Do I contradict myself?

Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend. Only four more hours until the weekend.

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Gorgeous, sunny day today.

I really donwanna be at work.

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Over the weekend our desks at work were moved from the 15th floor to the 7th floor. This is part of a long term plan to consolidate most of our space on the 7th and 8th floor of the building, so we weren't specifically chosen for this as such.

There are good things and bad things about my new space. The bad is that it's even smaller than my old cube up on 15, and that wasn't too spacious to begin with. The good is that I actually have access to natural daylight! Because of the orientation of the desk, my chair isn't facing a window but it's out there at about 7:00 over my shoulder! Natural daylight! I haven't had access to natural daylight at my desk in several years!

And now begins a few hours of unpacking my crates and making sure that I have some place to put everything.

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I think I spent half of my day on conference calls. I understand that meetings are necessary sometimes and it's actually good to get the entire project team together on a regular basis. On the other hand, when we have these conference calls and meetings we all have to stop working. I don't know about what the rest of the team has -- I don't have an easily accessible copy of the project plan -- but I still have a fairly big deliverable to finish by month's end.

The life of a consultant isn't all fun and games. Although I guess that I could play games and have fun while I'm on this call, since I don't need to pay attention to most of the rest of it (not my functional area).

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I am SO TIRED of conference calls.

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NY Metro area peeps! $EMPLOYER (a software company in the financial and commodities trading and risk management business) is looking for a trainer out here at our corporate HQ in Uniondale, Long Island.

There's about 50% travel involved.

Let me know if you're interested! I've been with the company for 9 years and it's mostly been pretty good.

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I've been super-busy since I moved back to New York from London. I haven't finished unpacking yet, and in addition to doing support for the London project, I've jumped right into another project. Also, the day after I got back I drove down to Maryland for the baby-naming of my brand-new niece. (Nothing like a 5 hour drive on jetlag. Thankfully).

But I'm back and ready to party, promise. More real content soon, including my farewells to London, stuff about Worldcon and Worldcon bids, musical things.

Watch this space. DW comments

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A couple of weeks back, the team from $CLIENT went to Dublin for the weekend and, of course, I took pictures. The full set is on Flickr. DW comments

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We just got a memo that announced a wall decorating contest to celebrate the magic of the holidays and promote holiday spirit.

Since they didn't specify which holidays, I'm thinking of decorating for Holi or Diwali. Or possibly Saturnalia.

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Friday night. 7PM.

Full team still here working, so I'm still here working.

WTF is wrong with them?

I cannot adequately describe how it fails to even rise to the level of "sucks."

Tiny, noisy, hot, bad location.

It's a 10' x 20' room, of which the bed takes up a nontrivial portion. The cooking facilities are roughly nonexistent; there's a fold-up hot plate with a single burner -- I can have the burner or the counter, but not both. The table is large enough for a single plate of whatever it is I don't have enough room to cook; there are two chairs as well.

The wardrobe has enough room for either my clothes to hang, OR my suitcase, but not both. Between the bed and the TV, there's not enough room to fully open the door/window out to the small balcony.

Due to the proximity of Bahnhof Oerlikon and an active construction site, it's impossible to sleep with the window open; it's too hot to sleep with the window closed (although there's no airflow at all, so it doesn't help much). The walls of the place are such that any noise such as the neighbour's doorbell or the door being opened or closed ring through the entire apartment; an issue when the neighbours are coming in at 2 in the morning.

My dorm room in university was significantly better than this.

There's no room for my children to visit for any extended period; there's barely room for a single person in there.

Not acceptable

Downloading Microsoft Windows Installer 3.1 (update 1 of 1)... done!

Snarky comments about Windows aside (I have to use it for work because that's all our application runs on and there's no actual demand from our clients to have it run on any other platform)...

3.1? 3.1?

I mean, come on, we're PAST Windows 3.1; I'm running XP here!

ETA: FSVO "running" it seems

$TECH came down to our dungeon today to run inventory on our machines. After he finished with my laptop, my USB no longer worked (this was the only machine which this happened to -- it's the oldest one in our group at this point and I need to get it replaced before Zurich anyway)

I grumped a little, but not too loudly -- a reboot takes care of it anyway.

HIS response? "Oh, you're German and I'm Jewish, it's a natural thing."

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Even had that been the case (regular readers of my LJ know that he's...umm...mistaken), what could possibly have possessed him to say that? At work, no less? At work for a company that has a Berlin office from which people frequently come to the Mothership out here on Long Island. I mean, OK, I'm a New York Jew and I was not brought up with a vast love of Germany or Germans; I understand the headspace because I used to be there. But...boggle

I expressed my surprise and displeasure, of course. And he apologized. Not for saying it, though, just for mistaking my background.

::headdesk::

Today, my initial objective is to drain the swamp

...it is at this dramatic juncture that I am muttering some very rude words about Crystal Reports. Yes, again.

On the bright side, I think I've pulled a rabbit out of my hat and found a workaround for things that have been failing since last week. It'll be a pain to implement and I'm not sure we can get it out the door before I leave tomorrow (I'm off on Friday and heading for GAFilk!) but at least there's a way around it now.

The deliverables that had to be out by close-of-business today?

Signed.

Sealed.

Delivered.

It's Miller time.

In the Google search box on Firefox, "crystal meth" is the suggestion immediately after "crystal reports"

Coincidence?

5:25. We just finished.

My eyes are SO glazed.

...we had a 45 minute break for lunch.

Back to the call.

Blrg.

8AM conference call the day after open mic night...

I left $CLIENT at 3:30 to get to the airport for a 1-hour flight scheduled to leave at 6:30

It's now just shy of 2:30 the following morning and I've just walked in.

No, it was NOT one of my better travel experiences.

...sucks. And I don't mean the pharmacy chain.

I'm getting an error checking in a file, but it's not a useful error that tells me what the problem is, just that the file has a conflict...

This trip was an adventure and a half. There was predicted Weather for Friday evening, so I'd not have been surprised to have the flight delayed. And, of course, I was flying into LaGuardia, which also meant that I'd not be surprised to have my flight delayed. It's a horrible airport to fly into, it really is. It's been operating well over designed capacity for years.
( Cut for text almost as long as the wait wasCollapse )
Oh, and I think I need a travel-related userpic.

The hotel's high-speed Internet blocks IRC. Go figure.

This is the WEIRDEST layout of a room I've ever been in. There's an actual hallway, with the WC and tub at one and. Down near the bedroom part is the sink. I mean, I can see it being apart because it's convenient for people doing their hair while someone else is in the toilet or the shower or something, but...a hallway? There's a nice balcony, though.

I was tired, so I only walked a couple of miles downtown today. Now I'm ready to drop into bed.

The prostitute who solicited me this evening was really cute and appeared to have a sense of humour. It didn't change my "No thanks, not interested" answer, but it was a nice change.

Today's been the busiest day in a week and a half; I've spent most of it on LiveMeeting and on calls and up to my ass in alligators. That said, I wanted to share this little bit of exciting news.

They've been doing construction along Hempstead Turnpike, the main road that my office is on. On the days that I take my bike, I have to ride along this road. I often avoid the final stretch of it and go a bit out of my way, because there's no good place to ride.

But today, I noticed something new: an actual bike path, paved and painted. This is a great sign. I wonder if they'll expand a network of them?