Tuesday, February 23, 2010

kill me

After a good night's sleep (despite the heat & humidity - take that insomnia), an enjoyable morning full of coffee (perhaps too much coffee - which made it pass quickly if rather twitchily) and a pleasant early afternoon working with a friend I have hit the wall.

Specifically a wall of FUCKING image storage disks. Dating from 1999 to the present day. About 20-30 boxes of them, upwards of 2000 disks in total. In a variety of different formats used over the years. With a bewildering number of arbitrary 'identifiers' used by the particular scanning company of the day or the idiosyncratic notation of the registrations manager at the time.

These have to be laboriously individually inserted into the computer and opened and investigated and have the batch and job numbers checked with what's written on the front of the actual disk and any discrepancies noted and explored and the results entered in a spreadsheet if it's a birth or a death batch and the date of original load into the image database and the original scan date if that's different and is dRiVinG Me FrEaKIng MAD.

I started thinking about looking for a new job the other day but faced with a week of doing this soul-crushing mindless spirit-breaking annoying brain-frying FUCKING job I'm just about willing to jack it in, run screaming from the building with my underpants on my head, and join a cult.

I've already got the haircut after all. And I think I'm already borderline insane.

3 comments:

helena said...

You have my utter sympathy on this job. It sounds like a nightmare. Are you allowed to play music while you work? Might help...

fishboy said...

Yes, music helps - as does the internet when I allow myself a break. Which is quite often - I'm a great boss.

I think I've managed to cauterize my synapses enough to tolerate the job for now. Madness is always lurking on the fringes though...

helena said...

It's good to have an understanding boss!