Earlier in the week, there was a small layoff. The unofficial communications networks at work have consequently been getting a lot of use as people attempt to figure out where the missing nodes are, beyond the obvious. There is a tradition of people sending a farewell email to their team and other close contacts. And then there are the people who use not!Facebook to do the same, and @-mention every group and individual who they can think of. Thus it was that I learned that Mr. Noise-to-Signal was laid off. Of my friends, the only person I know of who was laid off was R. There were no layoffs on my team.

R has been sent the information on where to find #adventuresofstnono. So have Mr. Zune and radius. (Yes, guys, I use an alias for this as well, and now you know where to find it. I started the practice of aliasing obscure/semi-private venues after the Incident where someone showed up uninvited in a different channel which I had mentioned, then never fit in well, angsted in-channel about not fitting in, and I eventually asked them to leave because I dreaded their presence and they were after all uninvited.)

Also leaving this week was one of the newer people on my team, whose wife got a dream job in another country, and (also as announced on not!Facebook) the second-in-command of the helldesk software. No word as to whether she was part of the layoff, or voluntarily heading for a lawn that hadn't been pissed on greener grass.

It being Friday and that point in the gas tank, I had to get gas before work, which resulted in a later arrival than would have otherwise been. Lunch was pleasant. It was the Rollercoaster Tycoon's last day (he's heading to a startup). I gave him my card.

A conference call with the vendor for the proposed new software followed. Researcher Haystack appears to have taken point on this one. His queries of the vendor's salesdudes are shaped slightly differently than mine. He's coming to it quite naturally from the perspective of the research utility of the thing; I'm coming at it from the shoving-all-the-things-in-it direction. Some of the things I had questions about had not occurred to him. He looks at the data structure of the Excel export of their template and goes "whaaaaaaaa---!!!" and I look at it and I go "wow, I would not have thought to do it like that, but I can do the thing", and most importantly the current thing we are using does not do the thing.

I still have many questions about their alleged choice of primary keys, but I think I can work with the thing.

Haystack likes Salesforce.

I made a list of my favorite software, starting from worst favorite and improving:

[that helldesk software]
[the procurement and expense software]
Salesforce
Outlook Web Access
Outlook
Kipper/Llama (fondness for the devs is coloring this)

Haystack was slightly surprised. I can't imagine why; it's not as if I haven't made my feelings fairly clear.

It was a beer bash day. I snagged a table. lb was not in, but Mr. Zune soon joined me, followed by Purple and large chunks of his team. radius also joined us. I waved hi to another friend, but the table was not quite large enough, so they sat elsewhere. Mr. Zune told college dorm tales. It turns out that when you freeze and then drop a pumpkin, shards get all over, and then they melt on your bike. This is not pleasant.

Joining #fishbrick is the fishdiscus, or fishbee -- first you #fishbrick the window, and then you throw the much more aerodynamic and prone to shattering fishdiscus through the hole. You can't really handle it barehanded, so you wear gloves. You keep the fishdiscus from sticking to the gloves with herring oil. In case they're gloves you might want to use again, you wear rubber gloves over them. A pair or two.

Shortly after Mr. Zune headed off, Lennon Glasses Guy wandered over.

radius regaled us with some of his OWA war stories. All he was trying to do was to move about 2,000 messages from one folder to another. Several months of swearing ensued. Presently, in the new folder, there are somewhere upwards of 40,000...

Lennon Glasses Guy observed that he's heard about an IRC channel driving some of this group's shenanigans from time to time, and he was curious about it. So he was issued a formal invitation to #cupcake. I think he will appreciate it, because he appreciates it when Purple and I bounce off each other at lunch, and has enjoyed the #cupcake table at beer bash.

The group split up. I went back to my desk and hammered on my inbox and the helldesk stuff a bit, although I was distracted by something terrible happening in Outlook when I tried to pick a conference room. It's always startling to watch the list of conference rooms populate and then vanish...

Presently, Purple pinged me. This time he had indeed parked in the same parking lot as I had, and we walked out. He had a banana and a tangerine; he held them both out and offered me some fruit. I picked the one that would not cause me woe. He suggested a frying pan and some rum. We chatted for a bit, and then he zipped off, as he had places to be. I chatted with Nora on the way home.