Yes, I'm still alive. Actually, all my news has been good - no medical emergencies, no bad tidings from my job, Clan Kitty is great, and even my own social life is okay.

Well, the social life part isn't that great - I don't have a lot of free time. Work basically ate my life. To be stuck in a job you hate is of course a curse, but to be employed in a job you love can be its own bane.

My last job was a very poor fit for me. As I said before, there are those who can look at a system and figure out how to break it; and there are those who can take a 'how-to' recipe on breaking something and writing a program to do it.

I'm good at breaking things, but not so good at programming. Actually, I'm a halfway decent programmer, but at a very high level (read: scripting, not hardcore coding minutiae.) I was originally hired to break things, but the company decided that everyone in software testing was going to be a programmer.

My new job is fantastic - I'm not just in a good fit, but I feel I can make a big difference in my team by building tools, improving documentation, and tuning processes. However, the team is very shorthanded and has been for a while, so there are many opportunities to make that difference.

Of course, the problem with making a difference is that I can't do it on 'company time' - I've my own share of tasks to uphold, so I can only do the special projects stuff after hours.

The special projects aren't stuff that my boss expects from me, so I can't gripe that he's being unfair. However, he does appreciate then when I pull them off, so it's a bonus.

As I told a coworker last week, your perspective changes when you land in that dreaded 10% bottom-feeder category. "You can be noticed for doing something good, doing something bad, or you can escape notice. In this case, being unnotices is a bad thing."

Therefore, I don't see the after-hours skunk works stuff as added obligation. I don't have to do it. I do see it as an opportunity, because it gives me a route to get out of this 10% bucket.

The reaper may have passed our immediate area, but there is no covenant that he won't return.