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impromptu departure party
Wednesday, April 28 1999
The so-called "Megaproject," an attempt to get us engineers to stay late rebuilding the site from scratch, seems to be unravelling in more ways than one. This is depressing to those who thought they'd be earning $10,000 in bonuses, but not to me. Happily, I can see my summer gradually being returned to me piece by piece. The latest blow to the Megaproject comes with the news that our company has just hired six supposedly "superstar programmers" who will, to use the jargon of my workplace, "take our website to the next level." What that means is that they, not us cowboy programmers, will build the new site. This development has engineering feeling insecure and demoralized. They'd been looking forward to building the site from the ground up; I suppose on some level it was to be something akin to their life purpose. Since there isn't much going on in their non-work life, snatching this avenue of achievement away is a serious blow. But for me, I feel like a stone is being lifted from my back. As I've said before, I wouldn't mind too much if I did get fired. There is so much else in my life that carries vastly more significance than the vapid, schmaltzy product of my employer.
In the evening, people kept showing up at our apartment completely unannounced with the intention of hanging out. In a way it was cool, because it's always good when people feel comfortable enough with you to just pop by and hang out. But tonight wasn't the best night for Kim and me to be socializing. Tomorrow, you see, we'll be catching a plane and flying to Las Vegas, then Houston, then New Orleans. Yes, we're going to Jazzfest. But before we go, we have some things we need to do.
Our neighbor Joe was the first to come by, beer in hand. Lisa (the next door neighbor) came over with a more pressing need; her computer (fresh from the shop with a new hard drive) needed a little tweaking before it would sense the world in an acceptable manner. When I finally had it working, Lisa came back with me and hung out too. I get the impression that she has a certain amount of intellectual hunger that goes through periods of starvation, and this causes her to be exceptionally curious.
Eric the Defense Engineer also came by, but he was in a mood to hit the bars, and had the impression he could get us all to go to Pacific Shores with him. Kim suggested instead that he get some beer and come back to our place, and he was agreeable. But when he left, he never returned. Go figure.
In other news: I've more or less finished the painting upon which I've been working, meaning I've signed it. Also, my first stab at designing gothic white supremacist web pages seems to be a stunning success. It's fairly easy for me to keep this Trench Coat Mafia page near the top of Altavista, and the one link to my journal on that page is responsible for a 30% increase in hits to the journal front page. Best of all, Ceej, the webmaster of Spies, the host of this site, now finds herself fielding hilarious emails such as this:
To Ixpres and Spies.com,
Are you aware that one of your users is using your domain to promote The
Trenchcoat Mafia.
The website is: http://www.spies.com/%7Egus/trenchcoat/
The email being used is: kmueller@ixpres.com
Please reply to this post and explain why this filth (though it may be
within 1st ammendment regulations) is being allowed on your Provider.
I will not go any further with this for 48 hours, however at that point,
I am going to go forward to the press concerning this matter as it is a
great danger to children worldwide.
Thanks!
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