In the cold, gray light of morning...

It was a cold, rainy, and windy night, and the room was very cold as I went to bed. Turning on the heat at bedtime, though, is only half a solution, since the nature of our heaters (oil-filled electric) is such that it takes a while for the heat to actually be perceptible. In the meantime, I lay in bed with the covers over my head, exhaling heated breath into the small volume I occupied.

I got up early this morning so that Drew could pick me up and we could then go to the store and do an internal postal audit, which turned out reasonably well. While I waited for Drew to arrive, though, I sent off the translations I checked last night, which gave me a front-row opportunity to mentally kick myself for the errors I found during my review.

Then again, one might argue that the whole purpose of doing a review is to catch errors, so perhaps things developed as they should, although I am left a bit nervous in the end. I don't generally have to correct more than one or two errors in a document of average length.

I can only resolve to be a bit more careful in the future, especially with repetitive text, which was my downfall in the assignments reviewed last night. There is a bunch of epetition in the item due Friday, so I'll have an immediate opportunity to put my resolve to the test.

Although I haven't looked at my presentation since last night, I awoke today with a feeling of dread about it. I don't know if that's merely a sign of age or what, because I've never experienced such feelings before (and I have made at least a hundred presentations in front of large groups).

I do recall I had something of the same feeling about last year's presentation, and it came off brilliantly, but only after some hard rehearsal and some last-minute tweaks in the hotel room. I won't mind spending an hour or two doing that this time, but I most certainly don't want to have to spend huge chunks of time at my hotel because that'll mean missing conference events (for which I've paid over $300), made worse by the fact that my room is not at the conference hotel.

As far as the live demo is concerned, I've resolved to take along a desktop Linux box instead of the eSlate (heck, I'm driving, aren't I?). It's got TWiki already installed on it (though I'd have to do something to, um, hide my client data... maybe), and I'm pretty sure it has MySQL there, too, so I may be able to run PHProjekt, as well. We'll see.

Top priorities:

finish the presentation

do the remaining translation by Friday (a couple of pages a day will do it)

invoice outstanding work

grade the practice tests and take them with me to Phoenix

print business cards

send the store's accounts receivable

So much to do; not much time. Gotta make the most of it.

Cheers...

Chipping away at the face of the mine...

Okay, of the 11 pages in the translation, I put down 6 over the past two-and-a-half hours, so that puts a crimp in that to-do item. Reasonable payday, too.

I also made the call that Galina wanted me to make to the coaching organization, and settled that hash.

Now to pound some more on the presentation.

Cheers...

!Congress...

The translation, as noted in the previous rock, is about 50% complete (if you consider the review as part of the job).

The business cards are printed. (I should probably now add "print 50 copies of curriculum vitae" to the list.  )

I turned the presentation on its ear, deleted a bunch of stuff as a false start, and used a series of slides to do a methodical exposition of the subject (the way one is supposed to). I'd say the first draft is done, and about the only complaint at this point is that the presentation looks pretty sterile (no graphics, no demo). A run-through will highlight the shortcomings; maybe I'll do that tonight.

Back at the store at UPS time (4 pm), at which time the kids left, so I'm here until closing. Yesterday, with no transport, I was forced to do a fine sweep of the fridge (nothing... or at least, almost nothing edible) and the pantry (rice, condiments, odd cans of tomato sauce and evaporated milk, dried mushrooms, and popcorn-in-a-microwave-bag). I ended up cooking a soup with the rice and beans (and some ancient frozen crayfish tails from the freezer). Now, alas, I must go shopping, if for no other reason than the dog is running low on his ground-turkey-and-frozen-veggie fare.

Cheers...

Mo' progress...

Okay, I've now got a Linux box that runs X, PHProjekt, TWiki, and a bunch of other stuff, if necessary. I now find myself in the enviable position of having too much material to present, which gives me an ideal opportunity to chop off the fluff and leave an informative core presentation. I figure I'll do one run-through tomorrow, another one in the evening on Wednesday, then another on Thursday (if it's needed, and if experience is any guide, I'll do one anyway). Friday is der Tag.

It hadn't seriously hit me that I'm to be the SLD Administrator until I got an email this afternoon from the ATA, basically congratulating me and all the other new division officers and looking forward to everyone seeing everyone else in Phoenix. I also got a note from the coordinator of the grading committee, inviting me to participate in some additional activities.

Somehow, I don't think I'm going to have the time to sneak away and see Matrix Revolutions.

It's been a long, hard day. Time to turn on the heat, watch a little tube, and then go to bed.

Cheers...