Monday, July 17
Today I'm going to start working on all that comments of the reviews last week. I read it and realize it'll be a large amount of work, besides the others I'm supposed to do this week. Anyway, the comment is very useful and I start with the easy ones. Some things are about formulation. It obviously has to be a lot more formal than I initially wrote down. After I modified that I decide to rewrite the introduction and start thinking about a management summary. These two things seem the most difficult for me. I already disliked summarizing at school and never did it since. Nevertheless I now have to do it.
After lunch I stop by Alain and Barbara. The news is good, they know which statements to code and Alain starts working on coding them thus that I can easily incorporate that into Swingbench. Once that's done we should be able to test it from the laptop and if that works we can setup the actual test. I agree to stop by Tuesday morning to check on progress. I very much hope to get it done this week
Tuesday, July 18
Today is good news because Alain reports first scripts are finished for me to put into Swingbench and test. I do so and run the tool. It actually works!! I'm very glad with this and immediately e-mail Alain the good news. I decide to stop by tomorrowmorning to confer with him. While he's finishing on the scripts I could install Swingbench on the server. That way, we could test the setup tomorrow afternoon and do the real thing tomorrow evening or Thursday evening.
Also, Joachim and I started to think of a base storyline for the presentation. Joachim offers to actually make the powerpoint presentation, so I can focus on my other activities. That presentation was supposed to be next week, but since people aren't available next week it was decided to do it this Friday. I don't really like the idea of doing a presentation, but I have to in this case. Fortunately I don't have to do it on my own, Joachim will sjupport me in this.
In the evening I suddenly feel like going into Rome's city centre, so I take the train and tram to Trastevere. I stroll through town, each time I do that I like it more. Nice streets, and all those people to watch. Monkeywatching is always the funniest thing to do :) When I get hungry I decide to do a McDonalds just for this once. No ice cream for me this week.
Speaking of ice cream, did I already tell you that they sell ice cream in the WFP cafeteria? Joachim very much likes a particular one, it's called Cucciolone. It's sort of a chocolate bar with ice cream inside. Made by a company that has the same logo as back home Ola does. I checked out Ola's website, but cannot find it. Apparently they're not sold back home. Pity.
Wednesday, July 19
Joachim must have started terribly early this morning because I find an email in my inbox he sent at five-thirty this morning. I stop by and discover he has the entire powerpoint thign ready for Friday. I'm very impressed. In the meantime I have to do some research into Oracle licensing. With the help of one of my Vertis-collegues I can actually understand Oracle's licensing and get some realistic figures. Only my head is now completely dizzy with numbers. Joachim suggests we go out for lunch. We go to the Bosch building next door and have a slice of pizza. They have a terrace so we can sit outside in the shade. And we all like it very well.
At lunchtime we're starting to experience the downside of Joachim's desire to work this morning. He used up all his energy already and doesn't seem to have any left, he's kind of moaning and groaning his way through the afternoon. He talks about going home early. I think that's a good idea, because usually he goes home very late, while starting at eight-thirty in the morning.
Thursday, July 20
This morning Ferry is very much back from two days off. Within ten minutes I get four emails in my inbox. I'm glad with them because it means some more information on the costs and benefits calculations. If we state how much it will cost, managers are bound to ask the question hoe much they will earn by investing. So it's a good idea to try and calculate that also. And I'm finding that very difficult, because how the hell do you know how much time who is going to save where??? And once you do know that, how do you convert that to money? Topping that, people at WFP who should be able to help me on that one are all on holiday :(.
At the end of the morning there's a lunch discussion; we end up going for sushi at the Commissary. So this will be my first time eating with chopsticks. I'll probably make a mess of it, but I'll try anyway. Joachim explains me how to use the chopsticks and I manage to actually eat all of my sushi in an orderly fashion. Joachim is a good explainer.
In the evening I go to Parco Leonardo. At one of the fast food restaurants at the first (second for Americans) floor they sell some kind of Coca Cola bottle. It'll be a nice addition to my collection. When I get to the hotel I put it at the cabinet so I can proudly look at it from time to time.
Friday, July 21
I get up and realize my headache is gone. It's been gone since yesterday afternoon. Strange. Yesterday morning it was still there, growing heavier with the hour. Until it was decided to change the agenda for todays presentation (they're now calling it a briefing). The most difficult subjects for me dissapeared from the agenda, I now only have to talk about those things that are clear up until now. Apparently I worried more about that than I thought I did. At work I drink a capuccino (wonderful invention by the way) and think about the loadtest that's scheduled for today. I'm having difficulty realizing we're actually going to do it, we've been working on this for so long. Later in the day I get a phone call from Alain telling me we need to have a meeting with ODTF about the load test. Now. Otherwise we cannot do it.
Damn
The boys and girls from ODTF are unavailable because in less than half an hour from now we have that presentation scheduled. And after that we're supposed to do the load test. Now what? Well, you guessed it: no load test. It just was too good to be true.
Ciao,
Ingrid.