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the big move
Friday, December 3 1999
The workday was cut short by a dramatic relocation. Today was to be our last day in the Mission Valley office. By Monday, we'll be set up on
the sixth floor of a building in the heart of downtown San Diego. At first there will be 120 of us crowded together on one floor awaiting the renovation of additional space.
The fact that entire office was about to be broken down and shipped across town didn't do much to reduce pressures being placed upon me. If anything, the imminent move increased the pressure. But today we were dealing with some very real limits and I regarded all the headless chicken behaviour mostly as comedy.
Yesterday I'd received indications from the treacherous E-commerce team that I wouldn't be bonused for the Herculean effort (and, dare I say, wickedly clever creativity) I threw into building them a kick-ass wish list site. Well today, as they rallied troops in a desperate last minute effort to get the wish list live, they suddenly found themselves encountering flack from the ever-schoolmarmish VP of IT. She's a terrible stickler for proper process and paperwork, things at which (like me) the E-commerce team does not excel. Further complicating matters was the opinion of the engineers familiar with our NetGravity banner server. They were in agreement that presenting more than five banners per web page was too much a load. But the E-commerce team (through its "tech liaison") had ordered a system presenting 12 banners per page. I told them I could modify my system to present only six banners per page, and that seemed to satisfy everyone save the schoolmarmish VP of IT. In the end she single-handedly nixed the launch of the wish list, more as a matter of principle than anything else. Since I was given to understand that I was to be swindled out of a bonus anyway, I actually took a certain satisfaction in the wish list not going live. I'd built a good system, the E-commerce people had played with it and had a taste, but since they hadn't followed proper procedure (which includes offering me a bonus!) they were denied. Serves those arrogant E-commerce people right! I'm sick of them treating me like their special E-commerce developer.
After I'd packed up and labeled my computer and personal effects, I split for the day. As I was heading out the door, I saw moving preparations happening throughout the building. Cardboard covered all surfaces over and past which material was to be transported. Wheeled hand trucks of various descriptions were everywhere.
As I rode home one last time along the San Diego River, I listened to Talk of the Nation on NPR as they discussed the imminent landing of the Mars Polar Explorer. It was about 11:30am.
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