Hanging out, listening in

For the record, alchemists
usually work alone

In the nonstop glamour that is my professional life, there is ample opportunity to become involved in meetings of all manners.  Planning meetings, update meetings, strategy meetings, advice meetings, etc and so forth and on and on.

Yesterday there was a 7-HOUR meeting to talk through a 180-page document.

Seven hours was not enough.  The team reconvened at 5 p.m. last night and appeared to have remained online for at least 3 hours.

Even that was not enough, for today the team are meeting for at least 3 MORE hours to talk through the last 20 or so pages of the document.  Which means, of course, that the computer systems are super-slow and seem to be teetering on the brink of collapse in the meeting sharing window.

The best part of this is that I'm really only just listening in to folks talking through the issues, picking apart what's been written, re-dictating crafted language, and scrambling to get this done.  I feel really bad for them, as this is a project that was super-sped up by the big bosses in the face of what was already a challenging timeline.  They're doing their absolute BEST, but jeez, how much can be asked of a group of individuals?  They're practicing virtual alchemy to create a golden ticket from a pile of confusion and conflicting opinions, at incredible speed.

It's astounding.  And for once I'm glad I'm not the one driving the content.  I just have to own the process, which is enough.

It's going to be enough to QC that 11-page reference list against the text...and get the data-driven sections QC'ed...and ensure it's publishable...in the next 10 days.

Goodbye, weekend.

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So, big eclipse plans?

Me neither.

The kiddoes are going with their Dad down to SC to see it happen, which is a nice thing to do with their Dad I suppose.  He's pretty big on Life Event things, so they have those moments built into their collective life experiences.  Me?  I'm not a planner and don't really like to go to place where I know a crowd will also be, so tend to just stay home and live vicariously through the participants on the street.

After seeing what happened in Charlottesville and Barcelona this week, maybe staying off the streets isn't a bad idea.

But, eclipse.  Let's talk about that.

Way back when (1991? 1992?  Can't recall), there was an eclipse, which happened during work hours.  I know this because all us science nerds were hanging out in the windowed stairwell of the beautiful new research building, peering up at the sun through a tiny window of a 'floppy' disc.

What?

Yup.  Apparently one can view an eclipse directly by pulling back the 'locking' tabs on the floppy disc and using the disc itself to screen out harmful rays of sunshine.  Like this:

Ta daaaaah!

We probably looked really cool doing this in our white lab coats, a mass of nerdiness peering like Devo at the fireball in the sky.

Heck, 'probably' nothing.  We rocked the look and the eclipse, then got right back to work saving the world.

Good times.

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And that's twice this month I've posted.  You are welcome.

Tiff out.