15 January 2002

Matt's not leaving town until tomorrow, he found out. Hurrah!

It was awfully hard to get out of bed this morning. Again. It was warm, and Matt was snuggly, and we were both sleepy...

We're not running nearly so late today, though.

It isn't getting any lighter in the mornings, though. I keep telling Matt, I think someone lied to me about this whole solstice thing.

I got a new project at work yesterday, finally.

Bad thing: It's not programming.

Good thing: It's not writing test scripts.

Bad thing: It's writing documentation.

Good thing: I got the job because the manager noticed that I'm an excellent writer. (I'm not bragging; if you compare my writing to the average code-slinger's writing, mine is excellent. Not only do I know what comprises complete sentences, I tend to follow most of the important grammatical rules and check my spelling.) In any case, being noticed by the management for something good is a bonus.

Bad thing: There are mountains of other documentation to wade through and contacts to talk to before I'll feel like I really have a grasp of this project.

Good thing: Since I don't know much about the project, writing the documentation will be an actual intellectual challenge, which I haven't had for a while here.

Neutral thing, at least so far: The project manager's boss is going to be using this as part of her supporting material when she presents the project to her bosses in early March. Which means this is a fairly high-visibility thing for me. This could be good, or it could be bad, depending on how well I do.

Good thing: The timing for the project means I'll be working on it for most of the time Matt's out of town. More or less, depending on exactly how long Matt's out of town. This is good because it will give me something to think about. I may even wind up going out of town on a short trip (1-2 days) myself.

Good thing: It's been a while since I've written any papers, but I'm reasonably confident that the timeline I'm working with will give me ample time to do the project, without either making me bored or putting my back up against the wall.

By the way, when I say "documentation" I'm not talking about user manuals. I've done those before, and they're not much of a challenge. And anyway, we have an actual, if overworked, team of technical writers to write manuals for us.

What I'm going to be writing is a "Concept of Operations" - that is, a document detailing how a project will work - who's responsible for what pieces, where the money will come from for each stage, and generally how things will, in theory, happen. My project manager doesn't know the answers to some of these questions, which means I'll be doing his job, in part, to figure that stuff out.

Amazing. How long has it been since I actually had a project where the good things outnumbered the bad things? How long since I had a project interesting enough that I was making notes to myself in the shower? How long since I didn't dread the very thought of going to work?

Too damn long, I tell you.

Time for me to get to work.

--Liz