64000

This whole working gig is a pain. Really, it is.

I like my job. I actually do. The work environment is uber-relaxed. The work is interesting, complex, difficult. To adopt a cliche, I feel challenged by it. Not because the markets are terribly complicated, though they're a touch involved, but because I have carte blanche to use whatever means necessary to achieve results. Which means I am constantly thinking of new ways to extract more information from the data available. Side projects are condoned and even expected, which is great. I build my own tools, spend time making my life easier, develop new ways to explore opportunity. It really is a fantastic place to learn and apply critical thinking skills.

Here's what I detest about work. I hate knowing that someone has absolute authority over you. Even in the army, I knew that I had recourse to civilian means if military authority became unreasonable. Here, if my boss doesn't like me, I could simply be fired. If my work isn't up to par, I don't get a bad grade, I get fired. That's annoying.

I can't slow down either. Unlike school, pausing to take a breather seems to be out of the question. Taking my time to do something is likely to cause me to fall behind in my schedule. Which is not acceptable. Results matter here, so I need to be faster, smarter, better than everybody else. Which I am, some of the time. But I'm not a programmer. I don't think that way. So in this situation, where all the data is in the databases, and I need to write scripts to extract what I want, I naturally am slower than many other people. I admit that coding has been a revelation. It is so powerful and flexible that I am completely frustrated by the limitations of Excel when I use it. Of particular annoyance, 64000 row limits. What kind of data processing am I supposed to do with 64000 rows? Also the tendency to reformat everything. Pisses me off very badly. Excel. Bah.

To top it off, I finish each day tired. So I wind up going to bed early. Which robs me of a large portion of life.

I'm sleepy, so I shall rant about excess some other time.

Uninspired

I think I just had a pretty much empty weekend. Did a fair number of things, but nothing left a particularly deep impression. Since I don't post very much, here's a quick rundown of my life over the past 50 hours or so.

Friday evening, it became apparent that I was the only person in the office who was foolish enough to stick around late just before the weekend. I had made a late dinner appointment, so I figured I'd just stay at work a little later and head over straight. Clearly a mistake.

It turns out that I really do have a knack for picking restaurants. After a spot of research while waiting for a script to finish, I changed venues at the last minute, and it turned out quite superb. One of those great little places with very good food and no pretensions whatsoever. Those can be refreshing sometimes. Although they did kick us out at 11.30, which I thought was rude. The evening ended quite properly, nothing too exciting to report there. Things are actually becoming less interesting, shifting to a more friendly tone, despite the occasional surprise.

So I woke up on Saturday, determined to make something of the weekend. I thought I'd play a quick game of Katamari until I woke up properly. Big mistake. I wound up attacking that game all day, until I was rolling a 500 metre ball around, picking up islands and clouds as if they were thumbtacks. If that last sentence made no sense to you, then you're missing out on one of the most brilliantly ridiculous games ever made.

That little endeavour lasted me the entire day, up until about 11, when I decided to head out. Which wasn't the best decision I made all day. Decided to go to this lounge in Georgetown. Absolutely the creepiest nightspot I've ever seen. When we got there, the line was quite long, but good-looking enough, so I handed the bouncer a few notes to cut it. Once inside, I was overwhelmed. I figured out why the line outside was so pretty and under-dressed. The dance floor was filled with these women, almost all of whom I believe were under 25, busily posing and grinding. That's fine. I have no objection to pretty women showing themselves off. The men were a different story. Most of them were in suits, which is fine, and in their thirties and forties, which is the creepy bit. Imagine a bunch of 35 to 45 year old men lined up along a bar, leering at a crowd of young girls desperate to catch the eye of a potential sugar daddy. Ok, I've just described a large segment of Shanghai.

We left pretty quickly. It was just too weird to have 40 year olds tryign to chat up my companion while I was getting drinks at the bar. And so I have concluded, in a sweeping generalisation, that the clubs in DC are either ghetto, replications of frats or populated by men too old to be prowling in nightclubs.

So Saturday was a bust. Sunday had to be better, right? Well, in a limited way it was.

I awoke on Sunday, full of gumption and the desire to make breakfast burning in my heart. I drew up a menu in my head of scrambled eggs and sausage links, matched with good, strong espresso. Then I got out of bed. Three things became clear to me then. One, I had no milk or cream, so proper scrambled eggs were out of the question. Two, I had no sausage links in my fridge. Three, I haven't actually bought that espresso maker I dreamt that I did.

So I started eating cookies. Rather good cookies. Finished the whole box. While watching Yakitate: Japan! Didn't stop watching Yakitate. Went through the last of my stock of Orangina, thinking that the anime had sagged a lot after the first major arc. Kept watching. Discovered that I had meat on the absolute verge of rotting in my fridge, and cooked it quickly. Kept watching. Did laundry. Continued staring at screen.

With the last episode in striking distance, I finally stopped watching anime and started typing a thoroughly uninspired account of my weekend.

And now I shall prepare to get back to the grind. For all that my work is fascinating and challenging, with plenty of actual learning opportunities, it can be a grind at times. Such as the bit about getting up early every bloody day.