Day of Craziness

Today has been one crazy day. I did a lot of cleaning before I left for work this morning. I got to work and it was complete chaos. The phones were ringing off the hook. People kept screwing up the most simple of things and they had no idea how to fix them. They were calling about stuff that they shouldn't be calling about on a month end. Let me give you an idea of how the day was.  We have had 88 calls today.  On an average day we usually get between 20 and 30.  On a month end 50 is probably normal. 88 doesn't sound like a lot. But keep in mind there are only 3 of us answering the phones. And the calls probably average around 8 minutes each. So that works out to be almost 12 hours of time spent on the phone. So divide that up and that is 4 hours on the phone for each of us.  That is only half our shift right?  Wrong.  We spend at least that off hte phone fixing things and finding solutions to problems that people have called about. Plus on month end we have to run the month end process of 5 credit unions.  That alone takes around 4 hours to do. Needless to say, it has been a very busy day.  I will be lucky to be done with all the month end processing that I have to do before midnight.  Fortunately I can finish some of it from home.

In case you are wondering what I am talking about when I say month end processing, I will tell you.  Month end processing is the processing that credit unions do at the end of the month.  It includes things like paying out dividends on accounts, charging finance charges on credit cards, printing all kinds of reports, and sending out statements.  It is fairly involved and if it is messed up the consequences can be bad and are a pain to fix.  So we get a lot of calls on month end. Year end is much worse.  There are even more processes we have to get done that day. Oh, to run the month end processes the credit unions have to be closed so we have to work late into the night to get them done.  The worst month ends to work are the ones that fall on weekdays.  Like today.  I will be working until almost midnight and then I will be back to work first thing in the morning. It sucks.  But that is life. It could be worse.  We could have to come in and start the processing at like 1 in the morning.

Work

I am working the late shift tonight.  I hope it goes fairly well and everything gets done quickly. Working late on night and having to go in the next morning kinda sucks.  So hopefully nothing goes wrong and I can get out of work at a reasonable hour tonight.  Month end processing can sometimes have some major hiccups and that is never fun.

Running

I had a nice run this morning.  In case you didn't know I get up and run a 5k at 5am three days a week.  Leona thinks I am crazy first of all for running and especially at 5 in the morning.  But that is the only time I am able to go. I used to run in the afternoons, but I don't have time to do that any more.

I guess the real question is why do I run?  Well, I do it to condition myself for soccer.  But I also do it just to stay in shape. And I actually enjoy it (most of the time). Crazy I know. But it feels good to reach the goals I set for myself.  Right now I am working towards getting my time consistently under 26 minutes.  I still have a long ways to go but I am getting there. One run at a time.

Running is also a great way to take time for yourself and just think.  I think about all kinds of things while I am running.  What I am going to do that day, what programs I am going to work on that day, what I need to do to get things done, etc.  So for me running has many purposes. I'm just glad I am able to do it.  There are days (like today) when my knees don't want to work.  It can get very painful, but I just push through it.  So if you ever see me limping around it is because me knee went out on me and I am in a lot of pain.  Probably more than it looks like I am.

Overwhelmed

Today I was feeling completely overwhelmed. I am used to a lot of stuff going on in my life but this weekend has really put me to the test.  Leona hurting her arm on Friday so she couldn't do much around the house has added a lot of things to my to-do list.  I was hoping to get a lot of stuff done this weekend but I didn't get much sleep Friday night and spent several hours at the doctor Saturday so I was so tired yesterday I could barely walk.  Last night I didn't get a whole lot more sleep than the night before. Needless to say, I am exhausted.  I was able to take a half hour nap this afternoon which helped.  I have managed to get a little more than half of my to-do list done this weekend.  I got some of my Branch Mission stuff done.  Now I just need to put together a Branch Mission Plan and a mormon.org fact sheet to give people.  I need to do that before next Sunday.  But I shouldn't have any problems doing that.

This coming week is going to be another very busy week.  I have to work late tomorrow night. I have several people in the branch to visit. I have a basketball game to go to and if the weather is nice a soccer game to organize for Saturday. I also want to get some more work done on some of the programs I am working on.  I have several that I could finish fairly quickly if I would just focus on them.  But I often get distracted. That is ok though.  There is no real hurry to get them done.  They are just personal projects.  I do hope that I am able to write a couple games that are good enough that people are willing to buy them.  That is my ultimate goal in life.  To write a successful computer game. Even if I don't end up making a living writing games, I enjoy writing them and I hope that people will enjoy playing them. I love programming :)

My First Entry

I thought I would create a blog to write down what is going on in my head.  I don't know how many people would be interested in my thoughts but I am going to give this a go.  Hopefully someone will find this blog interesting.