The company for which I used to work provides a free lunch for all its employees on Thursday. It’s one of the last dot-com niceties we had given the company’s woes over the past year, and it’s also a chance for management to make general announcements and give the grunts the low-down on the status of company (with the requisite spin, of course). If it’s someone’s birthday that week, they bring in a cake. If someone got sacked, then our acting CEO — who used to be one of the partners at our Canadian vulture capitalist firm, and who replaced our original CEO after he got sacked — usually makes some kind of statement, coupled with some explanations if the sackee was a particularly skilled, beloved, or long-time member of the company. I like to think that I fit at least two and a half of these criteria, and guess that my “elegy” sounded something like this…

Acting CEO: Mmm, falafel.

VP R&D: You know, back at Corel, they had some pretty good falafel. I remember this one particular falafel sandwich I had while debugging the square-drawing tool in CorelDRAW! 6…

Acting CEO: (elbowing VP R&D) Later. (turning to rest of room) We had a difficult decision to make at the start of the year. While we do have enough money to ensure that we can complete the product and while the investors have turned around and believe that we can deliver, it’s been made clear to me that we need to cut some more costs. It was a tough call, but we had to let Joey go. It was particularly difficult because he was a good employee who had such a great attitude toward his work, even when things were really bad. However, as the project and programming requirements changed, he didn’t have the skill set…

VP R&D: (muttering) Punkass couldn’t even spell “MFC” a couple of months ago…

Acting CEO: …although he put in long hours trying to make sure he was caught up. He’s done a lot for the company — part of the reason we have a good relationship with people like Microsoft and O’Reilly is due to his programming some really excellent prototype UIs and his outstanding work as Director of Developer Relations. And of course, we’ll never forget all that TV exposure he got us with that crazy accordion of his.

VP R&D: (muttering) Bitch and his accordion. Part of why I left Romania was to get away from the fucking Gypsy Kings and fucking accordions.

John Henson (Chief Scientist, one of the last cool guys left): He was there when we made our first presentations to potential VCs, as well as big-ticket clients like eBay. He also led the team that released our first actual product, COLAvision, at DefCon 2000. He also made sure the new people felt welcome. (Sniffs, stifles a tear.) And he made friends with everybody…the P2P higher-ups at Microsoft, Tim O’Reilly, and (chokes) when we had our Christmas dinner at Medieval Times, he knew the guy who played our knight! (Sobs) I loved him! (Catches possible gay implication) …like a brother! Like a brother!

VP R&D: But we needed somebody who really knew it now. I tried to find different roles for him, but it didn’t work out. That, and he’s one of the old guard, he’s not part of my hand-picked team.

Programmer who replaced me: On first day here, Joey took me to Burger Czar and explained company heestory to me. Made me feel like long-time part of collective. Bozshe moi. Am feelink like dirt now.

John Henson: He was studying MFC pretty hard…he always had that big-ass MFC book with him wherever he went…

Sham (a co-worker of mine, great guy): I will wear a black hood, renounce chasing after loose women and cancel my subscription to Maxim in Joey’s honour!

Waterloo co-op student 1: Uh, if you’re just going to let that Maxim go to waste…

Waterloo co-op student 2: Does the new issue have Jolene Blalock? Subcommander T’Pol is a hot piece of Vulcan ass.

Waterloo co-op student 1: Shut up, Wesley! Seven of Nine is hotter.

Waterloo co-op student 2: You shut up!

John Midgely (another co-worker, also great guy): He gave me his Jesus clock! Depending on the angle you look at it, it shows either Jesus or Mary!

VP R&D: (to employees) On another note, I shaved my moustache. Doesn’t it make me look more resourceful and dynamic?

John Henson: Whenever I’d pick up Joey for the drive to work, all I had to do was ask him to buy me a coffee and he would. And not the cheap coffee, either, but the good dark roast. And he often threw in a cookie or muffin or biscotti. What a sweet guy. I’ll…(chokes)…I’ll miss him…(sobs)…I’m just gonna run over to my desk and stick a gun in my mouth right now…(runs out of room)

Sham: Remember the time he had all those Subway 2-for-1 coupons and he gave them to all of us so that we could have a nice lunch…for half price?! He’s a prince! A prince among men!

John Midgely: Sham, are you sure you can live without Maxim?

Sham: My God, what was I thinking? Can I take it back? Are we allowed take-backs?

(in the background, a shotgun fires, followed by a heavy “thump”.)

Acting CEO: And there’s the time he met this cute chick at the Matador and accidentally gave her my business card. Damn, that was funny. By the way, she called and we hooked up. I’m still partially crippled from that night.

VP R&D: (grumbling) Techno-peasant. Real Programmers don’t pick up chicks in bars.

Acting CEO: Shit, that girl did things to me my wife can’t even pronounce. Thanks, Joey.

Okay, maybe it didn’t happen that way.

(By the way, the bit about my giving the acting CEO’s business card to a woman at a bar is true. Read it in this posting.)

What Would Shaft Do?

Only a few days ago, I posted a new year’s resolution promising that if I was ever in a tight situation, I would ask myself “What would Shaft do?” We’re barely a week into the new year, and thanks to my being sacked, I already have to invoke the name of the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks. Solid.

In both the 1971 version starring Richard Roundtree as John Shaft and the 2000 version starring Samuel Jackson as the original Shaft’s beloved nephew with the same name, both got out from under “The Man” and went indie. Roundtree Shaft was self-employed as a private invesrtigator; Jackson Shaft was with the NYPD and leaves the force to carry out some bad-ass justice. Unlike me, neither were fired, and I merely handed in my passcard rather than do something explosively cool like Jackson Shaft hurling his police badge as if it were a shuriken (that’s a ninja throwing star) at the wall behind the judge. My point remains: both took the bad-ass indie route, stood up for what was right, and pimp-slapped a few jive turkeys (in the 1971 version) and wack-ass beeyatches (in the 2000 version) along the way. Word.

So, in the spirit of Shaft, I have decided to go indie for a while. Lots of people have started to pay back the lots of money they owe me, the severance pay I got was adequate, and I can live for a while without having to go to an office (especially one in a loathsome suburban hell). I’ve become the second programmer for Peekabooty, an ambitious and much-hyped (and nearly complete) application designed to help people see Web sites that they otherwise would be unable to access due to their country’s censorship of the Web. It does so (this is the really simplified version, mind you) by creating a peer-to-peer network of users that act as what we geeks like to call a distributed proxy server, a convoy of computers that pass web site information to each other, thereby bypassing ‘Net-censoring machines. It was one of the highlights of the last DefCon conference and due to its late delivery, made Wired’s top ten vaporware list for 2001. I will be assisting the lead programmber, Drunken Master, in getting Peekabooty in shape in time for CodeCon in February (and probably H2K2 in July), where we will present it to the hacker community and to the media. It will be an excellent opportunity to continue polishing my mad skillz and getting some street and hacker cred at the same time. I’ll also be dropping some phat beats on the squeezebox while I’m there. Damn right.

If living well is the best revenge, then going indie and working on Peekabooty, a high-profile freedom-of-speech tool for the ‘Net, is like giving my former employers a Shaft-style “up yours, baby!” And I can dig it.

R.I.P. My Job, January 17, 2000 – January 8, 2002

I knew exactly where I was the minute my manager called me into the accountant’s room and sat me in front of what looked like a contract.

I was in Odd Todd Country. Except unlike Todd, I got a severance package.

Today, at the company, half the UI team — a group consisting of myself and a fella I’ll call Robert (after Robert’s Rules of Order, because he loved to debate) — were laid off in favour of two new hires, both white-hot MFC programmers (one of them developed the user interface for at least four versions of Corel Draw) with more C++ experience than I have experience working. They called us into the office individually, starting with me.

I’ll be the first to admit that I took the “have a life” option and have spent a good chunk of my career programming in Visual Basic, the Rodney Dangerfield of Programming Languages. When I was in datapanik, a partnership I shared with my friend Adam Smith (no, not the economist), we used VB rather than C++ because the software we were writing — custom-built productivity applications for businesses — because we could make the software in less time, and such software didn’t need the speed at which apps written in C++ run. These skills served me well until August, when we switched over to C++ development entirely.

While they laid off most of my co-workers, they kept me on as a junior developer on the strength of my prototyping work, my user interface work in VB, and all the good developer relations work I’d done. I took the trouble to try and re-learn C++ programming and learn how to program using MFC (the framework with which Windows programs written in C++ are often built) and was becoming half-decent at it. However, with recent hires who could code circles around me, a need to cut back on spending, no call for prototyping nor developer relations, I had become what Human Resources people call redundant.

Robert was a pretty decent coder. I’d been learning MFC by “reverse-engineering” what he’d written; looking at his source code and taking copious notes. They let him go over non-skill-related issues. He was quite upset about being let go, particularly because he’d just moved into a new house, committed himself to his first mortgage, and probably spent some money on the expenses that go along with moving. To add insult to injury, since he’s from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, he technically got his termination as a Christmas present from the company. Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas, you’re sacked.

As for me, I was more disappointed that I hadn’t become sufficiently skilled in C++ and MFC in the company’s eyes in time. I worked hard at it, and probably could’ve given up my life temporarily to learn faster, but I wasn’t ready to sacrifice it for a company that was a shadow of its former self and appeared on the verge of financial collapse. It’s annoying for a programmer to have to admit “I’m not 1337 enough”, but it’s an honest stance and the first step towards improving oneself.

The decision was made by people who’d been at the company less than half as long as I. Mind you, my manager can simply declare himself alpha geek by saying “hands up all those who have written six versions of Corel Draw and Corel Photo Paint” (we’ll ignore for a moment that real graphic artists use Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop and don’t sully their hands with Corel’s less-impressive wares — writing it is still tough). I know when I’m outgunned.

Still, I’m a pretty decent programmer, and I’m proud of the work I’ve done, especially COLAvision (the first app the company actually released), Twitch (a prototype P2P for gamers that wowed ’em at the Microsoft ISV conference last summer), and all the unheralded bug fixes I’ve made to the project we were working on (especially since only a couple of months ago, I couldn’t spell “MFC). They’ve lost a quick study, a very clean coder, a guy who understands users and interfaces, their best team player and the only guy in the company who can play the accordion worth a damn.

My co-workers, bless ’em all, were quite surprised and expressed shock and disappointment. First and foremost, I’ll miss riding to work with Henson and listening to Cory’s crazy ideas (by the way, Cory, thanks for phoning to check up on me. You’re a mensch). I also made it a point to get to know the new guys and got on especially well with Midgely, Sham and Joel (hey, guys). I went up to each of them and told them that I was being let go, to stay in touch and to work hard so that my stock options would be worth something. The company’s goodwill ambassador to developers to the very end, that’s me.

It took me the rest of the day — about an hour or so — to gather my files onto CDs and pack up my books. John gave me a lift home, saying something encouraging, if homophobic: “the gay factor in this company has shot through the roof today.” We listened to classic rock on the radio and laughed when they played The Doors’ The End.

Next: Plan B!
or, What would Shaft Do?

Recommended Reading

The What Color Is Your Parachute? site has a How to Deal With being Fired page.

The Monster.com job board has an Advice for the Jobless section. They also have an article on how to explain being fired in subsequent job interviews.

Dan O’Day has some advice: What to Do When You’re Fired.

I don’t feel like the title of this magazine, but it does have some interesting stories on what happens when things don’t work out quite the way they were planned.

You know, I never got around to watching Office Space. Maybe I’ll rent it this weekend…

“Terminated” Party!

Friday, January 18th chez moi. Please bring stuff. I’m unemployed, you know.

The Deadliest Weapon…

…remains our very own words.

It’s been that way from the beginning, but with the popularization of the Internet and ancillary developments such as instant messaging and especially blogging, search engines like Google and AllTheWeb and archives like The Wayback Machine or Google’s Usenet archive, our words as weapons now have greater range, firepower and fallout than ever before. Exercise your right to free speech by all means (if and while you have it), but remember that freedom untempered by responsibility is a sham.

In the Philippines, you can’t go very far in a major city without running into a sign showing the Rotary Club’s “4 Way Test”, which is how I became familiar with it. Written in 1932 by Rotary Club member Herbert Taylor, it is a twenty-four word code of ethics — complete with some rather regrettable CAPITALIZATION — that he wanted his employees to follow in their business and professional lives. Rotary International adopted the 4 Way Test in 1943, and it has since been translated into over 100 languages.

Learn it. Live it.

Food for Thought

This posting was partially inspired by Objectionable Content’s

quoting of Sai Baba:

Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true? Does it improve on the silence?

(Yes, I’m aware that there’s something sketchy about Sai Baba)

Thou can’st not joke an enemy into a friend, but thou may’st a friend into an enemy.”

— Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

iHat

The new iMac makes a pretty decent hat, too…

Apple’s New Thingy

There’s nothing like press lead-time to spoil an much-hyped product announcement. Here’s the cover of the January 14th edition of Time Canada:

Here’s another picture:

And here’s a snippet:

The new iMac, which Time took for an exclusive test run recently and which will be unveiled at the annual Macworld convention in San Francisco this week, could be just the thing. Like many PCs today, the new iMac is built around a flat-panel display. But instead of taking up precious desk space like a typical flat monitor, the iMac’s screen floats in the air, attached to a jointed, chrome-pipe neck. It’s also rimmed by a “halo,” a translucent plastic frame that makes you want to pull it toward you-or push it out of the way. Jonathan Ive, chief of Apple’s ID lab, says he designed it so that you would want to touch it, want to “violate the sacred plane of the monitor.” The chrome neck is articulated and bends while maintaining the angle of the screen; it connects to the computer, an improbably small hemisphere at 26.4 cm in diameter-somewhat bigger than a halved cantaloupe. The machine bears an uncanny resemblance to Luxo Jr. – the fun-loving, computer-animated swing-arm lamp that starred in a short film by Pixar, the fabled computer-animation studio that Jobs runs. (Pixar creative chief John Lasseter has also made the first new iMac ad.) “It looks a little cheeky,” says Ive. It looks alive.

So there you have it — the iMac, Mark II. Unfortunately, Time doesn’t have any specs for the machine. I suppose we’ll all have to visit Apple’s tomorrow to see what’s inside. But what’s outside is very nice (and yes, in my not-so-humble opinion, while what’s under the hood is important, style does matter), and it looks like it would look very sharp on my desk.

Chicks Dig It!
(and I dig it too)

Late 1998/early 1999 marked the start of a very good period of my life, especially as far as music was concerned. For the first time in about four years, I started playing musical instruments again — first, my trusty Korg Wavestation synthesizer and later that year, a dusty old Titano piano accordion given to me by my friend Rob. I also did more clubbing back then, and one spot I hit often was We’ave. We’Ave was an unusual club. It was in a little brownstone located not in the club-and-bar district, but near University and Dundas: an area where downtown Chinatown meets with an older residential neighbourhood, across the street from the Art Gallery of Ontario. In addition to its unusual location, it also had an unusual night called Chicks Dig It.

Chicks Dig It was a showcase of women DJs that took place every Monday night. Being a Monday, the evening would start out a little more slowly, but as it got later in the evening, the place would be almost full enough to convince you it was Friday night. The crowd was a friendly mix of students, bar staff and DJs (who work weekends and often go out on Monday night), people with flexible working hours (such as me) and those who just didn’t give a rat’s ass about sleep. The tunes were good dance club fare, naturally, but an even spread of the sub-genres: drum and bass, house, upbeat electronica, ambient, funk and hip-hop provided by DJs Chocolate, Freedom, Denise Benson, my friend Lady P, and the incredibly cute AMtrack. I went there often with those friends of mine whom I could drag out of the house on a Monday night. I’ve had really great times there, and one bizarro date that ended with her curled up in the fetal position screaming at me (hey, it never occurred to me to demand Rorschach and urine tests before the date, okay?).

With the demise of We’ave came the demise of Chicks Dig It. They tried a change of venues — Beat Junkie on Richmond Street, deep in clubland — but that didn’t work out because the roster of Chicks Dig It DJs had grown to an unmanageable number, among other things. However, Chicks Dig It is returning, not only to the scene, but to its old formula of a smaller DJ roster and the use of a club that’s slightly off the beaten track: Temple Bar (King Street west of Spadina, in the alley with the glowing red cross). It happens every Monday starting January 7th (that’s only a couple of days from now, folks). DJs Freedom, Chocolate and AMtrack will be there, and I believe I will too.

Recommended Reading

The eye magazine story on Chicks Dig It. eye also ran a review of Chicks Dig It in its earlier incarnation here.

Sister SF: Women DJs and MCs in San Francisco and beyond. Here’s a story about them that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

pinknoises: “The one-stop web resource on women + electronic music”.

Spinsters: A documentary film on Toronto women DJs and their experiences. Featuring DJ Wasabi, DJ Heather, Misstress Barbara and the legendary Denise Benson.

Going Illbient Underground with NYC’s Women DJs: W.i.g. magazine’s coverage of the other cool city’s women DJs.

Goddesses of the Turntables: Jive magazine’s story on women DJs.

sisterdjs: A mailing list and DJ Dazy’s “safe place to ask questions about DJing will help the growth of women dj’s out in the world.”

Bozhe moi! Women DJs are all over the world, even in St. Petersburg, Russia!