted a definitive list of what needed to happen to get to completion.  The problem was that my Boss was the bottleneck.   He wanted real close control over this project.   Plus, neither Sean nor I new enough about this part of the company to provide the input we needed from the Boss in order to complete the project.    Again, acting like he was my superior.

So I made a list.   The first item was open ended - the creation of an error database to record errors as we find them.   I felt like if all we did was react to the first thing we did that was wrong, we would never know how close we were to being done.   So we needed a way to record what we found, and be able to do it later.   Then we could measure how many things we found that were wrong or missing.   I tried to make it REALLY simple, because Sean doesn't write things done.

There were 12 other items on the list, some of which were very important.

Sean has still never recorded anything in the error list.

SO, my Boss called us both into a meeting unexpectedly.   He really chewed us out.   His main point was - you can't just have no accountability.  Then he demanded from us a date by which we would be done - to be given off the top our heads, RIGHT NOW.

When I started this project, it was just me for a long time.   Sean was added a year later because I needed help with technology that was new to me and I was having trouble learning how to use it on my own, with no training, etc.    When I was asked to do this project, it was pitched as if it was a research project.   No deadlines, take the time to learn what I needed to learn.   The Boss specifically said that there would be long periods in which he would not be able to get back to me to answer my questions, so that I should have background projects to keep my self busy.

I nearly went crazy in the meeting.   I mean for real, I almost snapped.   But I didn't want to go back to the psych ward, so I tried to maintain emotional control.   Then words began coming out of my mouth like they were being said by someone else.    The mind behind the words knew everything I knew.    I could feel that mind accessing my knowledge.    It said:   To make an accurate estimate, we would need to detail out everything that is not yet done, group these into sections by subject matter, and then assign the sections to Sean and I.   Then each of us would make a detailed estimate of each item in out sections, and then total up an estimate of man days, then map this onto a schedule.   I emphasized that I cannot make estimates for Sean, nor he for me, we had to make the estimates for ourselves, based on what we knew, and what we knew how to do.

The Boss accepted this proposal.   He then demanded off the top of my head how long it would take to make the estimate.   I said 2 days.   I should have said 4.   (that would have given me the weekend, and I would actually have had 6 days to do it).   As it was, I took 6 days anyway.

I had identified all the tasks and created the sections in the Requirements document.   Sean and I each took sections of the document, about 50/50.   This was about day 3.  

I felt like I needed detail out more information about HOW we were going to do these tasks - wehre information would come from and how it would be used.   That is what took 3 more days, and that was not enough to do it all.    Could have used 2 more days.   I was on fire.   ideas were coming in fast, crisp and clear.

He had no idea what I was doing.   i tried to teach him about "Deriving Requirements", how there are different kinds of requirements that are associated with greater levels of detail.   All he heard was "More Requirements", and he had had enough of that.

Sean freaked out that we were taking longer than we said to deliver the estimate.    So I told him that he was free to make his estimate separate from mine.   I asked him how many days a week could he dedicate to this project, knowing that Sean had other duties to perform on a regular basis.   He said 3 days a week.   So I reminded him to that he should divide the number of days by 3, not 5, to determine how many weeks it would take him to complete his part.

Sean put no thought into his estimate.   He did not think deeply about each task in each section.   He just read the section and gave an estimate of 1 days worker per section in the document, which totaled to 10 days.    I knew that was way off.   He then divided it by 5, and said 2 weeks, when he should have said 3.

I estimated 6 weeks for my part, and also said that if Sean completed his part before me, he could do some of my part.

After 1 week, Sean began stalling tactics.

He first claimed that I somehow made the database unusable which caused him to lose days of work.     What he was complaining about was a column in the database I had deleted 6 months ago because it was not being used.

I proposed in the first paragraph of the Requirements document that we do all database changes and database-interfacing software first, since that was a shared resource between us, and could become a point of conflict if we were both making changes independently.    Sean volunteered to make that document.

But now that it was execution time, Sean acted surprised that I expected him to write the database-change document.   Sean had claimed the database to be his domain very early in the project, and he did have more knowledge about database management and database interfacing software.  He would get real jealous if I did anything to the database independently.   But now he expected me to write this document, so I did.   He also asked me to identify all columns in the database were no longer being used, even though we did not need that information until after we were done.    I can see know that he was trying to slow me down, so that he could claim I was a bottleneck for him, thus justifying his delays.   Unfortunately for him, I am clever, and produced that document in 1 day.

Sean then decided that we should not do certain parts of the database-change document now, but do them after we were done, and in the meantime, use a work-around method that would be faster to implement, but would require a change later.   I agreed.
 
AND THEN HE WANTED ME TO IMPLEMENT THE CHANGES IN THE DATABASE.  again, I am clever.   I learned how to use the database admin tool in 30 minutes, and implemented the database changes within a few hours.    He was really surprised I did it so fast.   I think he was equally surprised when he checked it out, and I had made NO MISTAKES.


But now that it is execution time, he is claiming that he his is taking more time to do the original database design now so that we don't have to rework later, thus justifying his delays.   On top of that, he doesn't want to make the database changes himself.   He wanted me to do it.   But he would not give me enough information to do it.   He would try to give me the information over media that was transient.   I insisted on a document - even if it was just one page.  I told him all the types of information he would need to put in the document.   I told him the document was necessary so we could keep track of our design changes.   I expected  it on a Friday, which gave him a full day to produce it.   On Monday - no response.   I emailed him asking for the document.   He sent me an email with partial information again.    I implemented it that evening, making good guesses for the information he did not provide.

Then he tried to get our Boss to believe that one of the major design decisions Sean and I had made was a huge mistake.  If the Boss agreed, I would have to undo a lot of work I had done.   Sean knew that this was the first section of the document, so that I would have already implemented that section.   He managed the Boss' perception by saying I would resist solely because I wouldn't want to have to rework something I had already done.

We had several email exchanges over a few hours.   I was pissed!    My first point of contention is that he brought the Boss into the discussion immediately, without talking to me first.   My second point was that this was a design change that he clearly has agreed to, and he can't just change his mind, without a good reason, and he was giving NO REASON at all.  

This series of email exchanges were copied to the BOSS.    The Boss emailed me separately, and asked me if my resistance to Sean's concept was because I had already implemented the code, and didn't want more work added to my pile of things to do.   I responded to the Boss that I understood that he did not have a software background, and so he had to ask that question, but that I considered it a "cheap shot".  I am not sure he understood what that idiom meant.

What Sean was really doing was taking advantage of the fact that some labeling had not been changed to reflect the major design change we had made.   I was assuming that Sean was letting himself get too confused because he was getting too tired, and forgetting details, and not going back to our design documentation for clarification.   There was a conflict between a Label and the Data represented by the Label.   One had to change.   

Sean was saying it was the data that had to change, and used a very week argument that someday in the future, it would need to be in a different form.   I had already addressed that concern in my very first email of the email exchanges.   The translation from the new form of data to the old form of data would be trivial being done after the fact, upon demand.   So I won that round, but it took hours of feeling like someone was rattling my cage.   I only won because I came up with a quick reference to prove how the new form of data was better, and proposed a new Label which fit perfectly.   So Sean gave up by saying we should stop wasting the Boss' time, and take this offline.   I never heard about the topic again.    I hurried and made the label change in all the needed places in my work.

The next stalling tactic Sean did was to claim that HIS DEVELOPMENT TOOL WAS BROKEN and he was not able to OPEN ANY USER INTERFACE FILES.   This went on for 3 or 4 days.   He was acting helpless.   I was so duped, I volunteered to find a solution for him on the web.   Fortunately I did, or found enough detail and possible causes that Sean would look stupid if he was unable to fix it.   IMHO, he knew how to sabotage the tool to make this happen.   so when I quickly identified how the error could occur, he undid his sabotage.

So - I wonder what he will try next.   This guy is amazing.   He is a master of manipulation.   He is in the wrong field.   He should be in management.

Neuropathy History

I am going to record this in the hopes that it will help my descendants and others who might chance upon it.

Now that my ear infections are cleared up, I still am not sleeping well.   There was another underlying problem that was building up, and now I have just realized it.

HIP HISTORY

For decades, I have had problems with my hips when I sat down.   It was especially bad when driving for long periods.   It started out as pain in the ball joint of both hips.   I felt it on the outside of the hip.   after a few years, it became kind of a painful numbness.   In 2000, I noticed that whenever I sat down from more than 30 minutes, I would get a cold spot on the outside of my hip the size of a thumbprint.

By 2006, this spot had grown to the size of a handprint.  We discovered spinal nerve damage in 2009, and severe hip ball joint degradation on both hips.   Unfortunately, the Medical plans require me to go through a period Physical Therapy and Cortison Shots before they would do surgery.  

Physical Therapy showed negative results, I had less range of movement and strength after the physical Therapy.   The therapists didn't understand this, but I did.   The neuropathy was progressing.  I got 13 cortisone shots in the spine over a 6 week period, and there was no improvement in low back pain or coldness.   I was not able to sleep without heating pads under my hips.

It got so bad I created a belt to hold several pouches of chemical heat that went from one hip, across the back, to the other hip.  This was the only way I could walk outside in the cold (it was winter).  This progressed until I was not able to move my feet forward any farther than a foot print.

I had 3 major surgeries  in 2010 - spinal stimulator installed for sacrailiac, and both hip joints replaced.

My youngest brother, who is 5 years younger than me, has had one hip replaced and one knee replaced.   My father had both knees replaced.

My theory is that we all have a much higher than average bone density.  Our bones way more, so over time, the degradation is faster.   I had a chiropractor when I was 35 years old that told me, while looking at an X-ray of my spine, that I had a spine of a 70 year old man.


FEET HISTORY

During this time period, I was also having problems with my feet.  

Around 2000, I would wake up sometimes with what felt like ground particles of glass underneath the skin on the bottoms of my feet when I woke up.

In 2005, my toes were beginning to look unhealthy.  Soaking them in a warm tub with medical bath salts actually hurt.

In 2006, I would wake up with my feet ice cold.   I was barely able to walk on them when I got up.   Thia improved greatly when I got a CPAP machine.   It helped so much, my feet actually felt uncomfortably HOT to me when I woke up, I assume because I had become so accustomed to the coldness.   This, all due to improved oxygen in the blood.   My sleep apnea was severe - apnea score = 68.

In 2007, I lost feeling in my toes.
In 2008, I lost feeling along all the bottoms of both feet.  Not completely numb, but bad.

The doctors did a test to determine the extent of my nueropathy in 2009.  It was determined that the loss of sensation in my feet was not due to the Neuropathy in my hips.   It was caused by neuropathy in my ankles.   They did not do a test for neuropathy for my knees.   The neuropathy in my hips was diagnosed as mild because I still had sensation and complete movement in the legs.  My ankles were diagnosed as moderate, because I still had complete movement.

In 2010, my toes lost all sensation.  I kept getting infections in my big toes on both feet, not at the same time, and typically just the right big toe.   At one point, I went to the doctor.  The infection was easily visible.  The doctor squeezed my big toe, and pus came out.  I felt absolutely nothing.

WHOLE BODY HISTORY

In 2005, I switched to a memory foam mattress

In 2008, I switched to the thickest memory foam mattress I could find - 13 inches.

In 2011, I was having severe insomnia.   The biggest component was pain in the spine.  This was relieved when I discovered I need to sleep on top of an electric blanket.   The electric blanket setting was 3.   The heat helped with pain, but also made me sink deeper into the memory foam, since it is heat activated.

In 2012, I was finding other therapies to use to help induce sleep.   Recently, I discovered that I had to increase the level of the electric blanket.  I had to increase the heat setting to 7.   But this was too high for something inside my gut.   after a few days, I got really sick.   I needed to put a regular thick blanket between my back and the electric blanket.   This diffused the heat better, and no one part of my back felt uncomfortable.   For the diffusion to work, I had to turn the electric blanket too high.

In 2012, If I lay down on a memory foam mattress without any heat underneath me, I wake up shivering with cold.  The memory foam sucks all the heat out of me.

I was still having problems falling asleep once I was sleepy and in bed.   My legs just didn't feel right, and I kept shifting them.   I realized today that my legs were not heavy enough to sink into the mattress, so they weren't getting much heat.    I had 2 old heating pads called Lava Buns.   These microwavable heating pads are rated to give someone a warm seat in an outdoor football stadium for 4 hours when there was snow on the ground.   I put those heating pads under my calves.   I added a sheet to insulate me from the pads.   This works well, so far.

In 2012, my feet get so numb after driving and walking for 3 to 4 hours, that it is difficult to drive.   I cannot feel the brake and gas pedals.  I started noticing this in 2010.  I would occasionally hit both the brake pedal and the gas pedal at the same time when I intended to stop the car.   I solved this by using the right foot for gas and the left foot for brake.

On a separate issue, I am also having what I consider neuropathy problems problems with my hands, originating in my wrists.   As of 2012, my fingertips are numb, and my typing is error prone.  I have been typing all my adult life, and my typing speed was blindingly fast and accurate.  I am seeing new errors in my typing, which are due to mis-striking keys (hitting 2 keys at the same time  OR   not hitting a key strong enough to register a keystroke was made).

I am sad with how fast this is progressing.  I am 60 years old.  I was hoping I would have 10 more years of independence - not relying on others or machines to move me around.   I will think and expect positives