That Y2K feeling
Feb. 12th, 2005 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pbrayIt's been a while since I've been a programmer, and in fact my skills were in hot demand back when everyone was frantically trying to upgrade ancient applications to make them Y2K compliant. And that was so long ago, in computer terms, that there is a new generation of programmers who have no idea what the Y2K panic was all about. Sigh. It's not just my knees that are getting old.
Anyway, last month I volunteered to update my RWA chapter's website. A friend suggested that the website maintenance would be greatly simplified if we redesigned the site using cascading style sheets. She sent me a sample css file and html template to modify, and that's where things went wrong.
First I spent two hours this afternoon and all I had to show for my efforts was a lovely box on a purple background.
Grr. Argh. Time for dinner and rethinking the problem.
After dinner I powered up the computer and took myself back to programming 101. The kind of programming I learned back in the old days, when you picked up an application written ten years previously by someone who hadn't bothered to insert comments or produce documentation. In this method you make one change, save the file, and see if it works. If successful, you go on and make another change. If the change fails, you go back to your saved copy and try a different approach.
Step by step I managed to beat the first file into submission. And once I had that file the way I wanted it, the other seven pages were a snap. Still not quite convinced that the purple flower motif is the best way to go, but my tastes tend to run to black text on a white background, so what do I know?
In other news...
Writing: 1580 words today. Lady Ysobel contemplates the many uses of pretty boys.
Watching: Have tapes of Battlestar Galactica and am waiting for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yeep to find time for a marathon so we can catch up on what we've missed. Medium continues to hold my interest, and I managed to catch a great episode of House this week.
Anyway, last month I volunteered to update my RWA chapter's website. A friend suggested that the website maintenance would be greatly simplified if we redesigned the site using cascading style sheets. She sent me a sample css file and html template to modify, and that's where things went wrong.
First I spent two hours this afternoon and all I had to show for my efforts was a lovely box on a purple background.
Grr. Argh. Time for dinner and rethinking the problem.
After dinner I powered up the computer and took myself back to programming 101. The kind of programming I learned back in the old days, when you picked up an application written ten years previously by someone who hadn't bothered to insert comments or produce documentation. In this method you make one change, save the file, and see if it works. If successful, you go on and make another change. If the change fails, you go back to your saved copy and try a different approach.
Step by step I managed to beat the first file into submission. And once I had that file the way I wanted it, the other seven pages were a snap. Still not quite convinced that the purple flower motif is the best way to go, but my tastes tend to run to black text on a white background, so what do I know?
In other news...
Writing: 1580 words today. Lady Ysobel contemplates the many uses of pretty boys.
Watching: Have tapes of Battlestar Galactica and am waiting for
yeep to find time for a marathon so we can catch up on what we've missed. Medium continues to hold my interest, and I managed to catch a great episode of House this week.
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The Project That Becomes a Death March
Date: 2005-02-13 02:03 pm (UTC)You've seen it in others if you've been smart/lucky/organized enough to avoid it yourself.
Something happens so that suddenly folks are working around the clock to make a delivery and they keep saying "I'll just finish this one routine and then I'll take a break". But they either lie to themselves and go onto another task or they are so tired that they can't think coherently enough to complete the task.
I'm the old man at my current shop (where I'm the Network Architect/Sr Sysadmin), and all the developers have to deploy their code through me (no one touches beta or production but me and my staff, development is gray and the sandboxes are all theirs) so we often find ourselves waiting on a code push. I used to get some strange looks when I'd leave more or less on time during one of these death marches and tell them "here's my pager, home number and cell, call when it's ready I can push from home." Thing is we have 50 people to support, if we stay there all night waiting for the 4AM code push, then when we're done, we only have time to grab some breakfast in order to be back in for the next shift. I feel bad about leaving them sometimes, but the company insists that everyone get paid if they are there and conscious so it's really a waste to just hang around waiting. Still it's a rare and great company that will pay you for your work no matter how crazy it gets.
On a further related note, I'm trying to convert my webpages (and hundreds of photos) to CSS, and the whole, make a change, save it, beat on it, undo it or make the next change cycle is very familiar to me.
So much fun we make for ourselves!
Re: The Project That Becomes a Death March
Date: 2005-02-13 04:47 pm (UTC)Good luck with the CSS conversion. I'm sure it's a good thing in the long run, but I'm just impatient with the learning curve.