Sunday, August 31, 2008

Adventures in Staying Afloat

I've been really busy lately, with more things on my plate than I can really handle at once. It's evaluation time at work, so I've had to come up with ways that I'm super awesome, and also with evaluations of other people's performances should they request them. I've actually had two feedback requests, which surprised me.

Then it's also the time of year when people want to get papers finished, so that they can put them in their self-evaluations. I am writing a paper with a sometimes-reader of this blog, so let me right here add the statement that I've been working really hard on that paper, honest!

Then I finally understand how to do something that I had spent several months not-doing because I didn't understand it. When my collaborator took the time to explain to me what he was talking about, suddenly it made sense. So that's something else I have to do.

Then we're trying to get ready for a new supercomputer, and in order to do that, we have to prepare some tests for the new machine. I have to prepare a test based on the chemistry application I work on. Basically, you know how well the application performs on the current machine, so you extrapolate from there how it will do on the new machine. You want to create a goal that is realistic but not too easy or too ambitious. So I've been working on that too.

Then, of course, there's my family, whom I do not want to neglect. So I try to spend as much time as I can with them, but on weekdays, that's about three hours if I'm lucky. I'm glad to have this three-day weekend, so that I can actually see them, but it also means that I'm putting off my work for another day.

1 comment:

hgg said...

It's workworkworkwork, all the time! It's like Sisyphus...never ends. But I'd rather have this science life than any other.