a knife in the dark

it's actually the title of a track on the fellowship of the ring soundtrack, but you didn't know that, did you?

I hate being home alone overnight. and I had the good sense (!) to watch predator last night. it was on tv, and I knew jacopo likes it, so I figured I'd see what I thought of it. yeah, not a wise move. no points for that movie.

yesterday morning I met with mick jr and veronica to discuss pec billing estimates and whether we could afford to go get more bins from oakland or not. I asked veronica how many bins were in batch 4; she said there were 17. we did all the calculations and found that we could still fit at least another 10 bins into the budget.

well, then later diana brought in her drive from indexing pec, and I realized that we've already got more than double the amount of images anticipated for batch 4. mick jr and I started panicking. we called veronica over and asked her again how many bins are in batch 4. she said, "I don't know. I thought you knew." what?! she's the production manager! why would she not know that number by heart? then she said, "there have to be more than 17, because you added those bins from batch 3." gaa! so because of my miscommunication (I think it was also a big misunderstanding on her part), we accidentally picked up another 12 bins that went over our budget by about $10k.

I felt awful about it all evening. I really screwed that up. but at the same time, I'm not sure that I can take all the blame. veronica is still irritated with me for what I did by moving part of the bins picked up as batch 3 and having them scanned as batch 4. now, I was told by mick to get a delivery ready asap, and it was the best option at the time to take all the production for batch 3 and leave the rest for the next batch. it really is not difficult to understand. "batch 3" or "batch 4" is just a name, bin numbers are just numbers, what really matter are the images. she said she thought I meant how many bins were designated as "batch 4" when they were picked up, which is 17. grrr.

however...today I finally got amanda back doing indexing. I talked to mick and told him I really need her help, but veronica keeps pulling her out to do ipqc. which, personally, seems like a waste, since there's only 1 person scanning. might as well just do final qc. I don't mean to make it into a battle against veronica, but she always seems to get irritated with me for things that really aren't bad. who cares if it's called "batch 3" or "batch 4"? it's a data function; I'm the data manager; I get to do that.

while I'm at it: she also got irritated with me because amanda had been indexing one morning, veronica pulled her out to do ipqc the rest of the day, and amanda went back to indexing the next day. so veronica thought she was still doing ipqc. don't look at me, she was under your jurisdiction the moment you put her on ipqc. you should have checked. it wasn't my responsibility. bah.

only 2 days until utah! and hopefully (crossed fingers, a lot) I'll get my car back today. the jerks said they would call yesterday afternoon to let me know if it would be ready then, or if they needed to keep it another day. well, by the time I remembered that I hadn't heard from them, they were (of course) closed. and they had (of course) no answering machine. called this morning and the woman said there's 1 car that came in before me that needs to be taken care of, and with any luck mine will be done today; they'll give me a call to let me know. (ha.)

the reason I've been so down lately, especially yesterday and somewhat today, is that I feel like most of the things that are going wrong are directly related to something I screwed up.
telling mick we could get more bins. if I had been clearer with veronica...

• matti not keeping track of his indexing rates. he thought I said to stop keeping track.
• heather ruining her pec indexing (old, I know). I didn't give clear instructions
• matti doing strange, bizarre things with acdsee. I didn't give clear instructions
• amanda counting the wrong number of images. I didn't give clear instructions
• not finding out about my car. I forgot to call early enough.
  

and so it goes. (good song.) I wish I could articulate better, be more specific in the things I ask employees to do. I really need to start doing written instructions for everyone. perhaps it will help. perhaps.

but, like I said, only two days till utah, and then I get olive garden and jacopo and movies and time off from work. that's the best part. or maybe it's not. just spending time with a friend is probably what I'm going to love the most.

lunch break is over, but the long day is not. ciao.