Thursday, December 07, 2006

*GASP*

First off, I want to say Happy B-day Engineer Boy!!!

One of my favorite engineers had his birthday today. A handful of us are going out to celebrate. He's just a baaaaby though. He's 25. (I think... I may be off a year one way or the other…)

Ok, now that that's out of the way....

We are fast approaching the end of the year. This means that per my company's policy (gah! too many corporate words!!) we have to do our annual electronic review by the end of the month. Well, since I won't be here much of the rest of the month, I figured I'd better at least attempt to get it worked on this week. We have to list our achievements for the year and all that fun stuff. Basically, we've got to write a whole new 'resume' of sorts every year. It sucks. I hate it and the web page really is painful to use, but hey, I want to continue to get paid, so I've got to do what I've got to do.
Well, looking at last year's for inspiration, I decided I needed to know exactly how much time I've spent training this year. Mind you, that includes travel days and days I did training here in my office. Here are the scary numbers:
3 -- Number of months I was on the road less than 50% of the time
82.35 -- Highest percentage of time away in one month. It was November, so it was not as bad as it sounds, since I was commuting from home.
6 -- Number of months I was on the road more than 60% of the time. (I was told this would be a 40-60% travel time job....)
26.09 -- Lowest percentage of time away in one month. This was August. If you remember my blogs from back then, you can tell I was bored stiff. This is why. I don't like being on the road, but I do like to be productive. For me, being productive means teaching, which, unfortunately at times, means being on the road.
56.67 -- Average for the year of time spent away. This is just below that magic 60% I was told two years ago.

I can't compare month-to-month with last year, as Outlook ate most of my data by archiving or deleting my appointments prior to the end of October. (Thank you Microsoft!)

Anyhow, this proves a couple of things I'd been thinking. It shows that I have been working my tail off in general. It also shows that my theory about summers is right and why I was so unhappy with my job in July and August. I admit, I needed that down time in the beginning of July after a hectic June, but 2 months was a bit excessive. You give me that much downtime and I loose what focus I had and can't get moving again when I have to. (Yes, I prove Newton's laws of motion quite well some days....)

Gah. I just re-read those last few paragraphs. Can't you tell I had a scientific schooling? It's not a bad thing, but man does it make me sound geeky!
Well, I've got a few more things to wrap up before I head out to pick up Gak and go celebrate Mr. Engineer's birthday. Peace to all and may you be busy but not swamped. (Also, revel in your geekdom, whatever it may be!)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey. Thanks for the birthday wishes! I'm soo excited to hang out tonight and kick back a few. And woohoo I'm one of the favorites! :)