Yesterday morning the nose pads on my glasses broke (this afternoon I learned that my type of a nose pad is called a “nose bridge”) as I was getting ready to go to work. With my 12-hour work schedule, there wasn’t a good way to get to the optometrist to get them fixed, so out came the superglue. It seemed to work….

This morning it was clear the glue hadn’t actually worked in any kind of a super way. It broke again. However, today I was driving myself rather than taking the van pool. I had to go to a training class on how fill out my time card. That training was a web broadcast, but I had to go to the Idaho Falls office to get the training, so I needed my car there today.

So, my plan was to go to the office and take care of anything new overnight (wasn’t much), then go to the training at 9:30 am, then stop by Walmart’s vision center to get the glasses fixed. Plans only last until the workday actually starts. I got to the office to learn that there was a birthday lunch for one of my co-workers, except that the person responsible for sending out the invitations used an email list that didn’t have me on it (I’m not actually an employee but rather on a contract). The lunch was at a restaurant close to one of the Walmarts in Idaho Falls, so I replanned a bit.

Information Systems Laboratories (ISL), the company I contract through, is based out of San Diego, California and does a lot of government work. A government audit of their timekeeping system turned up a number of deficiencies (but no mis-billings, thankfully), so the time entry system has been completely revamped and, of course, made much more difficult and confusing. Further, annual training for all employees and contractors was also mandated by the government auditors. The first training session was this morning. And it was painful.

The training started almost a half hour late for unknown reasons. It was supposed to be for an hour, but they had 45 powerpoint slides and five different presenters. Anyone having sat a couple of times through “death by powerpoint” presentations knows that 45 slides means 2 hours and 15 minutes, minimum, for a well-rehearsed presentation. This was not rehearsed, let alone be well rehearsed. They didn’t know how to handle the audio part of the meeting. People from all over the country signed in with open microphones, some together in the same room with the presentation open on multiple computers, giving long echoes and longer pauses while folks tried to figure out what was wrong. Presenters kept being interrupted by other members of the management team to correct or “clarify” what was being presented. In the end, what should have been an hour training session went two hours before I could somewhat gracefully escape.

Also, I’ve had a very congested head for about 4 weeks. It’s become very difficult to sleep through the night with my nasal cpap machine (for sleep apnea) because I’ll wake up several times during the night because I can’t breathe. Since I had my own transportation, I had also planned to stop at an urgent care place and get a prescription for something to clear up my nose and sinuses. That was one of the few things that worked out as planned! I stopped in, was seen within 10 minutes, and was out with prescription as well as samples in hand in 20 minutes.

Lunch was fun. Walmart sucked. That Walmart is being remodeled or something. Construction going on everywhere in the building. They had almost no parts inventory in the vision center. I was out of luck on getting the glasses fixed. And now I knew less about how the timekeeping was to be done that I did when the day started. On the way back to the office I called my supervisor at ISL and learned that because of my status with them (variable time exempt employee) almost none of the training applied to me. I’m just to keep doing what I’ve been doing.

I went to my next meeting and called it quits for the day. Drove back to Pocatello, went to my optometrist, got my glasses fixed ($4.24), went to the drugstore and filled the prescriptions ($64.90), and came home.

Definitely hoping for a much more productive day tomorrow. I’ll be in the van. Not having transportation at the work place is likely to be a blessing. TTFN!