Tuesday, February 28, 2006

The Worst Is Over

I hope.

This has probably been one of the roughest rollouts I’ve been involved with. Mainly, it’s been related around system security and what I consider a bug in the vendor’s software.

Of course, when asking for support, the advice I got was to reinstall the web server software which is a major undertaking in this day and age of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. After struggling with the software all morning, I finally figured out a way to get the application in business again, without reinstalling server software.

The frustrating part of this is that our customers will look at this as a failure on our team’s part. In a way, it is. This should have been caught in unit testing, but there wasn’t simply enough time to test the security model which is very basic and we had already deployed for the manufacturing arm of the company.

In any event, the system appears to be stable and tonight is the first night in weeks where I’m taking a well earned break from working. Back into the frying pan tomorrow morning.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Launch Eve

I’ve diligently been working on a project for the last 9 months and tomorrow morning it will be unveiled and be put to the test. I can’t count how many times I’ve been through this before and it is always nerve wracking. Despite constant checking, rechecking and then checking again, sometimes something can slip through the cracks which will cause a crisis. The good news is that everything is fixable; it’s just preferable to have caught any of those problem before hand.

In any event, wish me and my colleagues luck. It certainly can’t hurt!

Saturday, February 18, 2006


Snow?

Last weekend when I went hiking the temperature topped out around 90 degrees. In contrast, it's been downright cold the past couple of days with today being really chilly (and yes, I'm talking about 'really chilly' with a Southern California scale). Taking a quick glance at weather.com confirms my hopes: we may wake up tomorrow with a blanket of snow around the house.


Last year's snow day

This happened last year during our bizarre winter and I about fell out of bed trying to get my head wrapped around all the white stuff on the ground and what the heck it was doing in Beaumont. The kids weren't at my home last time, so I'm really hoping they get to see that tomorrow!

Monday, February 13, 2006

Lost Palms


IMG_2544
Originally uploaded by Rob Thomas.
I went on a 7 1/2 mile hike on Sunday in Joshua Tree (although it felt like 10 miles, at least).

There isn't much to say about the hike since I took a bunch of photos along the way. So, go look at 'em.

This is the first post that I've created where you actually post from a flickr photo. I'm interested in seeing how this actually looks when it hits the blog.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006


The Bad Place

I’ve gone to the Bad Place. I’ve really tried to avoid The Bad Place but it doesn’t seem possible anymore. One of my good friends is Mayor of The Bad Place, as demonstrated by his constant pecking at his Blackberry while we were on vacation at Disney World in December. I even made fun of him. Now I’m being punished.

We’re entering the final stretch of a project that I’ve been working on since July of last year. We’re also hitting more than our fair share of snags which is causing a communication blitz on all fronts. Now, I’ve used my Blackberry in the past just to make sure that nothing requires my immediate attention and can wait until the next day. Of course, that was all Before Bad Place or BBP.

Pure evil

It’s bad enough that I’m watching episodes of Lost and The Office while working out on the elliptical machine. Now my official entry to The Bad Place occurred when I had the bright idea to bring my Blackberry to the elliptical machine. Yes, there I was, huffing and puffing and burning all of those calories while pecking little e-mails away to all of my colleagues.

30 minutes elapsed and I had cleared my inbox and by default, challenged my friend to a mayoral runoff for The Bad Place. The upside? Time spent in The Bad Place is billable. ;)