Twenty Years Ago

Twenty Years Ago Today a group of 7 men and women were preparing for the adventure of a lifetime.

Twenty Years Ago Tomorrow they were gone, as we mourned the death of so many hopes.

I remember Challenger.
1/28/86

bibble bibble bibble

I spent most of today trying to wrap my head around a database program that no one seems to really know how to use, a series of complex procedures supposed to minimize errors that aren't, and all with the aid of some binders and file folders someone found in a box.

SCENE: the offices of a not-for-profit association
ME: hmmmm
*pages turning*
ME: ooh
*tippy-tapping of computer keys*
*more pages turning*
ME: yay! (chair-dance)
*smothered laughter from my manager who has been listening to all of this*


The rest of it I spent creating new procedures form scratch.

Remember when I wrote about the old invoices with the 5 diff fonts on them, that were being individually created and printed? Well, my manager already has most of the data I need for them in an Excel spreadsheet. I pulled those three columns, filled in the addresses and fax numbers from the order forms in the file folder, and created the invoices as a mail merge using the data I already had. Net elapsed time 20 minutes. For what used to be an hour-or-more job. And they look pretty too.

Requests by other departments to have me cloned are filtering in.

I keep telling people - I'm not efficient because I like neat piles of paper, I'm efficient because I'm lazy and impatient! I want to be DONE. NOW!

However, now that I have emerged from the stygian blackness of the depths of the database manuals, blinking owlishly into the light of the rising weekend, I find I'm not fit company for movie night. I'm much more suited to stare at the TV and read books I've read before, and then to bed.