Preliminary Report Statistics

Time taken to write report: 56 hours
Actual report length: 20 pages double-spaced, 3491 words
Appendix length: 17 pages
Total report length: 46 pages, 8032 words
Official word limit: 2500 words
Amout of crap in report: 80% (sorry, boss)
Imaginary dedication: to the next co-op student, who's stuck with doing all the work after I am gone. (And for that, I am truly sorry.)

And no, I am not done. It's editing and trimming time! (A confluence of circumstances permitted me to work on one single report for this long. Also, one of my supervisors is really nice, if a little condescending sometimes.)

It didn't help that two of my supervisors um, changed the report scope on me. At least they had the decency to tell me near the beginning of the week. It's hard to understand how they think, sometimes - they shot random, tangential comments and ideas all over the room. It's my job to put those pieces together.

In my opinion, the report's actually pretty useless. It has very little new information; almost everything I've written in it is already known by everyone at the lab. The report thus only serves three purposes:

1. It "collates" most of the existing information in one ungainly package
2. It's something for the next student to read - the report has practically everything the student will need to know about the project, including all my idiosyncracies
3. It's something for me to hand in to the University after this term

Well, ok, my coworkers also have to wade through the report, without the "insert comment" button in Microsoft Word. Finally, a chance to torment my coworkers after all these months. Heh.

Naturally, there are more reports to go; the difference is, I actually have some interest in those, because they are more "my" projects than "something that's all decided already, but boss wanted a report anyway". Sigh.

That's it for today. Editing will happen tomorrow, with a less exhausted pair of eyes. Thank the various computer scientists for writing LyX (automatic Table of Contents generation and label-tracking is awesome).

Reminder to self: I should obtain gifts for the lab, soon. End-of-term is coming.

An utterly tangentially random aside: ohhhhhhhh he meant Saint-Saëns! I had no idea, when he first said the name (I forgot who wrote the Carnival, shame on me...). Define he := boss, who was giving me a ride from lab to corporate HQ.