Moment of Enlightenment:

After a few too many go arounds up against the developers this build, it's faintly possible I am losing a sense of perspective in that I just had to go and quickly erase a comment in reply to a condescending explanation of why this program is not working no matter how I test it.

The comment? In public? To several paragraphs of explanation of why wrong is right and of course this program is working, people (you) are the problem?

-->w/e

...I really need to get out more.

Happiness means one of the stores on my way to work sells Mexican Pepsi and Coke. In actual bottles. Which means I had the dubious pleasure of trying to remember a.) what a bottle opener looked like and b.) how they worked while fumbling around with the can opener (on the side, btw), but humiliation at my own fumbling is totes worth it.

The thing is, pretty much every country in the world makes better Coke and Pepsi than the US. I mean, yes, drinking something with delicious sugar does help, and yes, I actually do think glass bottles give better flavor than plastic (but I have no objection to metal cans; maybe I like a faint metallic aftertaste? IDK), but it also just tastes more cola-ish. Like the spirit of cola is strong in this one or something; having this discussion in real life always ends up with a lot of wary looks, but it's true.

You wouldn't think a good day would hinge on so little. Believe me when I say, this will be the best part of my day. The code push didn't go through, so the code for the tests we were supposed to start last Monday isn't there. And yet when we say that we haven't tested this, everyone, including the people who do code pushes, will be totally surprised by this. Because I work in goddamn Dilbert, but I have no sociopathic dog, which you would think would be an improvement but it totally is not.

I have Mexican Pepsi. Right now, I will interpretive dance our answer to testing delays. And maybe sing. Bring it.

...kind of fun, and kind of repetitive.

Mostly, logging into my work desktop is surreal and still novel enough that I enjoy doing it. It's also a little dangerous, since I'm anal enough that sometimes bringing work home is really tempting.

Of course, I'm on my third day of VPNing and I think I've doubled my week hours, not including the overtime I did yesterday at the office, then came home and logged back in until midnight.

Currently finishing up leftover testing. As I have been since noon. Its possible if you see me tonight, I will still be doing this. God, my life.

Dear Person Who Stole My Lunch From the Freezer,

I won't go into a lecture on how temporarily, I'm restricted from certain foods, and most days I don't even eat lunch, but the days I do, it's usually for a purpose, like avoiding life-ending nausea when I take hydrocodone to control gall bladder pain so I can sit up and talk and not scream a lot. I won't even explain how I have to time my food intake between my thyroid medication, work, and what I'm drinking so there's no interaction problems with the hydrocodone and potentially the benthyl that cause life-ending dry mouth and I avoid anyway. Because this is not a secret. And people who steal other people's lunches at work tend to be dicks anyway.

So you know, fuck you.

--Seperis, really goddamn nauseated now

Between this and something I read this morning and the clinic being closed tomorrow so unless I can get to the clinic before six tonight I have to wait until next week to get a refill on my script I am not amused.

I'll do a rec post later, maybe. Re-reading Sherlock and AIRPS is totally a prescription for a better mood.

ETA: Eating half a peanut butter twix. Does not help with nausea, but tastiness does distract from it. Also being that time of the month that involves blood and rage and whatnot, sugar is always welcome.

So after losing my glasses, my work ID badge, and feeling the great weight of horror when I realized hey, this isn't really Friday since I have mandatory work on Saturday, potentially indefinitely, I'm going to speculate this will be a Bad Day.

So today is a day of Lowered Expectations.

My lowered expectation of the day: I will not throw my tiny bowl of refried beans at anyone's face with the intent of bodily harm should they ask me any of these three questions:

1.) Say, did you get that job?
2.) Hey, you have some time to do a few more tests....?
3.) How are you?

I will give myself extra points if I also manage the following but am aware this may be a little too ambitious today.

1.) Not stare hatefully at anyone who looks at me.
2.) Not hide in the bathroom stall to play sudoku on my phone, Fiendish level.
3.) Not hide under my desk to play sudoku on my phone, Fiendish level.

I will not accomplish the following things and accept that totally:

1.) smile.
2.) enjoy the company of other human beings.
3.) not play sudoku, Fiendish level, on my phone while at my desk.

This is a day of lowered expectations. Excuse me while I try to finish my refried beans before anyone realizes I'm here. I really like them, but the container is very aerodynamic and I'm already getting a headache without my glasses.

Anyone want to add their own?

So at work budget cuts are leading to our contractors not having their contracts renewed. It's complicated and by that, I mean, bad. The positions will be opened up as positions in the agency, which is cheaper--yes, it's cheaper for the state to hire people directly to work with the agency than it is to contract--but the state cannot pay them what they got as contractors, and they're software engineers and specialists--we cannot afford them. We are going to lose them. We are very fucked.

All of us are getting jumpy because the the first group of contracts expires this month and we don't have the people to replace them. I mean, literally--it's not just education or experience, it's familiarity with the system itself and how it was built and how it works. One's wife works at the White House, to make this clear; they can find much better jobs than this one, which means the state will have to pull people who are missing either experience or familiarity; education, at least, isn't a problem. I could probably do several of the jobs--let me say, I read the raw code and it's not what I'd call complex to read or write, just repetitive--but we need someone with all three.

This is a long way of saying if I'm really out of sorts for the next two weeks, it's literally because I'm trying not to cry over my keyboard as they rush more and more priority jobs at us to finish before the end of August, then the end of December, while we scramble frantically. I had four priority jobs added today and we couldn't do any of them because they're rushing to get the system up and working and it's not working, which you see where this is going, and it's not like it's getting better after the end of August. Also, two of my favorite coworkers are leaving and that's fucking with my mood so much you have no idea.

Which is why I'm going to reschedule the gall bladder surgery thing, and not just due to utter terror of it. I did the math on the workload and basic fact; it literally won't get done if I'm not here. I mean, we don't have the staff, the resources, or the literal time in existence. I work on this system; if someone doesn't do my tests, and they won't, then that's a huge swathe that will not get tested and I have to use this system when I get back and experience suggests that failure is high. I bought a ton of cherry tea to get ready for this. Cherry tea makes everything better.

There is the faint possibility this is not actually what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, which is--irritating, I think. I mean, any of this. All of this. The thing is, I have my work and my life and my hobbies and generally, as I've moved around state employment, I get settled and comfortable and I don't always adore the work, I love the fact that most of the time, I'm fucking good at it, and I won't lie, being good at something, being very good at something, and occasionally being much better at it than anyone else, usually beats out whether I like it or not by a good margin. Also, and this is where this gets deadly, learning anything new is fun for me. The learning process itself has kept me doing things I'd otherwise hate, because I really love to learn and in the process get really good at things and again, you see where this is going.

I mean, I get this is the kind of attitude that can end in disaster or terrible jobs, but keep in mind stupid cheese tricks wasn't a fluke or anything; that's the shit I do when I need entertainment and my boss isn't paying attention.

There's also this; work is not my life. It can't be; I get some people can do that, but I can't, I have so many different things I like to do. I care about where I work for pay and how much it entertains me (see learning experience above) and the fact it's fairy valuable to social work, but that's as far as I go. Work is fun sometimes and boring sometimes, but its actual function is to pay for my computers, child's lizards, shoes, cons, trips out of state, visiting svmadelyn, playing with the stock market, concerts, my hobbies, and everything that encompasses my actual life. Giving it more importance than that never seemed like a good idea; that's a good way to go crazy.

This is the first time I'm considering school as more than a means to entertain myself, which is all I was basically doing it for (and because programming is really entertaining). I'm ridiculously close to graduating, but again, school is part of my entertainment budget, not a means to an end (though yeah, that too), so that changes how I've been thinking about it, as "something if I have time, go do that" to "perhaps a change in priority would be a good idea".

Maybe I just need something new to look forward to. July and August were concert, beach, svmadelyn, and VVC and now I don't have anything to plan for or look forward to like that until potentially June of next year. I need something new to be excited about after two months of high-level excitement and debt payoff and everything.

You know, I've never done New Year's in New York. I'm actually seriously considering this now. I mean, I have no idea what, but it's something to stare at thoughtfully and examine and then possibly do like I do everything: take three steps back, pretend I know what I'm about to do, and take a running jump to see what happens when I land. I don't think the universe owes me excitement; that's why I figure I should provide that for myself.

Speaking from experience gained via a lifetime of television and movies, when one's office lights all go out but all the computers still run, this is how horror movies start. And yet, no matter how many people I tell that sitting in the dark surrounded by the unearthly glow of LCD monitors is very bad and we need to run away now, everyone tells me to stop being imaginative and also warily asks how my gall bladder is.

Hello, my gall bladder didn't cause the lights to go out--or we're entering a very specialized type of horror movie that I really don't want to have to deal with, so stop that shit because a haunted gall bladder that causes lights to go out is not something I want to know exists. Is there a genre for haunted internal organs? Okay, you know what, don't answer that question. Just, just don't.

Yes, that's pretty much all I came online to say. I am a veritable Cassandra at work and there are no lights. And also a burning rubber smell near the door that is not unlike electrical burning or possibly, burning evil. It is currently being investigated. Not by ghostbusters, so who knows what will come of this? No one, that's who.

I feel a breakdown of sanity at nine thirty in the morning is not a good sign of how the rest of the day will go.

Loosely related to my post on benefit programs in Texas.

If you are in Texas and interested in pursuing a career with the Health and Human Services Commission, the umbrella organization beneath which four other agencies also rest, this is the link to the hiring center: HR Access. This works in IE only. I can get it to work in Firefox sometimes, but resign yourself to IE if you want to be sure it works correctly.

Click on the link for external applicants on the right, and you'll see drop down boxes split by state agency, category, city, location, blah blah blah.

Now, to the part I am pimping; Texas is hiring clerks at the Clerk III and above level and caseworkers at Texas Works Advisor II level for Texas Works, which handles Food Stamps (now known as SNAP, don't ask), TANF, and Medicaid for children and families, and is also hiring Medicaid Eligibility Specialists, who handle Medicaid for the elderly, the disabled, nursing homes, and etc. These jobs are under HHSC in Agency.

Oh, direct link: we're hiring caseworkers! And some other stuff, as you can see. Start value is $2200 per month, you'll do three months accumulated training, though they switch around whether you do all three months at once or over the course of a year or two--it's very strange and based on weird educational theories (again, don't ask) and office need.

The start value for a clerk is $1881 per month. I think there is a clerical test you have to do. Let us say, if you can read this, that means you can type, and we're done here.

The state provides insurance, retirement, access to 401(k) and 457, you accumulate one day of sick leave and one day of annual leave monthly and that amount increases the longer you are with the state (we call it tenure), overtime is not a problem and some cities, though not all, have a paid overtime option instead of just overtime that means you get literal leave, which is useful if you like taking two week vacations. There are holidays! Promotion is not difficult if you are at least mediocre or fake it extremely well and there is access to educational leave. And promotions can be fairly fast. I speak as someone who jumped a lot of paygrades in less than five years very fast, especially if you live in or are close to a major city.

Having a degree is not a requirement. Work experience is good. Clerical experience or work in any social service public, private, volunteer is golden, but again, not a requirement. For Clerk III, I think you just need to be breathing, to be honest.

Job Requirements

If you apply for a clerical position, pretty much anything goes. You might work front desk (see my LJ, April 2003 to February 2004 for details under the tag work), you might work file room, you might do pretty much anything. It is freakishly busy, your day will go very, very fast, and if you have an anal bone in your body, you will fall in love with the file room and organizing cases. If you don't know basic Spanish, you will learn. It just happens.

If you apply for a caseworker position, you will determine eligibility for SNAP (that's food stamps, btw), TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families), and Medicaid for families, for children, and for pregnant women. You will learn basic timeliness and policy, but more importantly, you will learn how to locate things in the handbook, both a paper version you will learn to adore highlighting and an online version that you can search with google. You will learn to determine eligibility on paper with a pencil (I still can) as well as on a computer. You will interview the entire range of humanity. Your caseload when you've been working six months will be between eight and sixteen cases a day, sometimes more depending on office, some of which will take ten minutes, some will take the full hour. You will learn to interview people, access data on a variety of interfaces, and stare at small children running in your office (have a couple of coloring books ready). You will do overtime. You will do a lot overtime. There is already a system of organization in place passed down from the first caseworkers back in the days we did things on stone tablets. Trust me when I say, you will love it. Also, you will probably get an office to decorate!

Both these jobs, you will have coworkers who will be your comrades in the trenches of welfare policy, dress code shenanigans, and Christmas Cookie exchanges (email me how to do that; it's fun!).

What You Should Know:

1.) It isn't easy. It's not hard either. It's confusing ocassionally, weird a lot, sometimes you will wonder what crack the legislature is smoking (cheap shit, apparently), and it's deeply hilarious. It looks terrifying and too much for one person to learn. It's really not.

2.) Interviewing only sounds stressful; I was scared to death of that part. That became one of my favorite parts.

3.) You will meet crazy people. They won't always be your coworkers, but usually, they will be.

4.) We like keeping people and hopefully hiring their offspring and their offspring's offspring (three generations working at HHSC is surprisingly common). HHSC is very much family friendly. Your mentor and your coworkers really want you to succeed, because if you leave they take your caseload and that sucks. Trust me when I say, there are few jobs where everyone really wants to keep you around for as long as humanly possible. They may offer snacks.

5.) We like promoting from within the agency. With caseworker experience, you can do pretty much anything, because most of the positions either require you to have casework experience or really prefer it a lot. A degree is not required for most jobs, but there's educational leave! Go get one if you have time.

6.) It's stressful, exhausting, miserable, and occasionally, you will want to say die in a fire without meme or irony. It's also amazing, fun, and interesting. You will not get bored, and I say this as someone who has the attention span of a gnat. Your day will pass like you would not believe. You will interview fascinating people, work with crazy people (and sometimes reverse those), and if you don't know how to be painfully sarcastic in ways that will fly over people's heads all the time, you will learn really fast.

7.) You will have a lot of data for stupid internet arguments on welfare.

8.) It's one of the few jobs where you will change someone's life every day. Pretty good stats, I think.

The application is available online and I'm pretty sure you can submit it online unless HRAccess went down again. Create an account at the link, then you may start your journey. And if you aren't interested in casework, there are a lot of possibilities in all the agencies you can check out.

Anyone who decides to apply--good luck!

So you know how you're like, whining at a coworker (and making him check your scripts) about how you are starving and send him a detailed explanation of exactly the right kind of breakfast taco and where to get it, and then like, it shows up on your desk because you are fucking magic today?

...or possibly, you know, you tortured him when he was really hungry and he got you one because he knew you'd steal his if he didn't? Pretty sure he took orders from everyone. (Thank you R!)

Yeah. I go with magic, myself. Bacon, egg, potato, cheese, oh my God refried bean*, I think I'm totes in love. I'm also still eating, so hunger could be affecting my judgment.

*wriggles fingers* I want...a blue pony. With wings. And a horn.

Magic, yo.

* Refried beans is new. Let me say, why the fuck haven't I been adding this to all my breakfast tacos, because sublime is an understatement for the sheer complexity of WHEE DELICIOUS. Wow.

When someone capslocks a response to a question at work with obvious capslock intent you cannot:

a.) write back DIAF, because sure, they probably don't know what it means, but it is not professional.

b.) check urbandictionary for more acronyms.

c.) smallcap your response. Or use the word typevore even ironically when referring to their typing.

You can be so sarcastic you wonder if it would have been politer to simply say DIAF and be done with it, though. Passive-aggressive is awesome.

If you want me, I will be framing emails to maximize my intent to be bitchy, and in pursuit of this goal, my grammar must be flawless.

*seething*