management monday

so, we had our management meeting today. adam brought in posters to illustrate his points. why he couldn’t just use the whiteboards, I don’t know. anyway, it was great… in a twisted sense. he explained to us his great system for making it so easy to see which drawer name correlates to which bin number, using this folder structure. see? I about died when mick jr said, “but we have spreadsheets that tell us that…” oh man. lauren kicked him under the table as he started telling adam that it was a waste of time to do it that way. “shh,” she said. “bite your tongue; it won’t do any good to tell him.” adam also showed us his verification process, which had 3 phases. I wish I had my notes with me; I’ll just have to do the best I can without. here’s the process he used:

phase 1 – incorporate rescans of rescans; verify that the image of each rescan matches up with the original image.

phase 2 – check off rescans on qc list

phase 3 – check original images for rescans; verify that the name of each image matches up with the original name

there was more, I know, but that’s all I can guess for now. at any rate, I had to bite my tongue when he showed us that. he was having people go through manually to verify that all the rescans on the qc list got done — after lauren showed him the simple formula to figure it out. plus, you see how in phase 1 he checked that the image was correct, and in phase 3 checked that the name was correct? can you explain to me why you couldn’t do both at once? it seems to me like that might save time…

lauren couldn’t stop laughing when I told her about the drive key thing from friday. I had an 80gb drive in my hand, asked adam if he had a key for it, so he hands me one and says, “do you know how to use it? do you need me to show you?” for crying out loud, if I know that it needs a key, I probably know how to use it. my goodness. so all day we were making jokes about that, and I kept asking her if she could show me how to do really basic stuff. the funniest part is that adam doesn’t seem to have a grasp on a lot of basic stuff. what fun.

watched one fine day last night. talked to ryan on his drive back up to logan. today after work I went to aaron bros. frames to get a frame for that watercolor, the one for ann; I also found a “decorative wall decor with wall mirror and ledge” for $15. maybe I’ll find a picture to put up, because that on its own makes very little sense. then cost plus world market was right next door, so of course I had to stop in. got some tea light candles and holders — china pear. it smells pretty good, though my main reason for that scent (aside from it being one of the few tolerable ones) was the color. it’ll match when I paint my room. granted, I’m using them now, but it was a bag of 25 lights for $3. I thought that was a good deal. I also got some chocolate, of course; but I left it in the car to minimize the bulk I had to carry inside. I’ve really got to clean my car.

oh! the most glorious thing came in the mail: a statement from scholarshare, the california governor’s scholarship fund I have. well, I thought it was gone. I used the last of it for my tuition this past fall semester — but lo and behold, I’ve got another $1,170 for 2005! I have no idea why they put more money in my account, but it’s very good news. it means I can go ahead and start that humanities class through independent study. and another after that. and another after that. all on the state of california. thank you, people in charge of education!

untitled?

so ryan might get engaged soon. but to which of the two potential girls, I don’t know. he doesn’t know. it’s a rather interesting situation. and the one I hope he’ll pick is the opposite from what I would’ve said a week ago. funny how things change like that, huh? anyway, we talked for a long time last night. wait, we always talk for a long time. I got lots of bedtime songs, though, and I told him I felt spoiled because he sang all my favorite james taylor songs. although I was kind of asleep at the time, I enjoyed it. it’s nice to be pampered, even if only over the phone.

tried doing my hair in ringlets today. how on earth do you think lauren does it? her hair is way shorter than mine, but her curls come out so well. bah. I felt like I had cocker spaniel ears all day. it was alright, though, and the interesting stuff at work kept my mind off the weird hair.

here’s the scoop: daryll called this morning to let us know that tomorrow they’d be bringing back all the rescans, complete, and that was 106,874 images. I played around with a lot of pscu numbers after that. want to see?

images on spreadsheets – 174,044
redout bins not included in indexing – approx. 12k (this is factoring in blank removal)
missing images – 5,025
total pscu scans – 191k give or take a few.

well, then we have the 106,874 rescans. I know that includes about 67k redout images, which, after the blanks are removed, turns into only 53k. as luck would have it, 30k of those are already indexed or in the process of being indexed! which leaves 23k redout images still to be indexed, and another 30k full-folder rescans that will get indexed again. then there are just 10k images to be reincorporated.

“just 10k.” funny, isn’t it? the reincorporating is going to give me wrinkles and grey hair. but anyhow, it got really good after that. amanda was in the office today, and she came in to tell liz and lauren and I all about what happened yesterday. mike wasn’t there, for whatever reason; and as part of the “verification” process, amanda discovered quite a few errors with — well, with pretty much everything he did. some folders had been rescanned backwards, which isn’t horrendously bad, but some rescans were given wacko names. for instance, an image would be named 01-MAR-MAR-0010.jpg when it ought to have been 02-MAR-MAT-0010.jpg. now, you look at that and say, well, it isn’t too far off. but you have to manually match the image up now. that’s a big naming error. at that point mick came into the office and asked us to come into the conference room, because he had just gotten off the phone with daryll, who called to let him know about a big problem they’d run into.

interesting thing: daryll told mick that the problem was with the stuff mike qced. which, yes, we looked at the images, and he did miss them. but those can be rechecked. personally, I find bigger issue with the naming errors and scanning order. we called adam then to see what was going on. actually, mick called, but it was on speakerphone. I’m not sure if adam knew that. so adam started going on about how he was doing his “verification,” and they were finding errors that weren’t on the original qc lists, etc., etc. mick asked how he’s doing verification, because he has never made that clear. adam says, “I’m looking at the rescan list, and verifying that each of the files listed there has been rescanned.” yeah, guess what? 1. there’s a really easy formula to do that in excel; it saves time, it’s accurate, lauren showed him how to do it and wrote it down. 2. that’s qc. not production. there’s no need whatsoever for them to be onsite doing that. 3. adam said he wanted to make sure everything was good to pass off to data. hmm… it’s interesting to me that they (according to him) haven’t finished any bins — or even folders — to the point where they can be passed off already. they’ve been doing “verification” for several days and yet not a single folder has been completely checked? maybe I’m just slow, but does that make sense?

it’ll be an interesting day tomorrow as well. liz and amanda won’t be in until 7am, but there’s a meeting at 6 with adam, lauren, mick, daryll, and me. who knows if patricia will be in there. when liz was saying earlier that she didn’t want to be in the meeting, because she knew she’d explode at adam like last time, I said I should be the one to raise all these issues. everyone thinks I’m so quiet and nice and I don’t know what I’m doing, I just say “well lauren told me to do this…” or something like that. this’ll be a good chance to show I do know what I’m doing, and I have every right to bring up issues I have with production or with any other part of the process. to tell you the truth I’m kind of excited to see how well I handle it.

today was payday, and I got a lovely little check. ok, not so little… it was $2 shy of a grand. which was just fine with me. I took myself shopping to celebrate. oops, not supposed to do that. I also went to the library and picked up my books, so probably tomorrow I’ll start on those. isn’t it nice to not have work to do in the evenings? oh yeah, I also have an optometrist appt tomorrow afternoon. new prescription! wahoo!

song stuck in my head: eyesore by new found glory
movie I want to watch: seven brides for seven brothers
anything else: nope