"the Masque of the White Death"

When I came in to the office yesterday, I learned a valuable piece of knowledge. When a fish goes belly up, that may happen only metaphorically.

Yes, Rupert the Red had ceased to be during the night. I didn't notice right away when I went to my neighbor's cubicle to feed the little guy since his owner was away. Rupert just stood there in his bowl, in the usual position, but there was no gentle swaying of his fins, not even when I tapped against the side of the bowl. Dipping my little finger into the water caused no reaction either. That's when I noticed a whitish film over Rupert's face and nowhere else that I don't think used to be there.

Luckily for me, that didn't turn out to be an omen of what my yearly review would be. Au contraire. It's not that I've ever had bad reviews from my current employer in the nearly 11 years I've been there. They were maybe a bit tepid, not an accurate evaluation of my work (*). Still they were better than the one I got from a previous employer, where I was chastised for turning in one project slightly late even though they knew the delay was caused by my dad having died that week, and my flying to Canada for the funeral. This year though, wow, what a review... Nothing but good things thru and thru, from my manager, from our users... I was almost embarrassed. And the nice financial rewards attached to the review only made it 'worse'. But I clamped down on my embarrassment and, on the way back from the office, I stopped by my local Borders where I treated myself to 2006's World Almanach (**), Lisa Goldstein's fantasy novel The Alchemist's Door and the DVD set of Star Trek's first season.

And this year's review is one reason why I'm at the office right now, at such an ungodly hour. Being appreciated will do that to me.

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(*) Heck, I'm only a programmer who, while not in the same league as a certain fictional Scottish engineer, sees himself as working in a Jefferies Tube, busting his you-know-what to help keep the machinery doing what it's supposed to do, and yes that Tube is why my blog is thus named.

(**) It's been my tradition to get it every year ever since I became an American citizen. Why that one originally? No special reason. That's just the almanach I had bought to read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights when I was boning up for the final exam.