Today I’m giving a talk, the notes of which are here. The talk is loosely related to my work on chapter 1 of my dissertation. I’ve already whined at Phantom’s about how much work is piling on my at work. It’s very frustrating. I’m actually not sure what to do about it. It’s not the kind of work you can just plow through. It’s people interrupting you constantly.

I’ve been trying to install Drupal for our blog software (sorry, Ben). It’s going okay, but it takes a long time, especially when you don’t really know what you’re doing. I think a lot of people don’t realize that some of the things that we technologists are pretty difficult. Because most of them seem simple in theory. The web guy is having the same problem. Can you do this fancy-schmancy web thing? Yes, he says. But then it takes a while and they want it yesterday. The other problem I’m having is where to draw the line with my work. There are certain things that are clearly my responsibility–helping with Blackboard, helping with the Media Lab. But there are lots of fuzzy things. For example, I often get calls from staff because at one time, I was helping to train the staff to use our new web editing software. Well, I don’t really do that anymore, but neither does anyone else. It’s kind of weird. It’s complicated and it’s draining me emotionally.

I just want an hour or two to sort things out. There are things sitting on my desk that I really, really need to do. Ugh.