Slacker March 4, 2009

The cursed project may, in fact, be cursed, but it sure as heck doesn’t take two months of dedicated time to run.  It has been just over a week and I’m nearly done with my tasks, and I have oodles of free time in which to pick up random incoming jobs.  My boss and I have come to the conclusion that the last several people to laugh in the face of danger and fail miserably work on this project padded their time by at least a few weeks and were probably playing solitaire.  It’s less stressful this way, although the first few days were wretched, and  I think overall I prefer it.

That being said, I’m finding it very difficult to concentrate at work. This is due, I think, to three things:

• I am in the feeble clutches of a not-very-robust, but still irritating headache
• My caffeine supply is dangerously low
• I hate what I do to make money

At the same time, I could be using my unproductive work hours for personal non-work productivity, but I’ve come to the realization that I’m a slacker at heart.  I am attempting to write an engaging article for the company newsletter about what the clueless customer service people need to know so I can do my job effectively, but I think that’s contributing to my first bullet point.

I’m amazed that I’ve managed to write this much.

In geeky news, I just ordered an ASUS eee PC 901 in Sweet Pea green.  I was going to wait and order it as my “Yay, me!” for making my mini-goal weight.  However, ASUS is currently offering a rebate which ends 3/8/09, and that changed my tactics a bit.  While this snappy little netbook will arrive well before I reach my mini-goal, I won’t have custody of it until I see those numbers on the scale.  By my calculations, that should be mid-May.  Delayed gratification!

Cursed February 23, 2009

I’m starting The Cursed Project today at work. Why is it cursed, you ask? It is cursed because every person who has been involved in running this particular project has not been around to run it a second time, and has either left voluntarily or been let go within the year. That tends to make it difficult to figure out exactly how to run this sucker.

It’s a project that spans approximately two months in run time. It’s terribly complex, easy to screw up, and so tightly scheduled that there isn’t time for screwups. It’s Day One, and things didn’t start well. I had problems with 3 of the 28 input files. The client resent those three, of which only 2 were good. I’m still waiting on the last one.

Of course, I also had to spend the first half of my day doing completely unrelated work. My co-irker had her furnace crap out, and it’s still very, very cold here, so she had to be hope to get the repair work done. That meant I had to do her usual Monday tasks. I can’t blame her, it’s just absolutely the wrong day for this kind of stuff to go down.

I’m currently processing my first file. It’s an hour before the official end of my day. I’m planning on being here for 3 more. Did I mention that I’m on reduced hours and have an hour less a day to process this stuff?

At this point I’m almost glad of the curse. It gives me hope that I’ll be out of this place sometime before another year is up.

Prosaica February 19, 2009

I’m incredibly bored. I should be working. Instead I’m trying to figure out how to make things pretty and cohesive in the ether. It isn’t going well. What’s new with you?

Housekeeping February 10, 2009

I’ve gone ahead and purchased a new domain, but I’m trying to decide what to do with all my fractured bits of writing. Do I leave it all here, point it to the new site, integrate everything, or leave it all separate? I’m getting rather frustrated because I’m not having any luck with a cohesive plan, so everything I do is pretty pointless.

If I can plan things out, it’s a good opportunity to do some housekeeping… delete old files, consolidate others, make an understandable directory structure, etc. I’m hoping inspiration strikes soon.