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recent
*{15:00} I've been sitting here at work all day on Saturday now... nothing new really, quite normal up until about two months ago when I started to devote more of my time to me. The difference is that then Saturdays where always relaxed, I was never pushing to finish a week's worth of work in two days.
Of course there was one really great weekend last year sometime... I had been attempting to install some new software on a very old server. I figured I would do it Saturday morning when all the clients were miles from their office. I found that to add the software I had to upgrade a few other programs on the server... that Saturday morning turned into Saturday night very quickly. The first time I tried to reboot the server with the new software was about 1 in the afternoon. It didn't start as you may have guessed.
I spent the rest of that Saturday trying to undo whatever I did, and that sure didn't work... I felt I was close several times, and learned a heluva lot about things I would never have learned had I not broken the server, but could not get it started.
I was so close to running out to buy a new computer so I could at least set up a backup server and maybe no one would notice there was anything wrong until I had a chance to figure out the broken one. Unfortunately, I didn't have that much cash on me (and it seemed that would be even more work than fixing this one). I had set 1pm on Sunday as the cut-off point. If nothing was fixed by then, I would re-install the entire server and re-configure all the software and programs that where running. This took me another seventeen hours but by 5 am Monday morning, I had everything up and running and only 3 clients noticed that the dates on their email was a little odd.
That was a nice weekend... how great it would be if every weekend could be that exciting.
Anyway, I will be updating this off and on today as I reach milestones and take breaks from the programming... but now I have to get back to work as I feel like I have already wasted 15 minutes...
*{17:30 } YeeeHahh! I just finished adding another crazy little function to the program and it took about an hour less than I thought it would. It is uglier than ugly, and normally I would never give it to the client as it is. It will be a nightmare to maintain for whoever gets that unlucky job, but this client wants the most for the least... as much functionality for as little money and as little time as possible.
They seem to understand that they are sacrificing quality, and that is what gives me the most stress and anxiety. If there are little bugs or things that "would be better if it worked another way", they always seem to forget that their first priority was cheap and second was fast... when little bugs appear, the only thing they remember is that Kevin made a buggy program. I would loooooveee to take an extra 3 days after the they declare it finished, and clean it up to a point where I feel comfortable declaring it finished. Unfortunately, I sure don't have that time, because even the few hours the client wants to pay for is sold so dirt cheap.
This writing during my little breaks works nicely... I can squeeze in a lot of quick topics, and don't have to have an hour free to do it. I think I'll try to do it this way every day. Not that I take so many little breaks, but considering how many cigarette breaks everyone else takes, and the fact that my average lunch hour lasts only about 15 minutes, I think I am entitled to a five minute bastish update break 3 times a day... like recess in grade school.
Since I'm the only one here, I have complete control over the cd player. In the last two-and-a-half-hour stint, I listened to:
Chris Isaak: Baja Sessions
Diana Krall: The Look of Love
The Cure: Wish (Wow! I haven't listened to that since High School)
*{20:00} I'm going to be really irresponsible and head home now. I finished a huge hunk of the program today, (it still has to be debugged, but that was supposed to start Monday so I am on schedule with that) The rest of it I should be able to handle tomorrow to some extent, and what is left over I will blame on the client for "insufficient information".
In this last two hours, I listened to:
Taj Mahal: Giant Step
Nat King Cole: Greatest Hits
Now I think I'll go home and listen to some NPR and draw or maybe clean my room... but whatever I do I will have a nice Belgian beer in my hand.
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