Make the Right Call in Trichotomy

Sept. 14, 2020, 11:30 p.m.
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Public

Out of a job

During the summer, La Professeure’s school was scrambling to prepare for a school year with Covid, and with conflicting directions about how much in-person instructions there would be. The management wanted initially to provide more, in order to differentiate their school from online schools, some the faculty objected to it because it’s not safe, and then it turned out the campus does not have enough physical room to accommodate the amount of in-person instructions with social distancing rules in effect, so now faculties were forced to teach online, , while some other faculty objected because they don’t want to learn how to teach their class online, and then the management mandated that all classes for first-year students must accommodate both modes - basically do what the students want - regardless of whether the class has to be in-person (e.g., pottery, drama, or dance classes) or has no reason to be (e.g., maths).

It was a cluster f*ck.

Now that school has started, La Professure is inexplicably non-busy. Apparently once the dust settled, people got on with their lives and stopped complaining to the administration. It reminded me a bit of when I was working at the education software company - our busy period was always right before a semester started; once the school year started, the product had shipped, and there was nothing we could do about it.

My current project at work is about moving people from one storage system to a new “better” system. The old system is hugely popular; I can’t think of a team that doesn’t use it for something. There was a mandate that was announced before I joined the teams that said the old system would sunset in 5 years, and everybody must eventually move to the new system. That’s because the maintenance burden for two systems is getting expensive. When I joined the team I was assigned the project to move people to the new system automatically.

The mandate was rescinded last week. When the mandate first came out, it was a surprise to everyone, since the new system was many times more expensive to run than the old one. I was puzzled by it since it was a known quantity at the time, and the projects back then to improve the new system won’t address the cost (especially network cost - the new system maintains global transaction consistency) in any real way. I imagine many people complained about it but then management hoped and planned for the new system to catch up with the performance with the old one, but I guess now they see that’s not going to happen.

But that means the ready-made customers pool for our team just evaporated. So there’s a lot of uncertainty within our team; not sure how many people are going to find our work useful and, even, what is the point for our project now.

Funnily enough, they actually started a project to remove the transactional guarantee in the new system; so now maybe there’s a chance the new system would catchup.

Nostalgia

I’ve been watching “Classic” English Premier League matches while football was on hold; it is funny to watch games that happened 10+ years ago, some of which I had already watched but barely remember. Sometimes I could remember the small Upper West Side apartment where I was living when I watched those games the first time.

As much as people complain about Video-Assisted Referees, watching so many wrong refereeing decisions being shrugged off makes you realize how much having technology’s help can improve things, even though they are not perfect.

Sometimes, you have to look back to realize how far you have come.

The Covid-19 diet

Since the lockdown started, I stopped eating breakfast. I usually have breakfast while I wait for my morning commute, but now that I don’t commute, I stay in bed till it is work hours. We also don’t eat out as much anymore - I cook for myself almost all the time (La Professeure is too busy to cook), and we order out twice a week, if that. I think the quality of my cooking helps contribute to my decrease in food consumption.

All that added together meant I’ve lost 20+ pounds since the lockdown. I don’t feel any different, and wouldn’t have known unless I go onto the scale. I think it’s stabilized now around 135lb. It was 156-158lbs before.

I certainly don’t mind losing some weight. More Food:

Grilled Tilapia