All Things Patrick - Working Hard to be Lazy!

Or why I almost didn't get my questions answered...

Last week thursday I was told that if I found another project to go ahead & take it. For those that need interpretation that means - if I find a job elsewhere, go for it... no need for 2 weeks notice. At least I'm still showing up in the morning, leaving in the evening, & getting paid so the project hasn't reached a, Please pack up your stuff & leave, point.

Last week friday I received a call from somebody looking for PHP developers in the Kansas City (KC) area. I was born in KC, grew up in KC, went to school in KC, & done alot of work in KC... I like KC - it's a large landmass, small population metropolitan area. It consists of something like 25 towns & cities, 3 or 4 counties, & sits on the border of 2 states.

I was interested... I just wanted to check financials (moving expenses not paid) before I said yes. I got home that night, check & sent an email off with an affirmative that I could move, but I'd need to modify my initial payrate. I also included a couple of questions -

• Do you know what the dress code is? casual, biz casual, or biz dress?
• Do you know if the project will allow flex time or even be just flexible with time? Or controlled by a time nazi?
• Do you know what part of town I'll be working in?

I sent the email, did other stuff, went to bed, & woke up on saturday. I did not expect to see an email from my contact asking me why I hadn't sent him an email yet. However I just figured it might be an issue with their server as he had stated on friday that they had been having some problems.... I forwarded a copy of friday's email on saturday with a sorry you didn't get this message.

Sunday evening I had finished several calculations & figured out what I needed as a payrate. I hit reply-all to the email I had sent on saturday & included my payrate and another question.

Monday I hadn't heard anything so I gave him a call, but got voice mail. He left me a voicemail stating he hadn't received any emails & was wondering what was going on.

That's when I realized that Cox cable could be the culprit... When connected to the Cox network you have to send normal email (i.e. via Outlook or Thunderbird) using their SMTP server - which just happens to be (or at least in Tulsa, OK) listed multiple times on a couple of well maintained known spam server lists (Yes, I have notified them of this & long story short, I got a stupid answer). Anywhere else I can use my webhost's mail server to send email & never have to mess with the ISP's mail server.

To get around this I logged into my webmail interface & used forward as attachment & sent the email (this time it would completely bypass Cox & as a bonus would also have the @domain match the originating mail server). Monday night I went to bed confident that this would solve the issue.

Tuesday I got nothing. I called to see if he had received the email yet. He hadn't. I knew it wasn't an issue on my end cause I can send & receive emails no problem... I had just received 3 spam emails right before he asked if my mail server was having issues. Only thing I could think of was his mail server might be blocking my mail server for some reason...

Tuesday night I sent a This is a test email to him, via google mail, stating that I'll follow up with another email. I copy/paste the entirety of the last email I attempted to send him over the weekend into another google email. This has the entire history of what he sent me & what I sent him in it. I send that to him & figure I should at least get something back or there's something seriously wrong with his email server.

Wednesday I get a reply to my This is a test email asking, Did you send that other email? Ugh, what now? Could it be that I have something in the email that could possibly be caught by a spam filter & diverting it into his spam box? Could it be that the email is to long &/or has to many duplicate references & is being caught by a spam filter? At this point I'm almost tempted to simply post it as a page on my web server & say go here, but that's not really user friendly & may seem to say I don't know how to use email...

I figure I'll give it 1 more try... This time I'm not going to send any of the history. I'm not going to elaborate on any questions. I'm just going to make it short, changing 'biz' for 'business', & hope this short, hacked up version of my email will make it through.

My detailed scrutiny made me see the phrase time nazi.

Considering some of the kid friendly sensoring crap I've gone through in the past I realize certain words may cause squeamish people problems. I understand why some people want to filter certain words (universal cuss words for example)... I'm not even saying it's what the problem was... All I know is after removing the entire email history, changing 'biz' to 'business', & changing 'time nazi' to 'time control freak' - the email went through just fine & he replied back that he had received my email.

My guess is that his mail server not only filters for spam, but also kills off emails containing sensored words & 1 of those words is 'nazi'. Please... if you're setting up a server that kills emails based on sensored words... would you please, please, please set the server up to reply to the sender telling the sender why you are rejecting the email.

Considering this & the fact that ...controlled by a time control freak just sounds overly redundant I asked around... I got several suggestions, but none seemed to embody the iron fisted evilness of 'time nazi'[1].

• time freak
• time fascist
• NTP whore (it's good, but normals wouldn't understand)

Somebody did meantion 'time zealot'... While not necessarily embodying the iron fisted part I think it does a good job with fanatical... With a synonym like extremist I think it fits well.

Why did I even bother to include such a thing in a question about a job & what exactly do I mean by a 'time nazi'... er, a 'time zealot'?

I ended up with a job where I showed up 10-15 minutes early every day, went home for lunch, & left 10-15 minutes late. I had to clock in & clock out so anybody who needed to could see my time. After a week of me working there the 'time zealot' couldn't take it anymore & turned me in for stealing company time... I had been taking 1-7 minutes longer on my lunch break than I should have been.

Considering most of the jobs I've had since then... once I get going I usually end up showing up somewhere between 10 til & 10 after I'm supposed to be there, work through lunch (usually an hour), & leave about 10-15 minutes late. This possible 10 minutes late in the morning apparently drives 'time zealots' bonkers.

Don't get me wrong. There are situations that are very time sensative. A retail store & assembly line are 2 that I can think of off the top of my head. With retail you need to get there before the store opens or you have issues. In an assembly line if somebody is missing for 10 minutes it can cause some serious problems.

I used to be very time conscious. I wore a watch & watched it constantly. I've mellowed over the years... I discovered I spent more time watching the watch than accomplishing anything & let's face it... Life happens, get over it. I no longer wear a watch.

I've also discovered that if I'm more worried about showing up on time I end up forgetting things. I'd rather take an extra minute or 2 to make sure I have everything I need... Showing up & realizing you forgot your (lunch, phone, presentation, security badge, whatever else you've forgotten at least once) is not fun™.

Because of the aforementioned issues & the fact that I don't like arguing over something this trivial I prefer to ask in advance. I'd rather defuse the issue ahead of time instead of getting stuck in a situation where I have to deal with a 'time zealot' again.

[1] Please note that I'm not trying to state that 'time nazi's are anywhere near the level of evil that the Nazi's from WW2 excelled at. Nor am I trying to lessen the vile deeds done by the Nazi's of WW2.