Another weekend, and more work to do...

I got as much documentation and such done on the contracts database while I was at work yesterday, but it's still not what I'd consider a useable application. And I really need it to be in production by the very early part of this coming week, which means it's time to get my ass in highest possible gear this weekend and get the rest of it finished.

When I got home last night, I really wasn't feeling like working, so I went upstairs and put up one of the girlfriend's shelves in her room. She hasn't gone upstairs and seen it yet, and I'm hoping that she doesn't before she goes to work, so I can have both of them put up by the time she gets home. Unfortunately, they're not into solid wood, so I don't think they're going to be incredibly sturdy. Hopefully they'll be enough to hold what she wants, though, and if not, I'll put some toggle bolts into them to hold them up better at a later point. Actually, if I have any toggle bolts that will work, I might do that at least to the top shelf once I get around to putting it up.

Aside from putting up the one shelf and checking the mail (all junk), I really didn't accomplish much of anything with the evening. I watched a show about ancient Egypt, and then the girlfriend came out and wanted to watch her new episode of Battlestar Galactica, so I watched that with her. While watching the show, I also sorted through a couple of boxes of stuff that I'd brought home from the storage unit a while back. The stuff has been sitting down in the living room, and I know that she's a bit frustrated with that, so I figured I'd try to get some of it put away, or at least sort out the crap that I should just throw out or recycle. Of course, right at the moment, it looks even worse than it did before I started, because I have stacks of stuff to get recycled, and sorted stacks of stuff to be brought upstairs. Hopefully I'll get most of it put away, somewhere, today while she's at work. In addition to hanging the shelf, emptying the dishwasher, and probably going off to get cat food, a few groceries, and maybe some wire so I can hang the mirror over the fireplace.

And, to make it even less likely that I'll get shit done today, there's a Stars game on at two this afternoon, and I'm sure I'll wind up watching that. I'm such a useless lump of shit...

Not gonna be a happy day, methinks...

I stayed up too late last night. I was up until a little after midnight in the living room, watching TV and looking at crap on the computer, rather than working like I should have been. I went upstairs and fed the bratling, and when I came back down, the girlfriend was still up watching some show about yachts on the Travel Channel. She closes today, so she didn't have to be asleep really early. Unfortunately, the show she was watching kept me awake a little longer than I would have liked, and then I woke up a couple of times when various loud noises around the building happened, probably the neighbors closing their doors. Overall, I think I got about four hours of sleep last night, and now I'm pretty much draggin' my tail.

Since I had already got up fairly early, I made it to work earlier than I usually do. Typically, I kind of drag in here a couple of minutes after eight, but today I think I was actually in the office by about ten till. Unusual, but I guess it kind of makes up a little for those times that I do run late.

On the plus side, Raeetta, one of the ladies in accounting, asked me to add a couple of reports to her vehicle maintenance menu this morning. It turns out that they were basically just filters that needed to be added to a report that already existed, showing either the last 90 days of records or within a given date range, so it only took me about five minutes to get them over to her. And, since she's one of those people who seems to have a bit of pull around here, it's good to make her happy with the reports she wants fairly quickly.

Now, though, I'd best get to work trying to get the reports that my boss wants done, so I can e-mail them to him by the end of the day. Damn it...

I should be working now...

I did do a little bit of work on some of the queries for the database when I got home, but I also got hooked into watching a hockey game, and then I watched some show about the Mariana Trench on the History Channel. And now there's a new show about the extinction of the dinosaurs on Animal Planet. I'm not sure that I really care of the show, but I'll give it a chance at least for a while.

I need to try to get as much stuff done on the database as possible by the end of the day tomorrow, because I need to send a copy off to my boss so he can take a look at it. I don't know if I'll manage to get it close enough to being finished for his liking, but I guess I'll just do whatever I can and try to fix the rest of it over the weekend. I'm going to definitely try to get the thing ready to be demonstrated by Monday or Tuesday, and then I have about a week and a half until I need to get gas cards out and ready for production. Great...

The girlfriend found out that her brother is going to be able to come and look after the house and the cat while we go on our vacation at the end of March. We're going to be driving up to Boston to see her friend Jason, and also we're going to see quite a bit of the country that neither of us have seen before. Hopefully I'll actually still have a job to come back to. We'll see how it goes, though...

We also heard from the ex-roommate. He invited us to go see the new Watchmen movie next Friday, so that should be kind of fun. Not sure who else is going to be there, but it's nice of him to at least think of inviting us. I think it's about the only time we've heard from him for a month, though. All the friends are going away, it seems. Damn it...

One step forward...

Sometimes I feel like I'm just rushing forward, getting so much closer to completing one of these damned projects, and then something jumps in front of me and makes me slam on the brakes. I ran into a problem last night, with trying to keep track of which annual contract record was the current one. I thought I came up with a way to solve it, but talking to the boss this morning gave me a better way of solving it. So now I'm having to redo the stuff that I just redid last night. For about the tenth time, it seems like.

And, of course, I'm running out of time, because I need to have not only this program, but also the gas cards web page thing done by the 13th of March, which is only a couple of weeks away. I guess I'm going to have to pretty much just bust ass all next week on that one and try to get something out there which is somewhat useable, and let the chips fall where they may as far as my review goes. So much for the whole "doing great things at work" idea...

Home again, but sometimes it barely feels like it...

It just seems like I've been working, or stressing about work, so much lately that I don't even have time off when I get home. Even though, in reality, I probably wind up spending far more time in front of the TV or otherwise avoiding work than I really should. And then, of course, there's the fact that I still kind of feel like I don't really live here, but I'm just kind of staying for a while. I don't know if I'm ever going to manage to get over that one, but I guess I'll see...

For now, it's back to the damned grind, trying to figure out how to get the right dollar amounts to show up on the contracts...

It's a wonder bicyclists aren't extinct in this town...

I keep noticing that almost no bicyclists in this town ever stop for stop signs. They just cruise on through without really even slowing down. I beeped my horn at one of them this afternoon as he pedalled on through right in front of me, and he just stared briefly at me and shrugged his shoulders, like he had no clue at all what I was beeping at him for. Which he probably didn't. Idiot. I should have just rolled through the way he did and see if he noticed that...

Hacka, hacka, hacka...

Back at work again. I've already managed to put together one or two of the forms I need for the new way I'm doing the main view, and I think I should wind up having that whole mess done in the not too distant future, barring any more major problems. I'm going to try to get all the basics done, forms laid out and such, and then I'll go back and fill in the major portions of code that need to be done for some of the forms. I also need to make sure that I keep track of the historical data for the contracts, and that's going to almost be an entirely new module added to the little beastie. And, unfortunately, one or two of the other pieces of the puzzle are going to be somewhat problematic. The credentials view and edit form is one of the probably problem children, although I think I might be able to hijack one of the forms I did earlier to get a leg up on that one. And then adding the new annual details and figuring out how to save any edits made on the old one are going to also be rather funky. And then there is the whole "Alerts" section, where I'm going to activate a button if any of certain particular flags get tripped, like the contract having credentials close to expiring, the contract itself being close to expiring, or the contract coming up close to its annual cap amount. Overall, I'd say I have plenty to do with the day, so I should really keep myself going at it...

I stayed up way too late last night, and made myself a drink that was just a bit stronger than I probably should have, so I woke up not really wanting to get up at all, and with a mild headache. Fortunately, the headache has pretty much already passed, and I didn't have the upset stomach and such that I sometimes give myself. Which is good, because having hangover stomach combined with my current frequent stress stomach would just be a horribly bad match. I'm feeling a little better about things today than I was yesterday, which might partially be because my boss is working from home today, so I know that he's not going to walk in here and ask me to send him whatever I have done on the project. I was supposed to demo it for him earlier this week, but I've just been lying low working on it, and he hasn't asked me to show it to him. Of course, tomorrow is our weekly meeting, and he's going to definitely want to know how it's going, so I'd really like to have almost all of it done by then. We'll see how the rest of the day, and probably part of this evening, go...

While I was up late last night, I did manage to at least get a few little things done, although none of any terribly great importance. I finished copying over all of the background notes, so now I just need to keep up to date on those as they come in, which shouldn't be all that difficult. That now makes about five mailing lists which I'm up to date on, so only about a hundred to go before I'm actually up to date on all of my e-mail.

I also happened to scroll through Craigslist for a while last night looking at some of the musician ads. I bookmarked a couple of them to reply to once I get more of the database stuff done. Maybe I can actually manage to get some kind of musical thing together. That would be nice, but it'll be off in the future, and the present has to do with programming for the moment...

Useless evening...

I got home at about my usual time today, and I found that the girlfriend didn't go to work today. She said she was feeling kind of sick to her stomach. She doesn't take much time off anyway, so I think it's fine that she stayed home today.

I managed to get a fair amount done on the contracts database at work, but I have yet to really do very much work on it since I got home. I watched the tail end of the hockey game from yesterday, which was being replayed, and then I watched the live game from today. I did manage to get my laundry finished, at least, and I think I can get most of the rest of the contracts database done tomorrow at work, so I'm not as stressed out about it as I have been recently. Still a bit stressed, but only enough to make me slightly uptight. Sigh...

I've managed to weed through a bunch of my e-mails, saving most of the background notes from the State Department into my little personal database. I know that it's kind of a weird thing to be doing, but I've done weirder stuff than that before, and I'm sure that I will again. And I took a shower. That's about it for the usefulness of my evening. It looks like the girlfriend is probably going to head to bed soon, since she has to open tomorrow, so I'll probably wind up my evening, too. Maybe I'll manage to get done with the database tomorrow. I certainly hope so...

Kickin' my ass...

So I spent a fair amount of time yesterday trying to get the contracts database finished, but I'm still just plugging away at it, slowly but surely. Well, more slowly than surely, honestly. I keep running into various unforeseen problems, and I'm entirely certain that I'm going to run into a shitload more of them once this thing is put into even limited production use. I was just down talking to Deana, who will be the primary user, and she had a couple of other things that she was hoping to have added to the thing. I told her that at this moment, I don't think it can be done, but I've written them down to look into later, possibly. Right now, I just really need to get something done and into production. Damn it...

Last night, I did manage to get a little bit of work done on it after I got home, but nowhere near enough. I think most of the section to add contracts is done, and the part to match the contracts to the payments, but now I really need to get some visibility of the contracts and the ability to edit them. And now it's just being a pain to try to keep my concentration up on this thing, with continually worrying about a bunch of other crap.

In addition to working on the database last night, I picked up a few little things in the upstairs room and did a little more laundry, although I still have a bunch in the washer and dryer that need to be done. I also shredded a bunch of the old papers that needed to go. After the girlfriend got home, she asked if I'd mind going to the supermarket, so i also did a little shopping that I wasn't expecting to do. And then I spent too much time sitting around watching TV with her. Oddly, I didn't watch the hockey game that was on last night, though. I'll probably watch the one today, though. For now, though, back to trying to design these damned forms...

Back to the salt mines...

So, my weekend didn't turn out anywhere near as productive as I would have liked. I only ended up doing a little bit of work on the database, nowhere near as much as I was hoping. In fact, most of what I did do, I found out during testing didn't work properly anyway, so I wound up scrapping most of it. I've spent most of the morning since I've been here at work trying to get somewhat caught up on some of the ideas I've had for it, and I think it's coming along pretty well, but I don't know that I'm going to have a very good product to demo for the boss later in the day. I'm kind of lying low right at the moment, hoping that he gets sidetracked with other things and decides not to ask me how the thing is going until maybe tomorrow morning. We'll see how that all goes. I'm still very nervous about the whole situation here...

We did get the recycling taken care of, and I cleaned out Kala's water dish and litter box, as well as planting her some new grass, since the old grass she had was starting to turn brown and nasty. I think having the little dish of cat grass for her keeps her from wanting to get out quite so much, and it's not all that difficult to take care of. I've just been too lazy to replant it for a couple of weeks. Garbage was taken out, Dremel stuff was all picked up and put away, and I shredded some more of my old papers and such that I don't need any more. I also did managed to get the upstairs closet cleaned out and got some of the stuff that's just heaped around up there put into a tote and out of the way, at least. Not that I don't still have a ton of shit to get put away, but at least it's a start. I got a fair amount of laundry done, but there's still more sitting in the washer and dryer that I need to get taken care of. And, of course, the shelves for the girlfriend's room are still not put up. Damn it.

We went to Olive Garden for dinner last night after she got back from the bridal shower she was attending. I guess from her description that the shower itself was something of a comedy of errors, which isn't all that great. But I guess the bride had a nice enough time, which is the general intent of the whole thing, so that's good. We had a pretty nice dinner, and then came home and pretty much vegetated for the rest of the evening. I did try to get some work done on the database, but I kept getting distracted. I really am beginning to feel like I have some kind of ADD or something of that nature, because I can rarely seem to keep my mind on one thing until I get it completed. In any case, we wound up watching the Oscars and some of her home decorating and design type shows, and then we went to bed.

The girlfriend had to go to work at the same time that I did this morning, so I did my best to get up early. I did only hit the snooze once, and then I meandered out and did the usual ablutions. I probably should have taken a shower this morning, but I didn't figure that I had the time. I should take one when I get home this evening, though, at any rate. I got myself ready pretty quickly, got the little beastie fed, got the laptop put away, and then pretty much just sat around for a little bit because I didn't really feel like getting to work early. Finally, though, it was off to work, and here I've been since, just plugging away at code and queries and the like. It's getting closer, but is it close enough?...

Workin' on the Weekend

Or something like that...

I finished out the day yesterday, worked on the data entry screen for the contacts database, but certainly didn't get it finished at work. Fortunately, though, the rest of the day remained pretty quiet. It's nice to not have all that many aggravations happening.

After work, I had to take a little longer way home than usual so I could stop and get some gas in the car. I wound up getting home at about 5:30, and the girlfriend told me that she had a few little errands that she needed to run. So, I figured that I could join her and get the drill bit I needed. I cleaned out the cat's litter box after I got home, and I realized that I needed to get some kitty litter, so I added that to the list of things to do. The girlfriend had already done the dishes, and the kitchen was looking nice and clean, so that doesn't have to stay on the list. I took out most of the garbage, but I did it before emptying the litter box, so I still had that to take out. I did also get all the recycling sorted out so we could drop it off on the way to do her errands.

We left some time around a quarter to seven in the evening to try to make it to the city office in the mall to pay the power bill. We got there in time, got the bill paid, and then the girlfriend wanted to stop at JC Penney to look for a shower gift for one of her friends at work. I wound up buying a 3-pack of socks, which cost me a lot more than I thought. I could have sworn the little ad posted said three pairs for five bucks, but it turns out it was five bucks per pair, so I paid about $16 with tax for them. I just hope they wind up being really good socks...

We went to Petsmart to get Kala's litter after that. The girlfriend actually went to a little fashion store next door, but I went in to get the litter. It turns out that they actually had the filters for her water dish this time, which they haven't had any of the previous times that I've looked there. Just a month or so ago, the girlfriend made a little jury-rigged filter out of some muslin fabric and activated charcoal. And, as always seems to be the case, as soon as that happens, there they are in the store. I got one 3-pack of those, and next time I need to replace the filter, I'll see if the girlfriend can sew some fabric around one of those with some charcoal inside of it...

Home Depot was next, and we got a new shower head to replace the leaky, clogged one in our bathroom. A drill bit was also purchased, and then it was off to Target. So, add the shower head replacement to the to-do list for the weekend. We spent a fair amount of time at Target looking for her shower gifts and some other stuff that she wanted to get if they had it. Then it was off to get some gas in her car, and we headed over to see if they had a time posted for the open house at the place she wanted to look at. They didn't have a time posted, but we did find out that her commute to the place would wind up being a whole lot easier than she thought it would have been.

We got home right around nine, which was convenient because she wanted to see the new episode of Battlestar Galactica. We wound up not getting down to the recycling place, but I just figured we could do it in the morning when we went to see the house. Unfortunately, I wound up watching Battlestar with her, and then some show about Lincoln's assassination, and I wound up getting almost nothing done with the rest of the evening. We pretty much drifted off to sleep in the latter part of the evening.

We got up around ten this morning. I still didn't get a really great night of sleep, because I kept waking up during the course of the night and early morning. I don't know if I'm ever going to feel well-rested again, damn it. I brought down one of my totes in which to put the Dremel stuff, but I haven't actually put it away yet. We just pretty much puttered around the house a little this morning before heading out into the world.

We stopped at the recycling place and I threw all the crap away. We then headed up to the house, but it looked like it was still locked up. We walked around a little bit and looked at the yard and such, and then the girlfriend called the number on the sign advertising the open house. Unfortunately, it turns out that the open house was cancelled because someone has already made an offer on the house. So, hopefully she'll quit focusing on the house now.

We got back home and I installed the new shower head. I fired up the computer and looked through some of my e-mails, had a bit to eat with the girlfriend, and then she went off to work. Unfortunately, I found out that there was a hockey game on this afternoon, and I watched that. It ended just a little bit ago, but aside from putting a couple loads of laundry through the washer, I haven't done much else with the day. Oh, and I did bring Kala's water dish downstairs, but it's still sitting in the sink waiting for me to wash it.

So, for the rest of the day, I need to finish washing her dish, finish the laundry, put the Dremel equipment away, and work on the data entry form for the contracts database. I also need to put up the shelves in the girlfriend's room upstairs, and I'm going to put at least a few things into a tote that I'm going to use as my give-away bin. So I guess I'd better get started now...

Manic Depression's a Frustratin' Mess...

So I find myself here, feeling depressed and like a considerable failure. I always just seem to find myself distracted, not finishing the things that I really should. It seems I constantly have things added to my to-do list, and nothing ever gets to-done. And now most of the girlfriend's friends have pretty much quick contacting us. Before I moved down here, they all seemed very happy for her. Now we could all go out as a group and have fun together, and she wouldn't be the single person there like a third wheel. Now, though, the former roommate who has since moved out really doesn't talk to us at all, and of course most of his friends and such don't really talk to us much either, since their real connection with us was through him. And the girlfriend's best friend doesn't really answer her phone or return messages any more, so we haven't really seen her for a month and a half.

Of course, a large part of the reason I moved down here to north Texas was so that I could find a band, which I thought would be considerably easier here than in southern Oregon. Of course, it probably would wind up being easier if I actually followed up with any of the leads that I had obtained when I first moved down here. But, being the lazy ass that I am, I didn't follow through with most of them for one lame reason or another, and the few that I did, I either let slide after the initial contact or else I just didn't like the music that the group was playing. I was playing with one guy for a while who was doing music that I enjoyed, but it was all covers, and it just seemed like I didn't have a whole lot of input into what we were playing. Then my car broke down, and between how I was feeling about things and the problems with getting to his place to jam, I just let it drop. I shouldn't have, but I can't do much about it now. I really need to get back off my ass and put up another ad or two on Craigslist and see if I can't generate a little more interest. See if I can find someone who wants to jam on some original material but isn't necessarily out to change the world with their music. We'll see if I can do something about getting back in that flow this weekend.

And my work has just been a royal pain in the ass. Everything was initially moving along just fine, but since I've been here, I've run into a few little sticking points in the programming, and I got lazy about doing as much stuff as I should have during the day. I'm kind of left alone over here in my little corner all day, and it's easy for me to just screw off a fair portion of the day. And, unfortunately, I've spent too much time doing that and too little trying to figure out the problems I've been having with the programming. And now it's come to the point where I really need to get the stuff done immediately, and I'm just having a hard time even concentrating on what I'm doing.

So I guess my plan for the weekend is as follows: When I get home this evening, I'm going to clean the cat's litter box and water dish, and finish doing the dishes if the girlfriend hasn't already done so. Actually, before I get started with the litter box and such, I'm going to get a load of laundry running, since I'm way behind on that, too. Somewhere along in there, I also need to make sure that I take out the garbage, since we have a bunch sitting in the laundry room waiting to go out. I should also make a special run down to the recycling center and get rid of a bunch of the crap that's in the closet under the stairs. After I finish doing the dishes and cleaning the litter box, I'm going to gather up all of my Dremel equipment that is currently sitting in the living room and put it in one of the totes that I have sitting up in my room upstairs. Following all of that, which really shouldn't take all that long, I will spend the remainder of the evening finishing the data-entry form for the contracts database, as well as taking screen shots to document it once it is done. I might try doing a little of the technical documentation, but that can wait a little longer as long as the database itself is up and running. One thing that I will not do this evening is have a drink, because I tend to get lazy and stupid when I do that, and I don't need it right now.

Tomorrow morning, the girlfriend wants to go see a house that she's been interested in. It's probably going to be auctioned off long before we could save up enough money for a decent down payment, but I can at least humor her and go to the open house. If she has the time and the interest, I'm going to see if she wants to run down to Home Depot or Lowe's so I can pick up a 3/8" drill bit so I can finally get her shelves hung up in her room upstairs. If she doesn't have the time or doesn't want to make that long a run out of the way, I'll go get it after she goes to work, and then I will get her shelves hung up, finally. Assuming it's not raining, my next goal after that is to get all the stuff unloaded from my old car, so I can think about getting it listed for sale. After I get the car unloaded, I'm going to write up a listing for Craigslist to see if I can find some fellow musicians to play with. I'm also going to draft at least three messages to people on various forums, although I might not send them all immediately because some of those forums are only available on my old laptop, which is currently having issues. And I'm going to write a message to Mom, because I haven't really talked to her for a while, and I should keep in more touch.

After all of that is done, I'm going to spend most of the afternoon and evening working on finishing the edit/view form for the contracts database, as well as finishing the documentation for that portion of it. I want it to be pretty much cosmetically perfect, and I want to start entering some data in to make sure it's showing up the way I want it to. If I feel like the form itself is pretty well complete, I'm going to see about making a couple loaves of bread, or perhaps some other similar kind of baked good. No cookies, though, because they just take too much time and would keep me from getting anything else done. Maybe I'll make those cinnamon rolls I was thinking about making a couple of weeks ago, though. Those would be good for breakfast on Sunday morning, too.

Speaking of Sunday morning, I would like to spend at least an hour or so picking stuff up in my room upstairs. I don't really have any good way to get everything organized as well as I would like, but at least I can get stuff off the floor and into some of those empty totes that I have sitting around up there. I think there is a hockey game Sunday afternoon, so I'm going to take a little time off and watch that, maybe have myself a nice cup of coffee with some Irish cream, but then I need to get back to it. For programming, I'm going to try to complete both the payment report and the payment reconciliation module, as well as hopefully being able to complete a couple of other reports that I think Deana might find handy. Documentation for those in at least a basic mode. And I need to write a couple of search functions for her, because she asked for them before.

Since I will hopefully have picked up a fair amount of stuff in the upstairs room, I'm going to get the old laptop set up and send off the messages I hope to draft on Saturday, if I haven't already sent them off prior to that. I'd also like to go through the old 43Things list and see what needs to be weeded out of there and what other things I need to add to the list. We'll see whether I have time for that, though. In the evening, I'm going to take a shower, read some of my ASP.Net AJAX book, and try to get myself rested up for the coming day. I'll hopefully check in to see how everything's going, too. We'll see, though...