Reflection 2006

About twelve months ago, I started to hit a comfort zone with blogging. I had written a lot of initial content the prior two months, started to get a small number of private blog comments as well as a handful of comments to various posts, and I paid attention to answering just about every single one of those comments. I probably spent hours every day just going through the IIS newsgroups and my blog.

Well, a lot happens in twelve months, in addition to a year passing by. :-) I have basically written twelve-times the blog entries, seen half a dozen entries gather 10K+ hits, and now getting about a dozen valid private/public comments every day. I definitely try to reply to all public comments of blog entries (I am still working through the backlog of comments made during my recent vacation in Europe), and private comments have to be REALLY detailed, concise, and illustrative of some common issue/problem which I can identify without asking for more details for me to answer it with a blog entry... or it has to push my buttons somehow. ;-) After all, I do not send private email responses because everyone benefits from public responses, and it is really hard to blog about an incomplete or insufficient question..

Anyways, I have hit a major lull recently, since returning from vacation. I am not really refocusing on work, and I am not terribly focused on writing blog entries, either. Or rather, I am not terribly motivated to think about anything at the moment.

Yes, like last July, we are in crunch-mode, this time trying to finish up on our final IIS7 milestone in Vista. Last year, we were just trying to get IIS7 into Vista, and Edmund and I had to perform some last minute heroics and miracles (and I do mean miracles, as the following days proved) for it to happen.

Yes, we are wrapping up on the fiscal year and yearly performance reviews are getting into swing. You know, as time goes by, I grow to dislike these reviews more and more because I see that they have little real value other than to illustrate your manager's opinion of your work, and you get to rank his/her ignorance of your achievements. I mean, it is all pointless because before you even write or have the review discussion, all the numbers are already set by committee behind closed doors, so the discussion is practically moot-point and only serves to make the employee feel somehow engaged and involved. Ugh, such a mental drag and waste of time...

What's worse, I feel like we are on a forced death-march for IIS7, with people's lives and careers as tombstones scattered along the path. .But maybe it is just me getting more and more jaded and cynical...

Crunch-mode, reviews, and death-march. Mmm... what fun I have returned to from vacation. No wonder I am having problems refocusing on work. ;-)

//David

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 14, 2006
  Good luck with "crunching" out IIS7 David! It'd be interesting to hear what those "last minute heroics and miracles" were.
• Anonymous
  January 01, 2016
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