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cold reality and warm IPs
Friday, May 13 2016
On Fridays, the IT department does their daily meeting (termed a "stand up," using nomenclature Da brought to the team) an hour earlier so as not to conflict with the weekly all-hands meeting. Today, it was just Ni, Da, and me in the stand up because the internet was down in the makeshift IT office in West Hollywood. In the absence of Meerkat and his sour killjoy attitude, the stand up was more chatty, jokey, gossipy and otherwise wide-ranging than usual. I came to realize something very important before it was over: when Meerkat leaves, I am the only person who will have a firm understanding of how all the backend systems function. The only other plausible backend developers on our team are Da and Ni, and Da admitted that I am much better with backend stuff than he is, and Ni said it was "great" that I am "getting into all that stuff." (Though she has a masters' degree in computer science, most of her tasks are concise and front-end; it's possible this is partly a consequence of sexism.) It often seems to happen that, over time, I become increasingly indispensible to the functioning of the IT departments I join as I gradually find myself in a position to know and maintain all the things nobody else has the patience, balls, or inclination to take on. But since I was hired by The Organization, this pattern is taking shape at a frightful rate. And their systems are far more complicated and heavily-utilized than the systems I've maintained in the past. I'm honestly surprised The Organization has so much faith that I am any sort of match for the responsibilities that await me within a couple short weeks. I've heard from Da that Meerkat, despite what he says to me, is actually impressed with my skills. And since Da hears so few good words about anyone from Meerkat, he tends to believe these things. But I suspect that the real reason Meerkat says good things about me is that, even in the face of his constant patronizing, belittling, and low-grade insults, I bite my tongue and mostly stay upbeat (and a little irreverent) while sprinkling my chat-window banter with self-deprecation for me and flattery for him. I'm guessing that Meerkat's social and professional behavior is the sort that runs off almost all positive affirmation, and, because I'm supplying something so rare, he has begun to like me.
As for The Organization and my place in it post-Meerkat, it would be quite a coup if I can meet or exceed the expectations being placed on me, and it would give me cause to renegotiate my job title and salary. But it's also possible I will fail. I'm fearless, patient, and flexible, and I excel at figuring things out on my own, but I can be sloppy and lazy, and my work can be hacky or otherwise unorthodox. And I don't always do well under pressure.
I phoned into the all-hands meeting during a downpour and, once I'd been noted in attendance, I put my phone on mute and paid almost no attention to the chirpy good news being reported by a subset of my colleagues (many of whom have perky Millennial names like Kelcey and Cailen). I did, however, pay attention enough to learn that donations are up 78% over this time last year, suggesting the cause is being well-funded.
I spent much of the afternoon learning and documenting the system delivering the emails to The Organization's many hundreds of thousands of contacts. The system was built from scratch by Meerkat, and soon it will be entirely my responsibility. Later I had a good long chat with Meerkat about the Postfix instances that do the work of sending the mail, and learned about such things as "warming up" IP addresses so they can deliver lots of email without being automatically flagged as sources of spam.
I cut out of work an hour early (while in the midst of writing a cron job to monitor Postfix instances for stalls) so I could drive out to Zena Road and attend the 49th birthday party of Chris, the male half of the couple I used to refer to as "the photogenic vegan Buddhists." Like me, Chris also works remotely for The Organization, although most of his contacts are on the east coast, so he can work mostly east coast hours. Gretchen had been working at the Golden Notebook in Woodstock, so she went to the party separately. Chris had told everyone not to bring presents, but I brought him the little painting I'd made of a pink flamingo anyway.
There were maybe ten or fifteen others at the party. I'd taken a 50 milligram dose of Vyvanse earlier, so I was in a nicely social mood. I talked some with Chris about office politics and the oddness of finding myself with increasing responsibilities for their technological resources. Later I talked to another Chris, one who even has a similar-sounding last name, though this Chris is a she. Some years back, Gretchen and I tried being friends with her and her husband, but she's one of those people who is really only friends with people if they offer her something useful professionally. She runs a popular blog about health, high colonics, and vegan eating, all served with a heavy dollop of woo. Though she's funny and ironic in a way that suggests social compatibility, her blog is unreadable for someone with my worldview (or Gretchen's, for that matter). In our conversation this evening, I told her about my new job with The Organization and about the fact that soon I will be in charge of all their critical (and homespun) IT systems. It turned out that Chris knew a great deal about sending mass emails (her organization sends out mailings of about 300,000 in size), and she independently brought up the concept of a "warm" IP address. She said that back when her organization shared an IP address with other emailing outfits, they would take advantage of the good (non-spammer) reputation her organization conferred on the IP address, facilitating the sending of small batches of genuine spam.
Later, after Gretchen left, I joined a small group of people in a circle in the living room. The butch half of a lesbian couple Gretchen and I like was telling us about direct actions she and her friends used to make on behalf of AIDS, gay-rights, and animal rights causes, and how some friends are stuck, in the aftermath of a court judgment, having to pay a portion of every paycheck to some horrible corporation that experiments on animals. "They wouldn't have to continue doing that if the company were to go bankrupt," I said conspiratorially.
Later, I held forth at some length about my right wing troll Suzy, telling the story of the time a guy hit on her from ISIS-controlled Mosul, yet was so sex-obsessed that he had to be prodded into saying anything at all about his very interesting vantage point.
Somehow I stayed at the party until midnight.
Back at the house, I stayed up late smoking pot, drinking booze, and dicking around on my computer. Occasionally I'd take breaks to saw away at a $40 violin I'd recently bought on eBay. I've never had a violin and have rarely had a chance to "play" one, but I've always wanted one. Being an acoustic instrument, I don't feel as bad playing it when animals are hanging out (their presence keeps me from picking up my electric guitar most of the times I consider doing so). I sound terrible, of course, but the great thing about smoking pot is that it allows me to find the few little things I like in something even so unpracticed as my violin playing, and it keeps me doing it enough to perhaps learn something. With a fretless instrument, one has to have a good ear for pitches, and, in keeping with that, when I "tuned" it, I just plucked the strings and listened for what I thought sounded like a suitable distance between notes.
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