2008 cars are up

The car ranking and review website I work for, US News, has been working hard to get reviews and rankings of the 2008 models up.

I'm glad to say we're most of the way there. It's been a crazy time at work and everyone deserves a solid congratulations. The remaining car reviews are either in process or the cars aren't out.

We've launched

There's still a metric tonne of work to do, but the site's open to the public. The url is http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/.

Okay, back to work for me.

More on work hours?

Even I'm finding my constant posts about work and the hours to be tedious. I promise that this will be the last one barring major interesting events.

I was at work from 9:30 AM on Thursday to 8:30 PM or so on Friday. By my calculations that 35 hours. Evan, who was there with me the entire time, and I were synching up our two technologies that produce the numbers that run our business. He has it in Excel, and I built it in SAS, so we needed to make sure the numbers come out the same (good news, they do).

Anyway, this was the last push to find errors and discrepancies and it took a good deal longer than we hoped. Still, it was the kind of work that doesn't require a great deal of hard thinking but also isn't so dull it puts you to sleep. In other words, it was the best kind of work to do overnight.

It's been a good long while since I pulled an all-nighter, and I'm sort of surprised I was able to pull it off. Good news if I'm ever a father and need to stay up nights. I did lose about an hour during a fugue state after I went home for lunch on Friday and wasn't able to get any rest because an investor called. I put my head down for about 20 minutes and then got a call from Evan reminding me about a meeting. I rushed to the meeting and kind of woke up there. I don't have clear recollections of what I did during that hour, but afterwards I was pretty well awake for the rest of the day.

Now we just have to make sure this doesn't translate to bragging rights at work. I really don't want to work somewhere that rewards you for staying up all night and day. I'd prefer to work at a place where work is done well and smart and people are expected to have interesting extramural lives. We're getting there.

Back from Portland, Angry at work hours

Hey, the funtimes in Portland shambled drunkenly to a close, and now I'm back in dear old Reston working a hell of a lot.

Portland was awesome. I'm not sure why I came back.

I was in a lovely relaxed mood when I left Portland on the redeye. By the time I'd landed, driven 4 hours to Reston, had an equivalent of 12 cups of coffee, and stayed up till wicked late AM coding more goddamn SAS, I'd managed to leave both the jet lag and the sensation of calm all behind me.

Now I breathe in a continuous high-pitched whistle and my heart's BPM approaches rave music. When I get a chance, I'll upload some cool pics and videos I took while I was in Oregon and perhaps recall the sense of calm I enjoyed while snapping them. Until then, you should try to find that video of a concerned snowman asking candidates Democratic about the goddamn environment. P.S. large parts of England and the US are flooded, so thanks for being so on the ball about Kyoto George!

later y'all. Big shout out to Matt, who I chatted with yesterday about how much grad school drags at the end. Can I get a hell yeah from other grad school survivors?

God Bless America!

As you already know, I'm British by birth. I spent a few years in the English school system, so I've been made aware of an alternative history to that doled out in American K-12 classrooms. I don't know that it's any closer to the truth, but it provides a counterpoint to the notion that maybe the US of A was set, jewel-like into the golden filigree of the Western Hemisphere by the sweat of brave explorers, doughty freedom fighters, Jesus, Washington, Lincoln, and Santa Clause.

I heard something more like, a bunch of godawful puritans got tossed out of England for being such a fucking bore all the time, landed on Plymouth rock, died, tried again later, finally got it right, swapped the natives smallpox for land, set up a nation that despite being free for all men, kept slavery around for a hundred years or so longer than any other country, and then defended it against the English using wits, cunning, and bravery, or at least such as could be purchased from mercenaries or tricked out of the Indians, who outnumbered Americans something like 4-to-1 in the US army of the time.

Here I am thinking fondly of the founding fathers, and hoping one will come along and unchain me from my desk.

Either way, I think the constitution is pretty damn cool and I like fireworks.

What I really love about the 4th of July though, is that it represents the first day off I'm getting in a long stinking time. God bless paid holiday!

Busy

Given that blogging is the lazy man's approach to keeping in touch with friends, and given that I haven't had a chance to even blog recently, I feel I should explain myself a touch.

I'm still at work now. It's about 24 o'clock, and I'm staring down the barrel of another couple hours of coding.

I'm actually only on google this minute because I was feeling lonely and hoped my inbox would be hiding some contact from the outside world.

Anyway, love to you all. I promise to write more - emails even - in a week or so.

Ah the weekend

The weekend, which Loverboy assures me we're all working for, is my time. It's my time to run errands that got away from me during the week, my time to get a haircut (not a very good one it turns out), my time to fruitlessly track down thrift shops where I can give away old clothes, and my time to well, spend a few hours at work.

I started the weekend with an outing to the bank. Closed on Saturdays thank you very much, but since I only wanted to deposite the last paychecks from CR, I coped with just an ATM.

Here I am looking dead concerned about the environment

Then, it was off to the recycling center. In my new building there's only recycling for cardboard, and you have to cart it to the dumpster (tip for the UK audience) by the exit of the underground parking garage. However, since Al Gore has spoken to me via powerpoint, I want to recycle everything. I found a very nice little place nearby where I can recycle all the usual recyclables, and went there.

I even ran into some other people equally worried about our fair mother earth, and one lady who might have been totally mental, but I didn't hang around long enough to ask.

....Because I was setting off for Herndon. Herndon is quite nearby Reston, and it's been described to me as where the people who clean and chauffeur and valet-park for Restoners live. Sort of the Morlocks to our Eloi (because, *spoiler alert*, we Restonites are delicious!). I went there in the hopes of dropping off some clothes at the Salvation Army.

A very apologetic man there told me that the enormous SA thrift shop just couldn't take a bunch of clothes from me and I'd have to go to a very-out-of-the-way Salvation Army outpost (bunker?) if I wanted to get my hands on any Christian Charity. However, he did helpfully pass on some totally incorrect directions to another thrift shop where I could give away clothes.

Utter bunk! I later found it on the Internet and I'll go there when I get a chance.

Finally, I dashed in to work where I spent four hours not getting any work done. Ironic since Evan and I had planned to go in on Saturday precisely because we'd finally be able to focus just on what we needed to do.

I mucked about with SAS and then went for a haircut. A very mediocre haircut. Then, looking mildly coifed, I went and bought no-wrinkle, iron-free shirts. I'm skeptical, but I'll let you know.

14 hour day

I had a lot to do today. Most of it got done.

Some will have to be tackled tomorrow.

What a crappy day.

Seriously man, I'm working a lot

I'm not complaining, but I've already put in 12 and a half hours this week, 16 and a half if you count Sunday as the start of the week.

I'm not asking for pity or awe, so you know, don't gimme none. I'd like to make some observations though:

• When you spend a long time at work you start remembering the morning like it was yesterday. I had to think twice before walking home today because normally I bike but today I walked (thanks to that stinking fire alarm). However, I couldn't remember whether the fire alarm took place yesterday or today.
• You stop knowing what day it is. I'm familiar with this event from the other side. During the summer vacations I'd sometimes lose track of what day it was because, well, who cared.
  
• Work sucks most when you spend the first 8 hours of your day trying to clear your docket so you can get some work done in the latter 4.
• Work can be a gang of fun if you have 12 hours to dedicate to really working hard on an interesting project.
• It's important to make lists. I had the nagging feeling that I was running around in circles accomplishing nothing until I looked at yesterday's List Of Crap To Do and was able to cross off about 6 important tasks.

Have a good night all.