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.