86.5 F (30.3 C). Too hot! Too humid. Can’t concentrate… keep losing my train of

Update: 18:15 — It’s now 88.7 F (31.5 C) and I’ll swear it’s more humid.

Just finished another merge and release. Yet again it was painful because of the page-caching hack.
I’ve just been warning one project manager to re-evaluate her estimates because that project will have to take this page caching into account.

This is not going to go away, it will be a maintainance burden for ever.

Woe is me 🙁

I spent most of today in an incredibly long meeting! It started around 11 this morning, and I got out about 5 this afternoon!

Unusually, I felt it was quite productive.

Had a pretty boring day at work today. Several meetings, and not much of anything interesting. A couple of bugs to look at one of which turned out to be a client data issue. The other is probably a client data issue.

Just found out before I left this evening that tomorrow I’ve got to sit in on a meeting with a new client (remember the tight time scales project) to help them understand why they can’t have lots of new features and have it delivered on time.

So that’s going to knock back several other things I was going to be doing.

Oh hum.

I’ve just had the following conversation with an old friend and ex-colleague on AIM:

[22:41:47] Mike: Did you read my recent 'adventure' in my blog? In
  trouble for my big mouth again.
[22:42:05] SteveP : no. i'll take a look at that presently.
[Snip]...
[22:45:59] SteveP : whoa. just found the long blog. reading...
[22:46:17] Mike: OK, I'll give you a few minutes.
[22:48:27] SteveP : the sentence starting "Folks..." sounds
 like one of your famous open air flames... (continues)
[22:48:32] SteveP : : - )
[22:51:32] SteveP : "You kind of came across as an asshole, but
 the other guy responded like a dumbass. Which I'm sure annoyed you." *snort*
[22:55:43] Mike: I've since exchanged a couple of emails with Chris. She's nice.
[22:58:31] SteveP : *exhales* 
 well, i can see from your log that you're just like you used to be. striving
 for perfection and achievement. unfortunately, other people aren't like that,
 and there's no use in trying to change them. you spotted a problem, and 
 problems aren't for brushing under the carpet in your book (and mine). it seems
 to me that you wanted to resolve the problem quickly and effectively, and in
 your mind, the initial email (and the developing incarnations thereafter) was
 the most suitable way to proceed. at least one of your recipients didn't like
 your choice of method, or content, whatever.
[22:58:44] SteveP : i've worked with you. i enjoyed it immensely. you have the 
 same goals as i, and i would take absolutely no offence with any of those emails 
 you sent. if i was in the wrong, i would be delighted that you pointed it out to 
 me. some people just don't know when they've got a valuable asset on their team.
[22:59:34] SteveP : my 2p.

Thanks Steve.

We started a new project in earnest today. Another ‘interesting’ one. It is a complete ‘re-skin’ of an existing site which “just requires a little bit of extra functionality”. “Oh yeah and it needs to be finished by the 23 of August”.
Which gives us just 13 working days!
That’s OK they say, “You can have some extra resources”. “Who?” we say. “Just one guy who hasn’t worked on the project for a year, and two guys on loan from another company who have never programmed in JSP before.” they say. “Oh great, thanks” we say. “Any and all overtime is automatically approved”. they say.
“Hmmmmmm…”

Aamir did have a word with me this afternoon. His comments along with a comment from Chris and my own reflection on this whole situation has made me resolve to think twice before hitting that ‘Send’ button.

To be honest, I’m more than a little fed up of developers who aren’t willing to improve themselves. I guess I’ll just have to carry on cleaning up after them 🙁
And if that sounds arrogant, I’m sorry but it’s a fact.

Well we didn’t have that meeting, but Aamir still wants a word with me later! Predictably Dave D did not feel abused by my emails, or at least he didn’t say so. In fact Dave and I had a further email discussion about the problem. And Dom S joined in with a suggestion which would in fact resolve the problem encountered. Unfortunately it would require substantial changes to the code, which I don’t have the time to look into. The only sour note was another quick response from Matt:

>can we end this now we don't want another flame session.

Ho hum….