Disjointed but with purpose
So yesterday was the watershed moment for the reason I couldn't go to Corflu this year.
Every year around this time I have to send some files to an outside vendor who runs a website for us that allows students to sign up for the commencement exercises in June. This involves gathering some files from the three branch campuses, and I spent last Thursday and Friday consulting about and collecting the files. On Monday I imported them into the proper databases, reformatted them, refamiliarized myself with how everything fit together, and generally made sure that everything was ready to roll. What I had to do yesterday was pretty simple, basically running macros and then reformatting the resulting tables into tab-delimited text files. I also wrote up the procedures for all this, because I've become acutely aware of being the only one who knows how to do this job now.
These days I frequently feel like a monkey running around in the ruins of a previous civilization. I run databases that my forebears wrote -- forebears who were lost to death and budget cuts. These databases are often black boxes to me. I don't understand how they work, I just run the macros. There are some, like the commencement databases, that I've worked with enough that I have some understanding of them and have even made modifications. But if I were asked to write them from scratch, I probably wouldn't be able to do it. My expertise is really in the underlying data structures, the institutional knowledge and policies -- the "business rules" as they apply to student data. That's valuable knowledge, for sure, but we are sorely missing somebody with in-depth knowledge of SQL and/or statistics.
Well, that's more about work than I had intended to get into. I was explaining why I couldn't make it to Corflu this year. I did manage to join the fun in the virtual consuite/program a time or two, and many thanks to the folks who made that possible. I won a FAAn Award this year for Alternative Pants, so I also thank those who voted for me, bless your hearts -- and thanks also to carl for the great design and layout work on the zine. This award was in a new category for one-shots or fanthologies. This ended up being a weak category, and one that a lot of people didn't understand, although certainly there was another strong candidate in Travlin' Jiant, the collection of Art Widner's writing put together by Kim Huett, which came in second. Andy Hooper indicated during the ceremony that the category wouldn't be continued, and I would agree with that decision. It's true that single issue fanzines rarely get award recognition, and are expressly excluded from Hugo consideration, but there probably aren't enough of them in any given year to support their own award category. Still, it was nice to get the recognition, and it also reminded me of what a great trip that was. It reminded me of all the friends I visited and hung out with on my travels, and it reminded me of previous fun times, like the 2002 Corflu where I met the fishlifters, the 1996 Worldcon where I met gerisullivan, or my 2003 TAFF trip where I met reverendjim and pingopark.
It also made me think about my vague idea of going to Novacon again this year. I didn't make it to Corflu and won't be making it to the Chicago Worldcon, so Novacon beckons again. However, lately I've been feeling like that wasn't going to happen, both because I'm feeling so wiped out from work and because my sister and I are planning to take Mom to France in 2013 for her 80th birthday, and then it's the London Worldcon in 2014, and maybe another British Corflu in 2015. How many years in a row can I afford to travel across the Atlantic? But another Belgian adventure sounds like just what the doctor ordered right about now. Wouldn't that be a nice reward for all my hard work and stress this year?
Still dreaming ...
Every year around this time I have to send some files to an outside vendor who runs a website for us that allows students to sign up for the commencement exercises in June. This involves gathering some files from the three branch campuses, and I spent last Thursday and Friday consulting about and collecting the files. On Monday I imported them into the proper databases, reformatted them, refamiliarized myself with how everything fit together, and generally made sure that everything was ready to roll. What I had to do yesterday was pretty simple, basically running macros and then reformatting the resulting tables into tab-delimited text files. I also wrote up the procedures for all this, because I've become acutely aware of being the only one who knows how to do this job now.
These days I frequently feel like a monkey running around in the ruins of a previous civilization. I run databases that my forebears wrote -- forebears who were lost to death and budget cuts. These databases are often black boxes to me. I don't understand how they work, I just run the macros. There are some, like the commencement databases, that I've worked with enough that I have some understanding of them and have even made modifications. But if I were asked to write them from scratch, I probably wouldn't be able to do it. My expertise is really in the underlying data structures, the institutional knowledge and policies -- the "business rules" as they apply to student data. That's valuable knowledge, for sure, but we are sorely missing somebody with in-depth knowledge of SQL and/or statistics.
Well, that's more about work than I had intended to get into. I was explaining why I couldn't make it to Corflu this year. I did manage to join the fun in the virtual consuite/program a time or two, and many thanks to the folks who made that possible. I won a FAAn Award this year for Alternative Pants, so I also thank those who voted for me, bless your hearts -- and thanks also to carl for the great design and layout work on the zine. This award was in a new category for one-shots or fanthologies. This ended up being a weak category, and one that a lot of people didn't understand, although certainly there was another strong candidate in Travlin' Jiant, the collection of Art Widner's writing put together by Kim Huett, which came in second. Andy Hooper indicated during the ceremony that the category wouldn't be continued, and I would agree with that decision. It's true that single issue fanzines rarely get award recognition, and are expressly excluded from Hugo consideration, but there probably aren't enough of them in any given year to support their own award category. Still, it was nice to get the recognition, and it also reminded me of what a great trip that was. It reminded me of all the friends I visited and hung out with on my travels, and it reminded me of previous fun times, like the 2002 Corflu where I met the fishlifters, the 1996 Worldcon where I met gerisullivan, or my 2003 TAFF trip where I met reverendjim and pingopark.
It also made me think about my vague idea of going to Novacon again this year. I didn't make it to Corflu and won't be making it to the Chicago Worldcon, so Novacon beckons again. However, lately I've been feeling like that wasn't going to happen, both because I'm feeling so wiped out from work and because my sister and I are planning to take Mom to France in 2013 for her 80th birthday, and then it's the London Worldcon in 2014, and maybe another British Corflu in 2015. How many years in a row can I afford to travel across the Atlantic? But another Belgian adventure sounds like just what the doctor ordered right about now. Wouldn't that be a nice reward for all my hard work and stress this year?
Still dreaming ...