Happy New Year?

So far, the new year is not going well. I work the midnight to noon shift this trip (perk of being the boss-I choose my shift and naturally chose the quieter one and the one matching best with PW and LP). Here, on New Zealand time, it's already January first.

I walk into work a few minutes before midnight and the new year and get handed a load of crap. We've got a problem creating one of our final products. It's complicated, confusing and just plain doesn't work like any of our documentation states it should. Fucking bits and bytes, one's and zero's, formats, formulas, algorithms and unrecognizable errors.

While the entire ship's company gathers on the bridge wing for fireworks (see emergency flares), I sit at my computer, contemplating a steaming pile of shit that is our first attempt at our final product. I've not had my first cuppa joe and I'm calculating expected file sizes, examining error logs and wracking my brain for an answer. Midnight passes and I take no notice. I have no time to wonder what the new year will bring, as it's first gift sits before me, steaming and noxious.

OK, enough self-pity and bitter frustration, but I really had to get that off my chest. I told myself that I would attempt to post regularly during this trip, if for no other reason than to give myself a much-needed break and diversion, during my shifts, knowing they would exceed the standard 12 hours and be full of nasties like the one -hold on, I have an urgent message from an engineer onshore....OK, I'm hot swapping data disks (good fun, that) so I'll have to get back to you people later....

...shit like this makes me feel like one of the astronauts on Apollo 13. Here I am in my little ship, getting instructions on how to perform a mission-critical task from a controller thousands of miles away. He can't see what I see and I don't have access to the data he's using to make decisions and communications are lousy. We keep hitting the dead band and must be floating close to gimbal-lock. Yes, Blondie, sometimes I feel like yelling, "I don't need to hear the obvious. I got the frappin' eight-ball right in front of me!", as I try to pilot this dying ship, but I might be on VOX...

Anyway, I was going to do a little post-by-post tour of the ship and had planned to write about the gym on here, but instead I'll post a shot of the theatre since I never use it, have little to say about it and can close out this, the first post of 2008. The theatre; it's large, with comfortable-looking leather chairs and a big TV.



Happy New Year, Landlubbers!