Weekend: Glorious. Weather smashing, temperatures moderate, sunshine intermittent but golden, rain scarce, food delicious. Shopping: successful. I frittered away $8.00 in a wild splurge on a single new book. Later that same night I frittered away a little more (online) for some new (ahem) underthings.
Etcetera., etcetera., etcetera.
That makes two lovely weekends in a row.
I'm glad I enjoyed them, because I have to stop taking the weekends off.
Starting about 3:00 yesterday, when I foolishly checked my email, I've been embroiled in turmoil with Bernie.* His client's campaigns are performing 30%-60% better (depending on what you're measuring) in the last 2-1/2 weeks and have been generating a steady stream of (qualified) leads. So, naturally I found a string of ohmigod the sky is falling emails in my inbox, wherein he frantically demanded to know what I'd done that destroyed the campaigns so thoroughly.
Fourteen emails later I figure out that he was confusing organic and paid search, had no idea that leads were coming in, and that he was assuming I was continuing to manage the campaign in spite of his failure to, (a) tell me he wanted me to, or (b) discuss hours and payment with me.
Now I remember why I was so glad to stop working with him. It's not his irrationality--many people prefer to ignore reality--it's that hair-trigger panic button.
I had emails from Gidget complaining that she didn't understand how to edit something she did online (click the "edit" button, I said) and wondering how to make a link (click the "make a link" button, I said).
In my next life, I'm being one of those mountaintop hermits and if anyone climbs my mountain and tries to talk to me, I'm throwing a goat at them.
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* The first person who says Itoldyouso gets smacked.
8/24/09
We had a sort of picnic lunch here at the Argonut Café today. I ate, like, six bitty (1-1/2") hot dogs and four bitty (1") meatballs and an oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookie. None of which sounds too evil, until you know that this was after I'd already eaten my nice, healthy diet lunch (roasted turkey breast, organic brown rice, baked yam). Granted, it was hours after, but still. Diet.
I do love me some Sekrit Food. I, along with many other women, I understand, have Issues around Secret Eating. We feel ashamed of our hunger or our snacking or our unhealthy coping mechanisms or whatever* so we sneak around and eat when no one is looking. This time, of course, it was only Sekrit Eating because I didn't hear about the potluck until three hours after everyone else had finished eating, but that doesn't eliminate the thrill of taking six bitty hot dogs instead of the more restrained three or four I would have taken otherwise.* *
I'm still trying to keep my sticky little fingers off of the 'Nut campaigns today. In fact, I need to stop messing with most of them until the end of the week. I've been very peculiar creative in my campaign changes for the past couple of weeks. While I'm aware that I might have created a nightmare, I'm hopeful that some of the edits will turn out to be flashes of genius.
While I'm waiting, I have a few other tasks I can mess around with. NewBoss Anais wants to be educated on what she's seeing when she looks at the dashboard data from the agency they're hoping to use to replace me. We have an hour scheduled to discuss it tomorrow. Naturally I needed to do my homework first, so I got the login information, logged in, glanced at the ads, and checked that research off my list. Granted, writing ads isn't easy (I have to spend 20 hours a week at it and sometimes I'm tearing my hair out), but these people are supposed to be pros.
8/25/09
I'm impatient to see what last week's, shall we say, 'creative editing' did to the 'Nut campaigns but it's too soon to tell.
Today's Snack Score: Three bitty hot dogs and two cookies. And a package of those fluorescent orange crackers with 'peanut butter' filling. This is turning out to be a fun diet. Ahem.
Nothing else to report.
8/26/09
Oh, dear.
For lack of anything more constructive to do, I poked around in the new Webstrainer interface today and found a very cool toy. Geekish story short, it tells me what would have happened last week, had various settings been different on the campaigns and invites me to make changes based on that data.
Six hours--and hundreds of campaign edits--later, I remember that I was not making major edits this week, while I was waiting for last week's dust to settle.
Oops.
The most frustrating part is that I now have to wait some more to see what happens.
Would any of you fault me if I wound up spending most of tomorrow working on Gidget Stuff?
I mean, I tried just random goofing off for a couple of hours yesterday and (67 pages of Innocents Abroad fun notwithstanding) almost went mad. Although some might say that, "inert" is the best description of me during my off hours* * *, I'm really very focused on working when I'm at work.
Unless, of course, I'm surfing the Zappos site for new shoes.
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* For the record, today's little binge was around the Issue of me loving KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce. Nothing more sinister than that.
* * Last week our in-house IT guy admitted he'd taken me off the All Employees distribution list back in March, when I was laid off the first time, and it never occurred to him to put me back on. Which explains why I never get the notices about all-staff meetings (I can live without them) or the notices about parties.
* * * There are few things as bewildering to me as people who defines mental activity as "doing nothing."
Posted by AnneZook at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)Well, it's only 1:30 on Friday afternoon and I've already done so many weird things to the 'Nut campaigns that I have to stop messing with all of them and let the dust settle for a while. So, I'm playing with colored graphs and running unlikely reports to see if any interesting patterns show up. So far, nothing has, but that doesn't dim my enthusiasm for colored graphs.
This morning I'm out pacing around in the parking garage just to get some fresh air (Yes, I was smoking. Shaddup. It was freshish air.) and a woman in an SUV comes barreling into the garage, almost running me over. She did roll down her window and shout an apology. She was flossing her teeth, you see, and wasn't watching where she was going.
The R.C. got to feeling wealthy or something the other day and had a little Amazon indulgence. Since we both have a fondness for cheesy monster movies of the 50's & 60's era, she picked up a multi-pack of Roger (King Of the B Movies) Corman productions.
Last night, we had Creature from the Haunted Sea which was much less about creatures than about crooks and Cubans and spooks (of the spy variety). It featured the weirdest cast o'characters I've ever seen and was so peculiar it was almost riveting to watch. There was one guy who 'spoke' almost entirely in animal noises.
I'm thinking it would have made more sense at the time had I known it was supposed to be a parody.
Once, a million years ago, I saw the World's Lamest Creature Feature. Some people--in the bayou, IIRC, were being menaced by frogs. Not mutant frogs or anything. Just--frogs. They didn't have powers of any sort. Just your average, garden-variety, sitting around and croaking sorts of frogs. If memory serves, the penultimate moment came when the frogs killed a guy by--wait for it--hopping up to his chair and looking at him. That was, until last night, the weirdest creature feature I'd ever seen.
I don't know what else is in the R.C.'s new collection. I'm hoping for Not of This Earth" and It Conquered the World and maybe even Gas-s-s-s (also known as Gas! or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It, which is potentially the best B movie title in the history of the world) but only time will tell.
Now that I'm in a creature feature state of mind, maybe I'll look for The Amazing Colossal Man or The Thing from Another World. I'm pretty sure I already have "It Came From Outer Space" in another collection, but I need to check to be sure. I know I don't have Beginning of the End or Invaders From Mars (1953).
My own particular weakness is for atomic radiation mutants. Things like Them! or Attack of the Crab Monsters, you know? I don't know why. I just find them funny. (The R.C. wants Tarantula but I draw the line at spiders.) Oversized crustaceans are the most fun. Mysterious Island has the funniest Giant Crab Attack in movie history.
Speaking of monsters? Granted, I've been a Game Boy fan for the last fifteen years, but Rapunzel is opening up my eyes to whole new genres and the fun to be had while not killing mutants. 'Member how I told you that she had loaned me one of her games? Well, if the last game she recommended (and that I got for Christmas) was the original Game That Ate 2009, this new one is definitely the game that's going to swallow the rest of the year. Farming! I'm actually entranced by farming. (Well, okay, and mining.)
In other news, Gidget may have us a new client. She was contacted yesterday by an organization that treats add*ct*on for a three-letter word we can all guess. There's a strange and interesting variety in our growing client list, isn't there? We send things, train things, watch things, and now maybe we're going to try to prevent things.
And, speaking of things done, I finally heard back from Bernie about that project. He didn't say, "send the bill" but I'm going to do that tonight anyhow. He did say it was good timing (on the completion) but in a vague way that made it clear he hasn't bothered to look at what I did.
And then he asked me if I remember how to do something they used to do four years ago and since I was only employed there for a year (a year-and-a-half a go), I really don't. But, pursuant (I've missed my word!) to my policy of walking off with everything that isn't nailed down when I leave a job* I know I have the instructions on How To Do It, so I told him I'd dig them out.
'Member when I said the problem with Bernie is project creep? I hope this isn't the thin end of the wedge. I have to act cooperative until he pays me--and don't think he isn't aware of that or that he isn't in the habit of taking advantage of freelancers that way.
There must be some Actual Work I could be doing.
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* Not precisely valuables. I don't steal. But I do take copies of passwords and access codes and websites and whatnot. Not to use but because 30 years in the job market has taught me that you never know what a former employer will come crying to you for six months or a year later. You buy a lot of goodwill by being able to help someone who's so desperate they're calling up people they thought they'd never have to speak to again.
August 14
The R.C. also got hatemail from the credit card company (I hadn't realized before that we actually have cards issued by the same organization), slashing her credit by 40%! Unlike my letter, hers didn't try to pretend she was a deadbeat (you could eat off her credit report). No, what they told her was that they pulled her credit report and decided she didn't need all the credit they were extending to her. Times is tough, they told her. Not everyone is payin' their bills.You are, though. We hate you for that.
I feel badly for her. It's bad enough for me, someone who has, from time to time, had the odd late or missed payment. But for someone who's never paid a bill late in her life? What a slap in the face.
Because I do have a certain pity for her, I'm going to forego my planned blog entry, which featured large amounts of RC mockery. (Short story even shorter. She borrowed some software from her office. Tuesday evening, she spent an hour and a half with it--reading the installation manual. What kind of gomer reads installation manuals? I mean! 90 minutes! And then she never actually got the product installed!*
There was going to be mockery.)
August 17
I take my eyes off of Gidget for a few days and you know what happens? She breaks a finger (What was a woman with her current health problems doing moving rocks anyhow?), faints from the pain, falls on the rocks, and breaks two ribs. Good grief.
My weekend was uneventful. I took the entire weekend off. I hadn't had a day off in over three weeks, so I felt I was due.
Although. Now I'm feeling guilty because I didn't get the last of Bernie's project finished. I need to do that--I should have had it finished last week. After I get the last bit done, I need to do a write-up for the client explaining my changes. Then I can bill Bernie.
I turned in my expense report for the seminar I charged to it (for work) and when I get that reimbursement, that's going against the card balance. So is Bernie's money. I am so close to being debt-free--the balance on Credit Card Of Doom is under $2k--I can almost smell it.
August 18
Well, I finished Bernie's project and sent him an explanation of what I did. Because I'm a tad compulsive, I've gone back into the campaign a couple of times and made some edits, primarily to ads where the first version wasn't performing well. I figure I'll give him 48 hours to respond to my note. If I don't hear from him, I'm sending the bill.
Last weekend I went mad and spent $30 on a new pair of slacks. Now I'm wishing I'd bought them a size smaller. (I guess that's not a bad problem to have.) They're not unwearably large, but definitely baggy in the backside. I'm back on the diet and with 7 pounds still to go, I figure the problem will only get worse. Next payday, I think I'll treat myself to a new pair, in a smaller size.
I need new shoes. Really. I need these shoes, but I'll probably wind up with these shoes because they're more sensible. These appear to combine comfort with a reasonable heel height but I don't know if I'm ready to have all that ugly hanging off the ends of my ankles. On the other hand, these seem to combine the best of a loafer with the best of a medium-heel pump.
Amazon bought Zappos! That could turn out to be expensive for some of us.
August 19
This is turning into a ridiculously long serial blog entry.
In my final note for the entry, I'm feeling a tad smug. The outside "experts" that TeamChaos hired to run some test campaigns, with the idea that this agency would replace me in the hearts and minds of--well--everyone? Came hat in hand yesterday to beg the favor of my ads.
Turns out the ads written by the in-house experts were failing to perform. (I ask you--who doesn't just try something different?)
There's little that's "secret" or proprietary about what I do, but what there is, is mostly around ads. Ads are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Any dinkhead can handle the bidding and organization part of running a campaign. What separates the pros from the wanna-bes is the ability to write an ad that draws clicks. Takes nerve to ask someone to hand over their ads but more than that, it's an admission of defeat.
Huh. I'm better at this than people give me credit for.
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* Turns out? It's been so many decades long since she actually installed a piece of software that she didn't know that installation wizards are more-or-less standard any more. She was expecting to, you know, have to know things. Software doesn't require you to know anything any more.
There are days when my life needs a little zen.*
Yes, I worked Saturday. But only three or four hours. After that I indulged in a three-hour shopping orgy, during which I'm impressed to report that I spent less than $30.
And then--Sunday. My day started at 8:15 am because I was determined to keep my word and get the Bernie project done "by the first of the week" and I knew it was going to take a whole day to do. Ignoring the temptations that the best kind of Colorado summer day can offer (not too hot, no rain, a little cool breeze), I plowed through the work--analyzing, adjusting, writing, rewriting, etc.
Picture my expression when I remembered, at 3:56 that afternoon, that I had, in fact, taken Monday off to do that exact, same work.
For a while I was aggravated but then it took me five hours on Monday to actually finish (the bulk of) the work, so maybe it was a good thing after all. (I spent the other three hours of my day off lunching with Gidget and playing a new game my generous but time-sabotaging niece, Rapunzel, just loaned me.)
Today I came in prepared to deal with whatever the 'Nuts threw at me. So far, nothing but a brief power outage that did me no harm because (hooray!) I'd just saved.
On the drive in today--a tortuous winding through side roads to avoid the accident blocking all lanes of the primary commuter route in this neighborhood--I was actually feeling pretty good about the status of my various free-lance effort. (I should--for the second weekend in a row I did 12 hours or more of extra work. When I say I'm a "recovering" workaholic, I have to admit that some months I'm more recovered than others.* *)
But, self-indulgent and random whining and complaints aside, I don't think I've ever had a job where management and 'clients' spent so much time leaving me in peace to actually do the work. At least, since the last round of layoffs when management got rid of anyone and everyone in the building who actually understood what it is I do.
Basically, no one left knows from nothing. I can come in and work hard on the nuts and bolts of everyone's campaign, slog through the thankless gruntwork for hours on end and no one will notice.
I can come in with a creative idea to improve--or maybe destroy, time will tell--someone's campaign and put in eight hours on the project, ignoring the claims of the other 29 campaigns. No one will ever have a clue.
I can blog, read news sites, peruse online comics, even take in a couple of chapters of King Solomon's Mine and no one will know the difference.
My point, and I do have one, is that with this much peace to work in, there is really no excuse for me to have made a weird and major change to a poorly performing campaign last week without documenting, for my own reference, precisely what it was I was trying to accomplish. It took me an embarrassing half hour this morning before I could sort of mentally retrace my steps and figure out what my goal had been.
And now, lunch (chicken curry) and a few news headlines.
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* A word that means anything I want it to mean at the moment I use it. Get over it.
* * It's for a good cause.
I got one of those "you paid your debts and now we hate you" notices from my credit card company on Friday. Now that I've paid off 80% of my balance, they no longer want to know me and they cut my credit limit by about 40% They offered one of those brain-damaging "we don't give credit to people who don't have a lot of debt" excuses. Apparently not drowning in debt makes me a bad credit risk, never mind my history of paying four or five times the minimum each month on time or even early, along with the regular acquisition of new charges (automatic bill payments).
In some fashion that no sane person could be expected to understand, using the card regularly, paying their Shylockian interest rate without so much a hateful note, and paying them hundreds and hundreds of dollars more than the minimum each month adds up to the profile of someone not to be trusted.
A friend suggested that I transfer my balance away and close the account, but I'm passive-aggressive. I'm going to pay off the balance and then leave the account open. They'll have the expenses associated with an open account but not a dime of income. (At least, until I get bored of getting their junk mail.)
Posted by AnneZook at 12:58 PM | Comments (6)Drat those evil fast food empires! I went to lunch with co-workers today (birthday celebration) and thought I was ordering a lower-calorie alternative with the bruschetta chicken breast sandwich. I mean, I laid the bun daintily aside and ate only the chicken, which was lightly (okay, liberally) spread with (probably swiss) cheese and lightly daubed with a sort of aoli-and-mayonnaise sauce.
Idle curiosity led me to check the calorie count online when I got back to the office and, even though I skipped the bread, it looks like I gave the diet a big setback. At a whopping 830 calories (with fries*), I've pretty much maxed out my calorie allowance for the day.
I don't even know why I do things like that. In my own defense, when I accepted the invitation, the restaurant chosen was an Asian place where I knew I could get a good, light meal. And I don't want to eat that heavily any more. I feel sick.
Anyhow. Monday, Monday.
The weekend was productive in its own way. I worked about eight hours on Saturday and about six hours or so on Sunday. A lot of Gidget Co work, account maintenance and miscellaneous stuff for a new website she was putting together and a huge chunk of the Bernie project.
Today I'm doing month-end reporting. Tomorrow I'm out of the office at a Webstrainer seminar that the Argonut Café astonished me by paying for. Wednesday I'm in the office. Thursday I'm actually taking off to (with luck) largely finish the Bernie project and do some follow-up on my Gidget Co work. By the time Friday of this week arrives, I am going to be on top of all these projects! That's a good feeling.
Unlike, for instance, the feeling in my stummick right now. Yuck.
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* I know fries are evil. I--I just love them. I only let myself have them once a month or so. *sob* And these were garlic-parmesan and just fabulous. But. Seriously? I had more than enough food to eat without eating French fries, so now I wish I'd asked them to keep their stupid fries.