So I've now had three weeks at work --- ten days, because of all the holidays --- and I finally, just today, got the last piece I need set up to do important stuff. That stuff? Recording my timesheets. So far I've had only one project that I'm authorized to be on, though I'ms upposed to get a second, and it was a curiously long path to getting that authorized. I know everything will be slow near the end of the year but this seemed to be a case where everybody thought they had sent e-mails stating what they wanted done and everybody else thought they got this for advisory reasons. A coworker tried later to show me how to use the system, although it turns out the interface is straightforward enough that I didn't need guidance. The bit about leaving notes regarding what I was doing was what I really needed advice on, and I couldn't get him to understand that I was asking about that instead; just, ``be detailed about what you're doing'' isn't the kind of guidance I needed. Though I appreciated the tip to write down what meetings I had gone to; I wouldn't have thought of that.
Besides that? Thursday and Friday I took to what seemed like a bold decision: just outright throwing out the Former Guy's code and replacing it. I don't do this lightly --- among other things I'm not sure they figured I would spend this much time on this one bug. But it was such a tangle of spaghetti code that I was having too hard a time confirming to my satisfaction that I had fixed the bug and not introduced new ones, not helped by my having discovered a couple new ones along the way. I am much more confident in the replacement, which is much shorter and much more linear and which, while it has a lot of if statements, are also all clearly purposeful if statements: each one is just checking that a quantity is defined before that's used to populate a form. It's not quite ideal --- I'm stuck using property numbers instead of text describing the quantities --- but, eh, at least the meaning of those numbers is clear enough and doesn't jump around, the way the older system (depending on the placement of returned data) did.
And how is getting up at 7 am treating me? Well, I'm surviving, although I definitely do better the days I'm at home and can basically get up and walk around every ten minutes. It seems like I do better the nights I can get at least six full hours' sleep, and I'ms ure I'd do better on seven but that's going to bed awfully early. Of course, I still haven't had a full five-day week yet. And, alas, there's no chance of cheating an hour or two here or there; the boss is clearly doubtful of work-from-home and expects a response within five minutes to any message he sends. Also two days of the week I have scheduled 9 am meetings anyway. Mm. The pay is much better but it's impossible to beat my old schedule.
Speaking of which: I got pay! Just one week's worth, and a short week at that, but it's the first money coming in since unemployment ran out and the first substantial money since that whole mess of my car insurance payout got done. Really looking forward to two weeks from now.
Week after Thanksgiving it was time finally to get our Christmas trees, so let's take a quick look at that.
Our downstairs tree! ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger gets down to cut an adorable one down.
And here it is on the cart, ready to be taken and bundled up and brought home.
And then our upstairs tree, a little bit smaller. bunnyhugger tries her luck cutting this one too.
We are always very good about cutting close to the ground. See how much trunk we have not left behind?
And here's the upstairs tree, by our bedroom bookshelf, still bundled up and ready to be opened up.
While I was getting pictures of the upstairs tree, bunnyhugger unwrapped the downstairs tree and unfurled it to its home for the month.
Trivia: When he announced the discovery of the elements Americium and Curium on an episode of children's radio show Quiz Kids, Glenn Seaborg encouraged the audience to tell their teachers to throw out their old periodic tables. In his autobiography Seaborg said that ``judging from the mail I later received from schoolchildren, their teachers were rather skeptical''. Source: The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements, Sam Kean.
Currently Reading: The Rise And Fall of the DC-10, John Godson. So of all the long digressions of marginal utility the editors let Godson go on --- there's, like, three pages of Watergate hearing transcripts to lay bare how mid-70s FAA administrator Alexander Butterfield was the one who confirmed that Nixon taped Oval Office conversations --- the one they cut is where he quotes the United Airlines and American Airlines advertising jingles of the time, on the grounds that the words and music are copyrighted and can't be used without permission? Even if we grant that, given that Godson was making a long and blog-like point sneering at the claims versus the actual care the airlines were taking with safety, they would unquestionably be Fair Use.
