Category Archives: Cogging for Kibble

Break To Gabble

Argh! Not only is this slow because I have to compare three documents, eliminate some minor differences and maintain others, but I have to dance around all these damned newly added tags and code. It slows me down dreadfully. Did I mention that I’ve been through this script or variations of it four times already, and it now bores me? Boredom makes focusing very difficult.

I’d plead for release via death, except that would preclude getting paid for finishing the work.

I will finish this first sheet tonight. I will.

I’m only halfway through.

*headdesk*

Break’s over.

(Why do I have no Walnut Whips left? Why?)

LATER, 10:49 PM: DONE! Well, the first sheet of thirteen, anyway. Now, to bed with a cup of warm milk because I”ll be damned if I’m going to wake up at 4:30 AM like I did today. Also, I have a book to finish.

Wednesday

Thank you all for your good wishes. The boy was reunited with BunBun this morning and gave him a fervent cuddle. “Liam hugging BunBun now,” he said, wrapping his arms so far around the bunny that it was gripped in the crooks of his elbows in front of him, and rocking it back and forth in a mildly violent fashion.

Meallanmouse and I met for lunch today (pasta chips at L’Etranger, how I have missed you), and while I was out I picked up a new notebook as well as doing a quick stop at Archambault to look at double bass method books (Eva’s a fretless bass, okay? Regular electric bass books keep telling me to put fingers on my non-existent frets, and double basses just happen to have the same tuning and thus fingering as an electric bass). I stopped at Indigo to get a book as well, but ended up leaving it behind after carrying it around for a while. (Gratuitous and self-serving stock check: they had one copy of my second book on their shelves, and two of my third.) When I got home there was mailbox joy in the form of the first cheque for the urgent work I did in July, which means Hydro and Bell can be paid. Also in the mailbox was my first issue of the Strings magazine to which I subscribed as a birthday gift to myself. (Of course, that was before I bought Eva as a birthday gift, so I ended up with two from me to me.)

I’d forgotten how public transport allows me to read a lot. I began Stephanie Cowell’s The Players last night, and as of now I’m something like two hundred pages in, with only fifty more to go. I’ll be finished tonight. And finish it I will, most likely in a warm bath, because I will need the break after an afternoon of reducing this script. This is the fifth time I’ve gone over a version of this story (three different versions are required for the project, let’s call them X,Y, and Z: I went over X twice, and this is the second [and significantly longer] edition of Z), and I’m already cross-eyed. And now we have the added twist of working within very specific coding tags, so I have to be extra careful of what I delete and add.

Very pleasant weather we are having. We have only had the air conditioner on for all of five days this summer so far. In fact, HRH took it out just before we left for our long weekend away, and it won’t be replaced unless absolutely necessary. I approve.

Ping!

Guess what just landed in my inbox? The first of the two revised files to edit! And I get to start all over again! This isn’t a simple cut and paste; this is a full-version reworking.

I am so very glad this complete reworking is through no fault of mine; it appears the translators only did a portion of the full file at first. The work I did before on the original version of these two files isn’t completely useless, it’s just… a small fraction of the larger file. The original file isn’t a unified chunk of the larger file, either; it’s fragmented and scattered all the way through the file as a whole. It will take a week to edit, and the only reason it’s a week instead of two is because I have the first full file to refer to (which took me two weeks on its own back at the beginning of July).

Well, a week for this file and a week for the one that will soon follow. It’s all money for my time. One must cog in order to buy kibble and Cheerios, after all.

Mighty Mighty

Am DONE.

Go me! Month-long project wrapped up! (Until the final files are sent to me for for integration, but no ETA on those.)

Taking rest of day off. There may be beer. But only because a glass of wine this early in the day feels odd.

The rest of you? Behave. I worked stupid amounts of overtime last week. I deserve this.

Excellent!

I just broke time and space to do an insane amount of work that could not possibly have otherwise fit into the workday.

I am awesome.

I could keep pushing, but it’s been a really, really draining week, what with the sick and the urgent project etcetera, so I am going to be good to myself. I’ll do a couple of hours while Liam sleeps tomorrow, and another couple on Sunday, and then things will be all ready for the final check and delivery on Monday, a day ahead of schedule. Of course, the deadline is kind of moot since the client still hasn’t provided me with the finalized files as they were supposed to do last week (“they are delayed! maybe within a week!”), but they’ll be reminded that I am not responsible for maintaining a contractual deadline if they haven’t provided me with the complete material. If they’re delayed, I’m delayed; it’s as simple as that.

I’m pleased that a workday that began in such a ghastly fashion turned around so completely.

Hello, Wall

Guess whose desktop computer won’t start up this morning?

*headdesk*

It turns on. No start-up sequence. Not even a system check. Everything was fine when I shut it down last night. No viruses were found in the virus scan I did at dinner yesterday. It must be a hardware failure of some kind.

And did I save the files I need to be working on to my thumb drive? No, I did not. I’ve asked the client to send me the last copy of the first file I returned to them last week and the original copy of the third so that I can pick up where I left off and work on the laptop. Hopefully Blade will be able to do something about the computer tonight, otherwise the second (and complete) file is stuck there unless we take the drive out and plug it into another computer to take it off. The good news is that I work with a partioned drive so that if we have to reinstall Windows (again) I don’t lose any of my important stuff, just programs and time. If the drive is dead, well, I’ll just have to completely redo the second file. And it will serve me right for not making an external backup, but still — argh, I DO NOT need that right now.

Rosy, smack me upside the head for NOT LEARNING.

And I was so optimistic about the day, too.

Needless to say, my access to email is going to be limited today. If you know my work Gmail address, use that instead, or leave me a shout here to contact you; I’ll be checking comments regularly.

Hanging In

Day two of unidentified stomach bug. I had to cancel my appearance at a lunch with friends, which disappointed me a lot because I’m going stir crazy being at home right now. I was so desperate for interpersonal communication that I sat on the steps and chatted with the mailman this morning. Thanks for the good wishes both here and via phone and email, everyone. Toast again this morning, and soup for lunch. I’m not dead yet, so I’m cautiously optimistic. Mind you, I was cautiously optimistic last night too, and woke up just as sick as I’d been the day before. We shall see. I’m done my work for the evening, so I can go to bed two and a half hours earlier than I’ve done the past two days.

The urgent project I accepted Tuesday at noon is back in the hands of the client after twenty-eight hours of insane editing, so I’m working on the more relaxed first project again. The urgent client has been told that I’m not going to be available again for a week if they need me, and I wrote a three-page memo outlining all the changes and suggested revisions/solutions to the problems involved so whoever picked it up next would have as much information as possible at their disposal, which took me two hours to do. There’s nothing like an insane urgent deadline to really refocus perspective on a regular project again, particularly when the pace had kind of slowed down on it. Of course, I have to put in some work over the weekend to make up for the two days eaten by the urgent project, but I seem to be moving through it at a very good clip, which is encouraging.

I’m glad it will be over next week, though; I miss the boy, and I know he misses us too, as much as he adores his caregiver. Today’s new word was ‘supernatural’, heard in a Rough Traders song. There is no telling what word he will hear and instantly take a liking to, to use as he pleases.

To my vague astonishment we will be seeing various people over the weekend, if only for a short time each, which will temporarily assuage my need to reconnect with the outside world. There may be Penguin bars and Fry’s chocolate tablets involved. There will certainly be corn, if I can swing it.