Old project sweat stinks more

Not sure what is going on with the bidniz’s themostat today, but it is absolutely scorching in the office today. My forearms (not four arms á la Ganesh)

mmmmmm Sacrilege
are sticking to the desk. On Tangent: Okay, I was just going to post a benign pic of Ganesh, but Sweet French Onion Dip! why in the world would someone put a diety on a scooter for their website! Jesus on a scooter would never be acceptable, similarly with Mohammad. I obscured their website's URL in case they copyrighted their sacrilege, but if one wants to find it just do an "image" search on Google. Off Tangent The whole sticking to the desk thing really is quite disgusting. Everyone I am working with at the moment (more near than with. I am a crogetty curmudgeon from Anti-socialville) should be happy that I wore deodorant today. It was a whim, what can I say. I am really quite un-comfortable here at the moment. I even recognized that today was going to be unseasonably warm. I wore short sleeves and everything (everything defined as: shoes {Keen: Bronx}, socks {ummm Khaki-esque}, underwear {at least I am pretty sure I put them on}, pants {lighter khaki than my socks}, undershirt {deep mossy green, ooooooooh stylish}, and short sleeve button down {deep blue, but not navy blue}). Every time I feel the air move, even slightly I have hope that I will no longer be miserably sweating at my desk. Alas that is not to be. I will be soaked through and through before I leave this building.

To top it off, I was running around the building today to the various color printers that we have (none of which are located near people who actually print stuff out in color, but, most importantly, me.) to collate printouts of an entrance and exit plan for a local sports venue’s parking plan. A job, by the way, that I haven’t had to touch since January 22, 2006. That is one of the issues with my industry (Transportation Planning): Old projects never die. They linger on… forever and ever and ever and ever and ever… So, I have been working frantically all day for a project that ended in January. That is the way of things. The sweaty frantic way of things.

The printer is adding some weird artifacts to the prints. And it is a good 600 feet (183 meters for my metric readership) away. So far I have attempted 4 different fixes to get rid of the spurious white triangle that appears in the lower left corner of the prints, and none of them have worked (4800 fruitless feet of travel to and from my desk {1464 meters for the metric folk}). I am on my last possibility to make the prints print out correctly.

So here I am, sticking to my desktop, saturating the carpet around me with perspiration, and working on a project that we turned in a final report on in January. It has not been a stellar Wednesday for me. So, how is your day going?

To recap:
Why in the world would someone Photoshop Ganesh onto a scooter?
I mean, really, Ganesh would be all about the H3
Wifey is in Cincinnati this afternoon, not to return until 8 this evening
I am not sure what I am going to feed Little Man tonight
I need to do laundry
I need some sleep
Tomorrow is the section Holiday Hootnanny
We are going bowling
I can wait
I can most assuredly wait

Meeting Hell

I will be in a meeting today from 9:30 am to 4 pm. Envy me. No really. Yep 6.5 hours of Meeting Hell. Lunch will be provided, but it will be crappy. Cold sandwich, stale chips, flat coke.

By noon I will be clawing my eyeballs out with boredom.

Why won’t anyone envy me? Oh, I think it might be the lovely picture I have painted. Nevermind.

To Recap:
6.5 hours of meeting = 390 minutes of boredom
I would doodle and draw during the meeting but company bigwigs are going to be there
Little Man has had 2 days of not having any bladder accidents
I hope today makes 3
Sloppy Joes for dinner
With crispy crowns and corn
There will be much rejoicing by Little Man
Wifey added comments to yesterday’s post
Read’em if you haven’t already
Wish me luck in the meetings
I will need it

Burn baby burn

So today at work I had to create a graphic for my boss’s boss as a talking point for some presentation he had with some clients today. Here is a piece of the graphic I had to make. These are sheets from some kind of design workshop that I did not attend.

I call it “Still Life in Paper.” You see, I don’t actually do work, I merely document others’ work

The rest of the graphic’s components are also stuff I did not do.

I am not too happy with the final “look” of this one because, well, I was given a whole 30 minutes to find/create the elements for this thingy. Ah well. This and another graphic are why this post is so short and work related.

Anyway… on Thursday evening I burned my right index finger on the oven rack removing a delightful faux pizza from the oven for the evening meal. On Saturday the blisters from the burn finally “let go” and left me with the open wounds of Sunday.

I have had much worse, so please don't think I am complaining about so trivial of burns. I did not have them bandaged on Sunday so they could dry out and scab over, so all day yesterday Little Man would poke me in the finger and say “Papa hurt.” I still do not know whether he was identifying the burns or giving me an order.

To Recap:
Not sure what will be for dinner
20 Questions Tuesday will be about High School
The burns do not hurt so bad right now
Probably because there is not a 3 + year old poking them
I think I am healing up quite nicely
Ow! That hurts Papa! Is not as strong a deterrent as one might think
In fact, Ow! That hurts Papa! Seems to induce giggles and more poking
Wow, I am really image intensive today
I am sure of it, Breath Right Strips have saved my marriage

Writing

I am writing a whole bunch of crap for work today coming up with requirements for my company to try and break into a newly emerged field of work. This task of actually writing for work is making the process of writing for blog a bit more difficult. It seems that I have a finite amount of writing in me per day, and unfortunately for this post, I have to focus on the work situation instead of the blog situation. Stupid work, getting in the way of my blogging!

Keeping my limit to my wordificationnessosity in mind, as this post gets longer, the less grammatical and cognitive sense it will probably contain. Thems the breaks.

Last night Little man and I went to Ted’s Montana Grill to celebrate Wifey and I exchanging our nuptials 9 years previous. Anyway… for their kid’s meal, Ted’s does not merely make a single child sized hamburger for the tiny tots to consume at their leisure. Rest assured tiny tots consume everything at their leisure. It is a fact of life. One can not speed up the eating of a tiny tot. To attempt to do so, will only backfire. Woefully, woefully, full-of-woely, backfire. No, Ted’s Montana Grill has decided that 3 smaller quarter sized patties are really what kids like. Unfortunately, they cook these itsy-bitsy-teeny-weenie adult bite-sized burgers are cooked on the same surface that the gigantor adult sized burgers are prepared. This lead to my burger being done perfectly (it had a warm pink center and was nice and juicy), but left Little Man with 3 charcoal lumps to force down his gaping maw. They were not good. Not good at all. The fries sucked as well, but he loved the IBC Root Beer. The wee one drank almost an entire bottle of IBC. Burped like a lumberjack when he was done. He was proud. I was proud. The wait staff was mildly shocked. But all this is irrelevant.

The thing to keep in mind is that I only have a discrete amount of writing ability that can be called forth from my noggin on a daily basis. I cannot tap the universe for some ethereal infinite writing ability that professional prolific authors seem to be able to tap into. No my dear readers, I must rely upon the paltry limited chunk of writing capability that is lodged within my head.

It turns out that some sort of dairy cross-contamination occurred in the preparation of Little Man’s coal-esque meal because I noticed some hives appearing on his back during his evening bath. I have no idea if the dairy was introduced because of butter on the cooking surface or the fact that his French fries also had one lone dairy laden onion ring gracing the same plate. Regardless, I forced the little guy to have some Benadryl. This ingestion of foul elixir caused much mental anguish and anxiety to my wonderful little boy, who wept for 5 minutes due its the disturbing taste. He was up from about 2:30 this morning until about 4:00 am due to his belly attempting to deal with the dairy within. This morning, when he awoke at 7:30, he started farting deep and rumbly farts that could potentially register on the Richter Scale. The dairy induced sub-sonic gas emissions caused some discomfort to the wee one, and much discomfort to those around him. Those of you who have experienced allergy induced gas know exactly what I am talking about. The important thing to consider though, is that the above information is not even remotely germane to what I am attempting to focus on today.

The real focus of today’s post is on how I only have a restricted reserve of writing capability at my disposal. Today is all about the way in which my work writing is interfering with my ability to post.

To Recap:
It seems that I have a finite amount of writing in me per day
Ted’s can make some charcoal for kids to eat
I only have a discrete amount of writing ability that can be called forth from my noggin on a daily basis
Dairy causes much gas in Little man
I must rely upon the paltry limited chunk of writing capability that is lodged within my head
I like to consider myself a wordificationnessositition
I only have a restricted reserve of writing capability at my disposal
In summary SRH’s writing ability ≠ ∞
I will again being dealing with the parents this weekend
I am tired
Have a great weekend

On Maps and Mapping

If anyone ever wondered what it is I do, I make maps. I make maps within the transportation planning department of an engineering/architecture firm. Most of the maps I make are for public involvement meetings where the client (usually a DOT) unveils a proposed design to fix some transportation issue. If the map and graphics I make are not associated with a public involvement meeting in some way, shape, or form, it typically has to go in some report or document for the client and/or interested parties for whatever project it is.

The documents where we are allowed to actually put some real effort into the aesthetic of the maps we produce (I supervise 2 cartographers as well) are the proposals that we ship off to prospective clients. It is on these pieces that we truly try to differentiate ourselves from our competition. These maps are more marketing pieces than traditional cartography. They are intended to be informational while still having a certain level of “eye candy” appeal to them. These are the products where we try to push the color palette. These maps are typically more enjoyable to make. They are more exploratory, because we have not fixed anything about their presentation as of yet. They are transient because we may not get the job we are going after. All in all, they just tend to be more interesting.

Today was the completion of one such map. This map is to be included in some way, shape, or form in a the interior or the cover of a proposal for a job in central Kentucky, just south of Lexington. The graphic designer who is assembling all of the other graphics associated with this proposal (he oftentimes posts here anonymously) and I decided to go with a more granite/marble color scheme for the project hovering around white, with deep blues and sea green for the details.

I am pleasantly surprised with how the final version came out. (I am not entirely sure how well Blogger will let you view the image. The original image is about 8” 8” (20.32 cm x 20.32 cm) in size. At that size everything is nice and legible. If you cannot see detail associated with the map, I apologize, but, really… It is all Blogger’s fault)



So, that, in case all 2 of you were wondering, is one of my tasks as a modern day cartographer.

To Recap:
Weekend was pleasantly boring
Tomorrow I will be out of the office, but still publishing my 4th weekly installment of 20 Questions
The color palette and style are attempting to give a sense of history within the context of current day modernity
I aced Introductory Art Appreciation and Art Histories I & II in college
Being able to write crap like “The color palette and style are attempting to give a sense of history within the context of current day modernity” is a direct result of those classes
I wish I could say that there was something in my daily repertoire that I use from my theory of Calculus classes Introduction to Analysis I & II
I got nada from those classes
Not a darn thing

Squeak

I have walked on many a tile floor in my days. Linoleum tiles, ceramic tiles, clay tiles, stone, etc… I have walked on them bunches. I have walked on these different tiled floor surfaces in many a different shoe and occasionally, when my shoes are wet, my walking will cause a squeak.

That is occasionally if the floor is anyway other than in my office. If I so much as look at any of the hard surface flooring within my office my shoes will squeak. Heck, even on some of the carpet, you can hear my shoes. It is quite frustrating and annoying. I like to consider myself a quiet walker. I like to consider myself rather un-obtrusive whence I am going to and fro, but in my office, no matter what shoe I choose to wear, I am a squeaky walking annoyance to everyone. In the halls, on the stairs, in the break room (sans toaster oven), in the bathrooms, etc…


Here comes SRH:

squeak, squeak, squeak, Squeak, Squeak, Squeak, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, Squeak, Squeak, Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak

There goes SRH

Heck, there are some hallways in this office, where if I am merely wearing any of three particular pairs of shoes, I will squeak like I am a basketball time down by 4 with 2 minutes to go. I just don’t understand why I squeak here in the office. I am sure that it isn’t because of the wax they use to polish the floors. I am not sure that these floors have been polished within my 7 years at this company. Sure they might have been mopped twice, but never polished.

Makes me think about just getting some soft soled slippers for the workplace, but if I did that I might as well get a light blue cardigan sweater and go all Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood on my company. I don’t think the company would mind until I started doing all the voices for the Land of Make Believe. Well, that and hallucinating Trolley to get out of meetings.

To Recap:
It is a bit rainy today
Here comes SRH:
squeak, squeak, squeak, Squeak, Squeak, Squeak, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, Squeak, Squeak, Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak
There goes SRH
If you can’t tell, it is kind of rainy this evening
Not much planned for the weekend
We have another open house on Sunday
I so want this house stuff to be finished: sale or no sale, it really doesn’t matter to me
I just want it done
I swear to GOD, I sound like a dog’s chew toy in the stair wells
Funny thing about writing "squeak" so much, the first time you spell it, you know that it is spelled correctly, but after 50 times, you question how it looks...

French Bread Pizzas

The problem with microwave frozen French bread pizzas is that they are not really on any real semblance of French bread and they are not really all that pizza like. Oh, and they always burn the roof of my mouth.

To recap:
I hate frozen lunches
Especially without my lovely toaster oven
Microwave stuff is always crappy
I am not in a good mood today
And I just don’t feel like waxing poetic about the minutiae in my life at the moment

Toaster Oven

So where the Hell did the toaster oven go?!?! Now, I am not one to vehemently complain about barbaric office conditions in the land of cubes, but this has gone too far. Too far I say!

I hate eating lunches at the office. I abhor the whole process of nuking something in the microwave so I can slop down some craptastic “meal” just so I can make it to dinner. Lunch in the office always sucks. Always. The only times it does not just absolutely blow is when I can finagle myself into a lunch meeting where lunch is provided.

At least that was the case until they brought in the toaster oven. Ah, the glorious toaster oven. An oft maligned and misunderstood piece of kitchen equipment. It works like an electric oven, but it is small enough that you do not have to worry about preheating. It is a wonderfully glorious device that browns and crisps frozen food while cooking it all the way through. Instead of getting from a frozen stick to a floppy eggroll in 5 minutes, I got crispy wonderful tasty Asian morsels in 15 minutes. Instead of getting rubbery French bread pizzas that taste like soggy pieces of cardboard, I got a toasty delectable French bread pizzas that tasted like firmer, non set out in the rain pieces of cardboard. Anyway… the machination of my bearable frozen lunches is now gone. Gone I tell you…. Gone

I do not care who says that Lean Pockets now have a crispier flakier crust. They can go straight to Hell, those lying bastards! Those microwave foodstuffs can not hold a candle to a frozen burrito lovingly brought to its gooey warm pinnacle by the workhorse toaster oven. I cannot help it if the other employees of the company did not understand how the toaster oven worked or how much better it was than their gimme-my-crappy-food-now-now-now microwave. You stopped the warm embrace of the toaster oven to my eggrolls by turning it off thinking the egg rolls were done and no one was watching them. I did not complain, even though I was constantly checking on them. You always thought something was burning whenever I turned on the toaster oven, but that fragrance you were detecting was a direct result of a little something called “cooking.”

They have taken my toaster oven away, and now I must sink to the level of a common grad student. Easy Mac it is…

To Recap:
Microwaves heat food by twisting water molecules back and forth and having those water molecules rub against one another to experience a molecular form of "friction"
Toaster ovens heat food because the heating element in the oven starts to glow red-hot, much like a conventional electric oven, the way God intended
I think I must have a tapeworm
I am stunningly hungry and I just ate lunch
I was hungry yesterday immediately after eating lunch
What’s up with that?
And what was up with Spain losing to France?

Making up hours

It is Saturday afternoon, and what am I doing? Well, I am at work doing some stuff for a public involvement meeting that has been consistently been postponed. I have some time that I have to make up for doctor's appointments for my little boy. Did I mention that rotavirus poo smells horrid? And, no, I am not "making up the hours" in the context of fabricating hours to dress up my timesheet. The little one's doctor's appointment and I also need to start getting in some extra hours. The 500+ dollars I just spent on car repairs is a kick in the crotch financially. Overtime would be a good thing. Luckily, I only have 2 more hours to go.

At least this gives me some time to clean off my desk, and organize the mess that is my office/cube/workspace. Oh well, Back to the grind.

No rest for the wicked

I never truly thought that I was wicked, but it turns out that I most likely am. I come to this conclusion due to my inherent lack of rest. Since, "There is no rest for the wicked" and since I do not feel rested, by the transitive property, am I therefore wicked.

Clearly this is a logical leap, since, most assuredly, the populations of un-rested and wicked are not mutually exclusive. There are people out there who have not rested for a long long time and are not considered to be wicked, but by the definition stated above, if I am indeed wicked, I am un-rested. So, I am just playing the odds.

Since I unabashedly choose funny over nice, I do not think that I can say that I am truly a nice person. I can live with that. Years of therapy have allowed me to accept the fact that I will choose funny over nice, and years of choosing funny over nice has effectively surrounded me with people who in some way, shape, or form support that trend in my personality. So, if in fact I am not nice, I could be wicked.

But to call myself truly wicked would be a bit off the mark as well. I have never kicked a kitten in the rain, and there have been opportunities to do so (It would not have been that funny). A truly wicked person would have booted kitty into a puddle in the middle of a thunderstorm. I guess this gets down to the idea of people either being wicked or not being wicked. It is a bivariate argument, and I am tacitly against bivariate logic.

So the more I explore this idea of wicked = un-rested, the more I realize that this saying is a bivariate statement. If one is rested, one cannot be wicked, because all wicked have no rest. Bivariate sucks. It is a purely western philosophy issue. Bivariateness stems directly from Greek and Roman systems of thinking. Yes or No, Black or White, This or That. Why can't I be somewhat wicked and therefore somewhat un-rested? Put that in your thinking pipe and smoke it, Procrates.

So, what I am getting at is that multivariate systems of logic are much more true to life than bivariate systems of logic and choice. The more choices one has, the closer the approximation to reality, the more refined the system. Lets say that my choices are now wicked, somewhat wicked, and not wicked. Being somewhat wicked gives me the distinct possibility of actually having achieved some rest, whereas being wicked does not afford me that luxury. I can live with that. Simply adding a third choice has made this system of choice a better system.

So, in conclusion, the 2 party electoral system sucks, we need more candidates to vote for so we are not just voting for a team name, but for the ideology behind the candidate.

Alive, but not yet kicking

I am sure the kicking will come soon. It is amazing how much work piles up when you are out of the office for a planned vacation, and it is absolutely stunning how much work is piled up when you are out sick. I am completely buried. Job security, gotta love it.

It is also amazing how much of this workload is un-necessarily late getting to me. I guess it is not something that needs to be worked on until it is 2 weeks late. Thanks guys. I guess I will chalk this up to the French saying "Plusque change, plusque la meme chose." The more things change, the more they stay the same. I do not know how many times I have railed against getting work at the last possible instant; I will constantly get work at the last possible instant. Another French saying comes to mind "C'est la vie."

On another note... That was one nasty French Dip Sandwich I had. The restaurant that we were at was one of them there all American restaurants, where the average age of the patron was hovering around 98. Keeping that in mind, I am surprised that it was not called a "Freedom Dip Sandwich." All in all, I thought it tasted fairly good, but it did quite the number on my alimentary canal. At least I can say that I am clean as a whistle.

I guess that sandwich has me thinking all French-like.

Lack of a creative center

I have come to the conclusion that I do not have a creative center in my life at the moment. I have no way of expressing any sort of creativity except for this blog. The blog does not completely count since I am not the best verbalizer I have ever met. I am much better with pencils or pen and ink, not so good with paints, and atrocious with 3-d stuff. I need to get back into drawing and sketching. It was always such a nice way of expressing myself whilst growing up. In college I did do a stint as an art major, and that really turned me off to the craft. Exactly the opposite of what I had expected the results of professional tutelage to be. It was an odd sensation to express myself in a classroom setting and then to subsequently be rated on my ability to convey an emotion. I vividly remember drawing the craptastic still life that the instructor had set out in at a pretty good level of detail. I was making sure that the lighting in my drawing was correct and that the shapes seemed to be around the same proportions that they were in real life, etc... Then this joker who was in my drawing group was sad, and ignored everything in the still life. He basically filled an entire page with black charcoal except for this one triangular shape of white. "Brilliant! Do you see the despair in this drawing? This is the way to capture emotion in charcoal..." etc... etc... imagine an art professor blathering on about ethos and tonal value while basically boiling his comments down to "I like lots of charcoal on paper, realism hurts." That was when I figured out that my style was not the same style as the art department at that particular higher education institution. Soon afterwards, I changed majors and finished college as soon as I could.

Now, it has been over 8 years since I have had the pleasure of doing any sort of creative drawing with any consistency, and I am hurting in my soul due to this. I need to get back into the habit of doodling, drawing, sketching, inking, whatever. This work stuff just ain't hacking it. So I guess in anticipation of tomorrow's post, I resolve to start actively trying to set aside time to draw. I am fairly positive that resolution will be trumped very quickly by the "I resolve to clean the bathroom regularly again" resolution, or the "Ooh, look something shiny" resolution.

Company Christmas parties just aren't what they used to be

Remember tales of people getting drunk at parties and telling off bosses, or the employee hook-ups that used to supposedly happen during the company holiday festivities? Well, none of that crap can happen anymore.

Today's company holiday activities are much more sedate affairs. There is no longer a company-wide holiday party where the bosses pay for everyone to get drunk and enjoy some merriment. No longer do people have to endure the office drunk/s blubbering on about how much they love everyone. I imagine that there were some lawsuits over bosses letting employees leave blitzed out of their minds and subsequently wrappingt themselves around a tree. Currently, we have in house Christmas extravaganzas.

This year it is on site and catered. A nice enough hoot-nanny to be sure, yet still less chance of seeing some good company soap operas develop. I would love to watch some folk just curse their bosses out. Some of the bosses definitely deserve it. The event happens over lunch now, because the big bosses think work will get done afterwards. They are horribly wrong, but they can think whatever they want. Hardly any work will be accomplished this week at all, or next as well. There won't be any drama to witness, so all we have to look forward to is good food, good conversation, and some fun white elephant gift stuff.

I guess that is enough of a celebration, but true celebrating involves watching some else make an ass out of themselves. One can only hope for some kind of soap opera work related incident now.

Back from a small hiatus

During said hiatus, my little one was sick, the pooping kind of sick. Many a poop was cleaned up during the week. Many a poop indeed. Unfortunately he is still not feeling well, but it is not the pooping kind of not well.

So now I am back at work. There are both positives and negatives associated with being back at work. A positive is contact with adults whose vocabulary is slightly better than the little one's singular word/whine of "eeeehhhhh!" while pointing. Usually still whiny here at work, just a better vocabulary. Negatives mainly concern that this is, in fact, work. It gets in the way of not-workin'. The interaction is nice, but the fact that it involves work is not so nice.

At least the people here do not expect me to pick them up and carry them into the kitchen so they can play on the counter with tupperware. Small consolation. There are some here that tend to still point and say "eeehhh!", but that is to be expected, this is a workplace after all.

Healthy Request Frozen Lunches are waaaay too small

Okay,

Here is the problem, Healthy Request lunches are typically tasty frozen lunches, but their portion size is either for a 7 year old girl or for a European. They always leave me wondering where the rest of it was. Granted, they are probably coprrect size portions for adult humans, but.... I'm an American, and I deserve larger portions. Super Size, King Size, Biggie Size, Up Size, Plus Up It, etc... That's the American way! If my sandwich is smaller than my head, it is a snack. I want a fry size that takes up the entirety of the passerger seat in my car. And I want bacon on that. Bacon should go on everything. It is God's perfect condiment. It is the pig's greatest and last gift bestowed to the human race. If it can have Ketchup, catsup, whatever, it can stand some bacon being thrown on there. Furthermore, because bacon is so superior to most other food stuffs it can also go where ketchup cannot. For instance, I can wrap steak in bacon (some call it "filet mignon", I call it "bacon-steak."), bacon can and should go on a salad, The BLT uses bacon very wisely as well. mmmm bacon. Too bad bacon is horribly not good for you. Canadian bacon though, is another matter entirely. The same salty piggy goodness, just half the fat. The US should invade Canadia just for its Canadian Bacon reserves. Then it could be re-named American Bacon, and then we could get it super-sized.

On another note: What is with Rally's current ad campaign, "You gotta eat." That is basically saying, "We make food, not good food or cheap food, but it is food. Also, we sell it." This in no way shape or form gives me any reason to eat Rally's over any other sustenance. How does my need of food necessitate eating at Ralley's. Now if it was "We will bacon anything up." That's a campaign that I can go for.

So, in summary, Healthy Request Lunches are tasty but too small, bacon is good, and Rally's makes products that, by definition, are edible.

Stupid Rally's

Not much to write about today

There is not much going on different today. Just the normal sort of stuff that accompanies my job. When I arrived this morning, there was a significant amount of work waiting for me in my chair. That is fairly typical. I have 4 different mapping activities that need to be done in the near future. Again, fairly typical. Last week, atypical. Had nothing to do, so I went around asking project managers what work needed to get done, and if there were anything we could be working on. Each and every time they each said that "next week we should have stuff for you." And since this is next week, all the pm's are starting to get work to me. Now, I have gone from the proverbial famine, to the proverbial feast. Neither of which is really optimal.

On the one hand, famine is bad because, no work = boring. One can only watch the clock so much before one goes insane.

On the other hand, feast is bad because too much work = not enough attention to detail on some of the work. The devil is in the details, and when there is too much going on, things get missed.

A good middle ground would be nice. It is rough going from 100%+ to nada and back again. Somehow I think this is a time-management thing. I am un-certain if it is clientside, or project manager side, or a little of both, but, nevertheless, it is not the best way to get work accomplished around here.

Anyway... nothing new going on, just the typical feast/famine cycle

Stupid feast/famine cycle.

How's your workload right now?

"How's your workload right now?"

Anytime I get asked this question, my workload invariably gets heavier. Today I have had 3 different people ask me how my workload was, last week 3 other people asked me how my workload was, and now, my workload is invariably pretty heavy.

2 weeks ago, I had nothing to do, and now we have way too much to do. It seems that when it rains, it pours. Stupid work, with its stupid deadlines and stupid workload. Now I have tons and tons of work to do and very little time to get it all done.

Almost forgot

So,

I have been working rather diligently today to get tons of work accomplished, and therefore, almost forgot to "blog" away.

Other than work, not much else is going on except that I am trying to get rid of my addiction to that marvelous green elixir of life, that philter of consciousness, the effervescent crack I call Mountain Dew. Oh Mountain Dew, how I miss your bubbling ways. You pick me up, when I am nappy. You quench my thirst for sugar and caffeine. How I shall miss you. I will be foreswearing the bubbly caffeine for at least one month. It will be tough, but I will be able to do this, for I have done it before.

Stupid Caffeine

Work again work again Jiggity Jig

I so do not want to be at work today. It has been entirely too hard to get focused on actually working. I imagine that this is a fairly typical problem when coming from a 4 day weekend. That means that it will be even more difficult the week after next when I will be out of the office from Tuesday until the following Monday. Oh well,I am sure I will be motivated when I get some more firm due dates for some products.

If not back to the grind, at least back to acting like I am amid the grind.