Subject: Technicalities! Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 16:47:34 -0500 From: "Mitch Golden" Technicalities Jan 23, 2000 *) The Return I know you're disturbed to see another one of these damn Technicalities spamming your mailbox. The message above is the 14th reminder today from your Project Manager telling you to get your hours in, and right below is that e-mail offering you help you ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS OVER THE INTERNET! People tear at their hair and the cry goes up: "Please God, when does the junk stop!?" I promise I fully intended never to write another. After I ended the series, I was stunned to find out that there are those whose lives are empty without their biweekly dose. You should regard it as a sad commentary on our modern, alienated lives, I think, that some of our coworkers actually look forward to intraoffice memos. But so it is. Some people, practically in tears, came to see me, begging me to continue writing. "It's not my job anymore.", I'd reply gleefully, "Go ask Ritesh!" And they would leave my office, dejected. "Jeez, get a life!" I thought to myself as they would skulk away. You can imagine my chagrin when I saw that Ritesh had _delegated_ this task back to me. I swear I didn't know about it until I saw the same e-mail you all got. Damn. *) Chaps... I doubt you've ever had the experience of working with the person who replaces you in a job you had. It's just unusual - mostly people move on to another area or another company or whatever. It can be mighty humbling, let me tell you. Ritesh has some serious mental illnesses, but they help him do his job. I mean, he would rather spend time with a client than design a database. Amazing. And he's a masochist: he wants to take on thankless tasks, such as running the Desktop Support group. Can you believe it? One could learn a lot working with a guy like that... *) Y2K Did you hear about it? Nothing happened. Several members of the tech department got paid big bucks to answer their phones that night, but virtually no one had to call. Nice work if you can get it. *) Three New People: I know Ritesh already told you this, but what else is Technicalities about, if not introducing the new tech department members. All started in the last few weeks. **) Yoo Kyung Chang - Is an actress. She performs in _real_ plays, not that pornographic stuff that Jamil Ellis puts on. (No, Caryn, I won't mention the name of his play again.) On top of it she speaks five languages, and I'm not even counting SQL. She hails from NYU's ITP, which means she'll fit right in. **) Tamer Elmenayer - Just graduated from Stony Brook. Tamer did _not_ major in CS, so he can write. Hey, it doesn't mean he can't code. His multitude of talents include selling snow to Eskimos. **) Kristjan Varnik - Is too tall to play basketball for AGENCY.COM, so we put him on the BA team. He just completed his BA at NYU. Kristjan is the sort of guy who can tell you about the architecture of a palm pilot. This month he and Ralph Seaman are going to spend some quality time together in London hacking the Royal Navy web site. *) Why the Brits needed us to bail them out in WWII. No follow through. Last November, in our tech department meeting, one of the goals (rated an A - highest priority - by the assembled department members) was to Have More Fun. This, like the other tasks, was delegated to members of the department. Andy Traff took on the job of putting together a bowling or pool trip, and Laurence Hill was to organize a ski trip for us. Well, here it is the end of January, for crying out loud, spring is virtually upon us, and neither has done anything. I saw Laurence packing to go up to Vermont one weekend - _by himself_! "Just doing research", he said. And we still don't have a design for the tech dept tee-shirts. You know who you are... *) The Woodbridge Party I have never subscribed to the commonly held belief that God created New Jersey simply as a foil for New York. It you get off the Turnpike, you might even find that the state has charms of its own. But whatever The Creator's sense of irony might or might not have been about putting our two states next to each other, I can only share what I'm sure was his conscious amusement about putting AGENCY.COM/Woodbridge in with AGENCY.COM/New York. Let's take the New York office: Our motto is "Function Follows Form". Have you tried actually to sit on any of those 4-legged conical seats in the conference rooms? Or used one of those "Privacy Pods", in which everything you say can be heard? But our motto isn't just in the office architecture, it's how we dress, talk, live our lives. It amuses us in the tech dept no end. Compare and Contrast: In Woodbridge they say "You mean it matters what it looks like?" Try visiting some time, and pay attention to the _very_ subtle differences in sensibility between Mike Benyo's and Aaron Sugarman's interior design. So last Thursday was the Woodbridge holiday dinner party. Don't bother flipping your calendar back: Yes, I'm talking about January 20th. If we did it in New York, we might call it "coming fashionably late" to the millenium. All the NY VPs were invited, but they couldn't stomach being around that many technogeeks all in one place. Heather found a way to be in Boston, and Ritesh had a client to be with. Anna suddenly came down with the flu. Chris had to wash his hair that night. One of the responsibilities of the Regional President is showing up at all such functions. It's needed for employee morale. So, dutifully, Aaron was there, but he spent the night at a distant table safely sandwiched between his girlfriend and Richard Harris. Richard is as big a nerd as anyone, but he's been socialized a bit because he has a cubicle in NY right near Molly Ker, who doesn't suffer fools - or geeks - gladly. (Molly, naturally, declined her invitation to come to the party as well.) Aaron looked pale and nervous all night. Vonciel was also present, but she sat the table at the other far end, back to the crowd, trying to busy herself talking to Barbara Pjura and Stacie Nielsen. Of the New York visitors, only I sat in the thick of things. I think that only I had the credentials and training to pull it off. During the appetizer, where I was sitting, Allen Goldschmidt and Jason Reid were busy taking turns challenging each other with tech acronyms. "LDAP", Allen said, and Jason shot back "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol". Jason replied by stumping Allen with "RAID". (Evidently this is an ongoing game with them. I swear to God I'm not making this up.) Over the main course we had a perfectly charming discussion of the relative merits of the iPlanet and BEA Weblogic application servers. The grand finale of this dinner each year is when Mike Benyo gives out his gag gifts. "Tools for success", they were called. There were lots of inside jokes, and somehow duct tape was prominent, don't ask me why. I got a French-English dictionary, in reference to my abortive trip to London/Paris. (A subject for another Technicalities, I suppose.) For me, the high point was when the crowd asked Jason not to give his acceptance speech in Java. So ponder it with me: What was the Good Lord thinking when he put AGENCY New York and Woodbridge together? Does He find it as amusing as I do, or is there some other plan?