Sisyphus

Posted on 2008/12/20 13:44:34 (December 2008).

[Wednesday 17th December]
What with assorted Christmas parties etc, tonight was actually the only night of this week that Chie and I had dinner at home together.

I suppose given that we really should have put a bit more effort in and made something a bit special, but I've been having quite a hard time at work this past couple of weeks, and really couldn't muster up much enthusiasm to cook.

I've been wrestling with a very high profile bug that I'm under pressure to get resolved before the end of the year. It's a bit like the Greek legend of Sisyphus - that guy who was cursed for all eternity to perpetually push a rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down again. It's a very complex bug to do with a large scale statistical system, and it means running hundreds of lengthy and tedious experiments with some small tweaks to the model, only to find the apparent solution is flawed for some reason or other, and it's back to the drawing board again. What's particularly demoralising about the whole thing is that even if I do eventually manage to fix it, that success won't be greeted with a fanfare of applause and celebration, because I'll have just got the system back to doing what it is supposed to do in the first place. It's really all just about saving face, which is somehow a bit difficult to get particularly enthusiastic about.

So that's a long winded way of explaining why dinner wasn't very lavish this evening. We just had some spaghetti, with some Quorn fillet things on the side. I did at least make a salad though.

Found it very hard to take my mind off work for the remainder of the evening - and ended up getting back on the computer after dinner and putting a couple more hours in. This bloody bug is really getting on top of me.

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