Frank's mom works here!

Its gotten even crazier. So we have this just Frank guy on the board. Basically his role is to advise on what the "kids" want from our platforms. So far its been a stream of Facebook this, MySpace that, FourSqaure the other. Anybody from TechCrunch could have come up with that list!

So it turns out that Frank's mom just started working here. Basically she got the role of looking after all the Apps teams. I'm sure the managers must have been pissed, since they must have been sizing up that position for themselves! Its where all the fame and glory is. Nobody, especially Henry cares about the Architecture team or Platform teams, we are the cost of doing business in Henry's mind, or so that's how it appears to me. Henry gets off on the Applications, and Frank's mom now runs all of the Applications teams.

I was confused that the Mobile and Popularity teams did not get folded in as well. That might have been some of the slamming of doors that went on last week in Henry's office. Poor Henry, it must suck being him. One week its Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir and then the next its a good chunk of the rest of the Engineering Directors. They are such a bunch of pussies.

I think it all got worked out in the end. Henry is great at the balancing act of keeping everybody happy and moving the business forward to the success we all deserve.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 8 (same as last week)
Shots : 10 (same as last week)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 188 lbs

PMO have vanished!

Its true. I did not pick up on the vibe. Its was all a bit "I know What You Did Last Summer". First Tori, one of Henry's super,super lieutenants just disappeared. It turns out, and the story was very confusing for a while, that she decided to leave her partner, move out to Yuma, AZ and live with Henry. See I got you. Not our Henry, but one of the board members that is also called Henry.

There was this totally wild story that went around that you had to be called Henry to get on the board, until Henry then appointed some kid (literally) from Gunn High School in Palo Alto to the board by the name of Frank and not our Euro-fool Frank!

Back to PMO. So Tori disappears. Then I noticed that my stand ups became bearable. SCRUM is cool, you have "cows" and "farmers". Basically the cow is committed to delivering the beef jerky and the farmer makes all the money. Generally the engineers and product managers are "cows" and PMO are the "farmers". They get to say "told you so" when there plans all get f**ked up because, well the unexpected happens. Its not like we are building the new bay bridge and its all a totally known science. I'm totally jealous of those types of engineers, everything always seems to go to plan for them.

Our stand ups are characterized by the PMO types asking the same question over and over again. I swear, you could record them and it would be word for word every friggin' day. And then there were none. They just vanished like it had all been a bad dream. Click your heals and return to Kansas. All very cool.

I'm sure that Constantine is working on some new engineering lead process. That's going to be cool, lets the engineers run the engineering process. Totally makes sense.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 8 (up 2 from last week)
Shots : 8 (up 2 from last week)
Dinner : 5 nights (5 x pizza)
Weight : 184 lbs

Sacre bleu, Euro-Fool is bogus!

Another week, another tech-sess. This week, Constantine's new "golden" boy presented. I am starting to understand why my boss, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir really hates this guy. Basically he spent 90 minutes talking about dynamic and scriptable systems, extracting configuration into the hands of the Ops teams and Support etc.

Afterwards, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir almost blew another fuse. He was ranting and raving about how we have been doing that for years, how we already learnt to scale this better than YahBay (where I think Euro-Fool came from) and why he should be running the platform team as well. I saw him later that day, tears running down his face, in a conference room with Constantine. I guess he was really showing his passion for the company and the mission. Just hope that Constantine was listening, we can afford to loose him!

Also, I was pulled into Can-I-Have-A-Latter-Sirs inner circle this week. He's pulled together a crack team and wants me to join. They are re-writing the build system to use something called "Raven". Its something really cool for the creator of "Git" that will blow away anything that Euro-Fool and the Platform team can do!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : zero bottles (same as last week)
Shots : 6 (6 up from week)
Dinner : 3 nights (3 x pizza)
Weight : 181 lbs

Bogus euro dude!

Bogus, bogus, bogus. I can see it already. Constantine our VPE has brought in some new management. Its some French dude, dressed too well and too much aftershave. I think he's real name is Francois, but people have been calling him Frank. Apparently he gets super annoyed if you do that. My boss, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir, is really pissed. Looks like they will give Frank the platform team, which I thought was the team I worked in. After Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir stormed out of the building, I caught up with him the next day. Apparently we are now the Architecture team and we lay the ground for everybody above us, including the Platform team. So sticking one finger in the air to Frank already.

I have grown to love Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir, we did not see eye to eye to begin with. But I'm learning my lesson and not judging a book by its cover. He really knows his way around the code and the system, and I should have respected that. I can see he super loves us in that I-will-beat-you-but-its-for-your-own-good sort of way.

Now I just need to finish that shopping cart feature.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 2 bottles (down 13 from last week)
Shots : 2 x Bourbon Shots (down 8 from last week)
Dinner : 5 nights (1 x Thai, 1 x Una Mass, 3 x Pizza)
Weight : 178 lbs