coder's high

So anyway, I got the job from the previous post. I don't know why they were making a big deal about how late I could stay, since the company policy here is to go home at 5:30 (!!). That's the earliest I've gotten out in a long time.

At first I thought of myself as mysteriously good at interviewing, because through the contracting company I've had many an interview. So far I've passed even the ones that I thought for sure I had made a fool of myself at. But now I'm starting to realize that the main reason I'm probably getting through all of them is because I'm *cheap!*. I mean. That sounded bad. I mean I get paid near-minimum wage. Think... full time McDonalds worker. It was kind of sad because when I filled out the tax form for the US I had to translate my salary into DOLLARS which made my meager salary look even cheaper. Cry!
... Ok, my boss gave me the raise, almost the amount I asked for, so I was pretty happy. So now I'm paid the same as a slightly better paid fast-food worker. Possibly In'n'Out burger.

But this new job is BORING. I heard in the interview I'd be coding PL/SQL, which I haven't done so much of. "sweet, I'm gonna learn new stuff!" I thought to myself. In the interview, my manager said "this will require you to use PL/SQL and stay late."

Here I was thinking my work would involve cola-inspired late night coding sessions, for which I had been getting a little nostalgic.

The first day of the job, however, the reality was pretty different.
manager: "Here's an excel file. Copy all of these columns and make one big select statement."
(there are 200 + of these files, some of them over 400 rows long.)
me: "Erm, so is that all? Copying and pasting,pretty much?"
manager: "It's a lot of work! You have until the middle of May, good luck!"
Me: ....I have been a-fooled!

After one day of painstakingly copy+pasting, my wrist was really starting to hurt and my mood was getting foul. I grumbled to myself "there's GOT to be an easier way to do this!!"

Then, in a moment of glory, I realized you can write programs with visual basic in excel. I hunted around the internet and found a sample excel output-to-text program, tweaked it around a bit, and had a macro that did my work for me. ...I'm feeling a little guilty because I will now have all my work done in the span of two days, rather than the month I was given.

This weeks lesson: If it's boring and repetitive, there's probably a way to do it with a computer program, and there are tons of examples on the internet.

Hooray, internet! ^^

In other news, fashion in Japan is very uniform. when you see a million other girls wearing trench coats, and you have a trench coat in your closet, it's very hard not to wear it. But I don't tie it up with a ribbon like everyone else because I am a daring non-conformist. ^_~