I was a little short on my hours last week, and it ended up with me having to pull a ten-hour Friday to get back on track. At the time, it wasn’t too bad—I’ve done similar things plenty of times. And at least it was just the Friday; I was looking forward to making a big push on editing Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia over the weekend, possibly getting all the way through to the last chapter.
So much for that idea.
It turned out that other guys on my team had been chasing a problem on one of the public-facing systems for a couple of days, and got nowhere. Friday night, 6pm, I got a phone call asking for help. And so for about ten hours yesterday (Saturday) and another four or more today, I’ve been digging into the code, trying to figure out what’s broken. The guy who wrote it left a couple of months ago, and he used some components that he’d downloaded from a third party (new and trendy: good; old, tried and trusted: bad)—and none of the rest of us are familiar with it, and we don’t fully understand how it works.
I’m a bit closer to understanding what’s wrong, but the root cause is still a mystery. I can’t do any more with it until I get into the office tomorrow, when I can get with the team and regroup.
And so I did, finally, manage to get on with a bit of editing. I finished Chapter 9 (yay!) and got about a quarter of the way into Chapter 10—and then I hit the wall. I suddenly realised that, four in the afternoon or not, I’m ready to hit the sack and sleep for about twelve hours. I’ve been staring at the same paragraph for the last half hour; editing it should be easy, but I’m just not seeing it. So I’ve saved what I have so far, backed it up and closed it out. Maybe tomorrow I can get back to it—if the other problem doesn’t zombify me during the day.
One good thing about the coming week is, of course, that July 4 is on us, and I’ve supplemented that day off by taking Wednesday and Friday as vacation. So I only have to work Monday and Tuesday, then I get a five-day weekend. And I’ll get these lost weekend hours back, too, so I can either quit early for a few days after that, or maybe just take another couple of days off, depending on the work schedule.
Enough blogging for now—normally I find it relaxing, but right now it’s taking the last little bit of energy I have. I need fluids, and I need to get into bed and watch some telly. Fringe season 5 in the DVD player, methinks.
Until next time, gentle reader . . .
Pete Ford 