Getting laid

off is really not what I wanted today.

That little theory I had about how doing the work of three people would keep me on the project was just shot all to hell today. A week and a half at most. And they kept four people. Three perfectly competent, one completely not. But they aren't subject to the "2 year rule." The one that says if a temp is so valuable that you have to keep them beyond 2 years, you have to hire them on permanently. Well, although Company, Inc. has a stable of 50-100 contract attorneys working on multimillion dollar litigation at any one time, they wouldn't want to be cost effective and bring some of the most skilled and productive people in house. No, that would make sense. Better to keep training new people all the time. Someone do a six sigma project on this before the entire thing collapses. I know what stock I'm not buying.

The temp agency says that there is no more work. So I'll be on unemployment in September. There aren't any jobs to apply for. I know. I checked.

Maybe once I'm on unemployment I'll defer my student loans. Or die. That would work.

Yum!

Dinner was awesome. If you haven't yet checked out the Fatfree Vegan Kitchen, do so at once, particularly the source for dinner tonight, here. I was lazy and didn't peel the Japanese eggplant, nor did I have any hoisin sauce. It was fabulous just the same. I'd often wondered how to mimic the spicy garlic eggplant I've ordered over the years, but never attempted it. I like that this has the flavor, but hardly any of the oil. Tofu always makes me happy, too.

Even little boy, who looked dubious at the thought of eggplant, loved it. Big Boy, who is out playing soccer at the park, has not yet weighed in.

Running was fun, a 5 miler with the particularly fetching canine starring in my profile pic. The photo was taken a couple of years ago, because she now has quite a few white streaks in the black spots around her eyes. She's 6 1/2.

SO should be home from cabin-building in Wyoming at some point tonight. We've seen each other a total of maybe 3 days since July 22nd. Brother-out-law will be coming as well.

Interviews

Well, I had one on Wednesday. No sense in blogging about it, it was a waste of $2.50 in quarters for the meter. But at least I got a good parking spot.

Out for an 8 miler this morning. It went reasonably well, and I'm not walking funny or anything now. The weather was beautiful. I'm kind of surprised that running has been going as well as it has. My increase has been well over the 10% rule. Here's August for you:

Week 1 - one run, 4.5 miles
Week 2 - two runs, 8 miles total
Week 3 - four runs, 19 miles total
Week 4 - five runs, 24 miles total

Next week will be five runs and 27 miles. Rather astonishing, given that my total miles for all of July were about 15. By the time the Big Woods Run comes in October, I'll be doing 30 mpw regularly. My schedule right now calls for one 12 miler, which I'd really like to do, but if it turns out to be another 11 miler, that's ok, too.

After May's half marathon, I still think anyone could run 13.1 miles. Can't believe how not trained I was for that. Ah, regrets. How fast could I run if I really tried to live up to my potential? Maybe I'd be at the front of the middle of the pack.

little boy ran in his first cross country meet this week. 5K in 23:xx. I was so proud of him! That embarrassing, mom-is-just-about-crying sort of proud that all teenagers just love. Big Boy had a double-header soccer extravaganza last night. He scored one goal in the second game, but alas, they lost.

The eating plan is going well, but for the pizza fiasco this week. Who knew you could feel hung over from eating sauce stuffed crust pizza?? It was probably all that darn sodium. I discovered that I totally love those little golden cherry tomatoes. Who knew? Grandma would be proud.

Edge of Seventeen

Well, my firstborn turned 17 yesterday. Given that on most days, I don't feel any older than 17, this has come as something of a shock. He's been taller than me for almost three years, so I don't know why it's so surprising that he'll be an adult in twelve months. Maybe cuz I can see the end of the ride? Who knew it was going to be so short??

I worked on his socks more last night, gusset is almost done, then the endless expanse of foot, some toe work and I'm done. They'll be finished by the time he gets home on Saturday.

Work is the same... I did some phenomenal production on Tuesday, but the "crisis" (as usual) was just a figment of the Real Employee's little drama. No job prospects at this point, and no interviews from the outstanding applications, either. We finally had some thunderstorms and the weather was completely acceptable yesterday. I rode my bike in today, as I fixed the flat. Had a quick chat with the co-temp-workers in their little side office, cuz talking to the dog isn't really feeding my need for conversation.

Quotas

**Quotas - yes, even lawyers use them. The first temp job I worked had a quota of about 25 documents per hour, or roughly 200-250 per day. The first project I worked on here had a quota of 40 docs per hour, and it freaked me out a little bit. I had to wrap my mind around working some in between surfing the web and emailing my friends and working on my pro bono cases and frantically looking for a Real Job.

After working on this current project for over a year, we finally got a number, but only because we have a production deadline set by a judge who means business and a whole bunch of new people who aren't yet "up to speed." That number is 78 docs per hour and it seems to freak out the newbies quite a bit. Given that I've been working with basically the same set of issues for a long time, I get to help train the newbies and QC their work. Well, not just me, of course. There's 5 of us here who've been doing this task.

Here's the procedure: we get a batch of 1000 docs at a time and the Real Employee (who isn't a lawyer, btw) has said that she expects us to get through a batch in a day and a half. You look at the document, decide if it's relevant, and if it's not, move to the next document. It's not rocket science, but most associates do this for several years in the big firms, so I hear (they also bill out at $275/hour). They're also not nearly as fast as I am, nor dare I say, as accurate. (I've had occasion to review some of their work, and really, they're not worth it.) I think that my personal record is just under 500 docs per hour. It was one of those days when I wondered how fast could I actually go without losing all semblance of accuracy and how long could I pay attention to document coding? That's usually the kicker - it's hard to concentrate long enough, because coding is really quite boring. To do it fast & accurately, it also requires hyper-focus, which is difficult for me to maintain when I'm really not interested in the subject matter. Normally, when I'm feeling slacky, I'll limit myself to 200 per hour, so in an 8-hour shift (like yesterday), I'll do 1,600 documents.

I have this crazy notion in my head that one of the Real Employees will notice that I'm really good at not only document review, but also training attorneys to do this stultifyingly dull yet very necessary job. So most days I make myself do the work of 3 temps. Sometimes only 2, sometimes 4 or more, but usually 3. If their quota is 78 docs per hour, mine is 234.

There's a deadline for this source on August 2, but the 45,000 docs won't be loaded onto the server until early this morning. Real Employee has asked that we work a lot today. I think I'll see if I can code 4,000 docs. Not that anyone will notice.

I think that 4,000 is entirely possible. They apparently just collected this source's entire email account for the past several years. There's so much non-relevant stuff that I just got through 500 docs in 35 minutes. On to another 500...