Of criticality circuits...

I am going nuts right now, searching for something that I know exists on my hard drive, but which defies my best efforts at finding it.

Add to that Microsoft Word's behavior in the face of truly awful source files (if exceptions were baseballs, Word could play center field for the Red Sox or the Rockies).

Fortunately, I haven't backed off from yesterday's pessimal schedule prediction. I may make use of it yet.

Cheers...

Someday...

...when I have infinitely more time than I have now, I'm going to try to understand why anyone with the mental capacity to use a computer keyboard would suspend such capacity to embed a series of Word document paragraphs in fields. Actually, when I have just some extra time, I should probably bone up on Word fields, just for the heck of it, in case I run across a document in which they are used rationally.

The document I thought would only be ready about two hours ago was sent out about when it was supposed to (a little after noon), although I wasn't too happy about the formatting. There appeared to be about a million different styles in the document, and attempting to cut and paste text from various documents into the one I created as the "final" document resulted in some pretty interesting rearrangement of text on the screen. Unfortunately, it was not feasible to cut and paste stuff so as to avoid paragraph-level styles, since this was - after all - a 67-page document.

However, I had to get it off my plate so I could start the next document, which is due by 9 am tomorrow (even though I said it couldn't be done). Unfortunately (a second use of the word, which itself is unfortunate), the document will be ready by the stated time tomorrow.

Why is that unfortunate? Well, as I stated yesterday, after whinging to the client about how I was almost certainly going to be late, etc. I now find that I've made up the lost time. However, it's likely that the client has recalibrated its karma to expect the documents late, and has probably informed the end client, who has probably performed a similar recalibration, so the net result of the performance is that hewing to the original schedule nets no brownie points for moi and, more than likely, brands me as a nervous Nellie for the near term, thus leaving a less-than-pleasant taste in client's mouth.

Those that might expect my previously flawless track record with said client to be worth something when everything is placed in the balance should keep in mind the ancient wisdom of: "One screwup wipes out a thousand pats on the back."

* * *My plate is back up to the 100% level until basically next Friday, with just a bit of time left over for me and Galina to visit Feht out on Cat Creek on Sunday, and maybe make a quick trip to Farmington sometime next week.

Yesterday, Feht, Maria, Galina, I, and Ken F. had dinner at the recently (?) renamed "Boss Hogg's" (a step up from the "Hog's Breath Saloon," nie?). The food was okay, but I caught us sitting around like a bunch of old fuddy-duddies, discussing aches and pains (I did keep my mouth shut during this phase of the conversation). Despite the snappy conversation (not!), it was good to see everyone again after all this time.

* * *The Epson CX6400 that's been sitting downstairs since I-don't-know-when still has ink in it, but I'm probably going to have to clean the heads a number of times to get them unclogged. Two monitors are nice, but there comes a time you really need to print stuff out! (Hint to self: Once the ink starts flowing, you'll find the printer isn't much use without paper!)

* * *The new Facebook application for the BlackBerry won't work on my 7130e. This is probably a good thing.

Cheers...