Thursday, September 13, 2007

Punctured balloon

Well, High Drama on the board today. I finally waded in and tried my best to be polite and friendly but firm in asking a certain new poster to lay off the unprovoked insults to all and sundry. On a standard day, I get something like 0-2 people mentioning something about a board post gone wonky. Usually 0. Rarely 2. Today? I got a dozen or so. So I was not out of line in thinking that something had to be done. Somewhat like puncturing a balloon or taking the bottom orange out of the fruit stack, there was some brouhaha that came after my post and I spent an inordinate amount of emotional energy on this. I tried to help someone in the best way I knew how. Some others tried to help, some others yet, not so much on the helping. The object of my intent may not like it or thank me for it, but I hope this person manages to find some help in learning to communicate in a friendly way. I think I am finally done with it. Come to think of it, I'm pretty well done with today.

Don't know really what else to talk about so here's another happiness update to remind myself it wasn't all just drama and a greasy salad dressing stain on my shirt.
  • My new process, a base layer for a subsequent process, works properly as that base layer.
  • I got a DVD photo album from the friends I vacationed with earlier in the year. I need to see if I can use my DVD player to watch it.
  • I did the BodyRev legs again but instead of being sore today, I am looser and more relaxed.
  • I don't have to type up minutes from the SWE exec meeting.
  • My town has an art fest/sidewalk fair type thing going on this weekend. I'm hoping there's lots of free stuff to do.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did I ever mention there are those you will never have pls'd with you??? :) I finally scrolled down to the bottom of the page.

You tried... and that's all you can do.

S.

CrankyOtter said...

Heya anonymous, I'm reposting your 9/14 just before noon comment here to make me a little more anonymous. Not that anyone who knows me wouldn't figure it out in an instant :)

---Repost---
Anonymous said...

Sometimes you are measured by the company you don't keep and boy do I mean that as a compliment.

I think you CAN learn something from people (I mean this in general not as in you Cranki McOtterski) you don't like. For instance ~ if I see someone who is deliberately cruel, obnoxious, contrary, petty...I hope I come away with the lesson on how not to behave. Someone who needs to *win* at all costs is someone who is going to lead a very solitary existence...and that's what let's me sleep at night :)

CrankyOtter said...

This might look like I'm posting to myself twice, but I'm not.

FW2: I'm glad that mess is scrolling off too. I don't want everyone to love me, as long as you love me more than... (roll eyes). Seriously, I don't need validation from everyone. I can handle dissent. I can't seem to spell it in one try, but I can handle it.

Anon: Thanks for the compliment. And I actually learn better from bad examples than from good. I find it easier to NOT do stuff than to do new stuff. We had an equipment field service vendor at work once who was chaos boy. It wan't until he started ripping apart a tool (to "fix" it) while there was product running inside, that I realized *I* was not always sufficiently careful about making sure that product finished running before I messed with a tool either. I am a better engineer because I saw what this guy did wrong, and make it a point never to do those various things. It's been 6 years or more, and I still know these lessons:
(a) Never shut down a production tool when product is running. Always check to see if product is, or needs to be running, in a tool before doing any engineering work and come back later if it is. [While I had a vague sense of this beforehand, the rule acquired clarity and top priority for me after chaos boy.]
(b) Don't take the primary and backup tool down at the same time if you can avoid it.
(c) When someone asks a question, give them the answer FIRST. Don't explain the answer until they know what it is or they won't listen and you just wasted 15 minutes of oxygen. [The condensed answer in this case was "F1, F5".]

Anonymous said...

The crap is back on.

And I do love you more.... :)

S.