More Reasons I Hate the Business Whirled

One of the projects that I'm working on right now is to help the company develop age curves and gender curves. Basically what that means is we want to take a male at birth and a female and birth and see how much they cost to insure for each year of their life. We decided to do this by looking at the premiums that different sexed age groups would have to pay in 6 * 2 * 3 * 3 types of plans. And there were 27 age groups. And I needed to find the cost for different parts of the plan, as well. And initially, I had to do it individually, setting up a plan type, and then going through each of the 27 age groups. So altogether I would be filling out 6 * 2 * 3 * 3 * 27 * 2 cells, which is 5832 cells total. That's a long time. I mean, even if you could do six every minute (which you couldn't), that's still 100 hours roughly. Which would cost them $2100 in labor costs to me alone.

So I wrote a program to do it for me, and it basically reduced the number of cells that I had to work on to 120. Because I'm awesome. Which meant that I could do it in approximately 2% of the time that they had initially planned to set aside for me. One fiftieth. And of course, I finished it way ahead of time, with way less hours than expected.

So I got to the meeting on Wednesday or whatever, which had been severely pushed back, and I bring out the age curves I'd found. All 5832 cells were filled out, which was a pretty impressive feat in and of itself.

Didn't mention it. Instead they look at one of the headings that my team leader had come up with. "Poor plan vs. Rich plan? No no, I think... no, you mean lean plan rather than rich plan, right? Like, one with reduced benefits and such? Yeah, typically it's rich vs. lean in a situation like that." As if it meant anything at all what we called the plans. We could have called them a happyface plan and a sadface plan. Or X plan and Y plan. Or squiggly plan and squirrely plan. It didn't make any difference at all. It's not even like we were showing this to a client who would have to understand precisely what we were talking about.

And then she asked about the standard plan. "Why isn't the plan definition on this page?"

"Hm?"

"Why isn't the plan definition printed out here?"

"What? I mean, I... on everyone else's I'm sure I wrote it in on the bottom - it should be written in on yours, too. It is, isn't it? [I look; it is written in] Yeah, okay. I mean, that was just how it printed. I mean, it just could not fit one more line on the printer, so I wrote it in."

"Yeah well, you should have come to me to see how to print it."

No, I shouldn't have. She never has time for anything, first of all, and she wouldn't have time for this. Not to mention that it doesn't make a bit of difference, since the plan definition was there for her to see.

Not one mention of the fact that I completed everything in 1/50th the time they expected.

Just formatting issues.

Later we were talking about filling in the gaps between the years. Of course we knew how much it cost to insure someone exactly at the boundry of the age group - we had some data points - but what about inbetween those data points? She suggested doing linear interpolation. I couldn't believe what I just heard. Quietly,

"Linear interpolation?"

She looked at me. "We could do cubic splines, whatever."

"Why stop there? You could get a 10th degree polynomial..." She had already moved on.

So she really really cared about getting lean plan correct instead of poor plan, and making sure it was printed on the page rather than written in, but once it came to actual math - you know, getting something perfectly accurate to the 10th derivative rather than, oh, maybe getting the 1st derivative right - no no, don't worry about being exact. It's no big. Not like that's actually going to make any difference, or make our work less accurate, or potentially cost our clients hundreds or thousands of dollars. Just draw a straight line, like a four-year-old. It's not even like polynomial interpolation is hard.

//

"So do you know what you're doing next summer, err... you think you'll be coming back here?"

No.

"I don't know, I was thinking about maybe trying plain old insurance..."

//

Peace out.

Recent Daze

I had to send a letter on my way back from Glen Mills to DC. I had to put it into a public mailbox because I couldn't let my parents know I was sending it. I mean, I probably could have, but I didn't feel like it. I went to see Bobby and Stefan and Raj and the older Rotter kid (I forget, Sean?) play volleyball at Kid's Dream first, and asked them where a mailbox was on the way. Raj said there was a post office near the Arby's on 202 South on the left, so I went for that.

I turned left and went into the post office. I saw a FedEx box, but no, that's not what I'm looking for. I saw two large blue things right next to each other in the way back, all the way past all the parking. Are those mailboxes? I don't know. They may well have been dumpsters. Although they did have the USPS logo on them. Maybe it was just what they did to protect their property, I don't know. So I drove to them, and they were mailboxes, and I parked my car. I still had some final touches to make to the letter, so I parked my car in front of the mailboxes, which seemed totally cool since it was 5 on a Sunday, the place was TOTALLY deserted, and who would ever get mad at me for that anyway?

Well, the old guy that got mad at me would, that's who. He drove up in a smaller two or four door car, I think reddish/brownish in color. He looked sort of funny, like Milton from Office Space, but thinner. He seemed really introverted, and bitter. He had funny tufts of curly hair, and I think big glasses. He seemed angry at me for being there, and as he got out of his car to drop his letter in the box he said, "There's an entire parking lot over there you know" without any punctuation, halfway to me and halfway to his feet.

I wasn't in any mood to be accosted by an old strange man in a car for probably a not-so-good reason, especially when he didn't know the circumstances of what was happening, and probably would have left me alone if he had known. So I said "Yup" without any punctuation or tone, and he said, "That's what I expected you to say" without any punctuation or tone, and I said, "Yup" in the same way as he was getting into his car, and he drove off.

I was a little upset he would do what he did, but it made me think. A lot of times I get angry at people right away without thinking what their circumstances are. I bet they get pissed at me. So I'm going to add that to my list of things that I think about in regard to my relationships with people and try to get better at it from now on.

//

I was driving to hockey on Monday around 7 or 8 at night. I forget exactly the situation, but I was still on Wisconsin Ave, right near the house. Someone had stopped in front of me, or was cutting into my lane hard right in front of me, and I had to slow down. Somebody in a black jeep/SUV honked their horn at me and held it down because I had stopped. What the hell was I supposed to do? Hit the guy in front of me? Whatever. I didn't know. So I held up the finger in my rear view for a few seconds to return his favor, and he threw his hands up in the air as if to ask "What the hell, man?"

That made for a very awkward side-to-side glance when he ended up beside me at the next light. He was older, maybe 40, and possibly hispanic, although his skin was light. He looked very angry at me, and I just shrugged and made a "Meh, oh well!" facial expression, and looked away. He turned left.

I didn't understand why he was honking at me. I shouldn't have gotten pissed with him. I should have just chilled. Mistake #1. I'm working on it. I've been making a conscious effort to be even more relaxed in traffic than I usually am since that incident.

//

Beth's sort-of-boyfriend, Connor, was visiting from Minnesota recently. On their last night together, they were in Beth's bed and kissing. Rena and Jenna sleep in the same room. Apparently they got really really upset about it, and couldn't sleep. They had both done similar things in the past. Reportedly to a further degree, but I digress.

They went outside to our porch, in the front of the house, Rena and Jenna, and chalked the word "f**k" (with all letters present) into the stone of the porch more than a hundred times, in a somewhat passive-aggressive slight toward Beth and Connor kissing in their room. I thought that was pretty mean. Not to mention extremely inappropriate. Bridget, the girl Beth babysits, couldn't come to the house... because she can read, you see...

Another housemate had written "Erase the f**ks" on the chalkboard near the door. No one did anything to clean it up. I wrote "Seriously" underneath it. Still no one did anything, even though they had no where else to be and nothing else to do for the most part. I took buckets of water and put them all over the porch to get rid of some of it, but not all of it, to maybe make it easier when they would clean it up. I wrote "Or I'll clean it with your pillow cases" or something to that effect. Leiha suggested that I also tell them that the water I put was also just a head start, not the whole thing, so I wrote that too.

Jenna went out later and said that "Someone put suds on it!" and that it was bubbling when she sprayed it with water. This was certainly not the case at all, but I couldn't say anything about it, except for that I doubted it. I think she may have ended up cleaning it off, but I'm not sure, I haven't looked yet.

I probably should have been more grown-up about the whole thing. I talked to both sides of the story, so I think I understood what was going on, but still.

//

I am so excited to leave my job next Friday.

//

I think the calendar date Saturday, July 11th, 2009, might have been my perfect day, like the one I would describe when people ask you late at night what your perfect day would be like. I mean, I didn't play hockey or eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts all day, but it was so close, it might as well have been. I'm extremely glad that I got to see all the people I did get to see, although there were a bunch of others that I wish could have been there as well, and that I still miss, and missed that day.

Peace out.

Bred Winner

Today when I went to get the bread and peanut butter to make myself lunch at work, I reached down into the cabinet where I store the bread, pulled out the loaf, and realized that the bread-tie was still on there. Not a twisty tie, but one of those thin, rectangular shapes made entirely of plastic except for a little hole at one end with two prongs to hold something inside the hole. I think you know what I mean.

I thought to myself, "Hm? Didn't I open this bread yesterday? I guess not." And I took it off. The bag inside the bag (for extra freshness? I don't know) was already opened, and the loaf end (with all the crust) was already gone, so I knew I must have opened it yesterday to do those things. Which meant I also must have put the bread-tie back on...! I never do that! I was pretty amazed with myself. For a few seconds, I definitely felt some measure of pride because I put the bread-tie back on, rather than doing what every other male in the world does: spin the bag a lot and then put the cord of breadbag underneath the loaf, and tuck it away. Which is also what I do 99% of the time.

I mean, this whole thing is ridiculous, but I just thought I'd share those two seconds with you.

Peace out.

Too-Weak's Notice

I put in my two-weeks notice at works today. It's not that I couldn't take it; it's that I wasn't taken. I had been waiting and waiting for Margaret, whom I thought was the HR head, to return from vacation, but she'd been away since July 2nd and kept taking days off or working from home. Finally I just told Connie, who's basically the manager of the office. I got a little nervous when I was walking to her office for some reason and stopped to consider it. Control. I walked up to her door - doors are always open in our office - and just said, "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that the 24th was going to be my last day, so whatever we need to do to make sure all of that goes over okay, just let me know."

She's fine with it. She asked me if I knew when Matt (the other intern) was staying until, and I told her that I was pretty sure it was August 14th, right before school starts. I didn't know when the other intern from Carolina was leaving, though. I asked her if I should tell other people - my "team leaders" or work assigners, basically - and she said yeah, I should probably let them know. I told her I just wasn't sure if she would do that or if it was typically up to the person who was leaving. We went and told David, who said he thought I was leaving at the end of the month. She said, "The 24th isn't the end of the month..." but didn't seem too upset about it, and he didn't seem upset about it either. It makes sense. I'm just an intern, it's not like the company is going to fold without me. I haven't told Tony or Karen yet, I think they both think I'm leaving August 1st.

More about this later, possibly.

Peace out!