The *fun* of contracting

<< To all the crappy drivers out there | Home | To all Veterans: Thank You for Your Service >>

The fun of contracting

I've been on a contract in this facility for over 4 years now. That's actually a good thing considering my age. I wouldn't be disappointed if I could stay here until I went out of scope. But that can't stop me from complaining... that's just the nature of the beast. In my first letter back home from basic training my Mother worried that I was ok. My Father told her "He's complaining, he's fine!" ... so I guess 39 years later things haven't changed :)

Logic tells me that if a company is paying a LOT of money for someone to be working for them that they'd provide them with good tools, but as a contractor, that ain't the case...

I'm sitting in front of two monitors, on two machines. One is a Win2K box that has just enough cajones to be turned on with all the monitoring software my client has running.

When I got here, there was a 2nd machine that had never been used that had XP on it. My predecessors had originated all the software on the Win2K box circa 2002/2003. Somewhere along the line, an employee got a new monitor, and one of the team members suggested I could grab the 'flat panel monitor' that was taken offline. This is a ViewSonic ViewPanel170 circa 2001.

I've gradually moved all the software to the XP box which got upgraded a couple years ago, and then about 4 months ago when the lease rolled, I was able to score a dual quad-core "Engineering" machine. But I'm still running the same monitor.

The Win2K box is still here and has a monitor on it that I'd have to strap on my truss to pick up.. a ViewSonic Graphics Series G800. I wanted to show a picture of it but it's so old, I couldn't find one with a quick Google search. The screen has a hellofa curve to it. Just picture one of those monsters that people throw out windows in YouTube videos.

IT wants to 'sundown' the Win2K box and I've got everything off it that I need, but I'm wondering what it's going to take to get another graphics card for the beast so I can run both these crocks, and after querying my local manager 2 weeks ago I haven't heard anything yet.

Then this morning, either my glaucoma is acting up or this flat panel is going out. The color is shifting at random intervals and rates, and although I really like blue, this is getting tough on my eyes.

Remembering that it took 3 months and about $500 worth of various people's time to get a $178 download license for a piece of software a year ago, I hesitate to think how long it's going to take to get this monitor replaced.

Unfortunately they have asset tags on them, because I could walk almost anywhere in the building and grab one and the user wouldn't miss it. Almost everyone has 2 20-inch monitors (employees of course), and on the second monitor is a static picture of: 1) Their car, 2) The car they'd like to have 3) Their kid, or 4) Their grandkid. I figure if I just dump one of those pictures to a good quality color printer, and replace their 2nd monitor with a picture frame, I'd be happy and they wouldn't notice!

Meanwhile instead of doing fun Silverlight stuff, I'm working out how to do "are you sure" buttons in .NET 2.0 ... but I'm working :)