Trees on the Beach, a Blog

So tomorrow I put in my two-week notice for my current agency.  I work next week, which will be short due to the Labor Day holiday, and then the week after that I take my vacation. After 13 years, I will be leaving my current job.  I worked myself up into a management position and did a good job, I think.  I saved the agency money several times, implemented a couple of money-saving programs that are still used today.  I completed my master's degree at this institution.  Got a promotion here.  Introduced modern smartphones into the environment and did away with the old Blackberry devices.  I managed a massive upgrade of server technology, .NET Framework technology, and SQL Server.  I made a lot of friends and then saw some of them terminated, many moved on, and some are still stuck in what has become a terrible place to work.   I work in government.  An election, especially a party change, means everything changes for you on the ...

I can't believe it. There are an unscheduled CPMS meeting to cover material that I already know. I intended to skip it. That one was canceled, and replaced with this meeting. No calendar invite.  No preparation. No real purpose, actually. We are a disaster! Thanks, Ramsey and Yeast. Nice fucking job putting us in this situation.

So after my blog post yesterday, I discovered some things.  Android Studio must be run with administrator rights.  That fixed the project creation issue. I am not Chip.  Just an fyi. So I found some sample code online and bam, Android Studio just mostly worked.  But after this little sample project, I feel deflated.  I went to work today and wrote a brief on Preservica, an archival storage system.  My day typically consists of nonsense like that.  We already have a great storage system that would cost nothing to use, but due to centralized IT and another agency charging us for the storage space, our system is "too expensive" to actually use. I go to these "CPMS meetings."  I spend at least 4 hours of my life every week in there pretending to pay attention, or sometimes not even pretending.  Sometimes I play with my phone.  I hate them with a passion. I get up and go to work every day.  Every morning I tell myself "I can'...

So I have a job possibility... it is very exciting stuff.  I could learn Flutter, Google's attempt at cross-platform mobile development.  It would be imperative that I finish my first project within the first year.  I've spent the last 1.5 hours or so fooling around with Android Studio, and the prior 2 hours messing with Visual Studio Code.  Both are IDEs that can be used to develop Flutter applications.   While it sounded exciting 6 hours ago, the reality seems to be a lot less fun.  I've got a command line window open, another with PowerShell, another window with the IDE, and various Chrome tabs open, where I am researching and trying to make this thing work.  Android Studio seems to be locked up while creating my first (empty!) Flutter project.  It's been sitting like this forever: What the hell is it doing?  Is an empty project that intensive to create? I'm concerned if I can't get a lousy "Hello World" project going, the...

I'm sitting in a work meeting ("CPMS"). We're into the second hour now. Random people are talking to each other. The manager is playing with his phone. The meeting, as usual, enlightens nothing. I eagerly await my return to banishment at my desk. Emily put in her notice today. I can understand why. I go to Fancy Farm this weekend to watch people who make far more than I do fight over my vote. I rendered this artwork just now while in the meeting. I wish I were finger-banging Mrs. Moffit right now. I'm dyin' here.