Still doin' it. Two steps forward, one step back. Cuss and repeat.
After reloading all the Nut ads Tuesday (a "hard bounce" for each campaign"), I was told later that same afternoon that the absence of a closing slash / at the end of each URL was giving the fancy new software a migraine, so I reloaded (hard bounced) everything again.
Wednesday morning, I was reminded of a conversation I had with someone on March 25 and the casual decision I seem to have made (and promptly forgot) to put some special 'stuff' at the end of each URL for the new web pages to track campaign traffic a certain way. I've already hard-bounced about a third of the campaigns a third time. Webstrainer is so going to hate me.
I mean, I'd give it a pass and add this 'stuff' gradually over the next month, which would be easier on the campaigns, but NewBoss Anais is desperately anxious to see good results from her nearly year-long quest to get these new pages live (which is fair) and the 'stuff' in question captures about 70% of our data results so I'm going to hard-bounce the remainder of the campaigns tomorrow--under the theory that a long weekend is a better time to rearrange the universe yet again.
Also, I have a weird rash on my arms that's 99% likely to be dry skin as the result of over-exfoliating under the theory that if a little is good, a lot must be fabulous. It's not contagious and not spreading, but it's very unsightly.
I did not manage to fight off the determination of Bernie's newest client to make me rush through loading the Dollar Funhouse's Funhouse campaign--didn't have to. They decided on their own to let it wait a couple of weeks.
What they decided to do instead was demand that I load an entirely new campaign--one I have neither researched nor prepared. I lost the battle on that one, so that's my Saturday morning project (aside from hard-bouncing the rest of the 'Nut campaigns.)
A few minutes ago, Fun Bobby dropped copies of a notice from the office building's management company on everyone's desks. It seems that a client of one of the financial companies renting a suite on the first floor of the building has threatened to come back to the building with a gun and kill her and a lot of other people.
At this point, a bucket-load of stress has invited massive anxiety over and they're holding a party with a lot of tension. All over my nervous system.
I so want a vacation.
(Wait! I'm taking one! Cannot wait.)
That's a colorful colloquialism that deserves wider usage. It's so apt.
I, myself, have been UtMYiA for the last week or so.
First, the final push to get the new 'Nut website live. I think I blogged (using my alternate persona of a h8r) about that last time. Mostly minor squabbles with the design company. Yes, do we want what we asked for. No, it is not okay if we do not get what we asked for. Yes, we do need our data. No, we do not need to justify to you why we need our data. Yes, we need the functionality we contracted for. No, doing without that functionality is not okay. In the end, we got most of what we needed with the rest "coming soon." Sheesh.
NewBoss Anais showed up at my desk at 3:30 yesterday afternoon, saying happily that the company was ready to go at that moment.
Since I've been making it Very Clear Indeed that redirecting the ad URLs for all of the campaigns was something I needed 8 hours to do (and that was not something that could be done a week or two in advance), I was less than thrilled. Of course, I dropped everything and worked on it for the next two hours, logged in late yesterday evening and worked on it, then came in today and worked through the rest of it, eventually getting it all done at 10:30 this morning, but still. (I had time to do everything but double-check the URLs. I'm activating them now and hoping for the best.)
Then we flipped the switch and it was time for link-testing. On the section of pages I was assigned to test, the first six pages I clicked on each popped an error message. That inspired a great deal of confidence, I promise you.
After 30 minutes of testing, when I realized that none of the test submission forms I was creating were going through, I was even more impressed by the designers' competency. (Our initial email of inquiry was met with, "I dunno. It worked when I tried it a different way in a different environment." So professional.)
Then, of course, there's Bernie. The Freethinker's campaign isn't live, I'm not sure where we are with that one, but the other one (which I've now decided to identify as the Dollar Funhouse) is raring to go. The Dollar Funhouse actually consists of two separate products. One is the Dollar, the other is the Funhouse.
Bernie emailed me on Friday that they wanted the Dollar to go live this Wednesday and to email him over the weekend (he knows I work mostly weekends) with any questions. I sat down on Saturday morning, did as much as I could do, sent Bernie my questions, and didn't hear back from him until Monday. I had a big tired on yesterday evening, from all the 'Nuttery, so I didn't get it done.
Reminder to self: I need to email and let him know I'm out of town all next week and that the Funhouse can't go live until some time after I get back to town.
In the midst of this, a client of Gidget's is abruptly ready to have their campaign go live. They want it live--wait for it--yes--Wednesday! Since I have received none of the information I need to actually create a campaign (audience, services, budget, etc.), Gidget promised to send me all of it today so I could build the campaign tonight.
As it happens, this client is a Special Category, I can load the campaign, but I'm at Webstrainer's mercy when it comes to getting the ads to show. I'll file for an exemption, but if Doittoit (Worst. Nickname. Ever.) does not, in Webstrainer's eyes, qualify as Legitimate Business, there may be trouble. There shouldn't be any problem--they are legit and I see similar businesses being advertised, but who knows?
I'm a little grouchy, yes. I watch television one evening a week--Tuesday evening. Between building campaigns, loading campaigns, and checking 'Nut campaigns to see how the new pages are performing, tonight is going to be hell.
I was going to blog about the party I attended on Sunday and the seminar I attended last week and the new books I bought (work-related) and my upcoming vacation, but I've already spent more time on this post than I really had to spare today. We have a couple of Prospective 'Nuts coming in for a meeting to learn All About Internet Marketing at 8:00 tomorrow morning, and I really need to do some prep work.
Up to My Ass in Alligators
Posted by AnneZook at 02:47 PM | Comments (2)I'm very over this week.
Also, I'm a h8er.
I h8 software companies who understand your specs but decide something else will be easier for them, code it to suit themselves, and assume you'll accept it as a fait accompli,threatening you with massive delays and cost-overruns if you tell them to do what you told them you wanted in the first place.
I h8 consultants who carelessly advise creating 'custom reports' which 'take a lot of time but are worth it' without stopping to consider that it's just me here, I don't have a staff of people I can assign to spend a month coding custom reports to capture everything I might need someday.
That's why we use the database, you moron. If the world changes and I need something completely different, we'll have it all in the database.
Wanting us to drop the database because it means you have to consolidate data? Don't care. I spend all day, every day, consolidating, filtering, sorting, and contemplating data. Cry me a river, from your high-priced office with the administrative and software staff sitting outside your door.
I h8 people who think building glitches and gaps into a system is job security for them. "Oh, we can just do that for you when you ask is not job security. It's incompetence.
I h8 having wasted over 30 minutes of 'Nut time this morning writing a document for Bernie to explain why his client's budget running out at noon every days means they are missing most of the day's search traffic How stupid do you have to be not to understand it just from hearing the words?
I h8 realizing that I have at least eight hours of work to do for Bernie this weekend, on top of the Gidget Co client accounts I need to work on.
I h8 knowing that the as-yet unapproved campaign structure document I sent Bernie to forward to the Freethinker will probably show up in my in-box on Monday with a request to have it all ready to go by Wednesday. But with massive changes, including to that as-yet undersigned special landing page Bernie is supposed to be providing.
Yes, today I h8 both having a job and having free-lance clients.
Free-lance? I'm over working every weekend and double-checking things during the week. (I log on around 10:00 a couple of times a week and review everything quickly and, okay, it's not a big time commitment, but it's a pain--especially if I find something that needs changed.) I'm over Bernie calling me or asking me to call him twice a week to explain why their $12/day campaign isn't pulling leads for the client's $2M house. I'm over spending hours and hours of time above and beyond what I can bill writing explanations and justifications for my decisions--trying to dumb it all down enough so that people who can't figure out how to log in to their accounts can approve a complicated strategy. (I am big time tired of having to explain myself to someone who would probably have sold the blasted property by now if she had ever picked up the phone and talked to one of the leads I drove her, or even answered one of the information request leads the campaign produced.)
Job? For the last week, the only non-rainy/non-snowy hours we've had during the day have come around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon and I have been having weird and unusual urges to go out and enjoy those hours, instead of sitting here, working for a living. I don't think I want to walk as much as I just want to not be here.
Which is kind of weird, because nothing has actually happened this week. I mean, nothing Big and Bad, you know?
I'm just…over it.
Yesterday evening, I accomplished absolutely nothing. No excuse--I just went home and slumped in a chair. Probably because it was all dark and gloomy and wintery-looking outside. It's spring in Harvest Moon Sunshine Islands, so I gamed for a while. Watched a really bad disaster movie (volcanoes). That's about all I remember.
Later, I had one of my periodic bouts of killer insomnia, which I only defeated by turning my nighttime fan to "medium" to produce the necessary level of white noise and enough of a cool breeze to make me comfortable. Maybe if I'd thought of doing that two hours earlier, I'd have gotten more sleep.
Anyhow. Naturally the heat is off in our apartment building (no one expected a mid-May snowstorm) so this morning the room was cold and the fan was blowing such a gale of wind I couldn't force myself to get out of bed and turn it off.* I did eventually, of course, but not until 7:50. So, I was late for work.
And now I'm going to be groggy and unfocused all day. It's only 10:00 and I've already started four or five projects, then dropped them five minutes later to meander over to another idea and dabble with it briefly.
Some weeks, things just don't quite run smoothly, you know? It's like you're a half a degree out of focus every day or something.
I'm on my fourth cup of coffee, so we'll hope for the best.
This morning the office is full of random men. I think they're window cleaners. They all have buckets.
I was having a thought--the kind that might have led to a brilliant breakthrough but was more likely to inspire me to eat breakfast--but I lost it when one of them started to climb up on one of the desks. No! They're not actually desks, okay? Just cubicle-things and I'm pretty sure that one wouldn't take his weight. He thought better of it, though.
Yesterday, in the all-staff 'Nut-together, NewBoss Anais announced that I'd gotten my Webstrainer certification. I didn't like to correct her--I've done the first exam with the second, actually hard one still in my future--so I played along.**
She made me explain what it all meant and then asked me about my shiny new game (content advertising) and for a moment I forgot myself (no one understands the kind of jargon I tend to use or what some of these accomplishments really mean, much less what it took to accomplish them) and lapsed into excitement.
Later, she came over and told me how much she and CEOJason had enjoyed my enthusiasm and how much they liked seeing me so excited.
Weird.
_______________
* I laughed when I first saw those remote-control fans showing up in stores, but I'd have paid big money this morning to be able to stretch an arm out of my warm cocoon and turn that blasted blizzard-maker off.
** Also? I found my score unimpressive. And, yes you might say a pass is a pass, but I don't feel that way. I told myself I should be able to get 95% without breaking a sweat, so a result of 91% is now and forever just--not enough.
It rained last night, which turned to snow in the late evening, now the first storm is moving out ahead of the next storm moving in, and the tornado sirens are sounding.
Apocalyptic!
Also, I took the first (fundamentals) part of the stupid Webstrainer certification exam today. I would like to rant about test designers who can't decide whether to test to the material or to the ability to complete a task, but I'm awfully busy at the moment.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)Good morning!
I'm making a determined effort to be cheerful today. Yesterday got a bit aggravating but there's no reason to take it out on today.
First, I'm pretty sure I mentioned that I was receiving the (unearned*) honor of being named one of Mother's Little Helpers on the Webstrainer forum, right? The official announcement was made today and there's a thread of nice comments.
Mostly I'm now ashamed of myself that I still haven't gotten around to taking the stupid certification test. It's moved up on my priority list from the "just do it" category into the "by the end of the week or else" category.
And, speaking of things that haven't gotten done, I did send DiamondGirl a screen cap of one of the Gidget Co's website pages, explaining precisely what I didn't like. That was several days ago. I checked the site again this morning and it's still got the same unprofessional sloppiness. Sigh.
If I weren't such a procrastinator myself, I would so email her and abuse her.
Last night I was doing a final tidy-up in the kitchen before going to bed. I opened the dishwasher to put in a dirty dish and there was dirty water standing in the bottom. Another plumbing problem. Since it was after 11, I didn't call maintenance. It was on my list of things to do this morning but the idea occurred to me that the water might have been there since Sunday's adventure, so I ran the "drain" part of the dishwasher cycle this morning and it did seem to clean up the problem. I'll check again when I get home.
I answered an email from the L-i-K-S this morning. It seems that Our Brother has disappeared--phone disconnected and the place he and his wife have been living for the past twenty years empty. He's not one of life's overachievers, Our Brother, so this disappearance has me worried. He's either taken off cross-country on some weird and unlikely get-rich-quick excursion, or even that ratty trailer became more than he could pay the lot rent for and they've moved in with some other borderline indigent friends.
I'm fairly concerned. Our Brother and I were very close when we were young. Very close. That was a long time ago--our relationship never really recovered from his decade-long stay in the Bratty Boy stage, but the core of it remains.
When I think of him, I tend to remember the days when it was him and me against the world and the two younger girls had either not yet made an appearance or were both at the baby-lump-in-a-crib stage. Although the R.C. is only two or three years younger than I am, Our Brother and I lived through a lot in the years before she turned sentient.
I don't often think about them--it wasn't necessarily a pleasant time, but it did make a bond, you know?
I'm not going to think about that now. I should be working. Also, not a cheerful topic.
So far, this week is taking more effort than there's any actual reason for, okay?
____________
* Really. I mean, yes, I post a lot but that's not necessarily the same as being incredibly wise, you know?
Tyro is the only 'receptionist' here at the moment, so when she needed to take a fifteen minute meeting a little while ago, she asked me to cover phones. I said yes, of course. I used to do it all the time, after all.
What I didn't remember is that I used to do it from the console. I've never used the portable handset. I think I hung up on four people, at least two of whom were trying to get in touch with CEOJason. I put one woman into interminable hold limbo two times.
So embarrassing.
First, I despise the professionally incompetent. That is, the people who brag about how they don't know how to fill the paper tray in the printer or sign for deliveries or work a postage machine. It doesn't make them seem high-level and important, okay? I know they think it does, but it doesn't. It makes them seem lame.
Second, it's a telephone. How sad is it that someone handed me a telephone and I wasn't able to work it?
It helps a little that two of the functions I was looking for--ones I used frequently on the console--turn out not to be available on the handset.
I did march up and make Tyro show me how to use it, though. Next time, I won't be so lame. (I am not a professional incompetent.)
It's supposed to snow tomorrow night. Up to a foot or two in the foothills and south of town, which means anything from a dusting of white to ten inches in Denver. It's May. It's the middle of May. What's up with that?
As Mondays go, this one is a bit rocky.
I was supposed to load a new campaign for Gidget yesterday afternoon. I just remembered it, so clearly it didn't get done.
I meant to do it but a blocked kitchen sink--a reasonably minor problem that wound up taking from 12:15 until 7:15 pm to get fixed, distracted me. (I called maintenance, it took them two hours to call back, by which time the sink had drained, albeit very slowly, so I told them it could wait until today and then two hours later, even though I hadn't run any water into the sink, the sink was 2/3 full again, so I had to call maintenance back and wait another two hours for a response, after which it took nearly an hour for the guy to actually show up and fix it.)
Anyhow. I have to stop on the way home and see if that power cord on the laptop is covered under the warranty or if they can sell me a new one if it isn't. Then, when I get home, I'll do that campaign.
Actually, as weeks go, this one is starting out a bit rocky.
In the "be careful what you wish for" category, I regret having objected to being bullied by the baby bunny.
It's down by the parking garage today. Someone hit it with their car.
Poor, little bunny. I'll miss you.
Many emails today. First, the Freethinker wants right of refusal on everything I do to reorganize his campaign before it goes live. At the moment, I'm working out in my head the wording of the necessary email to Bernie. If the client demands the right to "help" build the campaign, then my billable time estimate for the project has to go from 8 hours to 16 hours. (Bottom line? If he had any idea how to do it, he wouldn't be handing his mess of a failed campaign over to me. Second-guessing what I decide to do and making me spend two hours explaining each detail to him should cost him money.)
Also? I would not have quoted 8 hours for the job if I'd known he was going to decide to abandon his search network advertising and spend his 42 cents a month on content network advertising. Back in the middle of February when I did half the research on this project, I focused on search because that's what he said he was going to want. The idea of digging through six months worth of garbage (really) in the hopes of finding some quality content sites does not attract me.
Second, Bernie's other as-yet-un(nick)named client has decided to move ahead with advertising. These are the people I attempted to talk to a couple of weeks ago--I blogged about the day when just getting oxygen was so much work that I was babbling and drooling on the phone during a client call with Bernie, right?
Anyhow, it seems he was right not to be concerned. They want to get going. Software. I've never tried to sell software, but if nothing else, a product-driven campaign will be a nice change from service-driven campaigns. I hope.
Gidget!
After a (so far) unexplained seven-day silence, I got two emails from her today. She tried to set up two campaigns (Webstrainer and Yippee) and they're both now just laying there, stinking up the internet. Why she tried to do this herself instead of just handing it all over to me, I don't know. (Maybe it all happened while I was sick.)
Anyhow. That means tonight's agenda is set. Between working on the Freethinker's campaign and fixing (I hope) Gidgt's Webstrainer and Yippee campaigns for her new client, that's pretty much my whole evening.
All of which reminds me that I have got to remember to bring the laptop with me tomorrow. I need to swing my MicroCenter on the way home and take advantage of my extended warranty again. The power cord died. (Join me in hoping it's part of what my warranty covers.)
Other!
I mentioned that Webstrainer is about to add me to their list of Mother's Little Helpers on their forum, right? I finally had a chat with the relevant Webstrainer employee last week (or maybe it was the week before) and I got the bio information written and sent to her on Monday.
I'm not a bit aggravated that she's hasn't gotten back to me yet. When you've dropped the ball or missed a deadline, it's always nice to confirm that you're not the only person that happens to.
I'm a bit aggravated that I checked the Gidget Co website again yesterday and the ugliness in the formatting I saw before seems to still be there. DiamondGirl did tell me she wasn't able to duplicate what I saw, so I may have to screen-cap it and send it to her.
The bunnies are back and they're terrorizing me again. This year it's mostly one teenager-sized bunny that sits in the grass, alternately napping and eating all day. It gives me evil looks, just because I want to use the sidewalk sometimes.
Stupid rabbit.
I am better today. Much better, thank you. I'm not coughing and it's 2:30 and I'm not yet so tired I want to fall out of my chair! That's a huge improvement.
At 9:00 yesterday morning, the in-house Argonut Café employees all received an email summons to an "emergency meeting" at 9:15. Everyone was wigging out until they found out that the "emergency" was the abrupt decision by management to celebrate and thank the staffers (all female, of course) who took over receptionist duties when the employees in those positions (female, of course) were laid off.
The employees being honored were applauded at a bagels-and-cream-cheese-and-fresh-strawberries breakfast conceived and organized by a couple of members (female, of course) of TeamChaos.
The employees were also given restaurant gift cards and a "free" afternoon (of their choice) off. In their absence, phones will be covered by a volunteer member of TeamChaos (female, of course).
This morning we got an email saying that the refrigerator in the lunchroom is starting to smell so this one employee (female, of course) has decided to take time out of her busy day to clean it.
I'm just saying. 35% of the employees here are male and 50% of the management staff is male. I'd like to see some male hands on the sponge scrubbing out the refrigerator or the microwave.*
I really am feeling better. Not crabby at all.
_____________________
* We used to have more guys, but most of them got laid off. Guys, of course, make more money than women. When it came down to balancing the books, they could only really afford to keep the women.
Nevertheless, the two top jobs are still filled by men.
Moving on, the conversation around yesterday's breakfast table turned to this time last year and the meetings where they informed 50% of the staff that their space was of more value than their presence. As one member of TeamChaos put it yesterday, the Team had to decide who else they wanted on the team.
Everyone claimed to be surprised to remember that I was among those being urged not to let the door hit them on the way out. I reminded them, again, that NewBoss Anais was actually pretty urgent to get rid of me until she started taking calls from the 'Nuts Afield.
CEOJason claimed that I was not, in fact, invited to leave on multiple occasions. I pretended I have the email trail to prove it.
Once I typed it, that was all less interesting than I thought it was going to be.