Damn.

Sometimes I hate the fact that I'm a great multitasker.

Case in point? I've been working on three projects simultaneously this week at work and the mayhem is finally starting to get to me. Not to mention the fact that I've been helping one of my co-workers in our Baton Rouge office with files that he needs that we have here at our head office.

So, just when I get in the groove working on one project, he calls and asks me if I can look for such-and-such files and email them to him. Or as the case was today, I had to proofread a report he had to get out by this afternoon. Top priority. Which means *my* projects came to a screeching halt this morning. Which in turn meant my less important projects were delayed once again.

One thing I still haven't gotten used to is the fact that we have to stay productive at work. For the engineering-ignorant, in the world of engineering, we are required to be "billable". In other words, we need to be doing work all the time that can be billed to a client. So if we run out of work, we're required to go find more work to do no matter what, thus keeping ourselves billable. No downtime for us. Ever. That's no joke. No work on any of our own projects? Go find someone on my team that needs help. No available work from the team? Go find work from some other division.

I hear of acquaintances who work in the computer field who are allowed to slack off whenever there isn't much work. In fact, one of my acquaintances was bragging how they were playing Counterstrike while waiting for work to come in. WTF?? Man, if I were to do that at my job, I for sure wouldn't be there long. You'd find me thrown out on my ass with the broken Counterstrike CD beside me.

In addition to being "billable," we're required to maximize our profits. Which basically entails doing work that can be billed out to the client as efficiently and accurately as possible. Even though we're billable, we also need to try to finish all our projects within the allotted time budget. And how do we keep track of all this? In 15-minute increments of course. All you engineers know what I'm talking about.

Our time sheet isn't so simple as to just write down how many hours we work in a day or week. Nosirree, Bob. We need to keep track of our work in 15-min increments throughout the day & week based on which projects we worked on when. We have to so we can determine how much to bill the client each week. It was a little difficult to get used to at first, but it's not such a big deal now. It only becomes a pain when you're working on multiple projects. Like I have been this week.

At least for this week, I feel that the weekend can't get here soon enough.

At least March Madness starts tomorrow - I finally have basketball games to look forward to. That is, if it isn't pre-empted by war coverage.

But perhaps I'll be able to put those multitasking skills of mine to use by channel surfing to find the basketball games while doing billable work while maximizing my productivity.

Naah. I think I'd just rather sleep.