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Happy Feet

Last Friday I had a project cancelled that I had been working on for 18 months. We were just 4 months short of completing the whole shebang. I always hate it when something like that happens, but this project I really, really liked. It was a great project, a real knock your socks of cool daddy-o thing. As an engineer you get a chance to work on a project like this once or twice in your career, a real showpiece, something new and exciting that is way ahead of the curve.

All that promise, all those hopes, only to have it cancelled because of some evil concoction of politics and budget priority changes.

So this week has been pretty tough. In addition to trying to salvage parts of the project to see if they could continue without the aforementioned cancelled project I had to seriously wonder what future I had in all of this. If my projects could be killed, despite all that depended on them, then how long might I have?

So, the week was meeting after meeting and impassioned pleas with managers to try to see what we could keep out of the rubble I had to do it wondering if time might be short for me as well. It does sort of ruin your attitude.

It was an ugly week, and it was just getting uglier as it went on. I was in a real dark mood. In addition to this, we had our beyond the usual technical nightmare that kept me up for a couple of days and nights without any sleep.

So, I go into Friday morning with a big dark cloud over my head. Within an hour of starting the day, I receive the most surprising news.

The project is no longer cancelled but has in fact been expedited from the highest levels!

This sort of thing almost never happens. Once a project is dead, it stays dead. I’ve been doing this sort of thing since 1985 and don’t think I’ve ever had a project come back from the dead.

So yeah, Im in a good mood, why do you ask?

Posted @ October 21, 2005 08:36 PM | Current Affairs