random bits

[cellio]

Hot. Hot hot hot hot hot. And muggy. And did I mention hot? I really hope the AC guys we're talking with next week can do something for us. Their pitch is, essentially, "if you've been told your house can't accommodate central AC, talk to us". Yup, that's our situation. And window units can only do so much.

I might see psu_jedi and caryabend tomorrow morning. Woot! They will, alas, be spending most of the weekend with the relatives they actually came here to visit, but with luck we should get to see each other briefly. It was so nice to finally meet them at estherchaya's and sethcohen's over Purim!

Sunday night is Shavuot. I'm looking forward to the late-night torah study. The evening service, which is confirmation, I can take or leave; I'll go if it and dinner plans don't bump into each other. And I will, of course, be there for services in the morning.

My week was full of demands on my time that aren't part of the project plan. The project manager will not be happy when we next meet. Some of it was important stuff that needs to be done; some of it was extra administrivia caused by the corporate buy-out. I've now spent about 6 hours on the VPN problem and it still doesn't work, for instance. Whee.

But I did accomplish one useful thing today: we've been asking for a little developer time for months to hook online help into our product, but the project and product managers keep saying that while this is important, other things are more important and they can't spare anybody, even for half a day. So I finally just did it -- forgiveness versus permission and all that. As soon as I have a real doc set to launch instead of Shakespeare's sonnets, I can check it in. The project manager was going to be a little grumpy anyway because of things beyond my control this week, so I may as well get something I wanted out of the deal. Waste not, want not.

This exercise did make me just a bit more aware that I would benefit from a structured learning experience on the subject of Java. I've been picking the API up by osmosis, and of course I already know general programming principles, but when I have to do something completely new I usually end up asking a coworker for a pointer. That's not good; I should be able to do more of this on my own. (Today it was resource access through ClassLoader.) I wonder if I should just take a course from Sun or something. If I do, I wonder if there's any benefit to then taking the certification exam.

Comments

[cellio]

I'm glad we were able to meet up and that you enjoyed our service. (Sorry about the person at the end who had a rather broader idea of what "announcements" is for than I do; that took me by surprise.)

Next time, lunch or dinner or something! Presumably, next time you'll be here for a little longer, and that much family togetherness can both tolerate and require a little break. :-)