It has been a busy old week. One of the partners from another part of the business decided he needed an analytical heavyweight to help him do some serious number crunching. I obviously haven’t hidden my data analysis and Access skills deeply enough on my CV, because he approached me as the right man for the job. Even when I pointed out the impact of my day rate for doing a job like this, he remained convinced that I was ‘value for money’.

The job seemed reasonably straight-forward – take an Excel spreadsheet that was relying on loads of clunky lookups and a number of data tables (think ‘actuarial tables’ if you need an idea of size and scale) and create a more elegant solution in Access. I took all the input materials and created the model. So far ,so good.

The devil, of course, is in the detail. Because it’s only once it’s been built and you’ve pushed some data through that you realise that 1) the data quality is poor and 2) the client hasn’t defined their requirements clearly enough. For every business rule they have outlined, they’ve conveniently neglected to mention that there are exceptions to the business rules. No two groups in the company follow the same business rules, and there are 160 groups. And suddenly what seemed like a very straight-forward job assumes a life of its own.

Never mind. All I can think about is my upcoming holiday – my thoughts are squarely on our trip to New Orleans. All of our upgrades have cleared (thank goodness – 16 hours in economy is more than I can bear to think about). After a minor cock-up with dates (hotel booked for one week, flights for another) we have managed to secure hotel reservations for the entire period, even during the busy season of Jazzfest – although we will have to move hotels halfway through unless I can sweet-talk the GM into releasing a room for us. The concierge has a list of my favourite New Orleans restaurants and is busy making reservations. I’ve emailed all my friends and invited them to get together. Short of packing, I think we’re all ready to go!

Weather is predicted to be in the 90s all week – hot, but I can’t imagine New Orleans any other way. It’s my first visit post-Katrina. I just hope that this city for which I have such a fondness hasn’t changed too much.