Mantra: TheScheduleIsMyFriend
Aug. 1st, 2003 04:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cassy_gOk, so I am stopping for tonight. At least, I am stopping working on D*C.
The Xanax I took yesterday knocked me for a not so fun loop. I spent most of the day feeling like my head was in a fog. And I was right, it was about 12 hours before it wore off. I finally felt normal again around 7pm.
I have been working on the piles of pages of changes I got in the last couple of days. I made David help me for a little while. I just printed out all the emails, excel files, and word documents so he could read the changes for me. Toggling between Outlook and Access and Excel and Word can be a serious pain sometimes.
He was like, you do this EVERY day? And I said, well, yes, but this is a good day. Which it was, I only had about 60 pages of changes to do since Wednesday night. I haven't finished them all. I will have to do some tomorrow, but this was a good day, if for no other reason than he was helping me.
The biggest problem is, even though I say "Just send me the change, not everything", I am apparently have stopped speaking English. No one sends the stuff the same way as anyone else, even though there are guidelines that they get sent at least every week it seems like.
I should mention it is a relational database, which is a royal pain. Supposedly, being a relational database makes my life easier. I haven't figured out exactly how yet. I fail to see how having a track panel code, panel title, description, time, av needs, and panelist in one table, and the track panel code, date, time, and room in another completely different table saves me time. This means if someone says "Change Panel Titel to 7:00pm instead of 5:30pm", I have to go to one table to figure out which panel code that equals on the other table so I can change the actual day and time.
So far, there are over 700 panels in the database. I am still missing a few full schedules, and even though I have the revised Tribe schedule, I haven't gotten down to it in the stack yet.
It's my policy, that if I have a change I have to make for guest reasons, that I send that information out to the track director when I make that change. That way, I hopefully don't forget or miss anyone. I got a particularly special email tonight saying, "If you are going to just arbitrarily change my panel times, then I would think you would have the courtesy of telling me instead of making me sort through a rich text format file to find out."
Ok, first, I don't arbitrarily change anything. Call me crazy, but that makes more work for me, so why in all the levels of hell would I want to do that?
Second of all, I sent out a rich text file to all of the track directors and asked them to check it because I get so many emails, I wanted to be sure, one, that I hadn't missed any, and two, that I had made the corrections correctly.
Third, I am suppose to be perfect apparently. I sent this track director an email apologizing for the oversight, and I get back an email that just said, "Thanks for telling me."
Needless to say, it made me not want to do anything to help him at all. I will probably still try to sort out a way to "fix" the problem, and see if the two panels can be somehow switched around. But, I really don't want to do it.
Treat me like a person and you will find I will bend over backwards to try to accommodate your wants, I will even look for special things to do for you. But, get assinine with me and I will do what I have to in order to fulfill my job. I don't reward childish behaviour with favors.
Next year is going to be different. I have already started to design the new layout for the database, and the way the track directors submit their schedules and their changes. I can't wait to see some of the "well this isn't how we use to do it" responses.
But, for now, I have to live with what I have and make the best of it.
I know I say this a lot lately, but thank you![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eugie and Matthew! After this weekend, I am going enlist you both to help me start doing the editing for the Pocket Program. I can't tell you what a major help that's going to be to me! I will definately owe you dinner or something!
But for now, I am putting the database away and going to see if I can find a good movie or something on tele. :)
The Xanax I took yesterday knocked me for a not so fun loop. I spent most of the day feeling like my head was in a fog. And I was right, it was about 12 hours before it wore off. I finally felt normal again around 7pm.
I have been working on the piles of pages of changes I got in the last couple of days. I made David help me for a little while. I just printed out all the emails, excel files, and word documents so he could read the changes for me. Toggling between Outlook and Access and Excel and Word can be a serious pain sometimes.
He was like, you do this EVERY day? And I said, well, yes, but this is a good day. Which it was, I only had about 60 pages of changes to do since Wednesday night. I haven't finished them all. I will have to do some tomorrow, but this was a good day, if for no other reason than he was helping me.
The biggest problem is, even though I say "Just send me the change, not everything", I am apparently have stopped speaking English. No one sends the stuff the same way as anyone else, even though there are guidelines that they get sent at least every week it seems like.
I should mention it is a relational database, which is a royal pain. Supposedly, being a relational database makes my life easier. I haven't figured out exactly how yet. I fail to see how having a track panel code, panel title, description, time, av needs, and panelist in one table, and the track panel code, date, time, and room in another completely different table saves me time. This means if someone says "Change Panel Titel to 7:00pm instead of 5:30pm", I have to go to one table to figure out which panel code that equals on the other table so I can change the actual day and time.
So far, there are over 700 panels in the database. I am still missing a few full schedules, and even though I have the revised Tribe schedule, I haven't gotten down to it in the stack yet.
It's my policy, that if I have a change I have to make for guest reasons, that I send that information out to the track director when I make that change. That way, I hopefully don't forget or miss anyone. I got a particularly special email tonight saying, "If you are going to just arbitrarily change my panel times, then I would think you would have the courtesy of telling me instead of making me sort through a rich text format file to find out."
Ok, first, I don't arbitrarily change anything. Call me crazy, but that makes more work for me, so why in all the levels of hell would I want to do that?
Second of all, I sent out a rich text file to all of the track directors and asked them to check it because I get so many emails, I wanted to be sure, one, that I hadn't missed any, and two, that I had made the corrections correctly.
Third, I am suppose to be perfect apparently. I sent this track director an email apologizing for the oversight, and I get back an email that just said, "Thanks for telling me."
Needless to say, it made me not want to do anything to help him at all. I will probably still try to sort out a way to "fix" the problem, and see if the two panels can be somehow switched around. But, I really don't want to do it.
Treat me like a person and you will find I will bend over backwards to try to accommodate your wants, I will even look for special things to do for you. But, get assinine with me and I will do what I have to in order to fulfill my job. I don't reward childish behaviour with favors.
Next year is going to be different. I have already started to design the new layout for the database, and the way the track directors submit their schedules and their changes. I can't wait to see some of the "well this isn't how we use to do it" responses.
But, for now, I have to live with what I have and make the best of it.
I know I say this a lot lately, but thank you
eugie and Matthew! After this weekend, I am going enlist you both to help me start doing the editing for the Pocket Program. I can't tell you what a major help that's going to be to me! I will definately owe you dinner or something!But for now, I am putting the database away and going to see if I can find a good movie or something on tele. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-08-01 06:15 pm (UTC)That sounds awfully confusing and like a lot more work than it should have to be...
I admire the amount of work you're putting in to this, it sounds an bit like what Aislinn does.
Good Luck!
no subject
Date: 2003-08-01 07:00 pm (UTC)He just sent me yet another rude email. I am thinking that he simply lacks the part of his brain that allows most people to be polite. Knowing that he is obviously brain damaged, makes it a little easier to deal with him.
Don't admire me yet, heh. You can admire me if we get through the con without a major catastrophe.
Thanks again!