I love it too!

I have to agree with many people out there that say that Excel is a super powerful tool, how did we survived without it? Poor people before worksheets, doing everything manually…YUCK

A guy at work is quite a wiz in Excel and tough me the Macros tool option. Basically what is does is that it records all the movements and operation you do in a worksheet so that you can, afterwards, just click on an icon and see how everything is done by itself just the way you did before.

With the change of ERP I am in charge of migrating all the info from the old system into the new crappy one, so that means working a lot with Excel and doing and redoing the same thing over and over. I was getting good at it, but still it was time-consuming. This guy showed me Macros and now I record only once the process and then…just one click!

It’s so awesome that right now its working on the background while I write on my blog…It means that I am still earning my pay, just that the PC is doing it for me and I can use the free time to write…wow ain´t that precious?

Well the reason is work because for the first time in a long time they have me by the balls because we are changing ERP software, meaning we have to migrate all the old database into the new software and you can imagine, both software are not compatible at all, so we have to do everything the old fashion way. Put all the info from the old one in a spread sheet THEN use a tool to migrate, check and categorize in the new one and just open the dam doors and let the flow of water run free. When I mean water I mean mistakes, errors and other nasty things the new software shoots at us because we are feeding it with crap. The best part is that my company kindly named me “leader” of this stupid process meaning not only I have to fence with this stupid unlimited flow of flaws but also have to face raging bosses, nagging users and a heap ton of douchy people telling me how awful the new software is and how they prefered the old one. They are facing the common “change defiance” that commoners experiment when their tiny little brains have to deal with changes in their pitiful and meaningless lives…sad

But what is even more fun is how the users launch AT ME…they snap and start yelling at me like I was the one that designed the software or if it was me who decided to put them under stress or maybe I made the mistakes appear just as an october prank. “Well no mister idiot, I am just the messenger!” I have nothing to do with it, so shut your yap and just tell me whats wrong with it so I can rely the message to the pertinent incompetent bastards who designed this pice of garbage they call ERP. Classic thought, throughout the history, poor damn messenger is the one that gets killed, tortured or raped because they bring dire news…how is that HIS fault? Why skin him and send his head back? It was the damn Shogun, Lord, King or whatever who MADE the message, he just took a horse and delivered it.

So anyhow…my dreamy vacations is the only thing that keeps me waking up and dealing with all this shit…specially because my boss seems to have taken a lot of hate for the during the last couple of weeks. I still have not figure out what I do or did to make her hate me (other than prove again and again how idiot she is without saying it straight to her face).

Ahh but something good happened. One of the reasons I have decided not to have any kids of my own, at least not for now, is because if I ever do have a kid I will give him/her everything I was given or better. I was placed in one of the best schools and universities in my city to sadly end up in a job where I earn shit and in no way could place a kid in such good schools. I can´t deny that my stupid hormone clock or whatever is started to tick and makes me see kids in a new way.

Ain´t she cute?

 Some years ago I looked at them as pests now I see them as a cute bundle of joy…not all but some at least. One of my friends that does have a girl of 3, introduced her to me 2 weeks ago and since then I fell in love with her cuteness and adopted her as my “niece” and will definitely fight my position as godfather when they decide to baptise her. She now calls me uncle and last time when we said goodbye she hugged me…man SO cute!

Now the bad news is that her dad (my friend) has started a new job in a whole different city from my own and won´t be coming back until december for the holidays, meaning I won´t be able to see her until then (or it would be way too creepy if I did)… 

So to recap the most important facts that have happened:

So it is now a fact that my trip will be done in November starting from the 15th. A lot of gray thoughts, as grey as surely the sky will be in Germany, try tu haunt me, but I fence them with “We might actually enjoy a bit of snow for a change!” and just trying to find the good stuff about little things, like for instance. I screwed up in the reservation of a hotel and gave dates of a month earlier. Imagine what would have been my surprise when I arrive there and BOOM no room and worst of all, because a no show up, I would have ended up paying the whole account! SO…yeah thanks to the change of dates in the trip I found out about the mistake and now everything is fine. Also, due to the VERY terrible flight schedule for the near dates, I will have to stay one day and night in Dallas, so making the best of it, I guess I will be getting to know a bit of the city!

Now the crappy part is what I have found out, in my own lilttle espionage way. After I question certain key people I found out, tying pieces together, that my boss made a personal quest and life goal the changing of my trip, not because of work, oh no no no…because she was resentful, partially due to certain comments of people, that “her lackey (I am using that word, there would have been hell to pay if she would have actually used it!) was going to Europe before she even left the country for vacation” and to top all that up, “because she was very mad that I went and bought the plane ticket without consulting her in advance, even though the ticket was purchased 6 months in advanced AND I told her about it the very nest day I bought it!” SO yeah! She was so stingy about I me forgetting “who is the boss” that she actually made up some work and excuse of why she needed me here in order to convince the higher ups to PAY for the change of itinerary and well of course, screw me up…just to teach me a lesson!  Isn´t that just lovely?

Hell when I learnt about this I was very close to just marching into her office and throwing my letter of resignation in her face! But once again, I shall not play with my food…therefore I will keep this into my vault of “due vendettas” for the near future, when everything, probably, gets fucked up, due to her madness in changing dates. I will taste the sweet words “TOLD YOU SO BIATCH!” when the day comes!

For now well, I am already preparing for the winter in Europe, bought the new winter jackets and all the stuff, changed the hotel reservations, etc.

As I said in older post I was finally given the schengen visa in order to visit Germany and fulfill my heavily planned vacations. When people asked “So the trip is a sure thing?” my answer was always the same “Sure as it can be, this vacations is as certain as death is the end of all our paths” and I felt it was that way, I really though there was no turning back, the visa was the inflection point where my desires transformed into reality and there was no way in hell I was going to miss such vacation…again, so I though.

My company is in the process of changing ERP (main software) and my boss decided to name me “migration team leader”. This meant that I was suppose to be during the whole process that began in April and the schedule showed that we would be finished with everything in September, but thanks to dumb decisions (made by the higher ups of course) things go tangled up and we are still in the process. I announced my vacation in May when schedule was still solid and now things are delayed and so I was summoned to the vice president office with my boss and her boss. They told me “Sorry budd, but you vacations must be reschedule. According to the new schedule you vacations will be in the middle of the migration and we need you here”

I declare myself a craven, or a smart man who acts rationally? Depends on what light you shine on that. My first reaction in my mind was to tell all of them “fuck you and your project, don´t come screwing up my shit due to your incompetence!” but I took a deep breath and said “So what are you saying, that my vacations are cancelled meaning I am about to lose a heap lot of cash in the process?” And they were smart enough to say “Yes and no. We don´t mean for you to lose money or cancel your vacations, just reschedule and we as the company, will see that all extra costs are paid in full by us”. Ok cool enough, but still I shall not visit Europe in the fall but in damn winter! How is that a win situation for me? It’s rather shit if you ask me! So yeah, take one for the team?…I started rationalizing the possible outcomes of the next thing I would declare having in mind what my old man used to say “You never play with your food” and as bad as I hate to accept it, this company pays me and that way I can eat. It is clear that I have the hot pot by the handle and I have a bargain position and I could remind them how bad they need me and put pressure on my own agenda, the problem is that I also know the modus operandi of the company, they will surely fold either in granting my vacations as planned or rising my salary but they will hold the grudge and as soon as the project is over they will show me the pink slip…and again I will not play with the hand that feeds me, specially that I am with a lot of debts thanks to the vacations itself. So yeah, take one for the team it is.

As always, I have given the information of the restrictions of the change of itinerary: Due to visas and the airline instruction they told me that I had to be coming back the 8th of December as the latest possible date…so now the ball is in my comapny´s court.

This is a good definition for frustration! Let me tell you about the feeling in my gut when I phoned my GF to give her the dire news and she began to cry to what I though “What a drama queen, is not that bad!” but when she told me why she broke down between sobs my heart sunk pretty badly. She had a debt that was pending to be scored legally of a nice sum, more or less USD$10K that was her saving for her, well our, future. It was going to be a down-payment for her schooling or maybe our house. We both had high hopes for that money and both of us were “counting crows in the air” while the decision came through. Well it did, but she kept quiet and was fending it all by herself. Basically the judge decision was “Sorry, no money for you, tough luck”. She though I was having a hard time at work and was saving that news for when things were brighter. So you can imagine how she felt when I told her that the vacations, that small thing that was holding her together giving her hope that things might be crap around her but there was a bright spot in the near future making her smile was now torn to pieces…I felt how my heart shrunk into a little knot, comforted her and told her everything was going to be alright, that I we would find a way to get that money or just save up more, that is was not that critical, but in the end the truth was, the whole things was just a shitty mess.

So, last week I ended up following the advice I gave Kath a while back…the drunken bliss. Sad thing is that it didn´t helped me as much as I would have wanted. I have to keep up the good work, smile for my girlfriend to show her comfort and strength and the promise that everything will be alright when in the end I ask myself…will it?

I agree in that statement, if I am going to do something, I am going to do it fast, I am going to do it right and I will concentrate to do it well and give it my best.

The problem? We can’t always win…I wish I could, I wish I could say “every time I do something with my all I always do it right!” Hell I would really feel high if that could be true, but no…I am not immune to human error, to maybe not having my head in the right place when I was doing that task and whatever reason it might have been…I make mistakes and that pisses me off. 99% of the times when something goes wrong it was not my doing, someone else can point a finger in other direction and maybe the data that was given to me was wrong from the beginning. Nearly every time I can have an inner smile while saying “Yeah you are right, that is wrong, but if you look again, look who did it, if you follow the train of though of my work you can never have that outcome…see? The poor person who did this is wrong, not me”

All these “I am right” boosts my ego…problem? Yeah the 1% of the times when I am wrong makes my ego sink like a freaking Jap battle ship in the pacific in 1944. First is the shock “Wait what? Something must be wrong some place else…let me check again” the awe make me feel like an ass because I can´t believe it is me and when in reality it WAS me is like the cocky fucker got had…yeah I can feel the inner smile of whoever told me “Yup you MOFO…you ARE WRONG!”. After the shock I just feel like crap and admit my mistake and proceed immediately to correct it and I hate the times that I can’t get to the correcting part in full force because I am in a meeting or on the street…if that happens I will sit there not paying attention to anything and start  reviewing everything in my head to find where I screwed up, on how the hell did I screwed up and what I have to do to never do that mistake again…usually during meetings I will look overly concentrated on what people are saying when in reality I am someplace else in my head.

Yeah…today I screwed up…it was me! I hate it, made my day crap and even crappier because the mistake was dumb, only dumb people oversee that kind of mistakes, it was “I review too quickly and missed it” kind of thing…something like 4+4=9, everyone knows is wrong but if you read it too quickly and are not concentrated enough you might just process it as something right, because after all…I would never do that mistake, would I?…fuck

Does anyone else have a similar problem dealing with wrong doings?

I was very worried that my crappy luck was going to mess with my planned vacations, but it didin´t! Yes lassies and lads, I have the visa! Now is just a matter of waiting for the travelling day, max out all my credit cards, and save my debt weeping for after the trip!

I kind of felt that everything was going to work out, as it was meant to be. After all is you remember my trip to the capital in order to get the visa, things went in a clockwork fashion, arrived everywhere in time and everything just worked alright…I knew deep inside that all that providence was there for something!

I am grateful with the universe kindness, don´t take me wrong, but if she is such a goodie with me of the late she can always pop the winning lotto numbers in a dream and I will be set!

I for one can´t say I have any friends, I can´t talk for them, I don´t know if they see me as a friend, but I certainly don´t see any of them as friends, just coworkers and maybe one or two comrades…the special kind of coworkers that held a relationship like the mentioned above.

Now why do I think they are not my friends and I am not their friend? I am sure that if I get married I won´t ask them to be my best man nor I will invite them even to the ceremony, they will, if anything, get a card letting them know I am getting hitched. If they get sick I won´t go to the hospital to visit, nor go the funeral of any of their family members…sure I will feel bad and send them a card or a present but I will not be there for them…let the real friends do that.

The fact is that once I stop working in this company, after a few short weeks or maybe even days, I will be forgotten, no more calls, no more emails…just accuantance in facebooks that get a “how are you doing” from time to time and false promises of “we have to hang out together some time”. Reality is that even when the company tries to make everyone closer with party and reunion, we will never be real friends. The fact that I am “friends” with the boss does not shield me from getting fired if the company find it fit to do so.

So yeah I find it boring, dumb and pointless, the damn forced on relationships in the company. In my department, my boss has the “tradition” to gather the whole department in our free time when someone birthday is up, to get together, eat and/or drink and hang out to honor that eprson birthday…I do it because if I don´t I will get tagged as a Grinch and relationship might get aquard, but if people in general wouldn´t be such pitiful and judgemental biengs, why would I attend? Is not that I don´t like them (well maybe a couple of asses are not of my devotion), is just that I would rather get home and read some cool novel, watch a new episode of American Dad or even sleep. Why use my time to try and create some kind of “strong” relationship that is in the end frail, no matter what they try to do. I know that when I get fired or I quit, everyone and everything regarding this company will remain as a memory, in the past, and no further contact will be made. Besides, I find birthday celebration trivial and dumb…why celebrate a date that means no achievement? If it was up to me I would prefer to have my day uncelebrated and in return not get invited to boring reunion where a person stands in front of a cake while a group of people sing their birthday song and congratulate them and wish them a long life…more years of eating shit, yeah…thats what I need.

Bottom line is that real friends are the ones made at young age, with guys at school, university or the ones from your block and or vecinity…those are the ones that stick, like a bad smell in your shoe after you stepped on a turd, that no matter where they live, you will still keep in real touch…or at least I will try to make it so, getting disappointed some times when I try to contact them and have an empty response, but that is another post.

So the trip was to last 1o hours in the bus, meaning that if we left town at 8:20pm we would be arriving at the capital at 6:30am more or less. Everything started normally boring, we were going well on time when the shit striked. A big bad accident made all the roads to be closed so the emergency response could get to the site quicker. For 2 hours the path was closed! I was getting neurotic, if calculations were right, 2 hours stuck in traffic meant we would miss our appointment!

I am an impatient man, I won´t deny it, I have trying working on it, but its hard to fight something that seems it part of me, a part that I dislike, but a part of me all the same. So I am freaking out thinking “Ok, damage control now what?” my GF tried to calm me down with truthfulness “Well, fist, we don´t know if we are going to be late or not, you are guessing and calculating that we are going to miss the appointment, but you are not sure and second, why worry if you can´t do anything about it”. Just after she said that a dude 2 rows behind us started calling to get a plane ticket for 6am to be in the capital at 8am departing from the last town we passed by. I heard him say “yeah ok, thank you” and tell the guy beside him he was tacking the plane. My small tranquility went to hell, “should I do the same”? I started asking myself. Man I love my GF, she saw my face getting worried and she told me “The guy is nuts, not only he will be spending a lot more, but now how the hell is he going to get to the last town we were at? All traffic is closed anyhow!”…so true!

Anyway, thanks to my PSP I calmed my nerves and after 2 hours the traffic started moving again. Couldn´t really sleep, busses are not meant for people taller than 6′. I really felt uncomfortable! If I slept 2 hours in a row it was a miracle. I was up and about at 4am, damn it. I fall asleep at 5:30 again.

When I opened my eyes at 6:10am we were in the capital city! Now how on earth did we or the driver achieved that? I have no idea, not a clue, but it did. We got to the terminal at 7am, we were able to get a decent breakfast and to walk all the way to the embassy and still be on time!

Things in the embassy seems to go alright, but I didn´t know I had to take with me a letter from my employer saying I was granted vacations, like a vacation certificate. Why on earth did they even care? Well after some though, the vacations are a way of making sure I am not going to quit my job and stay in their country, but still, even if that was my plan, a vacation certificate can´t stop me from doing it, so its pointless. Anyhow, I was told that my visa wouldn´t not be processed until I get them the letter.

Right now I already asked for my vacations to my boss in a written form to what she said “I will have to talk to my boss about it before I approve it”…wait what? She already agreed on it like 2 months ago, why pull this shit on me now? Meeeeh…good thing I plan everything in advanced and the trip is in October, so she can take a few days deciding if she wants.

OH, BUT BUT…I found out that even if I would have taken a flight to the capital I would have been screwed, because the airport was closed until 10am! That means I was meant to be in that bus and that poor fellow who panicked got screwed…the teaching of the story? Easy mate: Prepare the essentials and know that your eventualities will occur: nothing is carved on rock. Also don´t panic, things tend to fix themselves or the solution is simpler than you think. Be patient! Patience is improtant…I really have to learn that last one.

Anyway, because I was given the appointment at 8am tomorrow, the earliest flight couldn´t get me in time and traveling the night before would require for me to pay for a hotel, and right now we are in war economy in my front, meaning, spent as little as I can and only is very important stuff, such as the teachings of the ninja saving program

Therefore I decided to take the bus, 10 to 12 hours depending on the usual problems of the road such as repairs or accidents. I will start travelling at 8pm and hoping to arrive at 6am more or less, take some time to take breakfast and get to the embassy with no hassle. Now the idea to sleep and pass all night in a bus other than boring and uncomfortable is just…I feel cheap! hahaha

Anyhow, I will be travelling soon enough and 2 days from now when I am back I will let you all know how things went down, if I will be able to travel to Europe or not.

Maybe, just maybe…at least in my dream world in my head: My pleads were heard. After the tragic events that happened trying to get my passport issued I made a lot of complaints to different news papers and to the authorities. I really want to believe that I was actually heard and that is was not all just by chance.

I have read in the news yesterday that they will start using a new finger ID machine starting this monday to give appointments. This means they have cancelled the stupid line of 5 hours just to be told when you had to really come to wait another 8 hours. With this machine, you just have to dedicate 5 minutes or your time placing your fingerprint and it will automatically give you a date: They did even a small study of how long they take to process 1 passport, made a really easy calculation of how many people they can really sort out in one day and placed a cap meaning that the long 8 hour wait will be reduced to just 5 hours hahaha…but it’s something, they stepped up.

So again, from the question at the beginning, I would really like to feel glad that I was heard…but the truth, as life is just like that: It was meant to happen even if I complaint or not…so I will feel bad because the measures were made AFTER I had to live through that ordeal…daaaaaamn