Sorta weird anyway. Just feels like this week has gone on for forever and a day. I spent the majority of the weekdays this week at work deflecting questions from people. I spent that majority of the weeknights updating and fixing SharpMT, as the main page surely shows; I don’t think there’s ever been this many “new” posts before. I spent half of yesterday at Foxwoods casino at a Microsoft event and a Pai-Gow Poker table. And now I find myself on the train with a sniffler.

The work thing is something that’s been a long time coming, actually. See, for the last 6 1/3 years, I’ve worked at the same company. My job title has changed over the years – it started as a PC-based/Win32 programmer – but the task is the same: put data in peoples hands. Over the years, it has evolved into what is mostly an architect of front-end technologies of all types of flavors. My company doesn’t think of themselves as a software company, though; they see themselves as a company that supplies a service and “they also make software” as an afterthought, or a necessary evil. Consequently, the following has been true for the majority of the last six years: a) my senior managers look down on the programmers that work here because we are deemed to be “expendable” and b) senior management will gladly take technological advice from the programmers but ignore it because they or marketing knows better – after all, how else could they be managers if they didn’t know better than their underlings?

All of the engineers that read this page just winced in pain – trust me, I can feel your empathy. The truth is that I was willing to overlook all this bullshit while the company was at least treading water and I was given free reign to build what I wanted to, in the technologies that I wanted to – freedom is hard to for programmers, especially in the wasteland of the east. I’ve worked in C, C++, MFC, ActiveX, ISAPI, ASP, WML, HDML, BREW, and J2ME technologies over the last few years, usually rebuilding the same types of applications on a new platform. Consequently, I know just about every aspect of the products we make and management knows it. When they have a question, they come ask Randy and Randy would either have the answer or go get it for them. Well guess what, my endearing managers: the shop is closed.

Could you tell I didn’t get paid on time again this week? Of course you could! Even so, I’m tired. Not sick and tired, not pissed off, just tired. I’m tired of having to answer questions about things that I have nothing to do with. “What’s the status of the application in QA?” I don’t know, go ask QA. “What’s the story with the new features and their release schedule?” Go ask the engineer working on it, because it’s not in my area. “Do we have any samples that we can bring for demos?” Why would I know that? Go ask the marketing team. I’m mostly just Done with that whole scene. I’m there to code and design UI and MiddleWare systems… that’s what I am [usually] paid to do, so that’s all I do now.

Enough of that. The Microsoft launch event for Windows Server 2003 (not to be confused with Windows 2000 Server – nice flip around on the year this release) and Visual Studio.NET 2003 was everything I thought it would be, save one exception: it was very VB.NET oriented, rather than C#.NET oriented. Seems I might be the sole C# programmer in all of Connecticut. I know I’m one of a few dozen of business level C++ coders, but C# is new and neato-keen, so what the fuck is wrong with these people? VB is ass. I mean it’s less ass than it used to be, but something about not having a ; at the end of a command line just pisses me the fuck off. Bluh. Anyway, at least they gave out eval software, so my Geek side was easily appeased.

This was actually the first time I had been to Foxwoods in years… probably about five, and yesterday I was reminded why it had been so long. From where I live in western/central CT, it adds an extra 15 to 30 minutes to the trip, compared to Mohegan Sun, which is where I usually go when I’m jones’n for a casino visit. Foxwoods reminds me of Atlantic City; the Sun reminds me of Vegas. What’s the difference if they’re both just casinos? Casinos are made to make us gamble. They are designed to separate from our money; I know this going in and I admire the owners for their effort. However, Foxwoods seems to be so… blunt about it. First off everything at Foxwoods is teal and rosey-purple. Very late 80’s/early 90’s, which is when it was originally built. They’ve added numerous hotel towers, but the place still feels sorta stale. Everything smells of smoke, except the small section marked off for smoke-free gaming. The Sun made their new casino area the smoke-free part when they built their new buildings – even their old casino doesn’t smell smokey, though, so I don’t know why Foxwoods stank so badly. Granted, I like the Sun’s style of design better than Foxwoods – and I admit that that’s personal preference – but it seems to me that the Sun has pushed more money back into maintenance than Foxwoods has. The Vegas hotels get just as much business as both of these, and they’ve kept up their appearances very well; there’s no reason for Foxwoods to look downtrodden. From now on I’m sticking to Mohegan Sun because they do things better – the fact that I was the only gambler under 45 didn’t have anything to do with this decision either ;)

And now my sniffler. Allergy season and my boy here doesn’t have a tissue. Didn’t on the platform and now we’re half way to Stamford and he still doesn’t. iPod to the rescue? Oops – left it the Rush play list when I got out of the car yesterday, which means it happily played 77 songs with no one listening… it’s a wee tired now, so I’m saving that for the ride home… There’s just nothing that cuts through an ordinarily drowsy and quiet car like a wet *SNIIIFF* does. Lo! The joys of mass transit.

But it’s Friday, so none of this feels as painful as it ordinarily would… yay me!