I've been running a lot of experiments for Company O. this week. This activity generally (and ironically) necessitates a lot of walking. The computers actually being tested are located in a building a hundred or so yards from where I am sitting now. Something inevitably goes wrong during the tests that cannot be fixed from here. So, I end up walking back and forth between buildings at least once a day, often twice, and sometimes as much as 4-5 times a day.
I pass a lot of low ornamental bushes on my way between buildings. I think that they are some form of rosemary. They have a lot of small lavender-colored flowers at this time of year. Walking back and forth past them, I've come to look for the couple dozen honey bees that are usually buzzing between the blooms.
I feel both kinship and envy with those bees. On the one hand, I feel much like some kind of worker drone under pressure to produce... and there is definitely that whole long hive/flower-cubicle/machine room journey thing going on. At the same time, the weather has been lovely here for the last few days and I'd love to be outside moving around like the bees, instead of sitting inside.
I had my annual performance review today and I don't know if I feel less like a drone or not. On the one hand, my manager said that I am doing well... but still with a lot of potential to take my performance to a higher level. In the greater group to which my manager and I both belong, I evidently was rated in the top two in a number of performance categories. If, on the other hand, my review scores were translated into a college GPA, it would come up just over a 2.8. Speaking as someone who had some kind of A average through college, this just feels a little low... but my manager also hinted at the possiblity of a raise during the next month or so. So what can I do?
I guess I need to keep being worker bee. It's time to head back over to the machine room and check on progress
said drgeek
on 2006-08-31 at 5:48 p.m.
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The Wayback Machine - To Infinity And Beyond
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