Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Kool-Aid absorption
OK, how bad is it that I sorta felt sorry when I heard my allergy medication is going off-patent? For a moment I had a twinge of sympathy for this little pill that has helped me through so many picnics and naps with kitties. This fall, Singulair will get LOE (Loss of Exclusivity, for you non-pharma types, or, well, everyone else in the world), which means my allergy meds will get much, much cheaper as they go generic. Probably $5 instead of the $90 or so I'm currently paying. So finally, I drank the pharma kool-aid and it tasted good. May be time for a detox....
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Superpharmablastwikifuntime.com
So, career update: Late last year I left behind my red pen and picked up the green one. That's right: finally, I'm a copywriter. Well, I shouldn't say "finally," because really that was never my endgame. It was just something a few people had encouraged me to do, and since copy editing is not as sexy as it sounds (really, there's way less glamour in proofreading than you'd expect), it was time for a career change.
So it's been 6 months. And things are pretty good. But the last couple of weeks have been excruciatingly slow. That is, I have no work. And since my entire day has to be billable, I have to scramble to find things to bill to (or else!).
Luckily, my boss found me a little task: name our new proprietary database. Easy, right? Uh, Bob. Or, no, wait, Excel. Dang! That's already taken. Actually, in the ONLY sort of direction or hint I've received (a vague email describing more or less what this person supposed the database would do), it was recommended we take an already-popular web product and mash it up with something agency branded. Very serious suggestions were: WikiPharma, or GoogleMed. Seriously. 1) This is no Wiki, so you can't call it "wiki"; 2) I think Google might possibly take issue with us using their name.
After several attempts to get in touch with the people who are actually developing this web site, no one has returned my calls or emails. So I get to name a database based on a third-person's interpretation on what the database MIGHT be like, looking at a beta version that so far hasn't returned any actual results, and oh, did I mention they want the name by Friday? Huh. No pressure.
So it's been 6 months. And things are pretty good. But the last couple of weeks have been excruciatingly slow. That is, I have no work. And since my entire day has to be billable, I have to scramble to find things to bill to (or else!).
Luckily, my boss found me a little task: name our new proprietary database. Easy, right? Uh, Bob. Or, no, wait, Excel. Dang! That's already taken. Actually, in the ONLY sort of direction or hint I've received (a vague email describing more or less what this person supposed the database would do), it was recommended we take an already-popular web product and mash it up with something agency branded. Very serious suggestions were: WikiPharma, or GoogleMed. Seriously. 1) This is no Wiki, so you can't call it "wiki"; 2) I think Google might possibly take issue with us using their name.
After several attempts to get in touch with the people who are actually developing this web site, no one has returned my calls or emails. So I get to name a database based on a third-person's interpretation on what the database MIGHT be like, looking at a beta version that so far hasn't returned any actual results, and oh, did I mention they want the name by Friday? Huh. No pressure.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)