Tag: day job

Tuesday. Almost the Weekend.

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Ah, lovely. After today, I have the rest of the week off, so essentially I have a five-day weekend, beginning . . . well, just as soon as I get out of here today, which will probably be around 3pm. Unless I can justify leaving a bit earlier, which might be the case.

That technical problem that I mentioned the other day? Fixed, as of yesterday. We were looking at all kinds of things for the cause, and the root of the problem turned out to be a single entry of incorrect data in a database table. I’d never have spotted it, had it not been for someone pointing out that one page on the web application’s display didn’t look right; that was the key.

So that particular fire is out, and that’s left things a little bit quiet around here this morning. I have a couple of small tasks on one project that will need doing, but I can’t touch them until the analyst gets in, which won’t happen for another half hour, probably. The other major project I was involved with has been reshuffled and now I’ll just be consultant for that. And I have another major project coming up, but there’s nothing doing on that until we have a kick-off meeting later today. So, right now, I have a bit of breathing space. Hence a few minutes to post something here, while listening to Vortex Rikers on the headphones.

Tomorrow, then, I’ll be able to get back to writing. Five whole days, during which I should be able to finish the copy edits on Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia. I’m a little way into Chapter 10 (same place I was the other day—I haven’t had time to work on it), so I’m on the home straight. Chapter 9 needs a polishing pass before I return it to my editor, and I also got Chapter 1 back from the line editor the other day; I haven’t looked at it yet, so I don’t know how much work it’ll need—but it won’t be as tough as the first round of copy editing. I hope. So the plan is, finish chapters 10, 11, and 12, polish them and send them off, then get into line edits. It should be a productive few days.

Calling Colorado Java Web Developers…

~ petefordwriter ~ Leave a comment

Completely unrelated to the usual business of this blog, but I was asked nicely . . .

We’re looking for Java web application developers, long term, full time. Experience required will be at least a couple of years with JavaEE, Spring 3 MVC/Struts/Struts 2, iBATIS/MyBatis, Tomcat, Eclipse. SOAP webservice experience a plus. If you have some but not all of that, it still wouldn’t hurt to try.

Location: Denver, CO area (Lakewood, actually).

Interested? Shove a note on my Contact form—put JAVA at the top, so I can spot responses easily—and I’ll forward it to the appropriate people.

Too Tired

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I was a little short on my hours last week, and it ended up with me having to pull a ten-hour Friday to get back on track. At the time, it wasn’t too bad—I’ve done similar things plenty of times. And at least it was just the Friday; I was looking forward to making a big push on editing Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia over the weekend, possibly getting all the way through to the last chapter.

So much for that idea.

It turned out that other guys on my team had been chasing a problem on one of the public-facing systems for a couple of days, and got nowhere. Friday night, 6pm, I got a phone call asking for help. And so for about ten hours yesterday (Saturday) and another four or more today, I’ve been digging into the code, trying to figure out what’s broken. The guy who wrote it left a couple of months ago, and he used some components that he’d downloaded from a third party (new and trendy: good; old, tried and trusted: bad)—and none of the rest of us are familiar with it, and we don’t fully understand how it works.

We want . . . information
We want . . . information

I’m a bit closer to understanding what’s wrong, but the root cause is still a mystery. I can’t do any more with it until I get into the office tomorrow, when I can get with the team and regroup.

And so I did, finally, manage to get on with a bit of editing. I finished Chapter 9 (yay!) and got about a quarter of the way into Chapter 10—and then I hit the wall. I suddenly realised that, four in the afternoon or not, I’m ready to hit the sack and sleep for about twelve hours. I’ve been staring at the same paragraph for the last half hour; editing it should be easy, but I’m just not seeing it. So I’ve saved what I have so far, backed it up and closed it out. Maybe tomorrow I can get back to it—if the other problem doesn’t zombify me during the day.

One good thing about the coming week is, of course, that July 4 is on us, and I’ve supplemented that day off by taking Wednesday and Friday as vacation. So I only have to work Monday and Tuesday, then I get a five-day weekend. And I’ll get these lost weekend hours back, too, so I can either quit early for a few days after that, or maybe just take another couple of days off, depending on the work schedule.

Enough blogging for now—normally I find it relaxing, but right now it’s taking the last little bit of energy I have. I need fluids, and I need to get into bed and watch some telly. Fringe season 5 in the DVD player, methinks.

Until next time, gentle reader . . .

Reporting In

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Late for work this morning—or, since I work flexible hours, I should say that I was later than usual by about two hours because of an errand I had to run first. The moment I walked in, I was dragged into a meeting to decide which, of the two projects with critical problems, I was to be spending my time on. So that was decided, and I got right into it. And I pounded at that most of the day, until a bad headache came along. At that point I decided to pack it in and start fresh tomorrow. So, late start, early finish. I’ll have to make the hours up, but that’s not a problem.

Thanks to the yard work over the weekend, I didn’t get much editing done—a couple of hours on Saturday morning was all I managed to fit in. So the plan for tonight is, grab dinner (something quick and easy from one of the nearby fast-food joints will do), watch a bit of telly while eating (I’m watching Fringe season 4 on DVD), then get busy with some editing for an hour or two.

Carrying On From Where I Left Off

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Regular readers of my old blog (Sid and Doris Bonkers of Penge) will know that I’ve discontinued that old blog, and I’m now firing things up here on WordPress. I’m not deleting the old blog (among other things, I sometimes refer back to it for various reasons).

Before I get into things properly, a quick tour. Be aware that this site is still in flux, a bit, and I’ll probably be rearranging things, and maybe adding another page or two later. For now, though, there are just the four pages to explore. This page, of course, is the main page and the blog. There’s an About page, with a bit about yours truly, and a Social page, where you can find links to my Twitter and Facebook profiles, etc. Last is the WiP page, where you can see current status on present and future writing projects. Explore away.

Without further ado, then, an update on what’s been going on in general:

Writing

Right now I’m working on edits for Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia. A bit less than half of the ‘script has passed through the copy-editing phase, and is now up for line editing. The rest is in my to-do queue. I finished one chapter the other day, but I haven’t sent it to my copy editor yet—there’s one little part that’s bugging me, by refusing to look quite right no matter what I do. I’ve moved on to the next chapter, and I’ll get back to that one shortly with a fresh eye. The trouble right now is that I’m so loaded up at the day job, that I’m not getting much writing time, and when I do I’m too tired to think straight. Things on that front might have to wait until the weekend.

The Day Job

I’m working on three, count ’em, three projects, under two different technical managers. And two of those projects—each having a different manager—have “critical” work that needs to be done. So I’ve had to put the tech managers together, and let them sort out which work has the higher priority. In the meantime, I don’t even get to stop for lunch breaks.

Home Stuff

Front and back yards have exploded with weeds, thanks to the summer arriving. I’ve cleaned up the front, but the back is a disaster area. And we’ve had a heatwave this week, which has meant that it’s been too hot to work outside even in the evenings. The forecast says things should cool down a bit soon, so maybe I can go a-weeding tomorrow evening. Regardless, though, I’m probably going to be out there Saturday and maybe Sunday clearing up the mess. Hopefully I’ll get some time to get a good chunk of writing/editing done. We’ll see.

That’ll do for now. It’s Thursday, 6pm and high time I organised some dinner, and then it’s time to relax with a bit of telly.

Until next time…