Off By One

I’ve got only three days before Ms. Charlotte and I take off into the blue yonder, across the pacific (a first, at least as far as reaching the other side goes — Hawaii doesn’t count) to Japan, where we’ll be roaming around and posting pictures (over at Morruz), as per SOP).

I’ve got just about everything taken care of, on this end; I’ve finished (as far as I’m going to) my paper for Cmput 401, I’ve got most of the written assignment for 414 finished, and a deferral on my 3000-word essay to a week after I get back.

On the work front, I’ve been putting in a bit of time off the books because I wanted to get some coding done, which wasn’t happening with all of the container management stuff I was doing. Oh, it pays the bills, but struggling with IBM’s toolset was one of the least fun things I’ve ever had the … pleasure … of doing.

So, that’s it.

I’m taking one of the few real vacations I’ve had in my life, since leaving home. Oh, I’ve been unemployed, and I’ve been off for a few days here and there, but this type of thing is rare, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to travel with Char; we’ve never done this together. Wish us luck!

Two times in the last week I’ve had to do class presentation, and although I can’t speak for the actual skill that I have, I do seem to have a knack for talking.

Which, come to think of it, might come as no surprise

Anyway, this week marks the end of classes for this semester and, in fact, all but one of my final exams. That one, which takes place next week, will be murderous, but other than that I’ll be content with my grades for the semester.

I wish I could say the same thing for work. My job has been a frustrating one lately, staring blankly at a piece of code from IBM and trying to figure out why it isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. It has to do with migrating our product to a new version of a particular platform and, while in theory it should be easy, we’ve always had a bit of a fragile relationship with this platform, and I’m bearing the brunt of it. The work would be satisfying if I were getting anywhere, but I’m not, and a deadline is looming. I predict some overtime next week, as we have two major deliverable dates.

Honestly, though, it’s not all bad.