Data Analysis, Traffic, and Dinner

So, I went to work today with three tasks. I needed to do a mock-up of some design changes to a website, which was pretty simple. Then, I need to run a pair of reports for analysis. The requests were moderately complex, but the data was there. I ran the reports got the data and went to work on the analysis portion of it. That is where things started to go awry.

First, at some point in the history of the data, two fields had been retasked - but behind the scenes the retained the names associated with their old task. So, as we dug into that, looking to relabel the fields, we discovered that about twelve percent of the data fields had been re-tasked at some point, so the data dictionary was out of kilter. I documented the findings, inserted some temporary labels on two of the fields I needed, and ran the associated reports.

Then, the second problem rose its head. Each field is supposed to be single sourced - an exclusive one to one relationship between the parent and child. Except - they weren't. Only, we didn't figure that out until we were deep into the analysis and things simply wouldn't add up. It took some trouble-shooting to figure out what was going on and it opened a can of worms that will require engineering to fix, so come Monday, I will document that one.

Meanwhile, now that I know what is wrong with the data, I can output it into an ad hoc Access database, establish some imaginary relationships, so I can key off something, and then do the analysis from there.

So, that was pretty much the sum of my day (other than a nice mushroom and tarragon soup for lunch.). It did make it a long day, with its own share of frustrations - but the day is done, I've bought a few more days to do the analysis, and I am looking forward to it, now that the hurdles have been overcome. I've always liked the analysis portion of my work.

I drove home in the middle of the rush hour, which meant that my usual twenty minute commute was an hour of stop and go, but I was listening to the Indigo Girls "Swamp Ophelia", which is in heavy rotation in my CD player, so the time passed quickly enough. The long commute was also much more easy to tolerate since I knew that I was sliding into a three day weekend.

At home, I had a dinner of grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches and watched the opening episodes of this seasons "Modern Family" - a good way to start the long weekend. Tonight, my plan is to keep it simple, spend some time with T.R., and then spend some time continuing to read George R.R. Martin's "A Clash of Kings". I am in a good mood and the three day weekend is about to begin.