Untitled 01

I often find that the hardest part of writing a new post is making the first sentence sound right. I've been trying to write a decent sounding sentence for the last 20 minutes, but nothing is working for me. I've changed the topic of this post at least three times, each time hoping that the new topic will inspire a good start-off sentence, but, unfortunately, this little paragraph about how I've NOT been able to find the right sentence is all I've come up with. Pathetic.

Attempt 1: I'm proud to say that I've conquered...

Attempt 2: I'm proud to announce that I've slain the CSS-P dragon...

Attempt 3: I'm proud to announce that I've slain the CSS-P donkey...

Attempt 4: As of last Saturday, I'm proud to announce that I've slain the CSS-P dragon, thanks in part to the box model hack...

Attempt 5: Parents just don't understand.

Attempt 6: I've been writing this blog for close to two and a half months...

Attempt 7: I've been chronicling our progress for nearly two and a half months...

Attempt 8: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...

Attempt 9: Call me Ishmael.

So, here goes nothing:

You know, I've been writing this here blog for darn near two and a half moons, and never once have I taken the time to talk about my current job. In fact, I think the only time I ever mentioned my job was way back in my very first post when I introduced myself to the internet. "My name is Dan and I'm currently a 23 year old Web Engineer for one of the world's largest textbook publishing companies." Oh, to be 23 again! How the times have changed.

My full title is Electronic Production Engineer (EPE), which really doesn't shed much light on what I actually do. My department, which is called eProduction, is responsible for maintaining the online presence of all our company's health journals. I won't mention any of the titles we publish, for fear of fiery damnation, but I'm sure the majority of you would recognize at least one or two of them. Our titles are targeted towards health professionals - doctors and surgeons of every conceivable specialty, dentists, vetrinarians, etc. - which means the articles are anything but light, summertime reads. My job is to ensure the timeliness and quality of the online articles in accordance to their print counterparts. In essence, every time a new issue of a journal is printed, I have to make sure that the online version matches the print version as closely as possible.

Each EPE is assigned between 20 to 30 titles for which they're responsible. I have 28 titles in my corral. Some days I'll have 4 or 5 journals to check, other days I won't have any. It all depends on the time of the month and the frequency of publication for each specific journal. Whenever a journal comes up for review, I open two browser windows (one for the online version and one for the print PDF) and slowly, tediously scan down the screen and compare the two. If there's a rendering error, which rarely occur, I mark it down and send it to the appropriate Senior EPE.

One of the articles I checked today was entitled, Transcervical artificial insemination in donkeys: effects of a new transcervical artificial insemination instrument and traversing the cervix on pregnancy and assing rates* (*the subject species has been changed to disguse the actual article AND to make an attempt at cheap, bawdy humor). Of course, we're not actually expected to read these articles, instead we're told to scan down the page, assure that the tables have rendered properly, the page numbers coincide, the links work properly, and the citations are displayed correctly, among other things. After several hours of this, your eyes glaze over, your lips become chapped, and you start feeling like a gelfling who's had his or he
r life sucked out. My job is SO boring, that I'm falling asleep just writing about it.

Although my eyes might be busy checking articles for broken images and links, my mind is in a galaxy far, far away. Thinking about... the... theater... of course. I can't continue this post. I have successfully bored myself to tears.

Ugh.