A Glass, Full

The day was one long meeting or nine long meetings all strung together.  Either way, the end result was the same.  Though it was a smooth start to morning, including time with T.R., the first meeting threw me headlong into a foul mood. I don't mind consulting on other parts of the project, but I dislike it when people attempt to off load their work on me, especially since I have a full project load myself. 

There are two analysts assigned to developing some custom reporting - the only challenge for them is neither of them has the depth of knowledge to design the reports they need to design.  Like everyone else, they're under heavy pressure from upper management - so, in the meeting today, they attempted to foist the detail work off on me. 

Now, under normal circumstances I am always glad to help - but these are not normal circumstances, so I refused to commit to the task unless management decides to assign it to me.  If I am a glass of water, then I am a very full glass of water - we can always pour more water in, but some of it is going to splash out. 

So, after that meeting put me in a foul mood I struggled through the morning.  At lunch, I decided to log out, commute home, take a nap, and try and reset the day. It worked and I was able to salvage both mood and productive out of the afternoon.  Then, a simple dinner (grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches), and an easy slide into the evening.  In a short while I am going to slip into bed and read a few chapters in "The Cloud Atlas".

Work, Cloud Cuckoo Land, and The Cloud Atlas

It was a long day at the office, with some pretty serious stress peaks in the early morning. The thing that sent my levels climbing was being pulled into a schedule meeting.  In an project, managing a schedule is a full time job. To that end, we have a master scheduler.

The problem with our current project is...he is not very good. In my current role, on this project, I do not have schedule control responsibilities (though, I have been pulled in a couple of times to write part of the schedule, but that is another stress point). Because our scheduler is not very good, he has to have everyone present in the meeting, for when he runs into things about the schedule he doesn't understand - which is all the time. Prior to departing for vacation my boss had provided schedule updates and estimates for the two meetings I got called into today.

So, basically, all I did was say "as was provided". A pretty much pointless waste of two hours.  The rest of the day though, I plowed through writing a new set of requirements.  Here is the challenge that I ran into - I have a portion of the project that is current in the test cycle - and yet, at the end of last week they added what translated to 150+ new line items for the requirements document.  Too crazy.

I would give you a nice entry about my personal life but I didn't have one today.  I worked about eleven hours, came home, ate a simple dinner, took a short nap, then got up and watched the presidential debate, while answering the occasional email on my corporate Blackberry. I do have one bit of feedback - I think presidential candidates should be wired with Tasers and when they fail to answer the question asked, they should be shocked.  In about three minutes both of the candidates would have been laying on the floor, twitching. A pure evening in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Fortunately, I plan on recapturing some good hours this evening by reading "The Cloud Atlas", which I started on Sunday and I am already enjoying.

A Simple Weekend, More or Less

It was a nice weekend, though work felt like the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.  My calendar is mostly clear tomorrow, so I should be able to pull a productive day out of it.  I worked for a couple of hours today, but I couldn't really say that I accomplished anything significant. It was more of a shuffling of data in different directions.

Sunday was a mellow day.  Had breakfast with Bob and Tony, then stopped to pick up a couple of new pairs of blue jeans, then up to Edgie's to play a few hours of pool (I won, 4 out of 7 games), then Patxi's for a pizza, a leisurely after pizza walk - then home to Mythbusters and the Walking Dead and a quiet evening reading The Cloud Atlas.

In short, it was a very ordinary Sunday, which is just what the doctor ordered.  I hope I have a productive week at work and I hope everyone else has a productive week, because we have a lot of ground to try and cover in way too few days and hours.  I am going to try and not psych myself out over the whole thing - going to try and stay focused and stay productive, but that is never easy, especially not in the environment that we currently find ourselves in.

I am enjoying sitting in the quiet of the living room, reading, this evening, since I've turn the television off. I think I am going to slip into bed early today, just so I can read and ease into sleep, to prepare for the week to come.