We're not here to do the decent thing

We're not here to do the decent thing, we're here to follow f***ing orders - Captain Miller, Saving Private Ryan

A week now since our .Net project got shelving. People are suffering for their low point. Matt and Gary were mostly not in the office. Lynn, Nick, Paul and myself were in but we are surfing most of the time. Not that many conversation or gossip, just been quiet. I was very quiet.

Tried to focus and do some reading so to take the advantage of the project gap, but it was hard to focus. I seemed more productive in the 20 minutes train commuting than the rest of the day. Regular monitoring Ebay for the diving gadgets as my partner and myself are going to Maldives in two weeks time.

Watched Save Private Ryan probably for the third time last Sunday. It still strikes me for the bloodiness, cruelness of war and breadth of humanity.

An elite team set off to search Private Ryan and it was the high command’s order to bring him home safely as he lost three brothers in the war. It is a difficult order. And people question the rationale of risk more people’s lives for this. To the soldiers in the team, James Ryan is just a name, while Caparzo is a brother. Without looking at the bigger map, it is hard to accept and act on it positively.

This brought me to think of the current situation of developers, management team as command officers and the company as about to change hand. You know, like selling off your car 2nd hand. You probably don’t want to add satellite navigation system but give it a full service and polish it a bit.

I told Danni I am going to cheer up and be more positive from this week. For whatever project I will be assigned to, most likely a big fix to legacy system- dark age of vi and C on Unix, I will be happily get on with it.

Like stuck in a missing boat, we don’t know where captain is going take us to. It didn’t look promising and probably it never will. And it is beyond us to influence the decision-making.

There are two things we can do if immediately work out is not an option:
1) Positively do whatever we are told and hope we will shored sometime although it may still sink by the end.
2) Passively do it with mourning until it sinks or lucky shored.

Regardless the result, I will definitely be more happy by enjoying my work.