measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post-holiday thoughts and meanders We had a new rollout at work today-- now everyone is required to fill out a weekly timesheet so we know where to classify each worker's time... which book budget, etc. The kicker is that everyone is a salaried employee, and the timesheet allows only 35 hours of claimed time. I'd like to know who in my office works anything resembling a 35 hour week. Seriously. Even I put more time in the office, and I'm probably putting in the LEAST amount of time, with exception of the short-hour employees, because technically I do qualify for overtime (even if they won't allow me to go over 40 hours). It's been a great morale kicker, lemme tell ya. People were already feeling pretty depressed, since the recession technically just hit my work field this year. We were surviving relatively comfortably in 2001 and 2002 thanks to the state budgets that had been passed before things got bad. But now we're in 2003, where state budgets from 2001 and 2002 were passed, and it's hitting us hard. People are really, really depressed. We haven't had layoffs in my office yet, although people who have left have not been replaced, and it's already starting to kick us hard resource-wise. This timesheet thing just rubs it in further, in my opinion. And yes, I voiced that issue when this idea was first conceptualized back in March. Didn't do a lot of good. *sigh* So a good chunk of my day today was spent doing fractions in my head because staff employees (as opposed to our contract employees) only put a percentage of their time on these sheets... it's a whole complicated thing. I can say this-- I'm much better at dividing by 7 than I was at 4 p.m. yesterday. I believe I have mastered the concept of dividing by 7 (and 3.5) today. It's about all I've done today, other than wait on the phone to get in touch with Apple about the sick 'puter. Barring anything else that might be wrong, my laptop screen is not working-- either a connection to the screen is loose, or the card is failing. Whether it's related to the cat-astrophe of a few weeks ago, I don't know. But Apple's sending a box out for me to ship it back to California, and they're going to take a look at it. Hopefully it will be something warranty-related and can get fixed. It's protected under Apple Care until 2005. Otherwise, this could be a mighty painful fix. Like Jeep cost in May fix. Grrrrr.... Despite the Mac problems of the weekend, it was a good weekend. Hotter than hell, but we spent the weekend relaxing and just enjoying the time off. Our town had its parade and firework celebrations on the 3rd. We didn't attend the parade, but we went down and sat on our apartment complex's lawn to watch the fireworks. Unfortunately, between some fog and then the smoke from the fireworks, we could barely see anything. Just the bottom arc of any of the globe-style fireworks, and some nifty colors in the fog that made it look like bombs were coming down or something. I feel sorry for the firemen who decided to put the show on-- it definitely was a display that should have been postponed for weather. For the Fourth, we met up with Erich's dad and one of his dad's friends. We saw the Hulk in the afternoon (it was pretty good... I'm not a fan of the comic, so it wasn't *great* for me) and then went to his dad's for a dinner of steaks, salads, etc. Erich's dad also celebrated his birthday over the weekend, and his friend brought over a $400 bottle of wine... which I had the privilege of tasting. It was quite good, even if I'm not a huge fan of wine. I knew I wouldn't have that opportunity again, so I had to jump on it, right? Erich's dad and his friend are huge wine enthusiasts, and opened three different bottles during the night. We spent Saturday relaxing. We'd originally planned on heading down to Newport, Rhode Island, for the day, but decided that between potential money issues and the heat, we should just stay at home and go some other time. We played some mini-golf (at an old and poorly maintained place... Erich beat me by six shots), got some ice cream, and watched Enemy at the Gates, which we rented from Blockbuster. Great movie-- extremely suspenseful. I highly recommend it... especially if you enjoy war movies at all. Erich took his dad golfing yesterday morning, and I spent the morning doing some cleaning in the apartment, bitching mentally about the computer, and doing some little things for my penpalling groups on yahoo. We had lunch with Erich's dad, and then came home and vegged. It was a good day. Erich received his copy of the UK version of Harry Potter 5. We've managed to misplace it already... but once we find it, I'll start reading it and doing the comparison. Goddess knows without my computer, I'm at a loss to do much else these days. *sniff* No Sims... *sniff* Okay, I'm done whining. Back to data entry... ~ Mel. 4:42 p.m. - 07 July 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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