Some photo blogging for Halloween

Been a long time since I linked to Flickr photos. Last time I did, I think Flickr was still a Yahoo property.  My blog is starting to live past some of the earlier properties of the internet. Before it simply predated some of them.  This is a picture of Thomas Lake Park in Eagan in the sunset.  I was out Ingress-ing and bumping the local farm.  It's a better looking picture larger.  I think it looks like a puzzle box cover (and accompanying puzzle).


I had my first Halloween at the new job.  We had a site party with beer, pizza, and board games.  M. scored a perfect score (0) in Parade.  I lost horribly at Exploding Kittens.  And G. won at Zombie Dice.  We played the base version because trying to integrate the hottie and jock were beyond my immediate capabilities.  A. won "scariest cookie".  This is not her cookie.  It's mine.  I went with a headless gummy bear cemetery.  It tasted bad...nasty...like the death it embodies.  If I had thought about it, I might have tried to create a Beetlejuice theme.  We had gummy worms and I could have colored one up black and white.


Here I am losing at Exploding Kittens - safe for work edition.  I fully failed to deploy my "nope" earlier which would have kept me in the game a bit longer.

Catch up (and not the blogging kind)

I think I'm almost caught up with most of the big things.  My team was at work 8-2  yesterday (Saturday) getting our product ready to go out the door and, as a non-programming manager, I took care of tracking down representatives for systems that weren't functioning properly and working on the employee awards program work I've been putting off forever because I had/have taxes to complete and rental property fences to help with and so much other work and family time.  The awards program work included fixing an Infopath form, which was the tricky bit, because I didn't have the right licensing originally and the intern who had created it wasn't around to work on it.  The very last button I pushed overrode all the historic forms and wiped the team view for five years, but the data is still there, just hidden and, like a smart person, I backed up the xsn so I can get back to a few versions.  At least I hope that's the case.

I have a bit left to do on my personal taxes, but my wife was still getting her data entered and I have them 99% of the way there.  And I have application security work to do this week (security artifacts in the backlog as part of the delivery process - I'm not even vaguely sure what documenting that looks like yet) and a product to get out the door and a dryer to replace at a rental property, but all that stuff was also there when I had other work, so it feels more under control.  I think post-Saturday work, it'll turn out to be a quiet weekend of bicycling, coffee, and treadmilling while watching the new Daredevil series on Netflix.

Ah, and I ordered the Castle Panic expansions (the Wizard one and the Dark Titan - better description from Fireside games here), although they won't get here for a few days.  I really like Castle Panic, so hopefully this will get my family reinvolved.  I don't think The Dark Titan released before yesterday (table top game day).  Klund says I should play Star Realms, but I'm a little wary of starting a semi-collectible deck-building game. Eryn has an urge to play miniatures and I can't support two hobbies at once.

WTF

I really enjoyed today's The Daily WTF, Accounting for Development.  Primarily because it once happened to me as a contractor.  I wasn't an accountant, but I was told the job I was interviewing for - and it was a two-way interview in my opinion, most contracting gigs were - would be bypassing IT.  The team I was talking to needed a new application, but couldn't convince IT to implement it on their time schedule.  They'd found some money in their budget, and wanted to use it "during the fiscal year" (which I interpreted to mean there might be money to start their project, but not necessarily to finish it) to show off what IT wasn't building and that they could build without them. I wouldn't be referred to as a developer, just a "consultant", and I couldn't use corporate images or database instances, because then IT would find out and put a stop to it and "they have more corporate clout in our organization."

I politely declined the gig, which really annoyed my contracting placement rep - although the fact that I'd been sent alone spoke a bit to faith in my ability to sell myself and make good decisions - until I pointed out we'd lose all other contracts with that rather large company had I said "yes".  I've often wondered if they ever found someone willing to take on their IT-flanking object and how miserable that person must have been once the inevitable political fight erupted.