Saturday, August 25, 2007

Help me through the hopeless haze

I'm being a bastard with the lyric today, you'll have to know the song (or google for it) for it to make any sense.

So I drop off my car for its oil change and safety inspection. The guy they gave the job of driving me back to work was the chatty type who was asking about my job. When I brought up the hardest part was the scientists constantly changing their mind, he mentioned it was the same for him. When querying on his work, I found he deals with custom work for cars & detailing.

Now having people want to change software all the time can be understandable since it's just text (all developers reading this just winced a bit). But frankly, if you're going to detail your car, this is not something you should be wishy washy about. I guessed flip-flopping came because a husband made design choices the wives later disagreed with. It turned out I was right :).

Speaking of those scientists, we're going to be locking our users to what they want early. If it isn't funded, they probably aren't going to get it. This allows us to devote our resources a bit better, and frankly will give me less gray hairs. Predictably, our users like this as much as they like getting their nose hairs pulled. But this initiative came from way above me in the food chain, so I can just point the complaints in that direction and get on with work. Hee hee.

Gavin's growing again, and he's definitely more little boy than baby now. He's much more self-sufficient these days. Even to the point of being able to ride his bike down the hill without daddy right behind him. More importantly, daddy doesn't have to carry the bike back up the hill anymore. Because I like being lazy in my old age.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Reservations on the next train to the moon

I've been away for a while, work has been hectic, home life has been hectic, blah blah blah

We suffered a strange illness in our son that even had our doctor scratching her head. Basically, after a day of sickness & vomiting, he would be fine the next morning. But then, at 4pm he's just shut down in a very disturbing manner. He'd just lay on the floor, not wanting to eat, saying he's sleepy, and basically being miserable. He'd want to be put to bed, then come stumbling out, come right up to me, then plop down in my lap, or on the floor. Maybe some more vomiting.

The next morning, he'd be fine, until 4pm rolled around again, then we repeated the drill all week.

When your child is energy personified, this is pretty much my personal hell. Thankfully, on Saturday when 4pm came around, he was his old bouncy self. He then started eating the whole house, so we were happy again.

The pieces of my new computer arrived, and for the first time, when I put it together, it wouldn't turn on. This was a problem. 3 tech support calls, a 2nd power supply and 5 days later it was determined that I needed to send my motherboard back. So it will probably be another week before I have a computer again.

All in all, not a great week.