damn weather
Dec. 17th, 2000 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupMy one true day off. It inexplicably is like 60 degrees out. But it is raining and windy like crazy outside. I got Mrs. Sanpaku to come with me and see the huge quarry across the street from our house. There is a neat path through the woods and you get this great view of the quarry from a rock that must be about 200 feet above the ground. Unfortunately as soon as we left it started to pour and she fell down in the mud. That's how things have gone. Tomorrow it will be back to highs in the 30s or lower.
If I only had more days to have a life. Just walking in the woods made me feel much better about everything. But tomorrow it's back to 13 hour days.
What we are doing now is checking links. This entails clicking on every link in a book to make sure it works. Since the books have like 30 chapters and each chapter has perhaps 50 links you can imagine how exciting this is. It would be less hellish if the stuff had been given to us weeks ago as it was supposed to be, instead of the afternoon before the deadline. So we will be behind deadline and have to work 13 hour days again this week, which is getting horrible. My shoulder is killing me. I don't know if it is related to repetitive stress with the mouse, but I am worried about it.
What really bummed me out was that my boss, who is usually a reasonable guy, laid down the law that we needed to check all the audio links by listening to them. I understand listening to make sure that the text you're looking at matches the text you're listening to. But just to hear that the audio isn't cutting off seems stupid as these are all audio clips that we have used in the past. And we certainly could have done this in those weeks that we had nothing to do. So instead of just checking the functionality of the link, we have to sit there for 1-2 minutes per link, and maybe 50 links per chapter, and 6 chapters for this book-- well you get the picture. Mindless stupidity for something that I bet will be 100% fine if we didn't check it. That is what I have no life for.
It is only at such moments that I truly hate my job. I am definitely going back to content work if they let me. I did not get a Ph.D. to do work that a chimp could do and lose any semblance of a life in the process. It sounds arrogant, but I am reaching the end of my patience.
The up side is that once this particular project is done it looks like we will get a whole week off between Xmas and New Year's, so that works out to about at 10-day vacation. As Mrs. Sanpaku knows, I do not look forward inordinately to Xmas as we are Jewish and the day has no meaning for me. It is not that spending time with my inlaws is so bad-- my sisters-in-law are very nice-- but I wish I could do something else with a 10 day vacation. Hopefully we will go up to Maine with the days that are not spent on Long Island, but the weather may change that. Whatever; the point is that I'm getting paid to be on vacation without having to use up vacation days in the process, which is nice no matter how you slice it.
Today despite the bad weather I went to a used bookstore and got a new copy of "Chess in a Nutshell" by Fred Reinfeld. I have been trying to get this book for a long time. It's really well written and funny but also much more approachable for a beginner than most chess books, which are like "ok now that you know how to castle, let's move on to Alekhine's Defense." It's weird how much space there is in chess between absolute beginner stuff and stuff that is way too advanced. Anyway I am hoping to recover some ground. Yesterday I had some disastrous games, losing twice to this guy who was only rated 1100 but had the lightning queen openings down too well for me to counter, so I lost like 40 or 45 points in 2 games. Plus I had this woman totally finished-- I was up by 4 pieces-- and once again stumbled into a draw. I won a game last night to go back above 1200, barely, but it is discouraging. I have to keep reminding myself that I need to play constantly for about 2 years before I will get really good.
If I only had more days to have a life. Just walking in the woods made me feel much better about everything. But tomorrow it's back to 13 hour days.
What we are doing now is checking links. This entails clicking on every link in a book to make sure it works. Since the books have like 30 chapters and each chapter has perhaps 50 links you can imagine how exciting this is. It would be less hellish if the stuff had been given to us weeks ago as it was supposed to be, instead of the afternoon before the deadline. So we will be behind deadline and have to work 13 hour days again this week, which is getting horrible. My shoulder is killing me. I don't know if it is related to repetitive stress with the mouse, but I am worried about it.
What really bummed me out was that my boss, who is usually a reasonable guy, laid down the law that we needed to check all the audio links by listening to them. I understand listening to make sure that the text you're looking at matches the text you're listening to. But just to hear that the audio isn't cutting off seems stupid as these are all audio clips that we have used in the past. And we certainly could have done this in those weeks that we had nothing to do. So instead of just checking the functionality of the link, we have to sit there for 1-2 minutes per link, and maybe 50 links per chapter, and 6 chapters for this book-- well you get the picture. Mindless stupidity for something that I bet will be 100% fine if we didn't check it. That is what I have no life for.
It is only at such moments that I truly hate my job. I am definitely going back to content work if they let me. I did not get a Ph.D. to do work that a chimp could do and lose any semblance of a life in the process. It sounds arrogant, but I am reaching the end of my patience.
The up side is that once this particular project is done it looks like we will get a whole week off between Xmas and New Year's, so that works out to about at 10-day vacation. As Mrs. Sanpaku knows, I do not look forward inordinately to Xmas as we are Jewish and the day has no meaning for me. It is not that spending time with my inlaws is so bad-- my sisters-in-law are very nice-- but I wish I could do something else with a 10 day vacation. Hopefully we will go up to Maine with the days that are not spent on Long Island, but the weather may change that. Whatever; the point is that I'm getting paid to be on vacation without having to use up vacation days in the process, which is nice no matter how you slice it.
Today despite the bad weather I went to a used bookstore and got a new copy of "Chess in a Nutshell" by Fred Reinfeld. I have been trying to get this book for a long time. It's really well written and funny but also much more approachable for a beginner than most chess books, which are like "ok now that you know how to castle, let's move on to Alekhine's Defense." It's weird how much space there is in chess between absolute beginner stuff and stuff that is way too advanced. Anyway I am hoping to recover some ground. Yesterday I had some disastrous games, losing twice to this guy who was only rated 1100 but had the lightning queen openings down too well for me to counter, so I lost like 40 or 45 points in 2 games. Plus I had this woman totally finished-- I was up by 4 pieces-- and once again stumbled into a draw. I won a game last night to go back above 1200, barely, but it is discouraging. I have to keep reminding myself that I need to play constantly for about 2 years before I will get really good.
