Kvetch and you shall receive…

I was grumbling about my lost time last pay period. My stupid tooth cost me four days. Denizen illness another two, plus a half day here and a quarter day there for appointments and whatnot – my paycheck was so light this last time it was in danger of floating away.

And, because I’d been out so much, I wanted to go into the office a little more diligently because I didn’t want anybody to forget I worked there.

Which meant my hours were even more down because going into the office means I’m spending between four and five hours of my day parked in a train or a bus or a car on my way there or back again.

It’s hard to get even seven hours of time billed…and that’s if I don’t take a break through the day but just charge straight on through, eating my lunch with one hand while coding with the other.

Not a fun way to go through an entire week.

So I was grumbling about my hours. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

And lo! The god(dess) of hourly workers heard my laments, and took pity on me, and made with the magic, and lo…

My team is doing a production data load this weekend. Which is why I was working until 9:00 last night, after a full week of other ‘up until 9:00 working’ and ‘logging in at 4:15 a.m. working.’

And which is also why I’m sitting at a computer right now instead of doing housework. (Wait…actually…is there a downside to this…?) (Oh, OK, I would rather be doing housework…but only because I love a clean house, not because I have any affection for housework whatsoever.)

I’m tired, cranky, and possibly beginning to turn a little code-blind. All the numbers are starting to blur together, the queries all look alike, the combines and the entities and the tables WAIT, that one is a view but is it the view of a view or is it just a, wait, is this the select-splat-from, or is this the one with that fourteen-layer-crazy-cake join in it…yawn…blink…stretch…squint…

No, yeah, it’s the crazy-joined view, of that other view, that summarizes the select-splat view.

Riiiiiiiight. I totally knew that.

Ah, the bittersweet life of the hourly contractor. On the one hand, I’m tired and a little cranky and very definitely NOT feeling the love for error counting and data quality research…which takes “detail oriented” straight past ‘art form’ and into ‘masochistic myopic madness.’

On the other…my next paycheck is going to be very sweet indeed…

Thank you, god(dess) of hourly workers…