Funnyquote Friday

There are multiple ferry companies that service the route between Basseterre, St. Kitts, and Charlestown, Nevis.  However, one of the companies has inexplicably stopped running since before the new year – the Mark Twain, as it is called, has grounded its boats "until further notice."  This means that other companies, in order to fill the now vacant timeslots, have tried running more boats to meet the demand.  The Sea Hustler, for one, has a half-passenger half-vehicle ferry that I had not seen running before this month, but now see all the time.  The locals commiserate with me on the drop in quality of these "new" additions to the fleet: in the words of my Nevisian coworker,

"The Sea Hustler – it doesn't really hustle..."

In fact, it takes a few minutes over an hour for this unideal ferry to traverse the miles between wharfs, which means that after its 7:00 departure from St. Kitts, it reaches Nevis at 8:05, with a scheduled 8:00 departure time.  With minutes to board, and scurrying along the water, it reaches St. Kitts at 9:10, and prepares for its 9:00 departure.  With a boat that loses 5 minutes every hour, it only makes sense to schedule it for hour-and-a-half runs so it can reasonably maintain its timeslots and not make all its passengers late.  But since the hour-by-hour method is the way it has always been done, there is too much inertia to overcome, and this almost certainly will not change.

Progress on the Ting is coming along nicely.  With several articles typeset already, and work put into the holistic look of this new issue, I'd estimate that I am on track to meet my deadline of February 26.  No decision on the cover artwork yet, though that might get pushed nearer the end of the month, once the tone of the whole magazine has been established. 

In other news, things at work are getting a little strained.  Now that my Intro to Computers class has ended, and the A Ganar project has started up, I have effectively run out of projects at work to keep me busy.  So my time is mostly filled up with small IT trouble-shooting, a task that is so coarse and unnerving for me that just one out-of-control situation is enough to make me unsettled.  It's hard to explain how stressful it is being the "go to guy" – since I am apparently the senior staff member in terms of experience with these tech issues – and yet not really being properly equipped to handle 60-75% of them.  The expectations of my coworkers is that I know these great and terrible secrets about their computers, and that I can magically flip their console upside down and, with a wave of my hand, fix all their computer inadequacies.  Since this is not the case, 60-75% of the time I fall below expectations, which is a heavy performance anxiety burden for someone like me, who's not used to being so unhelpful.  This, combined with the fact that I don't have much else going on there, means that my job satisfaction at my primary assignment is suffering right now.  I'm considering calling a meeting with my boss and my APCD for the end of the month – I don't want to do it sooner, due to my being busy with Serious Ting goings-on.