Greetings, all...

So, I've been working like a mad man the last month or so. 60+ hours a week on a "project" defined as so only by a study that the project manager and execs refer to as a spec. The group I've been working with complained at a meeting that we'd be much better off on these projects if we actually had REAL specs (implying that ALL projects are coming in only as studies), to which the "project manager" replied that there was too much multitasking going on with him and the other managers to do what we were asking.

Of course, that leaves us piddly developers to basically figure out use cases, functional specifications, the data schema, and (much less) develop and troubleshoot the project, all while getting new "features" and complete changes to the project thrown at us basically every other day. Oh, and about 5 weeks to deliver what was officially to have been started in December aught six. But, that's not really multitasking, just our job.

If we hadn't used netTiers and CodeSmith, we'd have been kaput, methinks in hindsight 20/20. ZedGraph and Microsoft's Smart Client Software Factory also came in very, very, very, very handy.

Needless to say, Uncle Simon here has been a tired boy. Joey finally dragged me out of the house today to go do something (other than lie around the house, which I kinda really wanted to do). We ended up going out to Mt. Lebanon to Little Tokyo for dinner, then Jernigan's Tobacco Village for some smokes and wine. I had to admit to her that it really is nice to get out of the house every now and then. Little Tokyo would be maybe a 6.5 out of 10 for me, a 10 being Takahashi in Portland. Jernigan's was a cool place, but not like what I'd thought it would be. Again, Portland's Rich's Cigar was a fantastic spot. This was really only my first run out, though, investigating some of the city and it's surrounding area.

In my spare time lately (what little I have), I've been doing a couple of things. One is playing around with SQLite and System.Data.SQLite. I like it. I'm going to try getting the netTiers wrapper for it from the CodeSmith site soon, and my little creation I'm making should fly.

Also been reading Dreaming In Code. This is an excellent book so far. This is not a developer's book per se or something specifically for the software engineer, but rather does for software design what The Code Book did for cryptography.

I have also very recently been directed to and become enormously addicted to Puzzle Pirates. I will be playing this again tonight, like I did last night until 2:00am. I wish a very long and horrible curse on the man who introduced me to this (and you know who you are!). He has also gotten me semi-addicted to going to the Google Products page and refreshing the screen to see what the latest searches have been. I showed him the Trends from Google Labs. He immediately rushed back to his desk, put in "sporks" and I think "mullet wigs" and got Portland, OR back as the hottest city for this "trend". Little does he know, I have a titanium spork for camping!

A quick update. Next time I hope a have a link to my SQLite creation, as well as some more pictures from around here in Pittsburgh. This town's pretty cool so far.

Asta,

~simon

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