|
prev home archive next Momentary Thought Chocolate. No, tequila. High/Low High: Had a marvelously *alone* and warm-fuzzy day with Calvin yesterday. Low: Monday-itis is particularly severe today. Current Obsession Work. Workworkworkworkwork. Grin Source A new journal friend! Check out lemon rind! Singing "The first, my last, my everything... and the answer to all my dreams. You're my sun, my moon, my guiding star. My kind of wonderful, that's what you are..." Barry White - You're the First, the Last, My Everything Storyteller Bio Dramatis Personnae Who I Read Recipes |
This is the Monday-est Monday I've experienced in a long time. Hang on, gang, cuz I'm going to do something rarely seen here on ~Snerkology~. I'm going to complain about my job. Gee, like *that* never happens. Today I'm writing a specification. I've developed an automated system for storing and tracking archive materials, and now I'm writing the operational and procedural spec for it. This is something I HATE doing (with a capital HATE) and so have put it off until the last possible moment (week). The system is going to be "turned on" after the final validation activities at the end of this week (if all goes smoothly), so in order to train the people that are going to be using the system, I need to have the spec done. This particular activity is something I've done multiple times (AcronymCo could also conceivably be called "DocumentCo", since we have documents as prolific as our acronyms. We have a documents *for* our acronyms). I have multiple other projects that have required, if not new specs, than changes to existing specs. In itself a tedious, but not impossible or really even difficult task. Under normal circumstances, that is. Our document database has got to be the slowest dinosaur of programs existing today. I needed to refer to some equipment information in order to incorporate it into the spec I'm writing. I opened the database and it took 10 minutes to load. I performed a search for the document I was looking for, at that took another 10 minutes. Then I loaded the doc attributes to take a look at it. That was 20 minutes ago, and I'm still waiting for it to load. Oh, no, wait. I just checked, and it's loaded something alright. An error page. Gr. Here's another bit of AcronymCo culture that I hate. Every employee, up to and including the CEO, works in a cubicle. Every employee is provided a barrier chain to hang across the opening of their cubicle. Said chain has a sign on it that says "Do Not Disturb", or some derivation thereof. These signs don't work worth shit. I'm jamming along on my spec, with my headphones on, and I hear someone holler "Laura!" I turn to see a grinning (smirking? Either way, I'm wiping the expression off of him if he comes back) co-worker. No, two - the other one is hiding sheepishly out of view around the corner. But I Know He's There, Because I Am Omnipotent. "Is this thing telling the truth?" he asks, pointing to my "Do Not Disturb" sign. I glare at him. "What do you think?" He utters a (snide? or sheepish?) little chuckle, and ahems and humphs at me. The fraidy cat around the corner pokes his nose around, and goes back into hiding. They're not going to leave. Making a show of my annoyance, I sigh heavily and remove my headphones. "What do you need?" I ask (with admirable lack of sarcasm, I must say). The Brave One hauls on The Chicken One's arm, and says "We have a question." He asks it. It's the same question I already answered for The Chicken One last week. Prefacing my answer with "I believe this is what we talked about on Friday," and shooting The Chicken One a glare, I succinctly answer the question. Again. They hemm and haw a bit, and shuffle away again. The next person who ignores my sign is getting ignored. I swear to God. The database still isn't letting me get the information I need. And I've received an e-mail that we are suffering, yet again, under the throes of another virus attack. A good half of my time last week - the *whole week*, mind you - was wasted on computer downtime. Shoddy systems aside, it's hard to believe how quickly things grind to a halt around here when there's network problems. I've requested step-by-step instructions from the guy who developed the program for my archiving system - what steps to go through to store things, retrieve things, etc. etc. What does he provide me? Oh, an instructional document, alright. But I can tell he copied one procedure and pasted it for all the rest of the procedures. How can I tell this? Because he never changed the instructions - just the headings for each one, so it *looks* like he wrote the instructions for each transaction. I swear, I'm so sick of other people's shitty work ethics. Or, if not *ethics*, their crappy results. I so hate that it's true that "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself". My boss already got on me once for not delegating enough tasks - if I delegate, I sacrifice quality, and it's just as simple as that. I wish I could count on my co-workers, but I can't. At least, not always. I have a network of folks I know I can count on, for certain things, and I use them as often as I can for the projects I head up. But they're not always available, or they're not always the right folks for the job, so I get stuck with idiots. Idiots, I tell you. Don't get me wrong. I'm very very glad I have my job here at AcronymCo. As corporations go, these folks treat their employees decently. My benefits are excellent, the work is challenging (when it isn't frustrating), and I like many of the folks I work with. Just not *all* of them. Also, trying to be dynamic or enact a change around here is like steering a cruise ship with a pair of oars. A S-L-O-W process, at best. And even when I have full control of the change, or the system (as with my archiving project), I still have to work within the cumbersome programs and data bases in order to do certain tasks. Hence the source of my frustration today. Giving the database another go (it kicked me out a second ago). Wish me luck... ...still no go. Moving on... ********************** Marie's party went well this weekend. I think we actually ended up hosting *more* than the 40 kids originally planned for. Oof. Shoot me the next time I plan something like this, okay? Actually, it wasn't *so* bad (hush, Calvin, it wasn't, really). Marie was annoyed because we had some party crashers, but there was dancing, and Twister, and good music, and the majority of the kids seemed to have a good time. Marie was sharing a joint birthday party with her friend, whose mom manages an apartment complex. We got to use the clubhouse, and it was equipped with a full kitchen, large party/dance/game area, and a separate theater room. The noise level was extreme once all the kids arrived. But hey, it's not a successful party unless the cops are called, right? They weren't, but the party was successful anyway. The grown-ups supplied the food, decorations, organized a few games and activities, and ensured the kids behaved themselves. Pretty much. Really, there were only three adults that stayed the whole time - me, Marie's friend's mom, and one of her friends. Calvin and Michael (I guess he qualifies as an adult, given the party-goer's ages) stayed for about 90 minutes, then fled. I was just glad they showed up at all. The balloon popping activity I mentioned before went off okay. At least, there seemed to be a good number of couples shifting their feet to various popular slow songs. The Twister game was met with more enthusiasm, strangely enough. I guess the stuff I liked to do at parties when I was 13 still holds true today. Ancient woman that I am. I have no idea who got the prizes - those just kind of disappeared. We only had to break up one fight, between two girls. I have no idea what it was about and I don't really want to know. Suffice to say, no eyeballs were scratched out. Besides, what's a teenage party without a little drama, right? And believe me, it was all about drama on Saturday night. Who danced with whom. Who brought who to the party. Who was going home with whom. Who wasn't speaking to whom. Who cheated on their boy/girlfriend and (*gasp*) danced with someone other than who they were "going out" with!! !!! Uh. Mah. Gah. Ah, well. I wouldn't go back to that age if I could. ~shudder~ After everyone cleared out, the place was a disaster. We cleaned it up as best we could, but finally abandoned the task at midnight. I inherited four girls besides Marie for the night, and also an obscene amount of cake and subs to take home - the kids didn't eat much at all. Marie made out with a lot of loot and money as gifts and seemed pleased with things. Which, in the end, is all that matters. I'm still not doing that again. Another interesting thing to note: after leaving the party, Calvin and Michael decided to go for a motorcycle ride. Calvin got pulled over for speeding but succeeded in *not* getting a ticket. Seeing as Calvin was going 130 mph (and it doesn't really matter what the speed limit was supposed to be - it's all relative after 20 mph over), I still can't figure how he got out of it. But, according to him, "I guess you *don't* need boobs to get out of a ticket!" Charming. |