Overalls

Did anyone see the male makeovers on the Oprah show on Thursday? I could swear that all of those men worked in my office building. There are two guys here that wear overalls everyday. There’s also a woman who occasionally wears overalls to work. And they look pretty awful on both sexes.

What Did You Say?

This morning my manager told me that she has been unable to find suitable candidates in India to replace the test team. The job add has been posted for a month and she is not getting many qualified applicants. She has interviewed several people but their English was so poor she could not understand their answers to her questions. She’s frustrated but is interviewing more candidates today. She thinks the company will have to keep at least one tester in Colorado. If that happens I have a one in four chance of being asked to stay. I’m not getting my hopes up because I’m the newest tester. I suspect they would ask my office mate to stay.

What Did I Wear?

I received an email from a reader asking what I wore to the fashion show. Here’s a run down of our outfits. This is a rather silly post so feel free to skip it come back in a day or two.

I wore a pair of dark brown Zegna five pocket pants, Jhane Barnes dark burgundy shirt, zip front brown Massimo Dutto cashmere sweater (bought in Brussels), brown lace up cap toe dress boots and brown leather Marc Jacobs coat.

K wore Ted Baker dark wash jeans, white cotton Shanghai Tang shirt, a black dress jacket he bought in Taiwan and a black cashmere Shanghai Tang top coat.

Lori wore a charcoal grey above the knee tight pencil skirt, form fitting black sweater, black hose, black open toe platforms shoes with a five inch heel, black leather coat and black leather envelope clutch.

Cindi wore a black sweater with black pants and black suede riding boots (she doesn’t wear very high heels because she is 5’10”) and her road kill handbag (The bag looks like it will walk away if set it down. It’s made of several types of fur, leather and metal studs). I don’t remember what type of coat she wore.

I was the odd man out wearing brown but I knew everyone else would probably wear black and I wanted to break out of the mold. Head to toe black is too severe for me to wear. I end up looking washed out and mean.

Fashion Fiasco

K and I ended up going to the fashion show with Cindi and Lori. It was snowing on Friday night and Judy didn’t want to drive her sports car back downtown from her house in the western suburbs where it was snowing more heavily.

We rushed to the charity fashion show after dinner since the show scheduled to start at 8:30 and we were still at the restaurant at 8:20. Most of the crowd was seated when we arrived and as Cindi expected the show was running late. It was a typical Denver fashionista crowd. Most of women were sporting fashionable outfits and four inch heels while most of men looked like they walked out of Goodwill. It looks odd to see a woman in an expensive dress with good jewelry and a pair of $700 Christian Louboutin heels while her date is wearing cargo pants with a t-shirt and hiking shoes. The fashion show didn’t start until 9:30. Our seats were a few rows back near the start of the runway. The first model came out and we watched in horror as the African American model proceeded down the runway in a strapless white dress that was too big. About of the third of the way down the C shaped runway the model has to pull her dress up. When she reached the end of runway and struck a pose for the photographer her dress slid down exposing her black bra. The model tried to keep her dress up to no avail. When she approached the curtain on way back she gave up and just let the dress fall down exposing her black bra once again. Most of models couldn’t give a decent runway walk to save their life. The majority of the dresses had not been altered to fit the models. Some of the models looked like they were playing dress up in their mother’s clothes. After a while it was just comical. I glad I didn’t pay $85 to see the show.

We hung around the after party for a while and decided not the hit the after after party at a club downtown. We drove back the Cindi’s office to drop off Cindi and Lori and headed home. Overall, it was an entertaining evening.

Will this work day every end?

Ninety minutes to go and then I’m off to the gym.

Tonight K and I are meeting Cindi and Judy at their office at 6:30. We’re then heading over to Zip 37 to check out Meg’s art opening. We’re all hoping this show is a gang buster. Meg needs a success. She’s been in a bad state ever since her teenage son was killed crossing a highway on foot two years ago. After the gallery we’re having dinner and then off to a fashion show. Cindi traded décor for a dress and four tickets to the fashion show. It should be a fun evening.

Root Cause Analysis

Work has been a bitch this week. The new delivery has many problems. Corrected code is being rushed to the users. More mistakes are being made. Why do they have to find to root cause of every problem? Why waste time discussing the issues when the developer should be writing code and testers should be testing? So much time is wasted discussing the root cause. It’s working my last nerve.

Another Cluster Fuck

Things are screwed up at work today. There was a server migration that started on Friday night that is still going on today. The new servers have less memory than the old servers so people are scrambling to come up with work around. I was logged into the test environment this morning and everything was fine. Currently, the test environment is belly up. Nobody knows when the problems will be fixed. I think this is all rather humorous because the team in India is working on the server migration. What do you think will happen when my job moves to India?

The Weekend In Review

Friday night K and I met Lena and her friends Dave and Pat, on the corner of 32nd and Walnut. My friend, Jean, invited us to the opening of a new co-op gallery that she helped start. The Ice Cube Gallery is the Dry Ice Factory building that now houses artist studios. The co-op only has female artists so far but is looking for additional members (D – I was thinking of you but you have your hands full at this time). I wasn’t expecting a great show because co-ops don’t always have gang buster shows. However, the show was great. Every piece was a knock out. My favorites were Deborah Jang, Theresa Anderson and Pat Aaron. We toured the open studios and discovered even more great works by artists that were new to us. Lena, who is an artist and set designer, was in awe of the talent. After the gallery we went to La Fiesta on Champa for dinner. After a late dinner filled with great conversation it was time to call it a night.

After a lazy Saturday morning K and I worked in the yard all afternoon. We had planned on attending Denver Arts Week free museum night but ended in at the pet hospital because Ferdinand came home with an injured tail. Four hours and $350 later we were on our way home. It was close to ten so we went home and watched TV before heading to bed.

Sunday was another day for chores followed by lunch at Houston’s and a stop by Tiffany to pick up our watches that we dropped off last weekend for new batteries. After lounging around after lunch I went to the gym and then mowed the front yard. It’s now dark and the weekend is almost over.

Tonight we will watch 60 minutes, The Amazing Race and the season finale of Mad Men. Then it will be off to bed.

Chatty Cathy Can’t Be Wrong!

Chatty Cathy is at it again. I rejected some of his code yesterday afternoon. This morning I get an email stating: “I’m not sure we actually have a rework here”. WTF!!! If I run a design and ask for part X and I don’t get part X there is a problem with the code. How is this not a problem with his code? I called the engineer who wrote the specs and she agreed with me. The problem lies in CC’s code. CC can be such a pussy. Man up and accept the fact that you made a mistake. Fix your code and give me a new delivery. CC will probably go ballistic when he finds out I found seven more problems with his code. I’m going to wait until he fixes the first problem and then I plan on rejecting the new load because of the seven additional problems. Thankfully, I’m working from home today so CC can’t come in my office and give me another twenty minute lecture on why he is not at fault. Some things never change.

Dad Jeans

There’s been a lot of talk in the last few years about the mom jean. My workplace is filled with a relative of the mom jean – the dad jean. There are also dad chinos and dad dress pants. A large percentage of the male population in this building consists of PhD scientists. Evidently, they have been so busy studying math, physics and computer science that they never bothered to read a fashion magazine. They wear their pants pulled up to their rib cage. Today I saw a guy wearing his dad jeans with the waist cinched so tight with a big brown belt he created a paper bag waist. Perhaps he was inspired by that recent episode of Project Runway where the woman designed the pants with the paper bag waist. Unfortunately, his possible attempt to be fashion forward resulted in a fashion disaster. It didn’t help that his poor posture made him look like a hump back. I’m not surprised at the abundance of dad jeans in the office. Most men here can’t buy a shirt that fits properly. Why would I expect them to wear a pair of jeans that fits and is flattering to their body type?