In which tomorrow is Monday

[rolanni]

Is it just me, or does this happen far too frequently?

So, today. I wrote a lot, though not as much as I had hoped -- about 3600 words on the weekend. I'd really wanted to crack 20,000 words, but! Didn't happen. I could press on, I guess, but I really don't think I have another four thousand-odd words in me tonight.

Despite the blow to my vanity, I think the story is moving along well, and I'm still enjoying myself, which is a Good Thing. I'm afraid the folks at the day-job are reaping some of the, um, Writer High, which may not be a Good Thing, but counts as Balance. All fall (Insert Rant: Excuse me -- five searches/one secretary? Hundreds and hundreds of applications to be input/one secretary? Whole weeks where I couldn't work when I got home because my brain was fried and my fingers wouldn't move? And when I ask for help from my supposed boss in admin the answer that comes down is "suck it up"? Sorry, guys, you already used up all of this year's rope, and maybe some of next year's, too -- and it's not even March.) the day-job Ate My Brain. Me, I'd much rather have a story eating my brain, and I'm not going to try to divert it while it's chugging along so nicely, just so I can impersonate a Good Girl.

Well, that was a nice rant, wasn't it? Ahem.

In other news, Steve is for catching the 6:45 Downeaster out of Boston North Station, getting into Portland at approximately 9:10, arriving at the Cat Farm somewhere in the vicinity of 11 p.m. The cats will be happy to see him; I'll be happy to see him, oh, yes. And tomorrow, I'll be short on sleep. At least my lunch is already packed.

Hope everybody had a satisfying and productive weekend.

Progress on Mouse and Dragon:

15,676 / 100,000 (15.7%)

And now -- to the dishes!

Comments

applications to be input?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Oh, oh. Is there an IT bunch running around campus? Can you get some sympathetic person to consider the possibility of web-forms? I mean, we're all learning the wonders of having the originator of the data (the applicants, in this case) input and correct their own data. This distributed model works very nicely, and reduces the need for some poor suck... er, make that secretary to input the whole thing.

Heck, even scanning, OCR, and then correcting is now possible.

We have the technology, really. Obviously we still need to learn to use it, but...

Re: applications to be input?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Alas, I'm told that IT has far more important things to do than make web forms for secretaries. This information brought to me via admin, when I made a suggestion regarding Something Else.

Also, I'm sorry to say, whenever the college is feeling a leetle pinch in the belly, the first move is to cut IT's budget, so they're running a thought too lean 'n mean at present and probably do have more pressing things to deal with.

Re: applications to be input?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Sigh. Okay, let me see. Would free software used at MIT for collecting form input be helpful? http://web.mit.edu/wwwdev/cgiemail/ or google cgiemail -- it's pretty easy to install on any webserver, and provides an easy way for endusers to make their own forms, if they can deal with a little html. The information is then sent via email which can then be copy-and-pasted into whatever is desired.

And that's like 10 year old technology, at least.

It's stories like this that make me really wonder about the ubiquitous computing and so forth that the software engineering community likes to pat ourselves on the back over.

[shana.livejournal.com]

Don't they give you President's Day off?

If not, bummer.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

If I'd had President's Day off, I'd've been able to make Boskone. The college has a very strange -- and short -- list of staff-observed holidays.

I console myself by recalling that, for the nine weeks of summer, I only work two days out of every seven. Of course, I only get paid for two days a week, but the health insurance rolls on.