So not worth it this week.

Thursday

Upon being shown the new 'NutNews template, something that did not happen until around noon, when I personally tracked down CEOJason and asked him to go look at it, CEOJason pronounced the New Look "wussy."

I spent four hours on a massive dewussification project, attempting to make the turquoise logo that my own personal ChaosManager, Vela, had given me look more manly. I showed the dewussified result to Vela and she decided she liked the original template from YakketyYak better.

So, four hours of my life I'll never get back.

The necessary files to create this specific newsletter started landing on my desk around 1:15. (You know the files I mean. The ones Vela swore would be in my hands by 5:00 Monday or, failing that, 9:00 Tuesday morning at all costs.) The last one arrived at 4:21pm. With a note from Vela, blithely asking me to put this story in first place.

(Have I bitched about that yet? The one thing that's really, really complicated is changing the order of stories once the newsletter is coded. You can make all the text changes you want, add or remove graphics, create click-throughs, anything you need. What you should not do is request that Story #1 become Story #3 and Story #6 become Story #2 and this New Story now become Story #1. It messes up everything. So, naturally, TeamChaos makes at least one such request for every issue of the 'NutNews.)

I fought the new template to make the necessary code tweaks. I need to get the basic template locked down, so I can make actually inserting stories a "cut-and-paste" process, so I can hand the entire mess over to DebLor in reception and making doing the 'NutNews their problem every two weeks.

In my spare time, I changed the past news stories display in the company intranet. Because the Wednesday newsletter will not be going out until Friday (if I'm lucky), there's no new story available for the intranet home page on Friday morning. I extend Thursday's rather boring story to display for another day.

1-1/2 hours of my life is lost to a conference call with one of our collective marketing groups who are in constant turmoil because their internet campaign does not produce the results they want. The biggest problem is that there are five of them in a fifteen mile radius. Nothing I can do to the Magic Internets will change the fact that there are too many of them for the territory. They bitch, moan, and whine, but stop short of agreeing that the location that receives 70% of the leads should pay 70% of the cost of the campaign. Eventually I promise reports, analysis, miracles--whatever it takes to get me off the phone.

I do not say that one ignorant lunatic amongst them went into their campaign and eliminated half their territory, so they're not getting all the leads they're entitled to, and this is a big part of their problem.

Friday

I came in and dove right into getting the 'NutNews ready to send out. Fixed the code issues. Settled the template. By 10:00, I was finally ready to start editing the content. (No matter how many ChaosManagers review it, there are always typos and stuff remaining.)

Then I get called into Vela's office to rehash yesterday's unproductive conference call. She wants to send this group all the information in the world so they can be "informed." I point out that I spent two solid days providing them with all the information in the world last month. And that, while they're entitled to all of their information, they are not entitled to everyone else's beyond the kind of numbers they can use to benchmark the performance of their campaign.

I don't precisely win the argument but since I'm the only one in the building who knows how to get to all the data, or what it actually means once you get to it, there's little she can do without my cooperation, and I have other priorities today.

'NutNews. Remember, Vela? I have to get the 'NutNews out today.

A task that was not simplified by the online email provider's site going down half an hour ago.

It's not even noon.

The person for whom I covered lunchtime phone duty on Monday? Who was supposed to take my "shift" today? Took the day off.