6/21/07

Okay, so I haven’t written here in quite a while, and there has been no shortage of things to write about, just shortage of time. The passing out turned out to be just vasovagal syncope. The blood pressure monitor didn’t reveal anything new, and my cardiologist’s medical assistant was most unhelpful. She just called to tell me that they got the results from the monitor and that the doctor wasn’t going to prescribe anything. But he had already prescribed the metroprolol, so I tried to question her as to whether that meant I needed to keep taking that or not. She didn’t bother to confirm with the doctor, just told me to keep taking whatever I am taking. So I took it for a while, but I finally just quit because it wasn’t helping anything at all. My blood pressure may be borderline, but I know it’s not normally as high as it is when I am dealing with people like her. I have a follow up a week from tomorrow.

I passed both of my classes, and that was a big stress relief. I got an A in Data Structures and Aglorithms in C++, and barely a B in Calculus-based Physics. That Physics course was such a bear! If Calculus had been more fresh in my mind, I might have done better. I forgot until after the semester was over that I was taking two 4-credit courses rather than 3-credit courses. It’s no wonder my workload was huge. I only got that B by rounding up, and I worked for every point of it. My lab partner didn’t come through, so I did the final project entirely on my own. That project was meant for three people to do, and I kind of slapped together what I could the weekend before it was due. I had to rig up experiments out of household items since I couldn’t get any more lab time at the school, but I got bonus points for creativity. And I survived it all without hurting my GPA much. I am registered for Calculus II next semester, and that is all I am taking – just one course per semester now. I only have 6 or 7 to go.

Meanwhile, I have been slaving away at multiple projects at work. Gone of the days of working on just one project at a time. Now I juggle multiple projects every day. The biggest one has been redesigning our time & expense billing system to support our european business segment. So I have been fighting with day formats and currency conversions for months now. That system just went live last week in Germany where all of the european employees were gathering for an annual meeting. No, the Euro did not make it much easier to code because they are still working in local currencies too. The only thing that provided us is an intermediate currency to convert to in the absence of a direct conversion. Oh, and I only have about four weeks of “rest” before they are going to start pressing me to add support for our Asia-Pacific segment as well.

That’s just one of the big projects, but there are over a dozen more – I kid you not. So my boss assigned our consultant to work under me for a while until my burden lifts a bit. But as you probably know, that’s time consuming too. Obviously, my boss is testing my managerial skills now, and he mentioned having me start to oversee other work done by my teammates too. It just feels like a lot of work for one person, but my boss is trying to get me help wherever I need it. I don’t think it will ever slow down ever again.