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Last year: I encountered three different varieties of being on hold, and have decided that I definitely prefer the sort with no music. |
In the meantime, I might see if I can track down my manager - not my supervisor, mind, but the actual manager who's supposed to be in charge of me - and try to talk to him about some of my concerns, needs, and desires. Who knows? Maybe he can actually make a space for me to go where I want here.
A week or so ago, K.T. and Kevin came up to meet Matt and I for dinner, and K.T. suggested trying a new place she'd seen an ad for - Quizno's. It was in Williamsburg, she said, and told me an address. I promptly forgot the address, but thought I'd see if there was a way to look it up on their website. Well, they had a form where you could input your ZIP code and they would tell you what stores were closest.
The closest Quizno's to us, according to the website, is in Richmond.
That wouldn't do. I told K.T., who perplexedly told me that she'd got the address from the Yahoo Yellow Pages. I tried that, and sure enough, they had an address. The address, once we consulted a map, turned out to be way the hell out on the far side of Williamsburg, but since the far side of Williamsburg is only about fifteen minutes from our house (it's not a big town) we thought it was do-able.
But when K.T. and Kevin arrived, and we located it on the street map we had, we all got confused, and in the interest of his empty belly, Kevin suggested just going to Second Street and worrying about Quizno's another time.
Last night, Matt and I decided to try to find the Quizno's. We checked the map, and figured out our route. I had the brilliant idea of trying to call them. I found them in the phone book, and dialed.
Ring... ring... ring... ring... click ring... clik-"Hello. You have reached the office of..."
Office? The names listed didn't sound anything like "Quizno's" either. I listened to the whole message, to be sure, then redialed. Same message. Huhn. Well, we thought we'd drive out and see what was there. It would be, we told each other, an Adventure.
I'd jotted down the address from the phone book on the back of an envelope. 3836 Phillip Ludwell Drive. We found Phillip Ludwell Drive without any trouble. It turned into what looked like a fairly posh golfing community, which jibed with what we had on the map (which we didn't think to bring). The clubhouse, which was the first building on we passed, was 3700. We drove past an immaculate lawn, and encountered a house: 3824. Okay, we were going in the right direction! These were very nice houses. Some of them still under construction.
This didn't really look like the kind of neighborhood that would host a sandwich shop, no matter how good the sandwiches. 3830... 3832... then there were a couple of houses still under construction... 3840. Matt brought the car to a halt. We looked at the houses under construction. We looked at the address I'd jotted down.
"Maybe," I ventured without much hope, "the Quizno's is in the other direction." The map had shown Phillip Ludwell Drive going all the way across the main road. We turned around, and headed back the other way. We got back out to the main road, and... There's nothing across from us except a gravel path.
We're not sure why the phone book and Yahoo Yellow Pages say there's a Quizno's back there. Maybe it was there at the beginning of the year and has since closed? Maybe they're planning one and it isn't open yet? Hmm. Maybe Phillip Ludwell was actually the street that went down by the clubhouse instead of the one leading into the residential section and we were on the wrong road without realizing it - I just thought of that possibility, but I sortof doubt it.
Whatever the reason for our failure, that's my story: an Adventure in Williamsburg.
Word of the Day: expiate - to extinguish guilt; to make amends for
I think, boiled down, guilt is the real reason I want to change jobs. I feel guilty for not being as good a programmer as they seem to think. I feel guilty for not enjoying programming the way the rest of these people do. I feel guilty for not making up work for myself to do during the long lulls between projects. I feel guilty for thinking of my job as merely a way to bring in a paycheck instead of a career. I feel guilty for not really understanding the point of any of the products we create.
And I want to expiate that guilt by changing my job, by finding a career that I can be enthusiastic about, by finding something that will keep me busy and happy and which I'm actually good at.
- The River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams
Current Projects:
- Trying to think of a new project
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