Home Base - Chapter 2

Home Base

Brad pulled out of the parking lot, not really sure what he was doing or where he might go. "Crap! What in the hell?" A fresh wave of confusion washed over him as he pulled out of the parking lot. Turning onto Washington Avenue, he instinctively headed towards downtown and home. IPSO was located in an office park nestled in the suburbs of Denver. This was convenient for most of the employees who avoided lengthy rush hours if they happened to live on this side of town. For Brad it was merely inconvenient, not that it mattered now. He enjoyed the reverse rush-hour of living downtown and working in the 'burbs about as much as he enjoyed visiting with his dentist. A straight-up commute to downtown Denver from the suburbs was misery, but Brad was hardly a suburb kinda guy. At age 30 he wasn't bad looking, just a shade under six foot and when he got around to it he went through fits of exercise, sometimes for weeks at a time. These fits typically fell victim to whatever cool new project he happened to be working on, but invariably started back up when things settled down. He hadn't been to the gym for nearly five months since he and the team had been really cranking on the Triton-3 project.

Jabbing an angry finger at the power button of the stereo, he turned it off. He needed to talk to someone. Sarah was at work, but was likely to talk to him. She was his on again off again girl friend of nearly ten years and a contracts lawyer for a small firm. Unlike Brad, Sarah was in great physical shape, though not in an obvious way. At 5'2" she wasn't particularly leggy and as an avid rock climber her body was more gorilla than princess. Sarah was driven, she had no problem putting in the 60+ hours of work that her job required, generally working that in the normal course of a five day week. Adding to that a healthy workout schedule and her weekend climbing, Sarah held just as much guilt regarding the nature of their relationship as did Brad. Addressing no one in particular, he said, "Rosie, call Sarah at work."

"Dialing 303 055 1922," responded a disembodied female voice from the speakers of his car.

"Babetz and Green. How may I help you?" intoned the pleasant, if uninterested voice of Jenny, the receptionist at Sarah's office.

"Hey, Jenny. Hey it's Brad. Hey, is Sarah available?" Geez, he thought, just how many times can I squeeze the word "Hey" into a conversation. Brad had never been comfortable around Jenny and always felt like an idiot when they spoke. Jenny met every law firm receptionist stereotype. She was blond, leggy and quite intimidating to the likes of Brad.

"Oh. Hi Brad. Let me check for you." Brad imagined Jenny on the intercom, dialing Sarah's office.

"Heya baby, looking for a nooner?" came Sarah's teasing voice over the car's speakers. Just for a moment Brad's sullen face cracked into a smile.

"Carp just walked me out at IPSO."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"They fired me Sarah, it was really weird. Carp called me into his office and said the project was being terminated and I was fired. He wouldn't even let me go back to my desk without an escort. I didn't get a chance to grab any of my stuff. He just walked me to my desk, asked me to check in my code and then walked me out the door. It was surreal, I felt like I was having an out of body experience."

"Holy Crap, Brad, that is crazy. Are you OK?" Sarah's voice was considerably softer than when they had started the conversation. "Where are you?"

"I am on Santa Fe, headed home."

"I am so sorry Brad, Want me to come over?" It wasn't an idle offer, Sarah's office was only about 10 minutes away.

"No, don't worry, are you still coming over tonight?" Just having someone to talk to seemed to make things better.

"Yeah, be there about 8, that OK? I will bring some Thai." Sarah's voice took on an apologetic tone. "I'm really sorry Brad, I need to run." She was working on making partner and generally didn't have much time during the day for anything personal.

"See you tonight." Brad paused for a couple of seconds, not wanting to hang up. "Thanks Sarah." This time he thumbed the power switch off using the rocker switch on the steering wheel.

Accelerating, Brad merged onto I-25 still heading North. "Rosie, order chile verde burrito from Duca's and have them delivered home. Use the Visa."

"Ordering one chile verde burrito from Duca's Mexican Restaurant at 121 Federal Boulevard, charging to Brad Maunikey's Visa account, and delivering to 230 North Federal Boulevard. Confirm please." intoned the same disembodied female voice that had earlier dialed Sarah's work phone.

"Confirm," Brad responded.

Turning off I-25, Brad made his way north on Federal Boulevard which was a very busy road running north/south through much of Denver. He slowed down in front of a rundown car repair shop. Instead of pulling into the drive, he overshot and pulled into the alley that ran next to it. "Rosie, open garage." Almost immediately, a door began to open in the building just behind the repair shop at the end of the alley. The bay he pulled into was large enough for a few cars, although there were currently no others. The floor was clean and the empty bay revealed a large metal staircase leading to the second floor. As the tail of the car cleared the entryway, the garage door started to descend.

Brad slid out of his Cayenne Pepper Red custom Honda Civic coupe. Any other day, he would stop and admire the custom wheels, custom body work, and more importantly a totally electric motor that produced nearly 300 horse power. The only downside was that its range was limited to a hundred miles per charge. This was no problem in town, but it wasn't much for trips. For that he had to rent something.
His head was still reeling from the bizarre morning and instead, he walked past the car and up the steps like an automaton. It wasn't really that uncommon to have a project canceled or even re-assigned once the hard work had been accomplished. Cirkus, Brad's consulting company, charged an arm and a leg for his time. Companies justified the expense when the project had a fresh budget. Once success was in sight, however, it was time to trim the fat. That was what he couldn't let go of. This project had just begun its first round of testing, and out of the blue the entire thing was shut down, citing total project failure. The IPSO project had been weird right from the start. If not for Paul Bently's request, he wouldn't have been involved at all.

He owed almost all his financial success to his good friend Paul. They weren't really hang-out buddies, although they did get together once in a while. They were more the "birds of a feather" type friends. Their friendship began when Paul, in a pinch, had entrusted a fairly pesky regulatory problem at one of his banks to Brad's capable hands. At the end of the project, Paul encouraged Brad to start up Cirkus, even providing some seed capital. On top of that, Paul called several wealthy friends and gave Brad his strongest recommendation. Together they owned Cirkus although Paul was mostly a silent partner unless Brad needed something.

Arriving at the top of the stairs, still mostly lost in thought, Brad stood in front of an oversized steel door with a small safety glass window centered at about five foot high and no visible handle. Directly to the right of the door, a small recess betrayed an industrial keypad and LCD screen. Instead of typing on the pad, Brad simply addressed the door. "Rosie, open front door please." The "please" was unnecessary, but it made Brad feel a bit more human. The door slid to the left, beginning before the words were completely out of his mouth, with just a bit of squeaking. Brad thought that he heard his oversized air compressor kick on in it's basement room, but wasn't sure.

Anatomy of an Ass Clown

Anatomy of an Ass Clown

Brad Maunikey had been summoned yet again to his boss's office. Bad enough that he had been banished to a floor where there were no other coders, but for some reason, his boss, Carp felt compelled to summon him regularly for conversations that could easily be accomplished via email. A little out of breath from the stairs, Brad poked his head into Carp's door and noticed that the office was empty.

"Yeah, right, summon me and take off. What an ass clown!" he offered to the empty office. Brad walked over and took a chair next to the windows in Carp's office. While Carp had some windows, it was still a crappy office. The furniture was that old particle board stuff whose edges were worn and chipped. The so-called guest chairs were old secretary chairs that should have been discarded and probably had been.

"Hey Brad, thanks for coming up." Jack Carp said as he walked through the door and swung his large frame around the edge of the desk.

"Sure. What's up Jack?" Brad returned.

At that moment, Carp's computer jangled indicating that he had an incoming text message. It was one of Carp's big things. Everyone on Carp's team was on an instant message system so he could get hold of you at any moment. "Hang on a sec, this is important." Carp turned his attention away from Brad as he started conversing with one of the other members of his team.

Brad worked for a company called IPSO as a software developer. While Brad loved writing code, this particular gig was fairly pathetic. He was only working at IPSO because one of his good friends, Paul Bently was a major shareholder in the company and had requested that he help out. Apparently Carp felt this was some sort of breach and was dead set on making Brad's life miserable. Well, it was working. If not for the request, he would have bailed on these clowns within a couple of months. As it was, he had stuck it out for an entire year and no amount of loyalty was worth this junk.

Carp finally looked up from his computer and turned his attention to Brad. Jack Carp was dressed in dark khakis and a poorly fitting, long sleeved polo shirt. Brad recognized this particular outfit as one of Carp's standard uniforms. Brad felt a little pity for Carp as he noticed the sweat stains building up under his arms. This guy had a serious sweat problem and when he felt pressure it got worse. This particular shirt must be his "go-to" when he expected a bad day, as there was evidence of previous bad days. Brad was almost mesmerized staring at the stains thinking that it was something like the rings of a tree.

"Alright Brad, so here's the thing. I am scrapping your project." Carp let his words hang in the air for a moment.

"Crap, Jack, you've got to be kidding. We're almost done! Have you seen the testing?" Brad could barely contain himself. He and his team had worked on this project for almost a year and they were nearly ready to start showing it to the product teams.

"Yeah, I've seen the testing. As you well know you are getting a lot of false positives. We just can't afford to keep spending money on a system that doesn't work." Jack Carp, whilefocused on Brad, was rubbing the palms of his hands on his khakis.

"You've got to be kidding me Jack. Why do you think they are false positives?" Brad's head was starting to spin. This was crap and he knew it, but what was Jack trying to do? Sure Jack was an ass-clown but until now he had simply been a joke, ineffective and pompous.

"Brad, we have verified with Triton-2 that your project is kicking out tons of bad data. Look, its over. I know it is hard to take, but let it go."

IPSO as a company provided software to credit card companies. The Triton-2 program was IPSO's flagship but venerable fraud detection system. The technology used to run Triton-2 was written in the late 80s and was ancient by software standards. Brad's project was to rewrite the current system using modern technology. Easy enough, just take the behemoth, figure out how it works and start slinging code. Triton-2 was considered to be the "best-of-breed" software in its class. This project was to simply update the technology, no creative work required. The company was so confident in the Triton-2 program that they called Brad's project Triton-3. Software companies as a rule aren't overly creative with their project names, but this was boring even by those standards."

Come on, we just got the results of the test back and haven't had a chance to figure out what the problems are. All we need is a couple of weeks with the data and we will know what is going on." Brad was annoyed at his pleading tone, but this hurt. He had never had a project yanked from him in the 11th hour. And never with thought that his project was poorly done. Doubt was starting to cloud his mind.

"It ain't gonna happen, this goes all the way up." Carp paused, as if he didn't want to continue. "Look, Brad, there's more. Once you check in your code, I am to escort you to the parking lot."

"Eff you Carp!" Brad was starting to lose it, his head was starting to throb. What had started out as a BS meeting had ended in slaughter. HIS slaughter.

"Cooperate and we won't have to get lawyers involved. We think there may be some irregularities on the project," Carp threatened.

Brad's head was really throbbing now, this was a fricking duck shoot and he was the duck. "You wouldn't, that's crazy!"

"Look Brad, make this easy, just check in your code. I will walk you out and you can say you quit."

It was hard to argue with him. He might be a clown but he was holding all of the cards. What a freaking surprise, this was a crap job anyway. Jack Carp accompanied Brad to his desk and watched over his shoulder as he checked in his remaining code. The good news was that since he was isolated from the other programmers, there was no one near his office that really had any idea what was happening. Brad wondered about the other members of his team. They weren't close friends or anything, but they also didn't deserve to be treated like this. In silence they walked to the door of the building where Brad handed over his security card and desk-key. Carp, in an unusual show of humanity, shoved his hand forward, offering it for a final shake. Looking at Carp's outstretched hand and up into his expectant face, Brad turned on his heel and stepped into the parking lot. Mostly to himself, but still audibly he simply said, "Ass Clown".

As he slipped into his car, Brad just shook his head trying to clear his thoughts, thinking, "that really was just a stupid effing job."