Let the games begin!

Not sure exactly what the title has to do with anything, actually, but it was going through my mind. Mostly, I think, because today has been a very game-playing day already. This proposal is, thankfully, due Friday but until then, Proposal Madness continues. The people who are wanting to be subs for us (we're set to prime) are still resisting everything and are making comments like, "We're not sure what value you actually add." Grr. Kate is still tearing her hair out, we're still missing entire sections, and they keep needing me to make changes to the Word document because apparantly I'm the only non-inept person when it comes to word processing. I don't mind all that much...except that they give it to me with this aura like I'm a glorified secretary. I feel like asking them to help me out with this java code real quick and then I'll get to their document editing. But I don't. I just smile and go in and add captions to their figures because they can't figure out how. I just don't get how Word is this mysterious creature to so many people. Back to the "not average" issue, discussed previously, I guess.

Beyond that, my code didn't run over the weekend because we lost power. So I kicked it off again this morning and it has finished, making three beautiful flat files, nicely importable into your DB of choice. I have since imported them into SQL server, glanced over them, and handed them off. Of course, I did all this crap because the guy (who I know is making more than me because he has 20 years of programming experience *choke* *cough* *sputter*) couldn't get it to work. Of course, part of this may be because it was suggested that this be done with perl. It's not required, it was just one thing suggested. So he doesn't know perl (at which point I say use something else rather than futz around with something you have no clue about -- we don't have time for a learning curve, we're over 2 weeks late already!) and just messes around until he can get something. He fussed for 2 weeks on this stuff. Again we see that it took me 2 days, and that includes a few hours for deleting and having to get Mike to find my file for me, to redo it and get it right. I guess it's like Word...some people just like making things harder than they need to be.

We also have apparntly hired some interns. This is fascinating as I'm not sure what work they're going to do (for all we're 2 weeks behind on this one project, it's not like we have work breaking down our doors...now that my little piece of that is done, I'm back on overhead with proposal writing and another demo I'm working on). So...whatever. This is only of note to me today because Mike (sys admin extraordinaire) had no clue they were hired and starting today and thus we have no machines for them and so...he's gotten chewed up a little for not being prepared for them but if no one tells him they're coming...what's he supposed to do?? Anyway, just fascinating the things that go on here.

And if that's not enough...my hair is, at best, average today. *sigh*

On the positive side, I have tickets for Star Wars on Wednesday night (well, Thursday at 12:01 a.m.) so that is definitely cool. Will review Thursday...still trying to decide if I'm going to be part of the absenteeism crisis on Thursday or not. Have to see how I'm feeling I guess.