journal for 2002-09-04

programming

I learned, today, that Inoshiro (of kuro5hin fame) has a serv.pl-based journal. I thought it was a little weird that he didn’t credit mdxi with spawning the server, but I guess he doesn’t need to.

This prompted me to do a little updating to Debug. I did a little edge-polishing, but mostly I added buttons for going back and forward daywise. Not thrilling, but it’s something. Did I ever mention the changes I’d made to its file storage? Single entry days (most, for me!) no longer need their own directory. That was a hassle.

work

While I was on vacation, the big project for which many people were clamoring and for which I laid out an implementation schedule, was declined by some top brass. This was pretty much a downer, and has led to a lot of people in the US, who wanted it, going, “Well, how can we hack out a different, crappier solution?” The problem is that the current solution is total garbage (mostly) and that the users have waited so long for the Glorious People’s System (ERP) that they’ve lost any faith in it coming.

So, I found out, today, that other people continue to work on fixes for the situation, some of which sound catastrophic in design. (One solution suggested there might exist an array of Excel workbooks, each with dozens (hundreds?) of worksheets!) Talk about layoffs has begun to circle again, and the stink of death has been replaced with the fruity odor of panic. I think everyone is kind of wondering, “What the hell is going on?”

Yesterday and today were no good for getting work done. I got some semi-critical things finished, but I’ve just been slow, lately. I think the long vacation contributed to that, and that the office environment hasn’t helped me recover. I think that, maybe, tomorrow will be better.

music

I finished (I think!) Phase I of updating the organization of my music collection, and I mirrored the updated collection back onto the drive at work. It only took about 16 hours, which is, I think, an improvement.

While I’ve been without the USB hdd, I’ve finally started to listen to BassDrive, a free drum and bass streaming station. It’s pretty sweet, especially for coding. Coding is, actually, one of the only times I like jungle or drum and bass. BPMs make coding better. That’s my motto!

Written on September 4, 2002