Daily drudge

I'm fairly close-mouthed about my job, usually. This is partly because there are certain elements of confidentiality about what I do (which I take seriously), and partly because I don't want to get into trouble if I occasionally grumble about my employers. But... to those of you who harbour even a shred of desire to find out what I do during an average work day ... this post is for you.

Minutes spent trying to remember what it is I have to do next: 20

Minutes spent wondering what it was I was trying to remember two minutes ago: 30

Number of cups of proper coffee drunk: 1

Number of cups of machine-brewed vaguely coffee-ish gunge drunk: 7

Percentage of energy spent drumming fingers on the desk: 3%

Percentage of energy spent tapping foot on floor: 4%

Percentage of energy spent running away from colleagues who are getting pissed off by my incessant finger-drumming and foot-tapping: 6%

System design documents updated: 3

System design documents screwed up and tossed into the bin: 2

Number of times distracted from what I'm doing by people wanting a progress report on what I'm doing: 4

Number of times approached by gormless wannabe-techies wanting to know how to follow simple instructions written in 5-year-old language: 11

Number of times telephoned by unbelievably gormless users with a PhD (Gormlessness) from the University of Gormless wanting to know how to turn their PCs on: 59

Lines of fiendishly incomprehensible code written: 400

Minutes spent reading yesterday's fiendishly incomprehensible code and trying to work out what the hell I was thinking of: 45

Mail servers fixed: 2

Mail servers broken: 3

Mail servers thwacked enthusiastically with a big hammer: 1

Stuck email messages liberated: 109

Meetings attended: 1

Meetings fallen asleep during: 1

Blog posts written: 0.05 (it's an average, OK?)

Pounds spent on overpriced canteen food: 6

Pounds spent on overpriced car fuel: 15

Kids dropped off: 2

Kids picked up: 2

Kids enraged by refusing to let them throw their shoes at each other while I'm driving: 2

Kids calmed down by singing The Piglet Song in a silly voice: 2

No cigarettes or gallons of red wine - sorry, Bridget. (Although I do like a small glass of single malt on occasion; donations to the usual Swiss deposit box gratefully received).