6:00 AM
Alarm goes off, cats are fed. Brush the teeth, wash the face, pick out clothes. Stop the cats from eating each other’s food. Finish morning ablutions.
6:45 AM
Figure out lunch, pack bag, pet cats.
7:00 AM
Leave the apartment, grooving to the Prisoner soundtrack.
7:15 AM
Get on the El train to the city, grab a seat and turn the iPod to Notes to read TWoP recaps.
7:35 AM
Off the El, walk to the office’s shuttle stop.
7:45 AM
Office shuttle leaves for work.
7:55 AM
Arrive at work.
8:00 AM
Log on, check mail, get coffee.
8:30 AM
Fellow coder comes by to discuss issue. Takes the error log to his desk.
9:00 AM
Team Meeting. Boss asks for status etc.
9:55 AM
Return to desk to work on problem with London.
10:00 AM
‘All Hands’ meeting, to hear about how people taking the credit for shit my team does. Make snide comments to coworkers in order to stay awake.
11:00 AM
Return to desk to finish London work. Realize the entire code is FUBAR and start over. Coder from 8:30 calls to say he found the problem, files were missing. Must rebuild that too. Spend the next hour on rebuilds.
12:00 AM
Lunch: Finish rebuilds and get started on other London problem. They’ve all gone home in the UK, so it’s time to email and give them status. Try to finish paperwork and reviewing other programs.
1:00 PM
8:30 guy comes down and verifies the code now works. Huzzaah! But the documentation sucks, so we must redo that.
2:00 PM
Meeting where GrandBoss tells us we’ll be re-working our procedures. Many people find issues with it, but we all act diplomatic and try and be constructive. Suspect, personally, that this will add more time to an already long process. GB wants us to try. Okay, but not till March.
3:00 PM
Return to desk to finish London app.
3:15 PM
Get told Problem App killed another app.
3:30 PM
Quick test of Problem App and Dead App shows we can’t recreate the problem. So I go to the lab and start working with the others.
5:45 PM
Finally determine that it’s not Problem App, at least, we don’t think so. Might be. Basically, we have no idea why it’s happening, we can’t reproduce it, and the only thing we can get close to it isn’t the same and it shows. We can fix it, though.
5:50 PM
Handle last, lingering problem, share a few curses with the Boss, giggle like girls.
6:00 PM
Leave the office. Fucking hell, i normally leave at 4:30!
6:15 PM
Get on the El. Hear a report that there was an ‘incident’ on the Red Line, but the trains are going to my stop.
7:30 PM
The normal 30 min train ride takes an hour-fifteen. Meet a nice girl named Susan who’s angsting about a date she’s late for. Cute boy. I loan her my cell phone to call him. He’s late too.
7:35 PM
I try a Chantico. Determine it’s yummy as a concept, but it’s burnt. Per usual for Starbucks. Bastards. Susan meets her boy, I go home.
7:50 PM
Home. 12 hours and fifty minutes. Bastards.