Entry tags:
Making Progress...
(Don't you just hate it when the 'Update Journal' feature eats your entry? It just happened to me when I clicked on the question mark next to the 'Tags' field.)
In short, I felt significantly better when I laid the last of the BTJ (Big Translation Job™) down on phosphor earlier today. I even didn't mind the interrupted sleep period due to what seems to be an instinctive desire on the part of hotel housekeeping staff to clean rooms regardless of the wishes of their occupants.
This first became apparent to me back when I was a young control systems engineer working on a municipal garbage incinerator project startup back in the day. Being the junior guy, I drew the night shift, which obviously meant I had to get my shuteye during the day. But in order to sleep, I needed no interruptions.
This meant no phone calls. And no housekeeping.
Simple? Guess again.
The phone issue eventually went away - temporarily - when I made it clear to all who called me that I was trying to sleep, for crying out loud, and not because the hotel operator cooperatively agreed to not put through calls to my room for any reason short of fire, riot, or insurrection. In retrospect, I half-suspect the hotel operator might have been fishing for a little extra something on the side to keep my phone from jingling, I don't know. The housekeeping issue, on the other hand, never went away.
It didn't matter what I did, nothing would keep the housekeeping staff from trying to clean my room. Signs on the door were ignored. Requests not to knock on the door were ignored. When it became clear that I was not to be interrupted by knocks on the door, the phone problem resurfaced as housekeepers called several times a day to ask if now would be a good time to come in and clean up.
Ye gods, I get a headache just recalling that episode, as well as my management's lukewarm response to my request to change hotels. We were, after all, on a budget and my boss (the other half of the startup team) didn't like not being able to collar me any time he felt like it (though in truth, he rarely exercised that ability).
Basically the same scenario of daytime interruption (knocking, followed by a couple of phone calls) played out at the Marriott today, with the happy difference being that the Marriott only provides housekeeping twice a week (oh, happy day!) unless requested more frequently (certainly not by me!).
In the end, I ended up with a little over 6 hours of uneasy sleep, which will have to do. In anticipation of having to check about 25,000 words for submittal later today, I arrived at work a couple of hours early, only to find that almost everyone else was here as well, following the launch of the latest Progress cargo vehicle (filled with all sorts of goodies, including that all-time favorite of Earthlings everywhere: oxygen!). Everything seems to be going well, though the U.S. side - as usual - is greedy for data on how things are going. It would appear that so far, alles ist in ordnung.
Cheers...
In short, I felt significantly better when I laid the last of the BTJ (Big Translation Job™) down on phosphor earlier today. I even didn't mind the interrupted sleep period due to what seems to be an instinctive desire on the part of hotel housekeeping staff to clean rooms regardless of the wishes of their occupants.
This first became apparent to me back when I was a young control systems engineer working on a municipal garbage incinerator project startup back in the day. Being the junior guy, I drew the night shift, which obviously meant I had to get my shuteye during the day. But in order to sleep, I needed no interruptions.
This meant no phone calls. And no housekeeping.
Simple? Guess again.
The phone issue eventually went away - temporarily - when I made it clear to all who called me that I was trying to sleep, for crying out loud, and not because the hotel operator cooperatively agreed to not put through calls to my room for any reason short of fire, riot, or insurrection. In retrospect, I half-suspect the hotel operator might have been fishing for a little extra something on the side to keep my phone from jingling, I don't know. The housekeeping issue, on the other hand, never went away.
It didn't matter what I did, nothing would keep the housekeeping staff from trying to clean my room. Signs on the door were ignored. Requests not to knock on the door were ignored. When it became clear that I was not to be interrupted by knocks on the door, the phone problem resurfaced as housekeepers called several times a day to ask if now would be a good time to come in and clean up.
Ye gods, I get a headache just recalling that episode, as well as my management's lukewarm response to my request to change hotels. We were, after all, on a budget and my boss (the other half of the startup team) didn't like not being able to collar me any time he felt like it (though in truth, he rarely exercised that ability).
Basically the same scenario of daytime interruption (knocking, followed by a couple of phone calls) played out at the Marriott today, with the happy difference being that the Marriott only provides housekeeping twice a week (oh, happy day!) unless requested more frequently (certainly not by me!).
In the end, I ended up with a little over 6 hours of uneasy sleep, which will have to do. In anticipation of having to check about 25,000 words for submittal later today, I arrived at work a couple of hours early, only to find that almost everyone else was here as well, following the launch of the latest Progress cargo vehicle (filled with all sorts of goodies, including that all-time favorite of Earthlings everywhere: oxygen!). Everything seems to be going well, though the U.S. side - as usual - is greedy for data on how things are going. It would appear that so far, alles ist in ordnung.
Cheers...