Eek.

No wonder I'm losing my mind. Monday, the longest consecutive period of time I worked on a task all day (despite working for over 12 hours total) was only 3 hours and 15 minutes. More frequently, I would work for 15 minutes (as little as 10 in some cases) and then get pulled from the half-finished task to another, and so on. Each time a task was completed, I would revert to one of the earlier tasks, but again, would usually be cut off. So my day becomes staccato. I switched tasks 17 times that day, and worked on 7 different billing codes (ranging from administrative work to code and/or debugging for three different sites plus the baseline, to estimation work for sales)....

Tuesday was more of the same, only a little worse. Longest consecutive stretch Tuesday in the office: well, there were two periods (one for testing/doc/updates for a client site, one for a customization for a different site) of one hour each. (Again, during office hours - I got in a solid 1:20 at home before I gave up for a while.) 23 task changes. 8 different billing-codes. Only ten hours.

Yesterday was comparatively peaceful, really. A mere 5 task changes, and an uninterrupted block of almost 5 hours working one task, in the office, in the afternoon. Maybe that's why I was so much more effective on the work I did last night, despite being a bit tired - because my day wasn't so bloody staccato!

Wish me luck with the rest of the week. So far today has been flittery, but more like yesterday than Monday/Tuesday.

(no subject)

( Contacts. Glasses. I dunno, big deal. )

*beams*

Trainer reported ugly bug. Five minutes to fix, all clear for tomorrow as the training continues. Client site reported annoying bug. Five minute fix, compiling now.

Bad there are bugs. Good they're going bye-bye. One more left to test, wish me luck!

*waves hand, flapping-fingers-style, at the bugs*

Wheeee!

Project manager was talking to coworker about programming time on another system. I walked up just in time to hear the CLASSIC Programmer vs. Non-Programmer/User discussion.

(Hint: programmer, in this context, is not a compliment. A good programmer, a software engineer if you will, should avoid being on the programmer side of this conversation!)

P: "This is what the computer does."
U: "This is what I need it to do. Can you do that?"
P: "But this is what the computer does."

Ironically, the computer is probably going to go on doing what it was. It would cost us a lot to change it for this one site, and there's a workaround that will work about as well.

The project manager, however, wanted more advantages to the client than just "that's how we do it". Strange how that is. And it took us five minutes of discussing the general nature of the beast, when I stated the obvious, and then we both realized what we were missing. Project manager had just said that we wanted to convince them to change to the simpler ("this is what it does") scheme. I said, "Yeah, (the other) will be a lot of customization if you do it."

Duhhh. We charge more, not only for customizations (this site's already priced, so...), but for upgrades to customizations. Huge advantage to the client: stay baseline, not pay through nose each time upgrade desired in that system.

I love random conversations. And that one made me feel vaguely helpful. Tonight's going pretty well - once people started clearing out for the day, I started getting things done quicker. *nods*

(no subject)

It was a long day (I left work about 7:30 in the end), but a productive one.

Of course, working that long means I got home, had dinner and did basic chores and a bit of reading here, and that's pretty much it.

And now I'm going to make it worse by taking a shower and going to bed. It will make tomorrow much better, however.... *grins* Maybe I can survive this week, you think?