Today's journal is another rant of mine. It seems that my Slashdot journal is turning into my own personal bitch sheet. The guilty will remain nameless for their own protection, but we'll call him Mr. VP (he is a VP where I work.) So here's how it went down. Last week this guy begs me to use him for some code help on my current project. Now mind you, I didn't need any help, and I explained away that I don't need the help, I'm making good progress, etc, but he wouldn't drop it. Basically, I had no choice, let him help or hear the bitching. So I finally gave in and said "sure, here ya go, you can work on class X." Dropped my latest code into CVS, went over to his desk, helped him pull the code from the repository, and explained the architecture of the subsystem he'd be working on. For the most part I wasted 1/2 a day doing this. Now this guy is a VERY experienced coder (20+ years coding), and he's worked on tons of projects including some very high profile, enterprise-class offerings. So I feel assured that this will get done, the quality will be high, etc. Fast-forward about 10 days. I'm sitting in a developer's meeting and we're going around the table giving status updates and such. When it's my turn to go, I ask him how he's doing, and he tells me that he hasn't done shit, and he doesn't have the time to do this. NICE! Here we are 7 working days from GA release freeze, and I've got my dick swinging in the breeze thanks to him. Tomorrow's my b'day (YEA!), guess what I'll be doing ... that's right! CODING! WOOHOO! Thanks a ton for that one Mr. VP. Next time you get a piece of work farmed out from me is when the Winter X Games are hosted in Hell. Grrrrrrr .... live and learn.

I guess every software engineer/architect/developer/etc. has had this gripe sooner or later. Today I started a small uprising within my development team surrounding a feature we ALL hate. Basically, upper management has required a feature for GA only so they can tell investors/customers/partners that we play in that space. Nevermind the amount of engineering that has to go into a feature like this one, nor shall you pay attention to the possible invasive-ness of such a feature. I know anyone reading this is wondering "WTF is he talking about?", but I actually shouldn't say ... this is a commercial product that isn't out yet. If I wanted anything to come out of the three wasted developer manhours it was the addition of some type of risk/reward analysis of features before they crop up in requirements documents. Ah, requirements documents ... be nice if we had those, but that brings me to another diatribe, and I'm trying to get all my stress out with this journal entry. Nonetheless, I need to get my nose back to the grindstone. There's a GA deadline in 10 working days hanging over my head like a "Sword of Damacles." Numerous API changes, requirements changes, and everyone's favorite "feature creep" has become part of my life. Ahh, how I love doing software (I really do love it, but it, like all things worth doing, is difficult.) Culture change is slow ... serenity now ... serenity now!

-Alabama Mike

Well, this is the first one in a good while. I've been busy, doing the design/code/test cycle, and things have been going fairly well. Still crossing my fingers that we get funding soon. As far as I'm concerned the snow season has now passed me by. I can't complain, 50+ days on the mountain while maintaining a real job feels like an accomplishment. On the flip side, it was a short winter (at least for me.) Now it's golf season. Been out for a few rounds already, and it's going better this year than ever before. Speaking of going better, I now have a positive karma on /. Not that I really care, I'm far from a karma whore, I just say what I want and expect it to end up -1, flamebait, but here recently it's been 4 and 5 with the "Interesting" modifier. I guess now I might get some mod points to give out. It's funny I've been reading this silly site for at least 5 years now, and I didn't ever have an account until about 3 months ago. Well, back to work. Today we got new requirements for WMI support (yeah, new reqs and we're 2 weeks from GA!) I guess I need to get crackin on that. Oh yeah ... my b'day is 6 days away, and more importantly, the new Matrix is out in 13 (I'll see it the night of the 14th.)

Well, my friends are going to ride Killington tomorrow for $1 ... I *could* go for free (with my Instructor's pass) except Monday is the absolute deadline for our beta 2 release, and it appears that everyone is working the weekend to make it happen. The kicker here is that it's snowing today, and I'm sure they'd be a little fresh around the mountain if I could get up there. Oh well, it's been a bitchin' season for me personally, and I have no business complaining. That, and I'm sure I'll be up there next weekend ;)

Well, Adjoin's .Net native observer is feature complete now, and I feel I've gained a solid grasp of C# and the juicier pieces of the .Net framework. It's hell going from J2EE/Java to .Net/C# at first, but I'll have to give MS some credit, they did design C# to ease the pain for Java programmers as much as possible. That's a statement I make somewhat grudgingly as C# does have it's fair share of warts. Anyways, today's activities are to use the Setup and Deployment feature of VS.NET to package this application up and prepare it for a windows install. Thursday will be interesting ... interop testing day. I expect that workday to go long. Probably need to contact Killington today and let them know I can't make it in this weekend. My guess is that we're going to be pushing for Monday, and I don't want anything to stand in the way. Then again, here's hoping it all goes well and Friday night I'm VT bound!