January 14, 2005 Work, Work, Work PLEASE NOTE: If it hasn't happened yet, you'll most likely be redirected to my new domain address, http://www.leftfield.org/~xingcat/journal. If that doesn't happen automatically, please click on the link to get to the proper directory for my journal. Please change any bookmarks or links to this site ASAP, as spies.com is going to become defunct (or at least defunct for a lot of the users it had) as of Saturday, January 15 (which is, actually, right now). Sooner or later, you won't be able to get to me through spies.com, and I'd hate to lose any of you as readers. So re-link, and bookmark this page! It's late, and I'm tired. Work was very busy today; one of the first days I've had where there was no down-time at all, and I had to stay late to finish what was on the schedule. In a way, I didn't mind it too much (except for the staying late part...no overtime!), because it made the day go by very quickly. On the other hand, I was fairly stressed out by the time the day ended, and was very snippy with Laurie on our internal messaging system. She likes to have a nice quiet weekend, and when she saw that the database was chock-full of stuff (very little of it scheduled for Saturday), she messaged me, saying, "Did you tell Consultant X that we can't do this tonight?" and "Did you make sure to get Brad's slide that he sent?" By the end of the night, I messaged her to "GO HOME!", which she promptly did. I felt guilty, after I'd gotten everything done and was heading home, so I called her from my car and apologized for being snippy. That kind of thing rolls off her back, though, and we just ended up bitching about work. (Mostly bitching about our style of "...", which in Consulting Company standards is ". . ." Yeah, we live exciting lives!) So everything that happened to me today happened while either getting ready for work, at work, or coming home from work. Well, there was an hour where Laurie and I watched Joan of Arcadia, which was really good, as usual, but the rest of the day was just work, work, work. Laurie is dirt-poor this month because the teaching gig she's had for the past 4 years or so went away with a shift in department requirements. Her college is trying to find another job for her, but for the next semester, she's going to be a poor puppy. Yesterday, I brought her a cheesecake from Trader Joe's, because the night before I'd melted an entire quart of ice cream in the microwave. (I forgot to set it to "low".) Today, I brought us both a dinner of last night's leftover chicken (from Thirty Minute Meals... a chicken encrusted with pulverized honey roasted peanuts... yum!) and mac 'n' cheese. It was actually better than most of the crap we order in, and it saved us a couple of bucks. Speaking of food, I'd also bought an enormous box of clementines when I went shopping the other day, and I know I won't eat them all at home, so I brought some in to work, leaving them in a bag on the front counter where my desk is. I think Dan had about four of them. Every time I looked up, he was back at my desk, taking another clementine. Hey, if it makes the boss happy, I'm happy. I am definitely getting more responsible at work. I'm taking this on myself, not through any sort of pressure from Dan (though my review might be added incentive to do more, I didn't do that many projects in 2004). I just find myself interested in what I can do during the 8 or 12 hours I'm there. Right now, Dana and I are putting our heads together on an image database project. (Many thanks to Bruce for suggesting some mySQL scripts that are ready-made... it will save me lots of time in the long run!) Walter created a new map of our design offices for the intranet site (the one we have is very tiny, and stuck in a corner of the site... I wanted color!), and I got to call an employment agency to find out about hiring a full-time person for the night shift. Dan was very focused on a particular temp agency that specialized in creative professionals, which would seem to make sense, given that we are the "design" department at all. But what we really do isn't high-end design work, we do the day-to-day cleanup of PowerPoint documents for our consultants, as well as some Excel and Word. But mostly, it's PowerPoint, and what we desparately need is someone who has enough knowledge of the program to learn to use it in the way we do. Having someone with Illustrator skills would be a big plus, but we have people who are well-versed in Illustrator right now, and the most amount of work is cleaning up presentations. So I suggested we contact an agency I temped with way back in college, who pride themselves on having the most qualified candidates in the business. I called, and this agency already has an account with the company as a whole, in that they have a transcription department that handles some of our work. So we didn't have to go through the hassle of setting up an account. I gave all the details, focusing on the fact that the person we hire has to be bright, eager to learn, and wants or is willing to work nights for an extended period of time. We have very little turnover in the department right now, and getting a day shift is a matter of seniority, so it will be a long time before anyone we hire gets to work a day shift. Someone who is doing something else during the day, like taking care of their children or going to school could be an excellent candidate. At any rate, I felt very professional, getting the information we needed and sending it to Dan, then sending the information the agency needed back to them. I've hired temps in past jobs, but I've never felt like this was an entirely "professional" job, given the laid-back atmosphere on most days. These days, I feel like I'm getting something accomplished. I hope this trend continues, feeling good about work. I like going into the office and knowing that I have projects that are all mine that I will accomplish. I like the new-found camaraderie with my co-workers and the consultants and AAs. I like having two people from outside of work in the office with me. It's a real change from a year ago, and I like it.