Yesterday, Melissa and I took Dagny to the dog park for lunch in hopes that she would run and play with all the other dogs at the park. Well, it being a Tuesday, there were no other dogs at the park at noon. We hung out for a little bit and then decided to go for a walk in the woods behind the park. There is a nice little trail back there, perfect to let Dag off-leash to run and play. She LOVES running on trails through the woods and was in heaven. Then something very unexpected happened. We came upon a stream that had a foot deep area where the water was pooling. It was crystal clear, and flowing nicely….until Dag crashed through it like the crazy pup she is. We were shocked, because every other time there has been any water play, it’s been hesitant at best. This time, she was all about it.
Seeing this as an opportunity to get Dagny to jump head first into a river, we headed down the path a bit more to an area where we knew we could access the flowing “river”. When we got there, we realized that it probably wasn’t going to be the best spot for her to swim, as the banks were very steep and the water was kind of murky… I started to walk closer to the edge when my trusty flip-flops lost traction in the VERY slippery mud. I proceeded to fall onto my side and slide down the embankment into the stream. As if that weren’t bad enough, but my feet sunk into the mud a solid foot deep. They were in so deep that I actually had to reach my hand in to pluck out my flip-flop from the murky water.
I was able to pull myself out of the mud, but was covered on the whole right side of my body. Oh well.
Later that day, we stopped by the Dekalb Farmers Market. As we were walking around, I saw that they had some fresh apple cider. I remembered a brew club meeting that I went to years ago and a spiced holiday cider that a guy there had made. I checked the label on the cider at the market, and sure enough, no sulfites, no preservatives, just flash pasteurized cider. We were in business. I loaded up the cart with 5 gallons of cider and headed home. 12 Cinnamon sticks, 1 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon allspice, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, 8 oz brown sugar, 4 oz honey, 4 oz maple syrup and a hearty portion of yeast from an old batch of beer that we brewed and we’re in business. I now have a bubbling carboy going nuts in my living room. It should be interesting if nothing else.
Work has been pretty miserable. I’ve been working so little because we have severe data dependencies that are just not being met. We’re waiting for data, but because we’re not in the critical path, it’s just not coming. I’ve gone beyond the point of actually caring if it gets done, but I know that I’m going to have some long days when we finally DO have data, which is fine, but it’s annoying in the short term.
Anyway, I am about to make some coffee and start my day.

This week was perhaps the hardest I have ever had to work since I’ve started working in consulting. Let me give you a brief rundown of what I’m up against on my current project.
We’re attempting to install a financial reporting solution using a business intelligence tool. That in and of itself is annoying.
I am trying to use a transactional database (think excel workbook full of data) to do OLAP (think Microsoft Access) reporting. It’s not meant to do that, it makes things a pain, and it’s slow as shit.
I’ve never done this. Ever. Not even once.
We have a huge team of highly incompetent people working on all of the data that we are relying upon to build this reporting solution…oh wait…they are running 6 months behind, so I have no data. Do you know how hard it is to build out metadata for a reporting solution that has no data when you have never done it? Yeah, it’s damn near impossible.
We have a client that thinks they know a bunch about the BI tool that we’re using. They don’t know shit. They went to my manager this week and said they had “concerns” about my metadata work that I had been doing. When I first started on this project I told them all…everyone one of them that I had never done this before. I explained that I would need lots of support. What did I get? Nothing. Not a thing.
So….after all that, we have a tight timeline where things MUST BE DELIVERED (bullshit) by a certain date (arbitrary). It’s so fucking lame. I’m so sick of it and it’s times like this that I hate and love my job. Every day that I go to work it’s a challenge, but I just wish the stakes were a bit lower…you know…like not having the entire project hinge upon my ability to get the work done.
Anyway… I finally sent up the distress signal today and we’re having a Senior Manager come up to Charlotte to help me out with the metadata to make sure that I’m building it correctly and to really push us towards a better solution. If nothing else, he’ll be able to put the client in their place and tell them that they have no fucking clue what they are talking about.
So what am I doing now to relax? Venting on my blog and sucking down some of my good Russian friend….ol’ Rasputin. Fucking love that swill.