swans on tea

Just another SFN Blogs site
  • Home
  • A very little about me
  • Sample Page

Progress

Published by swansont on December 10, 2009 03:00 am under Bureaucracy, Lab Stories

Since the Last Progress Report, I Have Worked on This Progress Report

This always takes much longer than it ought to, in large part because it’s hard to remember exactly when certain significant things happened, which leads to a lot of searching of my email trying to determine when various things saw print, and which of the available categories it fits in. I probably really ought to keep a running tally of my activities as the year goes along, but they tweak the form every year or two, so my attempts have always been thwarted– I end up spending a bunch of time working out how to convert from one version of the form to another.

I have to do monthly reports, and then I can choose my greatest hits from them for the annual report. At one point long ago the reports were weekly, but that got to heavily into minutia, which wasn’t particularly useful. There’s only so much you can report about aligning optics and tweaking lasers, and sometime no real progress is made at all, especially if you’ve stepped in some management and can’t spend time in the lab. All too often the reports go along the lines of

Week N: Discovered some anomaly.

Week N+1 Investigated anomaly; finally identified and solved the problem

Week N+2 Oops, no I didn’t.

When you finally do fix the issue, what you’ve reported is all of the path-dependent work you did, instead of the actual progress you made.

No Comment

Comments are closed.

Posting your comment.

  • Recent Posts

    • When Does the Decade End?
    • This is the Hardest Job a Manager Has …
    • 5 Things You Should Know About Light
    • See Spot "Run"
    • The System Works
  • Recent Comments

    • Joey Cook on One Ringy-Dingy, Two Ringy-Dingy
    • Science Fanatic on Talk Like a Physicist Day
    • Chris Gould on Brian Cox is Full of **it
    • LaurieAG on Inmates Running the Asylum
    • Uncle Al on Curious About Curies
  • Archives

    • December 2019
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
    • January 2014
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • October 2012
    • September 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
    • December 2008
    • November 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
    • June 2008
    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • March 2008
    • February 2008
    • January 2008
  • Categories

    • admin
    • Antiscience
    • Art
    • Blog Compendia
    • Blogging
    • Body
    • Books
    • Bureaucracy
    • Business
    • Cartoon
    • Conference stories
    • Cool stuff
    • DIY science
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Experiments
    • Food
    • Game
    • Geocaching
    • History
    • Humor
    • Illusions
    • Journalism
    • Lab Stories
    • Language
    • Links
    • Math
    • Metaphysics
    • Misc
    • Movies
    • Music
    • Navy
    • Not Really Science at All
    • Other science
    • peeve
    • photography
    • Photos
    • Physics
    • Politics
    • Quotes
    • Rants
    • Religion
    • Satire
    • Sci-Fi
    • Science-general
    • science-y observation
    • Security
    • Shameless self promotion
    • Sick sick sick
    • Silly
    • Sports
    • Tech
    • The Lab
    • Thermal IR
    • Time
    • TMI
    • Toys
    • trivia
    • TV
    • TYAGFITI
    • Typography
    • Uncategorized
    • Video
    • Weird
    • World Events
    • Writing
  • Meta

    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 swans on tea
WordPress Theme based on Light Theme