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The dark curse known as meetings

At work I'm sort of the Linux kernel go-to guy, which might be all fine and good except for one teeny little problem. And that problem is that since I'm the Linux kernel guy, that means that basically everything that's not the Linux kernel is being handed to other people, and so if I do anything that's not just tweaking the kernel I have to wait for those other people to decide what they're going to do, then have a meeting and tell me what I can do.

So, such things as, oh, checking my changes into version control? Oh, no, you've got to have a meeting with the person who has just this last week been assigned the job of setting up where to put things into version control. Okay, so that won't be happening for a while, because even though it's important to tell me to not check code in, it's not important to actually save six weeks of work I've done to build an automated 2.4 to 2.6 upgrade process. So, okay, I'll just not work on that until my corporate masters finish the important meetings and give me imperial approval to, um, save all these changes. But that's okay, because I need to add a new device driver to the build, then make a bunch of changes so we can use it in userland. Well, it's actually a device driver that's already in the 2.4 build and I've already prototyped a round of changes. But, no, I can't actually make any of these changes because, yes, I don't have any authority to do anything in this part of userland and I'll have to have another goddamn meeting to plead my case with my bedazzled with (bad) technology (and the Gallop Q12 scam! Can't forget the Gallop Q12 scam!) corporate masters before I can actually do anything.

So I can't actually do anything.

What a waste of my time. It's clear and sunny outside most days, but there I sit in my stupid cube, trying to do make-work until the clock strikes 5:00pm and I can bolt out of the office like a racehorse out of the gate, while half a dozen software projects sit at home rotting away (and by the time I get home I'm so burned out so all I can do is read weblogs until I fall asleep (only to wake up the next morning to do the whole stupid thing again.)

I know there are some people who love the whole "go into work and stare at the wall for eight hours" routine, but it's driving me *nuts* and depressing me to the point where the effort of updating and sending out my resume seems too hard to even consider doing. Perhaps I'm not suited for the corporate life. Perhaps I'm not suited for this corporate life. Maybe it's time, at age 47, to throw it all over and become an artist.

—orc Wed Mar 21 23:47:32 2007

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