65 hours of over time

Been hell of a month, it's coming down to crunch time and we are finally starting to get into reliability testing. The problem is that development time wasn't properly allocated into reliability testing and things are in a complete pinch.

Just making something and having it come out pretty is one thing, but it's going to have to last if people are going to buy it.

Then I get suddenly thrown into the reliability testing group and will have to do a lot of redesign and testing to get things working right. According to the schedule, I have one shot to make the device and then hand it off to another division for some post processing (which they have one shot to get right) and then perform a 1000 hour lifetime test, where the the sample must pass.

I'm basically playing for a hole-in-one game here and the schedule is tight... actually, we are already behind schedule and it looks like I'll be puling 150 hours of over time in the span of 3 months. I'll be hitting the limit for overtime over a 3 month period.

Despite this, I keep my weekends busy with visiting friends and attending events. Ironically, I don't get much rest on weekends either.

It's easy to see how one's life turns into a work-rest-work cycle when doing these kinds of hours. You'll be old and nearly dead before you realize it. There are plenty of other things that I want to do but have absolutely no time to do them.

I'll be glad when this is all over.

Fortunately, I just got clearance to procure man-power from another division and will be roping in 2 people to help me and possibly getting one more person for some sort term experiments....

My supervisor is somewhat incompetent and scatter brained (lacking in good logical and planning skills) and unfortunately I don't have his experience with working on this project. Fortunately, he's going to be busy on another project and I'll be moving myself into managing the other guys coming in (whom are much older than I, but this will be interesting).

I've got a shot at making a name for myself if I can pull of a stunt to succeed at the reliability testing and crazy state that it is in right now. If it works out, I'll be asking the boss for a bonus for the winter and it'll be something nice to add to the resume.