Sunday = work, work, work

Out of 22 files, I managed to get ten done this weekend. Sunday's work went faster than Saturday's, mainly because I had come to understand the nature of the iCloud/Pages glitch and could work around it. With twelve files to go (and another two files soon to be added to the workload), I'm planning to stay a couple extra hours every day this week to get the rest of the pile out of the way. The racking-up of comp hours continues apace. I have a nice vacation ahead of me.

Why is this taking so long? you ask. I was wondering about that myself, frankly. Then I realized that I had forgotten that I live in Korea, where nothing ever moves in a straight line. Linear algebra? Try nonlinear Asia. At first, I thought I would blow through these files, taking maybe ten minutes per file to check the answer key against the main text. Then, when I opened that first file, I realized that there were massive problems to contend with. To wit:

1. For the first three files I worked on, whole chunks of the answer key were simply missing, so I had to build them from scratch.
2. In almost all of the files I've worked on thus far, sections of the answer key have been transposed—rearranged as if by gremlins or some trickster deity, such that I had to waste several minutes per file trying to figure out where the proper place for each section of the answer key was.
3. Some of the section titles in the answer key were given names that had nothing to do with the section headings in the main text. I feel sorry for any English teacher who tries to consult the answers and gets lost in a morass of drug-addled nomenclature.
4. In all the files I've worked on, the formatting has been utterly haphazard. No care has been taken to standardize fonts, font sizes, indentations, numbered/bulleted lists, etc. Section titles have been indented for some odd reason, while the answers listed under the titles have (on occasion) been placed flush against the left margin. What the fuck is going on, here?
5. Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes. Every single answer key has had numerous mistakes in it, so part of my job has been to hunt down and kill every error I can find. Cleaning this mess up hasn't been easy. It's a tedious and time-consuming job.
6. This last bit is on me: I've been going through files I've already proofed, and I've found more errors in the main text. Not huge ones, mind you, but enough errors to be annoying and to cause me to curse my own lack of vigilance. This isn't too surprising, of course: when you proofread and suss out most of the errors in your first "radar sweep," that sweep clears up the field and allows you to see even more errors during your second sweep. I'd say I catch over 95% of the total number of errors during the first sweep, but the existence of the remaining 5% is still very frustrating.

So that's why there wasn't much blogging on Sunday: work, work, work. Blogging will probably be light for much of this week. That's just the way it is. Some things'll never change.