Merit based expectations.

FYI: Administrative Service Officer levels go up to six, then the Executive Levels begin at one.

Three and a half years ago my Team Leader (EL1) was shocked when his recommendation on my performance assessment to adjust my pay point up was rejected. It turned out I was already at the top of the ASO5 scale and not an ASO6 as he thought. Three selection processes, two unfortunately planned vacations, and another ignorant Team Leader later I am about to move (it is not official but I have literally been given a nod and a wink) from the ASO5 level to the ASO6 level.

Today our National Manager invited me to a meeting which was described as being only for EL1 staff. The point was enforced when he asked someone he hadn't invited to leave, and was reiterated throughout the meeting. So, while my duty statement might say "undertake simple tasks under supervision" (soon to become "undertake complex tasks with minimal supervision"), I have the impression I'm expected to be providing the supervision to my colleagues. I wonder how long it will take for this merit to be reflected anywhere beyond the expectations of my superiors.

I hope regular readers will appreciate what a joke this is without the usual Muppet Show allusion.  ¶ 16:59 5 comments

  Tangentiality.*

I saw The Dead Girl last week with Alex, Emma, Gavin, Pat and Shy. Alex, Emma, Gavin, Pat and Shy thought it was a horrid story (or five horrid stories) so, although Gavin and Pat were willing to discuss it’s merits as a film, the conversation had been decisively moved on before we got out of the theatre.

[tangent]
Sometimes this happens. You greet someone just in passing day after day until one day they don’t return your greeting. You may not have ever got past finding out they are well, the ambient temperature or occasionally if they enjoyed their holiday; but it was nice. Now it’s not anything.
[/tangent]

I have been given a list of creaky sets to repair at the Muppet Theatre. This sort of task is usually driven by the construction crew rather than the design team as the creaks come from ordinary wear and tear; so they mostly need to be hit with a hammer and rarely involve rebuilding. For the spring season however it will be up to the designer to establish what needs to be repaired and where to hit it because the carpenter won’t be here with the hammer for three weeks. This designer predicts many uninformed questions about the unrepaired sets from uninvolved parties at the first read through.

*Not a real word, yet.
  ¶ 19:41 2 comments

  Zombie.

I had some moles cut off because they looked odd. Now I have healing wounds on my chest and my shoulder, and stitches in my back and my side. This means I can only lie on my other side to sleep. I have not had a lot of sleep since Thursday, and none of it good. Also, I have a cold. Usually if I have a cold bad enough to stay home from work (which I did on Friday) I stay in bed all day and, if it is really bad, take a long hot shower. Unfortunately my stitches prevent me from either lying comfortably or showering for long. Instead I played World of Warcraft which allowed me to sit still backwards on a chair with a desk to support my arms and watch pretty pictures for hours at a time. So I have spent the last three days: fuzzy headed, unsocial, stitched together, looking like death warmed up, wandering around the countryside hitting things until they die. I am zombie.

Rampage.

Because I care less about my work colleagues than the friends I missed on the weekend, I returned to work today even though I was still possessed by an undead funk. Fortunately for my colleagues the preternatural miasma focussed it's malefaction on icons of technology. The first victim was my computer monitor which surrendered its magic smoke to the ether with a loud pop. Next was the height mechanism on the spare desk which had been set up for a gnome and would only go lower, and then not back up again. Finally, the list of system updates required by the spare computer on the spare desk were uncommonly prone to fail if I stayed there, or time out if I went away. Fortunately this was solved by the help desk who ran the list from their end without incident. It seems supernatural zombie influences don't grasp networking.
  ¶ 16:08 2 comments

  Well, that was fun.

Polly came to stay and I had the week off work to visit people and places and eat out a lot. We went to galleries, saw a movie, ate well and drank a lot of coffee. Thank you for making her time such fun Alex, Andrew, Dave, Emma-Jean, Fiona, James, John, Kate, Linda, Mark G, Mark S, Nola, Shaiyena, Simon and Toby! Polly is sending my pants back from Sydney.

We crammed in so much fun to Polly's visit I was late back to Canberra and missed registering for Phenomenon 2007. Fortunately my α-Dammit teammates were there to register me; thank you John, Shy and Terry. After some urgent rescheduling the next day (which I suspect the organisers engineered deliberately to demonstrate how jolly nice they can be about it) we played games.

Personally, I failed to identify with my flirtatious-army-lawyer character or assimilate the four pages of background information. Then the session went forty-five minutes over time and we missed our Call of Cthulhu game. John, the GM, told a great story; it was just a pity none of the characters was involved in it. However everybody else had a wonderful time, which was nice.

When our Six Soldiers game was rescheduled due to a double booking we were lucky enough to find a GM called Andrew without a group scheduled for the session. We, and James who was visiting from Melbourne, became the Ferocious Rabbit clan. Eager to join all the other ninja clans in the secret ninja organisation (with our five point exploding heart plan), we were fooled into assassinating the Emperor. It was even more fun than it sounds. :)

Oddly engaging for five player characters (and a few non-player characters) who seemed to have nothing but animosity for each other. Jacinta, the GM, had a particular talent in sidling up to the players and whispering in their ear as a sort of conscience. Then my character committed suicide.

A Weird West (Deadlands?) game full of outrageous accents. Best accent was Shy's Chinese mad scientist who continually referred to the "lady down the hall" as a "rady damn whore". There was some magic and a demon war in Hell too, but the best bits were the accents. Thank you Mik, the GM, for tolerating our puns and keeping us on track. (Ha!)

At last I got to freeform. I was a student from Tokyo U and I was invited to the Emperor's Fifth Anniversary celebration, where I met a gorgeous and talented pop princess, and the clever Shogun, and the Emperor announced his engagement (like, right there in front of me, I was right there), and I got a job as a secret Imperial Guard, and I participated in the unification of two worlds, and I made an appointment to see a doctor at the mental hospital. It was my best day ever. Did I mention I could control earth and stone?

Then, because I wasn't actually dead and it was a long weekend, I played Primetime Adventures with Dave, Emma, James and Simon; and then Ars Magica with John, Peta, Peter and Shy. After the sheer fun of the convention I am determined to register earlier and attend the social events next time. (However I am not inspired to write a freeform game, which is unusual for me after a roleplaying convention.)  ¶ 19:24 4 comments