2005.04.11 Professional Zombie Slayer
According to the ISO 9000 description of my position as a Senior Applications Engineer, I'm formally responsible for problem solving. Mostly, I review truck specifications, analyzing performance criteria and configuration compatability trying to balance the needs of the customer with the production capabilities of the factory. I also provide technical support to a wide range of departments. At the simplest level, I answer questions. Lots of questions. Much of the time, I can just answer off the top of my head due to my experience and memory. Other times I use my engineering skills to calculate or otherwise resolve answers. I'm quite good at what I do.
But there's more to it than just that. There are personalities behind the different kinds of questions I am asked all day long. Some of them are just dim pantomimes of the actual people who want information, but a lot are imaginary personalities of the relentless questions themselves. This is part of the basis for my usual metaphor for days that are a lot of hard work; I often call it "slaying ogres", or giants, or whatever. But then I suddenly realized, I had it all wrong. You see, I finally realized that these questions are unflaggingly trying to eat my brains!
I fight zombies, all day long, killing as many as I can. And I get paid for it. I'm a Professional Zombie Slayer.
I'm serious. It all fits. The zombie questions don't die easily - it takes skill and resolve to lop their heads off properly. If you just hack at them randomly you can tear off bits, but the main brain-eating portion still remains. If the metaphorical sword or axe of your ability grows dull, you end up beating the zombie questions to a pulp, and exhausing yourself in the process. What's worse is that if you waste too much time flogging one zombie question, all his buddies crowd around and start feasting on your brains.
Just like in the various zombie movies, it seems that a big part of the ability to be effective is largely about stance. If you run away from the zombie questions, they eventually corner you and smother you. Likewise, if you charge into the zombies you invariably get tripped up and your cerebral cortex is transformed into zombie chow. However, if you assume a solid defensive stance and don't back down, you often find that the zombie questions tend to line themselves up and come at you in predictable formations and intervals, allowing you to develop a nice zombie question killing rhythm. A good, hard hack to behead the nearest zombie question, landing pretty much anywhere between their metaphorical brow and their collarbone will usually do the job, if you swing hard enough. You've just got to grit your teeth, lead with the hips, and really put your back into it - yet still remaining keen enough to finish the job with that one stroke. That way there's just enough time to reverse the swing for the next zombie question. And so on. And on, and on. All day.
You have to be careful about the ones that try to sneak around out of turn. Generally, they should be detectable from their overall aura of clumsiness, and their gibbering cry of "Brains! Braaaainsss!" Personally, I take great relish in dispatching these with either the backswing or follow-through of another zombie question culling stroke. This too, seems quite appropriate according to all the zombie movies I've seen.
On particularly busy days, there starts to be a problem with a piling up of bodies of the dead zombie questions. Nominally, it's usually just a matter of the zombie quesions being sent back to their makers, but it does occasionally require an extra kick thrown in to get them out of the way.
Unfortunately, most days the damn things do manage to get some telling nibbles in. There have been many days where I've left the field of zombie battle with little more than an a wish to stare at a wall, gibbering. Until my brain grows back, ready for another day.