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digital sweatshop mercenary
Sunday, August 15 1999
As arranged yesterday, I went to work yet again on this Sunday.
Work-wise, the big accomplishment of the day was my completion of a novel integrated semi-static system for the much-traveled main page of the corporate web site. Under the system I devised, the bulk of the new website front page will be pulled statically from an ASP include on the web server. But this include will be rebuilt dynamically by the front page ASP script whenever the script detects that either new database data is available or administrative update tools have been at work. This cuts back enormously on hits to a centralized file server where many dynamically-generated snips of content will reside. With all the great minds in our company worrying about load stress, I'm surprised to be the first to devise such a system. It was tricky to implement, but the glory of success made it all worthwhile.
Around 8:00PM I told John I had to go. I was mostly done with my work, but there were still plenty of odds and ends that needed doing. So he immediately offered me $200 if I'd stay late. I didn't really want to keep working, especially since this was supposed to be the weekend of reconciliation with my girlfriend, but the money and the desperation in John's mellow eyes made me agree to stay. I called Kim and left a message telling her that shit had come up, but not to worry, I'd be making more dough. (You see, if I was like my colleagues and simply working out of a sense of obligation or for the dubious promise of a bonus, my continuing to stay at work would have been utterly indefensible.)
By the time I was free to go, it was 1:00AM. I was exhausted and just wanted to maybe crash on a bean bag in the office, something that I would have been free to do back when I was a free man. But such is no longer the case. Kim freaked out when I suggested that I wanted to do such a thing. So I agreed to have her come pick me up. We ended up fighting for the rest of our waking hours. It was horrible.
The reason I find Kim's behaviour in these matters so aggravating is that I'm used to having girlfriends who spent considerably less time managing my life. Back in the day, without even the aid of email, I found I could carry on extended (and very romantic) long-distance relationships with the likes of Lisa "Joy" Powley, Christin Knowlton, and Leslie Montalto. They never really worried all that much about me when I was away; they just carried on with their lives and were thrilled as all hell whenever I could find the time to visit them. I guess I should have known it was going to be completely different with Kim during the few weeks in July 1998 when we were apart, when she'd routinely send me angry emails demanding to know the exact date I'd be returning.
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