# How was YOUR work week? Or, thank God its Friday!



## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

Well, I had a relatively tough week. I didn't take any vacation during the end of the year so I'm a little burnt out. Really haven't felt like working.

Then my sister-in-law broke up with her boyfriend and he began to stalk her. So much so we had to get a restraining order put in place. She's been sleeping in a different person's house every day. It needs to continue until we go before a judge next week. Gees!

Other than that, everyone's healthy so I can't complain.  

How did you fare?


----------



## pineapple (May 4, 2004)

Chinese New Year begins on February 8th (New Moon day in the USA, it is the 9th in China), the year of the Rooster (last year being the year of the Monkey) so tradition is that we clean up the mess of the old year ready to face the new one and wish success to our friends and hope for some of the same. Half of the family is Chinese so we are happy to follow the tradition.

I look around at the piles of things to do and wonder whether there is time enough before I leave to see my mother in England next week.

My daughter has a science fair project to get ready and she wants to develop something useful for people in the Tsunami Zone which can benefit the survivors and be made from readily accessible materials... that has me scratching my head well into the night.

Andrew Cribb


----------



## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

I really like these "end of the week/TGIF" threads. It's a great way to wind down from the work week, and just chatter with everyone about what's been going on in your life.

The week was pretty uneventful here. It's aways a drag to go back to work for the full 5 days after all of the holiday time off. And the next paid holiday isn't until Memorial day...  

It's been cool here with the low night before last -36° F, and the highs haven't been above 0 for several days. We're supposed to get a warmup this weekend and have highs around 20° - short sleeve weather....


----------



## Gomer (Feb 2, 2004)

Week was as good as it could have been all things considered.


----------



## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

What were you waiting for?


----------



## Gomer (Feb 2, 2004)

removed


----------



## Piscesgirl (Feb 25, 2004)

This last half of my week has been horrible, just horrible. Thank goodness it has nothing to do with my health or anything like that, just a work situation that had me standing up for something that I just can't believe I had to stand up for in the first place. Then, being reprimanded for saying what I said -- not the intent -- but the wording (which I don't think was harsh to begin with, and I included the fact that I was not trying to put anyone down). UGHH. My blood pressure is still up and I bet my neck is red


----------



## Sir_BlackhOle (Jan 25, 2004)

Busy busy busy work-wise. There never seems to be enough hours in the day for everything I want/need to do!


----------



## Phil Edwards (Jan 22, 2004)

If I were any better I'd be twins! $600.00 worth of new Eheims and Corallife fixtures will do that to a guy.  Yup, you guess it! I'm finally going to have an active and growing planted tank in my house again after more than a year. I'm starting to get really excited after looking through all my AquaJournals and contest books/CDs. They're even going to be *gasp* STEMPLANT tanks! OMG! Run, Hell has frozen over! 

oh yeah, my wife is having her 2nd interview with the Richard Petty Driving Experience on Thursday. Please pray that she gets it. not only will she be working for a REALLY REALLY cool company, but she'll be 10 minutes from where I go to school. 

Best,
Phil


----------



## Piscesgirl (Feb 25, 2004)

> STEMPLANT tanks!


Oh my goodness! So it won't be Crypt Master Phil anymore? Should we begin calling you Stem Master Phil? hehe. Somehow that doesn't sound as good!


----------



## Phil Edwards (Jan 22, 2004)

Hehehe, no way! I'll *always* have crypt tanks. In fact, I'm planning a Thailand biotope right now that will use Crypts extensively.


----------



## Piscesgirl (Feb 25, 2004)

What will the fish be? There's a good chance I may be able to give you a stem of Pogostemon Helferi (Downoi) which is per my understanding a Thai plant  If the weather doesn't eat all my vacation days, and the Downoi stays healthy (I always have my fingers crossed!), I'll bring one to the RAS workshop if you want one. It's the least I can do since I'm so selfish with my shrimp


----------



## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

I spent the week in El Salvador, Central America. I couldn't wait for the weekend to come so that I could get back to my family!

Trying to manage the site transfer from Central America was also a challenge. However, I would highly recommend El Salvador to anyone. Beautiful country with tremendous beaches. With the cold weather we're having, I'm sure many of you wouldn't mind a little vacation to the tropics???


----------



## Phil Edwards (Jan 22, 2004)

Sharon go the job! Woo Hoo! We're likely going to be moving a lot closer to the university/speedway sometime during the summer. There will be numerous and copious photos of the creation of new fish/plant rooms and displays to tickle your funny bone.


----------



## Piscesgirl (Feb 25, 2004)

Congrats Phil -- that's great news!


----------



## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

This was a long one for me. I was in Venezuela, El Salvador and New York. I'm exhausted!

I'm glad it's the weekend. Have to wake up early tomorrow to paint my son's room.:smile: It never ends...


----------



## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

Department Chair problems----box of supplies for molecular biology kits gets mislaid. Is somewhere on campus, I think. Several calls with vendor and with United Parcel. Shipped to suite E instead of suite D. We don't have any suite addresses on campus! Received by HORN. We don't have anybody with that name! A computer for a faculty member has also been shpped and mislaid. Can't be found. Fisher Scientific calls me about a seriously overdue invoice for $50.00. That is for 2 boxes of LaMotte nitrate #1 and 2 boxes of nitrate #2 pills ordered last semester. (We use Lamotte kits in a lab exercise that extracts nutrients from soil) I got 2 boxes that were neither #1 nor #2. Don't know if the purchasing agent messed up in retyping my purchase requisition because I never got a copy of the purchase order. Fisher then sent me 6 boxes of #1., but no #2. They said, no, don't send the boxes back; it is too expensive to mail them back. Consider them a gift. So, why are they billing us $50.00? They say they are giving us credit, but we still have to pay for what we got. ???????? I refer them to our purchasing agent and wish them good luck. Recommend they get a good night's sleep and take a big vitamin pill in the morning. Our purchasing agent messes up on more than half of my purchase requisitions. If Fisher gets past the purchasing agent, they get to Accounts Payble, who, as a general rule does not pay until venders refuse to ship or the people who supply our deionizing tanks for our deionizer arrive to remove their equipment. I had to pay them a personal check to get them to leave the tanks here last time they showed up. (I did get paid back.)

Dark rumors circulating that all accounts will be frozen soon and employer contributions to retirement funds and insurers have stopped. This happens every year. In the past, accounts have been frozen right at the beginning of the academic year. Here's your budget. Bam! It's frozen. We are either doing much better than usual or we are much more broke than usual. 

I am teaching full time, also. Have a student who tells me that she is doing very well in all her courses except in mine-------! Her parents come. Highly concerned about "their baby". I check her math grades with her math teacher. Oh Oh! not so good! Have meeting with her, her parents, and the Division Dean. She looks us in the eyes and says she has 2 B's in math, so far. I know differently, but keep my mouth shut. We have a different generation of parents, now. The older generation put the blame for not doing well on their children. The newer ones try to lay it on the teacher. In this case, though, I think the parents are of the older generation, but they trust their daughter to be telling the truth. Sad. 

Am working on senior theses with three seniors. One comes and says, can I email you my draft on Friday, and can you meet with me Sunday so that we can go over it. A paper with my signature that we have done this is due, according to her, on Monday. Actually, the senior is misinformed; the signature is not due until Feb 21. 

Students suddenly can not access the computers. The passwords have mysteriously changed. I go to the Information Technology people. Only their secretary is there, feeling overworked and neglected. We commiserate. The rest of the IT people are all out somewhere changing our email system so that we have to do our email on the web. I have very bad vibes that this is not going to work out. The problems I forsee are worse than the ones we have now with our email server that somehow duplicates emails so that we get as many as 50 duplicates of some emails. It also lets through all the spammers in the world, many of whom are now masquarading as banks that want me to visit a web site to "update" my account. Other than that, I have no problems with our email server. It even works most of the time. I think that the reason IT wants us to do email on the web is that our server is so infected with viruses and worms that some branches of the U.S. government and many local internet providers won't accept emails from us. 

Gotta work on course assignments next fall, Departmental evaluations, Personel Committee recommendations, recommendations for Sonis Web, the barely functioning academic records software, my portfolio, my Personal Development Plan, and grade quizzes and make an exam, 2 versions, because the 9AM section has established good communications with the 11AM section. The communications are so good that the 11AM students put in the answers to the 9AM quiz, even if the questions are totally different in the 11AM quiz. 

Oh yes! Listening to the State of the Union speech did not help my mood!

I have concluded------Carl Hiassen and Tim Dorsey are NOT EXAGGERATING in their novels.


----------



## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

Gees, Paul! You've had one heck of a week! Take Sunday off man!



HeyPK said:


> make an exam, 2 versions, because the 9AM section has established good communications with the 11AM section. The communications are so good that the 11AM students put in the answers to the 9AM quiz, even if the questions are totally different in the 11AM quiz.


That is classic! :razz:

Paul, it will get better. Hang in there. Hopefully coming to APC takes your mind off of things.


----------



## Phil Edwards (Jan 22, 2004)

Wow Paul, that's quite a week you had there. I hope this next week/month/semester gets better for you.

Best,
Phil


----------



## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

Good Week for me....

Many of you know I do tech support for an Apple contractor, specifically mind numbing iPod support, well no more. I am moving internally to be the Knowledge Engineer for a new client. Back to what I do best, technical writing. I will be responsible for the creation of all support documentation for a large software pkg used for Education data management for k-12 systems throughout the US.


----------



## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

Congratulations, Gnatster!

Department Chair biz:
The box of molecular biology supplies is still mislaid, along with the two computers and a purchase requisition for another. Already three hours of meetings scheduled for Monday! I cranked out 35 letters regarding the personnel committee's recommendations for tenure and promotion. This is where I really need Mail Merge, but my old printer from the late 1980's got real cranky with addressing envelopes and jammed on every other one. I was able to pull some of the jammed ones out, but then the printer went into 'warming up' mode where it cranked through an envelope without printing anything on it, except for a grey band or two. Then it would print over the same one that I had rescued. If I was lucky and that one didn't jam, then I could get another envelope out, except that it would jam. Aaargh! The Vice President is going to have my head on a platter if I don't get all these letters out. Not such a bad week as the previous one. 

Oh yes! The flat tire episode! Tuesday evening, after teaching two three hour labs, I discovered that the front tire of my bicycle was flat. It turned out to be a leak around the valve stem, and that kind of leak can't be patched. I didn't have a spare inner tube, and, since it was 5PM, I thought I could make it to the local bicycle store before it closed at 6. The store was about 5 miles away, and I didn't make it. The last employee pulled out of the parking lot as I limped in, pushing my bicycle. I have a bit of plantar fasciitis, and the long walk was bringing it back big time. Nothing to do but push on the remaining six miles to home. Finally made it to home by 8:30 PM with my feet really hurting. Fell into bed. Putting weight on my feet was agony the next day, but they are a lot better now.


----------



## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

Congrats Nathan!

You always have the most interesting weeks. Glad you finished those letters though.

My week was average I would say. My wife is terribly sick with the flu and that is causing mayhem. All schedules are out of wack. I've sent my kids to school without lunches (I forgot, OK) twice. ](*,)


----------



## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

Congrats Nathan!

Egads PK, I can't even imagine walking that far when it's not for recreation, and you're trying to beat a deadline....

The week here was better than last. We're both finally getting over the flu and regaining our stamina (I feel for your wife, and perhaps kids ;-) Art). If it's anything like the strain we had, it's nasty and hangs on.

We had a nice pre-Valentine's day dinner tonight and I'm stuffed at the moment. :-&


----------



## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

Eeks, whata week

Training was to start on Wen, come in, find out the co. backed out of the contract at the last min. I think the steam coming from ears scared the HR witch, was given day off with pay. 

Come in noon as scheduled on Thurs, get pulled into a meeting with Dir of Ops. I've been "volunteered" for transitional training to move to a new Apple que. I'll be supporting iBooks and powerbooks now, grrrrr, and no I don't get to the pay raise. At least training is 9-6 and it's already 1, 1/2 day off with pay, thank you.

Fri looms, a snow squall races thru some local areas at 5am. 2 tractor trailers mate and proceed to close highway, traffic backed up in both directions for 15+ miles. 13 mile commute takes 2 hrs. Training class ends about an hour early, nice, another paid hour. Head home, I'm 1/2 mile from exit, oh no that car up there just bounced off the Jersey wall, oh crap, it bounced under the back wheels of that truck. Oh geeze, that other truck just jack-knifed blocking the entire road. Oh goody, another truck plows thru the now sideways trailer. Both directions of highway are blocked, Pull to shoulder and try to plot way across fields to escape. Cops come, 4 local volunteer fire co. respond. Chopper lands on highway and whisks away the injured. Must say for the response was incredibly fast in this rural area. 2 hrs later after front end loaders scoop up cargo and haz-mat teams clean spills the road opens back up in both directions, but Mr Officer asks for a statement as he reckons I was close enough to see the carnage. Another 30 min to do my civic duty. 

Sure glad it's Friday!


----------



## Piscesgirl (Feb 25, 2004)

Yeeeeek! Glad you made it through basically ok, Gnat!


----------



## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

One day that past week I was soooo asleep at work that I fell from my chair.

--Nikolay


----------



## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

Wow gnat! Glad you're safe. Bummer about that contract though. Did you have it in writing?

I was out of town in Venezuela all week. Really bummed about being away from the family. The one bright spot was that I went to visit a client in a mall. On my way out, I pass a fish store. Wouldn't you know it, three tanks full of plants lined the glass window to the mall. I couldn't believe. In Venezuela with all their problems, the owner feels plants are that important. I wish the US owners would see the potential as well!

Glad to be home though.


----------



## Phil Edwards (Jan 22, 2004)

Thank God I'm a student. After reading your weeks that's all I can say. I hope things go better this coming week y'all.


----------



## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

Amazing how things change in the corp world. When last I wrote a contract I was about work on was cancelled and I was switched to a different department. Well lighting does strike twice. Last Friday the HR witch came back to me and offered another position as the Knowledge Base Coordinator for a different division. After some discussion I took that position and it's been a week since I started. I am now part of 2 man team that writes tech support articles for internal as well as external use for over 300 products. I'm back to a more normal 8-5 M-F schedule. Office is filled with games, we mostly support gaming software and I have to actively test them. Due to Non Disclosure Agreements I am not at liberty to mention the games or the companies, but suffice to say we cover all the major PC and standalone devices. Next week I will be 2 new clients writing all the support documents for some web based shared gaming applications. In this capacity they give me an unlimited account to play the games as we need to. 

The best part is I don't take calls from end users!!!

Still writing for the organic farm and I'm about to take over management of the web site. Once revamped I'll post the URL and seek your comments. 

My side business of PC repair has also been rather busy, I received an order from a local construction firm to build them 8 PC's a server and a wireless network for their office. 

The light at the end of the tunnel finally is not the locomotive bearing down on me for a change.


----------



## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

Glad to hear things are on the right track for you now, Gnaster.

I've had another of those frustrating weeks with people who only enough about computers to be dangerous. One of the big boys from the parent company pranced in a while back and really screwed up the computer I enter endless data on. Yesterday I go to open some of the Excel programs and much to my horror all of the data is gone for 2 months..... :shock:. I was almost catching up on an Access program that they thought I should enter from January 1st, and now I have to go back and try to replace everything else that was lost, plus get that one up to date.... Whine....


----------



## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

It's Friday! How was your work week?


----------



## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

It was only 4 days, so that's always a good thing. [smilie=k: 

My week was mostly working on wrapping up the month and getting inventory in order. I finally finished that today, so everyone should be happy. I could have easily had it done yesterday, but it seems that everyone who walks through seems to think it's time for a BS fest.... #-o They must not have as much to do as me..... ;-) 

Does anyone else have trouble with people at work who just can't be quiet so you can concentrate?


----------



## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

> It was only 4 days, so that's always a good thing.


That's true, but you know sometimes it's those 'short weeks' that seem to go on forever! I am so glad it's Friday! I'll be a lot happier in 2 weeks when vacation starts. Wife and I are going to the islands for a week! :razz: Can't wait!


----------



## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

What island Bert? I'll be in Marco Island and Sanibel Island this summer.


----------



## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

We're going to St Barth's :razz:, a tiny, very French island in the Caribbean. Nothing to do but sit at the beach and eat good food! About 20 years ago, showing my age, my wife and I stopped there on a cruise we did and loved it. Always said we'd go back someday. Someday has come!


----------



## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

Never been to it but have heard lots of good things. Enjoy your time there!


----------

