The sun was shining, the temperature got up to 75 degrees – perfect for sitting outside on the back porch with a bowl of cereal and a good book.

I’m reading “Voyage” by Steven Baxter. It’s alternate-history sci-fi, speculating about what would have happened if the Shuttle program had not been approved and a manned mission to Mars had been approved instead. It’s dry in parts, interesting in others.

In other news, apparenty NASA are searching Nevada for peices of Columbia. None found so far.

We’ve found out a little more about how the corporate politics work at WonkaTech. It’s easier to deal with than the Acme culture, let me tell you. Basically the manager who approves our time sheets each week doesn’t seem to want us there (What do you mean, it’s not like Acme?!?).

There’s a number of business application – sales order entry, etc – that have some stability problems, and they want to replace the whole thing with a new generation of business ware – namely Siebel and EDS. This isn’t going to happen very quickly, however, and the sales reps are in pain right now because the of problems they have with the existing software. Our job is to fix it as quickly as possible, and put some much needed enhancements in place, and at the same time, document it thoroughly so that the Siebel/EDS consultants know what it is they are supposed to be replacing.

At this stage, we think we’re doing ok, and will deliver a new-improved version sometime this week, and the sales-people will be relieved and thankful, and we’ll be eventually assigned to another program that is causing similar problems. Or something like that.

It matters because at that point we’ll know if we are going to be working there for longer than a couple of months. We’d like to work for a decent amount of time – so far we have had no real alternative jobs in the pipeline, although we’re still looking, and will continue to do so.