It is 2 AM the night before MITSFS inventory. We don't quite yet have all the data necessary to start generating shelf catalogs (in our local jargon "shelfdex packets"), at least partially because I sent some people home early. I will really, actually, have a checklist for this next year. Or possibly arrange to be in Argentina.
It is 1 PM the next day, and I am frantically trying to write a piece of software that I should have written two years ago: the resolver, so that spurious books aren't handled by a very tired person with a SQL interpreter. Of course, "frantically trying to write" means staring at a buffer consisting only of comments that I wrote yesterday.
It is 3:15 PM. The software is by no means done, or even at the required functionality level, but I'm improving something that sort of works rather than staring at a buffer full of vague comments and unparsable code. "We have a heartbeat!"
It is 6 PM. I know what this year's hilarious screwup was. But I can fix it... with a SQL interpreter. Fortunately I'm not yet that tired. (When you're matching the books that were unexpected in one place with the books that came up missing in others, you want to make sure you're matching with books that were missing in this inventory.)
It is 9 PM. "Yes," I said. "For the love of God."1
It is half past midnight, and the library has been reconfigured to be a library again, not an inventory-taking machine. I am far too tired to do more than poke desultorily at the shiny thing in front of me. I can also only sit in awe of Kevin, who got three hours less sleep than I did last night (and in the student center at that) and then herded cats all day. It was claimed that inventories don't usually end with fewer boxes of books than they start with, so I guess we won.
It is 1 PM the day after, and I am fixing up this blog post, after sleeping for about twelve hours. My brain seems to be vaguely wondering where all of its neurotransmitters went. (Disclosure: I did actually start each paragraph at the the times specified, but I went back and edited, sometimes writing more based on recollection.)
1. (People have begun to barricade themselves with boxes of spurious books.)
I can also only sit in awe of Kevin, who got three hours less sleep than I did last night (and in the student center at that) and then herded cats all day.
*Bows.*
To be fair, I only had one thing to do -- herd cats -- I wasn't trying to multiplex herding with writing the resolution code/SQL queries, as I believe you've tried to do.
I was still pretty exhausted by the end of it. Two hours of sleep on a couch in the Student Center is not... quality preparation for Inventory. Next year we will have a checklist, dammit.
It was claimed that inventories don't usually end with fewer boxes of books than they start with, so I guess we won.
Yaaaaay!
You wouldn't like Argentina right now...even with all the steaks. It was supposed to be 102F there today (although it did not quite make it). There's an Atriot down there on a wine buying trip for Whole Foods who reported this.
Congrats on the inventory. :-)