As the holidays rapidly approach and the schedule for my project at work continues to fold in upon itself (in ways I thought only a Guild navigator could possibly accomplish), I realize that there really just isn’t enough time in the day.

At work, I spend the first half of my day in a conference room with three to five other developers, where I can’t get any work done because the sole purpose of me being there is to answer questions. The second half of my day is spent trying to regain composure from the first half of the day, remember where I was in the middle of the project, and try to do a full day’s worth of work in half a day. I’m in the 50 - 60 hour week range, and it’s just the beginning of the project.

At home, I get an average of four nights out of seven every week when I can potentially relax. The hockey season is well under way, which means those other three nights are hockey games which start at 7:00p and end at 10:00p, but it takes an hour to get there (rush hour) and half an hour to get back, so the real time allocated is 6:00p - 10:30p, and that’s if there’s no overtime.

On my nights to relax, I’m torn: There are so many projects I’ve got going that I’d like to work on, but I’m brain-dead from my day at work and I’m not motivated to do more when I get home.

Ugh.

I’ve got the last two weeks of the year off (assuming that doesn’t get canceled for me because the project’s behind), and I can’t wait. I know I just took a week off last month, but man, I’m feeling the need to decompress here.

Hockey game tonight, then the next one is next Friday… then one that Saturday, too… But that still gives me a week off.

Sort of a side note: I just now made some iced tea here at work. They were out of plain black tea, so I picked Earl Grey - scented black tea.

Earl Grey does NOT make good iced tea.

Went to the Winter Hawks game last night, and while I insist that this season’s Hawks are mediocre at best, the Swift Current Broncos suck, so we kicked their ass 4 - 0.

It was nice to see such a blowout win, but I won’t lie: it’d be nice if it was good hockey. Connect a pass, guys. Come on. You can do it. At least there were a couple of good fights.

You’ll notice that I’ve turned on the requirement for folks to register prior to adding comments. I came in and looked at the 50 comment spams I had gotten and realized I had to do something, especially since it was still happening while I was reading email. I turned on the registration to stop the spider from adding more comments (they were going down the list of every single entry and adding comments).

I may or may not remove that registration requirement. I don’t actually send anything out to the email list, so maybe I’ll just leave it. It’d be nice to know how many folks come in. Then again, I should probably take the effort and implement my lame almost-CAPTCHA “copy and paste this random word” solution. It’s not foolproof by any means, but I figure my site’s not big enough for folks to invest the time and figure out how to sidestep it. I suppose if they ever do invest that time, I’ll have to move to a solution that actually supports CAPTCHAs.

I may have narrowly escaped getting thrown into a bullpen - a many, many person shared cube - because I called it like it is:

First, my productivity would go to shit. I can’t concentrate when there are a bunch of other people sitting in the same room. I don’t care how quiet it is; the fact they’re there is distracting.

Second, it’s psychologically problematic for me. Seriously. Just thinking about sitting in a room with a bunch of people all day makes my blood pressure go up. I don’t think I’m necessarily anthropophobic or agoraphobic or anything, but I do feel pretty traumatized to be forced into a large, shared environment. If I was in jail, I’d probably ask for solitary confinement.

Anyway, crisis averted for the time being.

Hockey season has taken over, and I’m not sure I like it.

I mean, I like going to the various hockey games and such, but we went to one Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of last week, there’s one coming up on Tuesday, then another on Friday. Again, don’t get me wrong - I like hockey, but I’m feeling like it’s dominating my free time. And it wouldn’t be so bad if we were kicking ass, but we’re battling mediocrity this year, so it’s not even good hockey. About one in five games is interesting; the rest of the time… well, I’ve been getting a lot of reading done.

Of course, going to the games isn’t just about the hockey, it’s also part social. I get to see my friends there that I don’t normally get to see, so it’s fun. It’s just the hockey gets in the way sometimes. Plus, each game is three hours of your evening, gone. Here’s hoping next season is better.

Jenn and I went to breakfast at IHOP on Sunday, which was nice since we don’t normally go out to breakfast. I had a chicken fajita omelette, which was tasty but stuck with me all day, and Jenn had a standard ham and cheese omelette.

After breakfast, we went on a grand tour of the city, running errands.

Stopped by the dollar store and picked up eight huge Laffy Taffy bars for the creation of my taffy masterpiece, the “taffy brick.” It’s a 7.5” x 2” x 1.5” brick of grape Laffy Taffy. I always said they should sell taffy in bricks; since they didn’t start doing that, I took it upon myself to create one. I took pictures and I’ll see if I can get them up here soon.

We also ended up stopping by the comic store (gotta get my monthly fix) and visiting my parents, among other things. Lots of travel time, but we got a lot done.

Sunday evening Jenn put up some garland around the house and I worked on a beading project I’ve had going for a while but never seem to make much progress on.

I also played a little more San Andreas. This time I went on a mission to romance a casino croupier into giving me her vault access card so I can pull a heist on the casino. Now, normally I’m down with this stuff in San Andreas, but this time… well, in order to start dating the croupier, you have to dress up in a gimp suit. Then you kill her boyfriend and go into her dungeon in his place. After that, you have the option of picking up a new melee weapon: a giant, purple, double-ended dildo. Because I somehow need to go Clockwork Orange on someone?

Now, like I said, normally I’m down with whatever they throw into this thing, but they sort of crossed the lines of good taste here, so to speak. Maybe Rockstar’s giving its Manhunt game a nod here; I don’t know, I never played that one. But come on. There’s bad taste, then there’s bad taste. I’m not sure I’m on board with this.

At work the project I’m on is picking up speed on an exponential level. My job over the next couple of weeks is to start teaching some of the other engineers around here how to use the software that my group’s working on. I think they’re jumping the gun a lot on this, since we don’t have enough done to really do anything effective, but whatever.

They want me to sit in a conference room for half a day with these guys. I guess that’s fine; my primary work focus will be getting them going. But then I also got an email from my manager and it looks like they want to put all of us in a “bull pen,” a giant open-group sort of work environment.

That’s where I draw the line.

I can’t work in an open setting like that, folks. It’s disruptive. I can’t concentrate. Not to mention my stress level goes through the roof in a situation like that. I chose a small, one-person cube over a larger, multi-person cube when I moved to this new department because I can’t work with other people in the same area. I need my space. Now everyone’s going to the same area? This is actually something I’ll consider looking for a new job over. I’ll train folks, but keeping communication lines open doesn’t require me to be stressed out and irritated by my work environment.

One of the guys in my group had a dream last night that I was mad at him for wasting time on frivolous programming efforts and not spending time on the things we need to deliver.

That’s how I work, baby. I work my way into your subconscious, like George Costanza. A positive negative impact of sorts.