Email Backlog... - 2007-05-09 03:21 PM
If you've sent me an email in the past few days, please be patient. I'm working on getting to it. 
Screw It, I'll Take The 6 - 2006-11-27 06:23 PM
Part of my job is, temporarily, to provide support coverage in our New York City office on Mondays. While not unenjoyable, commuting to 'the city' involves learning a series of lessons.
1. Don't drive.
For the first few 9 months of this office's existance, when I came in once every two or three weeks, I'd drive. The Scion does much better here than the Avalon ever would, but the ride back then was a trip to look forward to. Getting on the road at 6:30, arriving in SoHo at 8, having parking, tolls and milage reimbursed were perks. I95 is a being best left untouched, but the Merritt is actually a beautiful ride, as is the West Side Highway.
But the traffic and my environmental sides got the best of me. When, on one occasion I was an hour late after leaving 15 minutes after I'd planned, that was the end of it. All those cars sitting around me - maybe the fumes had an effect.
I take the train now, taking advantage of free parking in a hidden lot.
2. You will not make the 5:28 if you leave SoHo at 5.
No matter what. I walked out of the office at SoHo and Broome at 4:59 tonight - the earliest I possibly could - and still missed the 5:28 from Grand Central. Walking the 5 or so blocks to Spring and Broadway (a block further, actually), the pedestrian traffic can be worse than the morning congestion at the Lincoln Tunnel. You can be on an uptown 6 train in just 10.
Here's where New York outsmarts those trying to outsmart it. The fastest way to GCT from SoHo is to take the 6 to 14th Street/Union Square, then the 4 (express) for the rest of the trip. At 8PM, maybe, theory and practice yield the same results. Not during rush hour - trains get packed, and somehow all the people they discharge don't leave as much room as they look like they would. After two packed 4 trains and a similarly affected 5 (15 minutes later), I got on the next 6 train, passing the local stops I'd hoped to avoid, making it to Grand Central at 5:35, just in time to wait for the 5:51.
On the plus side, the subways are great for people-watching, if that's your thing. On top of that, I can write blog entries while squeezing between fellow passengers.
This time in SoHo every Monday may also provide some inspiration - I have the opportunity to try a new place for lunch weekly and may turn that into a new series of entries.
Assuming, of course, that I can make it here.
Justified Irrationality - 2006-11-06 03:17 PM
I was just invited to a 4:00 conference call, and am not looking forward to it.
More than the normal reasons - having to be on the phone, time taken from getting actual work done, being required to describe code without sending it to someone - this is an “exploratory” call with a vendor.
Two years ago, I wrote a piece of software that interfaced with the vendor’s software, essentially automating a tedious process of drag-drop-wait-drag-drop-rename. It was optional, and as with all non-mandatory new technology wasn’t well received by the Creative department. In the two years since, version 1.1 was released with the ability to move files based on some text in the file name. Rather quickly, the software became a mandatory part of our new workflow/CMS/job management system. Then the bug reports started coming in, most of which were from the same small group of people who were diligent enough to use the software and actually report bugs. (Thank you.) The leader of this giant new project, a non-technical person non-IT employee, seemed to be living under the assumption that I could fix bugs as quickly as the other Technicians rebuild an Entourage database, complaining that patches weren’t coming fast enough. When, on one occasion, I released a patch a day after receiving a bug report, the criticism read “Shouldn’t we be beta testing the software before releasing it?” I fixed the new bug and moved on. No lessons were learned.
After the Great Hard Drive Crash of ’06, after which DriveSavers was able to recover everything from my drive other than the following critical elements of this project: 10 .m files and the NIB, I pulled down a 2004 backup of the code, opened Interface Builder and went to work rebuilding. That was a week ago today. Except for the preferences model, everything is working as it should - and the preferences are delayed only by my desire to implement Cocoa Bindings instead of custom NSButton classes for the checkboxes and so forth.
From the outside, I'm sure it seems irrational for me to think that the power that be here are looking to “outsource” my work on this program. Being the only developer in IT, <artist>my work can be too complex for even others in my group to understand.</artist> The call will consist of myself explaining to the vendor’s developers what the program does. I can’t see this coming out well.