TGIF!

There aren’t enough words in the English language to describe how happy I am that today is Friday. It’s been yet another long week, and adding to the working world fun & joy, I’ve also been getting to start fall quarter at college next week, along with playing Mr. Executor for my sister’s estate. So I’m pretty gosh darned thrilled to not have much to do tomorrow, besides answer my correspondence, read my textbook, take a couple of online tests, write a paper, do my laundry, buy new shoes, haul the new washer & dryer from the garage to the basement, haul the old washer & dryer from the basement to the garage, write up a classified ad for Earl (my daughter’s old car), clean house, wash the convertible, go to a wedding reception, and...oh, yeah – slip into a coma.

So my weekend will be jam packed with thrills and chores, but it’s better than being at work. We’ve been so understaffed and overworked lately that it’s starting to take a genuine physical toll on people. Burnout is running rampant through our little group, and it’s manifesting as head colds, headaches, nervous ticks, and best of all, the invention of new, previously unknown curse words. (“Bitchfuck” was the funniest of them.)

We’ve been working like mad to bring our Web site up to what’s known as 508 compliance. Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act states that a Web site must comply with about 20 different standards for those who are visually impaired, colorblind, epileptic, or otherwise disabled. In order to comply with Section 508, we have to have certain colors, certain fonts, certain styles, and all sorts of background notations and special features built in to allow anyone with a text reader, scanner, mega-screen monitor, or other visual aid to access our site. It’s a good idea, but it’s really complicated.

The hitch is that for my primary employer to do business with the U.S. Government, our site HAS to comply. And currently it doesn’t. But since they’d like to sell to the Feds, it’s now become our task to make sure it does, which sounds a whole lot easier than it really is. The catch being that we have to go back to 1997 or so, and make sure every page complies 100 percent, and we have somewhere around 1,400,000 pages of data. 1.4 million pages to verify and update, and only 3 writers. Yikes.

So we’ve started slowly, doing what we can in between all of the other 99 crisis situations we face daily, but it looks like for us to complete this project, the company is going to have to loosen the purse strings a little bit, and Mr. Scrooge is going to have to suck it up and hire us some temps. Even then, I’m estimating that the complete project will take a team of 8 temps 9-12 months to finish. We’ll see how much they want Federal business after finding out that expenditure, won’t we?

But for now, I’ll finish my week as I usually do; wrapping up all the last minute details before walking out the door at 5:00. And not a moment later.

Have a good weekend, world. See you bright and early Monday.