Personal Reflections

The last 3 weeks have been interesting around here. We let go the other person on the project and hired a new great developer who starts at the end of the month. Being in Lexington, KY I thought we might have a hard time locating and recruiting a quality developer for the project. We not only found the perfect fit within a week but he was here in town. That was very lucky. The only downside has been that I have been working on reviewing and fixing all the crap that the old developer (and I use that term loosely for him) left behind. All the Visio database schemas he did had to be redone and checked. Also the master schema to generate the new database had to be started from scratch since the bozo did not use the correct relationship shape in Visio to build the foreignkey relationships. That cost me over a week to go through and rebuild the entire schema. But better now than later. I am also writing the project design document by myself and trying to keep on schedule. Ideally the document should be collaboration but we have to make do. Just taking a lot longer to write and get all the supporting materials like UML models and database schema snapshots. I am also in the middle of jury duty so I do not know day to day if I will be in the office. I almost was picked for an 8 day civil medical malpractice trial. Interesting but my client would have freaked! So all this brings up interesting ideas and realities. I have been a person who would push and work extra hours to get things done as close to on-time as possible. But thesedays I have discovered that there needs to be a balance. Also now with kids I am finding that I don't want to do much besides sharing some time with them until they go to bed.Then when I get a chance to sit down and work I am usually tired from the day so I read and go to bed. One way to keep going is to start exercising 3-4 times a week. Need to get that oxygen to the brain. I am writing this on a short break just to let you all know what is going on with me. I know I am slacking on the blog. I have a lot ofstuff to write about but until things settle down and I get this design document handed off I will be holding off on the big blog stuff. I will still pass along cool stuff and links. So be good and if you cannot be good be careful!