dianec42

Work background 1: My workplace (Blizzard Entertainment) has been making much of our diversity & inclusion initiatives recently. I have been participating at a moderate level.

Work background 2: In the last few months, my department's management chain has lost both the head of the department AND the engineering lead. We have been making do with a middle manager (who has close to 40 direct reports at the moment) and a ragtag band of old-timers stepping up.

So imagine my delight when we FINALLY posted the engineering manager position to our hiring site.

.... Then imagine my delight turning to horror as I read the listing. It was a huge blob of word salad. It named two different positions between the title and the first wall of text. It had a laundry list of Absolute Requirements. It included the word "ninjas". What are we, 12 years old?

You know that position that no sensible will ever apply for because no one can possibly meet all the requirements? Add to that: The position that no one with an organized bone in their body will ever apply for, because OMG YOU PEOPLE CAN'T EVEN WRITE A JOB REQ, WHY WOULD I GO ANYWHERE NEAR THAT.

So. I approached my acting manager and said "The wording on this is terrible. We need to fix this." Next thing I know, the Word doc appears in my inbox with the directive to "go for it". So I did!

There was a bit of back-and-forth. They tried to move everything back into Required. I put my foot down and INSISTED that at least 1/3 of them had to go under Optional. They picked different ones than I had picked, but that's okay.

The new listing went up Friday afternoon. It's not perfect, but it's more inclusive and welcoming, and it is HELLA more readable. I am super proud of myself, and I am also very grateful that management and HR took the time to work with me on this, because this is important.

Here is the job listing, in case you want to admire my skills and/or want to come work for Blizzard and be my boss! https://careers.blizzard.com/en-us/openings/ogsu8fw4

P.S. If one more person tells me they appreciate my "unique perspective" I may actually cry. I am so tired of having a unique perspective. Can I please just be among my people now please?

I feel like my life is one of those DirecTV commercials but in reverse. "When you get a third pitcher of margaritas, you take advice from Stefan. When you take advice from Stefan, you go work for a game team. When you go work for a game team, you sit next to a producer who is a jock. When you sit next to a producer who is a jock, you sign up for boot camp. When you sign up for boot camp, you drop 2 jeans sizes..."

Did some more stitching on the cross stitch lady of dooooooom. GAH, someone needs to be slapped for recommending doing this on aida. Sadly I've already agreed to do the same picture for a friend in shades of pink. Maybe for the next one I'll make up some art deco mittens. :P

Started trying to play Rock Band 2 songs on Hard mode. Ow. Only got booed off the stage once (that will teach me not to trust "simple" mystery set lists!). Am occasionally adopting the strategy of just skipping all the orange notes. Sigh.

Have realised that work stress is getting to me way too much. There's too much ambient stupidity; I never seem to discharge the current Mad quickly enough before the next one comes along. Oh well, awareness is the first step. Silly post-its are the next ("stupid happens"), we'll see if that helps.

The new CJ Cherryh book ROCKS. I might need to go back and re-read Cyteen, but I'm not hopelessly lost. Yet.

Had a ton of sushi for lunch today. I feel like I may never get hungry again. We stopped for boba on the way back. I have tentatively decided that beverages should not be chewy.

DAMN YOU KENKEN!

I've been doing a little more stitching on the Art Deco Lady of Dooooooom. Next time, I will get to use a 4th shade of purple! Whee!

I've also been taking afternoon walks around the block a little more often. For a while I felt guilty about getting out of the office for 20 minutes during working hours, but everybody's doing it (including my lead and my manager!) so apparently it's just the done thing. It's also an excellent chance to talk to myself without anyone looking at me strangely or interrupting me with work issues, so occasionally I manage to gain a little perspective on the whole work drama thing and the need to rise above that. (-:

I've scored a 2-week free pass to a different gym (Bally's). It's not ridiculously far away, and the parking situ is reportedly workable. We'll see about the actual facilities, hours etc. I have GOT to get myself a membership in a gym that's actually pleasant to go to. (I also have a line on a cheap "in" at LA Fitness but have been too lame to look up their nearest location.)

Dragon boat coup is still incomplete (need to locate our current captain so we can depose him properly). Our coach says he's cooled down a bit and isn't actually going to kick our butts. I asked if he could just kick S. and K.'s butts anyway, and spare mine. :P

So for about a month now, I've been fighting off a rotten cold. Or something. I'm now fever-free and mostly sniffle-free, but still have about zero energy or focus. I've missed a couple of days of work, and even when I'm there I've been firing on about two cylinders max.

This past Monday I was feeling almost better, so I braved the gym. I did 20 minutes walking on the treadmill, and it damn near killed me. Sigh.

Today was a relatively active day. I went out with a group of cow orkers for a farewell lunch (cleverly got someone else to drive), and after work I indulged in some retail therapy at Barnes & Noble. I also shopped for some necessary bits and bobs at Trader Joe's, where I miraculously did not kill anyone.

For the future, even more ambitious plans have been thrust upon me. I have a dragon boating coaching clinic far too early on Saturday morning, and an open blues jam thingy two Sundays hence, both in Long Beach. Am currently v glad we moved south, still hoping the rain stops before I have to drive to anything far away.

I feel a bit like I'm waking up from a long nap. It will be good to get out more. Who knows, one of these years we may even get around to having a housewarming party...

I should really write up a multi-bajillion-part trip report about my trip to Japan. However, I am still absolutely exhausted, so I will leave you with a few snippets for now:

* Japanese toilets are really, REALLY strange.
* I hope I never see another buffet again for a really long time.
* Tokyo Banana is made of win.
* I drank a LOT of coffee on the trip. Some of my colleagues would probably say TOO much.

There were 14 of us in the group; 7 from this building, 5 from a random assortment of offices from around the US, 1 from Canada, and 1 from Argentina. I didn't even know half of these offices existed.
( I should have been practicing my conversational Spanish for this trip. Who knew? )

Tune in next time for further adventures and short-lived sporting careers.

Let the record show that I made it to the gym twice last week. I also went last night. I've been running jogging for up to 4 minutes at a stretch, which is the point when I am (barely) capable of pushing the buttons to slow down the treadmill and still have enough breath to swear at the lousy user interface.

This afternoon was soccer practice. By an amusing coincidence, I saw an article recently saying that soccer is better exercise than jogging. I can attest to that, though I think they need to add the phrase "if done properly". :P I was trying *way* harder than certain of my teammates.

The soccer is for a work thing next month, several of us are going to Japan. We're going to get our asses kicked at the actual sporting part; luckily that's not our entire reason for going!

This week I am mainly attending a class on how to write ridiculously complicated SQL queries for Oracle. I was somewhat surprised to find that this is a sufficiently popular topic to hold a class on, let alone regular classes, but apparently so.

The instructor is a mad Serb called Sasha who is energetic and rather enthusiastic about the subject matter, to put it mildly. I suppose this is good, as we'll benefit more from too much enthusiasm than too little. He has a disturbing way of asking "Are you with me on this?" before going on to a new topic. It comes out sort of like "Arjoowidmeahndiz?" and the first time he said it I just COULD NOT figure out what the hell he'd just said, and stared in helpless puzzlement for a long moment. Ironically, I had been with him right up until he said that.

Everyone in the class that I've spoken with has been very nice. I seem to be the most extroverted person there (apart from Sasha, obviously), which is exceedingly odd, and I am one of 2 or 3 people whose native language is American, which makes the whole thing rather entertaining. My heart sank when I saw that we'd be sharing PCs, but the guy I'm sharing with is very sharp and happy to let me type (as I can spell tricky American variable names with the greatest of ease).

It is very refreshing and liberating being out of the office. My lead only called me on my cell phone once today! And that was after I'd called her to see how things were going. So you could say I started it.

The only down side is having to get up Even Earlier. I am rather sleepy to say the least. At least the coffee there is free and not entirely abominable.

Last weekend we did NOT make it to Gallifrey con. We did sort of make up for it by watching the rest of season 2 on DVD that we ordered from the UK around Christmas.

I miss British TV. We're making a short trip to England soon for a wedding, and I hope I don't spend the entire rest of the time glued to the telly sighing wistfully.

Why are they changing the dates on daylight saving time AGAIN? It's hard enough to get up in the morning as it is. (I know, I know... they're just doing it to piss off grumpy old farts like me.)

My new resolution around the office: If I cannot help making theatrical sighing noises, I shall at least endeavour to do so with my mouth closed.

It is not actually possible to do a "quick" run of any part of Sunken Temple.

When are the Oscars? I volunteered to drive stuartc to a thing in Hollywood tomorrow, how doomed are we?

It took me longer to drive home from Torrance last night than it did to drive home from CYPRESS last Thursday. Grrrr.

If anyone wishes to purchase a Blackbird for half price, give me a shout.

The "friends & family" deal expires October 15, 2006; and the units are not for resale, must be for your personal use only. No idea if we can ship to non-US addresses, although I strongly doubt it comes with non-US maps anyway.

Also, I apologize in advance if our fine and lovely web site crashes anyone's browser. Obviously, they didn't consult me. (-: