…I’ve moved all my software-development posts over to my new software-development blog, where I’m currently in the midst of a series chronicling my evaluation of Perl 6.

At least since the mid 2000’s, when I wrote about software, I tried to keep it popular, non-techie, or at least about the culture rather than the coding. On my new SD blog, I am no longer afraid to use lots of code snippets. And I’ve taken to publishing sample code on GitHub.

When a Cat Takes Over Your Life

I apologize for being absent this week. We’ve had a small family drama… involving our cat.

If you subscribe to my Facebook profile, you know that Tessie-cat got sick and then started acting seriously weird. As I’ve mentioned before, Tessie is old, quite old, almost 19 years old. On top of that, we’ve been behind in her vet appointments (as well as our dental appointments). So we kinda freaked out.

Two vet visits and $440 later— Didn’t see that coming. We’ve discovered that her kidneys are beginning to fail, a common dysfunction in geriatric cats. This explains all of her symptoms, but it means she’s now on a special diet. And we get to start that diet off by injecting her with fluid twice a day for a week and a half, which she doesn’t seem to be enjoying too much. (I think the experience traumatizes me more than it does her, though.)

I do have a post in the incubator about old friends and how short life is. That post is near the top of my list. I hope to publish it next week. [UPDATE: Here it is!]

... and SQL Stuff

This came at an significant time for me, because I too have been working on a project that is quite painful for me. It’s painful, because I saw the disaster coming, because I warned about it, because I was ignored, and because now I need to be reminded (despite the innuendo of the manager on the project) that it isn’t my fault, because indeed it isn’t my fault. As a fellow developer reminded me, at every point, I was reasonable, responsible, and professional.

If I were to do anything differently, knowing what I know now, I would probably bring the crisis to a head sooner, rather than reluctantly going along with: “what you need will be ready in plenty of time” (because it wasn’t), and “just ask for what you need, and we’ll get it for you” (because they didn’t, because they were too busy with their own stuff), and “you shouldn’t let that hold you up” (because I should have, because it was a big red flag). I would have brought the crisis to a head sooner, because that would have given the team as a whole a better chance of ultimate success.

My problem is that I allowed myself to become emotionally invested in the project. (Gasp!) And while that did not compromise my professionalism–that is, I still only committed to those things I actually thought I could deliver, given the assurances I had been given–it did cause my judgement to falter–that is, I should have questioned the assurances I had been given, suspected them, pored over them, verified them.