Archive for April, 2007
Imagine a scenario where you want someone to build a deck for you (no, not this deck)
I mean the other kind of deck. The one made of wood that you have to paint.
So you want to build a deck. So you hire a contractor, and tell him “I want you to make me a deck. I want it made out of wood, and I want it to be nice. You can decide what color to paint it.” And that’s all you tell the contractor, and he goes off to work. A week later, he finishes the job, and you look at it, and decide “you know, I really don’t like this deck. The color is wrong, and it needs more benches. And I expect my changes done in 2 days at no additional cost to me”. And the contractor says, “Ok, but you never told me what color you wanted in the first place. What color do you want?” and you respond “Oh, I don’t know. I need to see it completely painted before I can decide which color is right”.
Sounds insane, right? This is the insanity of software development. I’m in this cycle right now, currently in it’s 4th iteration. And this customer, who is actually a pretty good customer, can’t seem to nail down exactly what they want, and it’s costing us a lot of time and money. They just want changes, and once the changes are complete and put into production, they’ll decide if they like it or not. And they think this is fine, and natural, and normal. This, of course, is not the first time this has happened in my career, this is just the most frustrating.
I’m just glad I don’t have to build decks for these folks.
This weekend Mark took me trap shooting. Trap shooting is the one with shotguns and moving clay targets where you say “Pull” a lot.
(I’m dead center, left)
Before I continue, I should point out that I’m not a “gun person”. In general, guns make me nervous, and people that own guns make me even more nervous, so when I showed up to the shooting range I fully expected to be swarmed by a bunch of preachy Charlton Heston loving conservative nut jobs, their cars plastered with pro-2nd-amendment bumper stickers, loaded to the hilt with modified assault rifles and rocket launchers.
I was really surprised to find out that they were just normal people, and really respectful and nice. I explained that I was new, and I had never fired a gun before, and the president of the gun club took me off to the side and explained gun safety, etiquette, rules, and how to actually hit stuff. And he assigned a guy to me to make sure I did everything correctly (orange vest, to my right). Everyone was exceedingly patient and friendly. There was even this one guy who had been shooting for a million years that had this stupidly expensive trap gun (8k+ ?) and he offered to let me try it out.
So I left with a really positive impression. As expected, I suck as a marksman, and I have a giant bruise on my shoulder from the gun’s kickback. But I want to go back again, it was pretty cool.
And no, I haven’t turned into a gun nut. And I’m not getting a gun. Why bother. The guy who runs the club said he has plenty of giant guns that anyone can use for the day at no charge.
This weekend, I decided to change the oil and oil filter in my lawn tractor. John Deere actually makes this process EXTREMELY easy, in fact, you don’t even need tools to do it. So I drain all the oil out, no problem. And the instructions say to just twist off the oil filter with your bare hands. I’m not sure what animal they hired at the John Deere plant to screw on oil filters, but that f*cking thing wouldn’t budge. So I get my pipe wrench, and try to twist it off, and in the process I bust up my middle finger, and I get this really deep gash on the top of my ring finger, right below the nail. Extremely painful place to get a cut, let me tell you.
In the end, all I had to do is put on a pair of latex gloves (for grip), and the thing eventually did come off. But man alive, what a pain.
Process? Simple. Implementing the process? HARD.
After 2 weeks, Andrew was finally discharged from Hartford Hospital this morning. He had a translateral mega something something, I don’t know, they opened up his chest, took out some ribs, and replaced some major plumbing, and it SUCKED BALLS.
Here’s some pictures of him in the hospital:
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