Tuesday, April 19, 2005

On Bonds and Blogs

So, it's been a while since I posted anything here. Partly, I'm a little conflicted... between possible privacy concerns and a friend's comment that she though only the most self-absorbed actually write blog entries. I don't think that's really true, but I've been contemplating it a lot. Of course, the real reason is that I've been very very busy.

Not just with work, but that's been a lot of it. I'm still on M and we've had a couple of big deadlines. I'm more or less pleased with the way things are going. I can't remember, and don't feel like looking right now, whether I told the story of Derek & Bob leaving us holding the bag on M - no project plan, no signed requirements spec, and a long history of dicking around with fucked up requirements and missed deadlines. Patrice, Rich & I went to see M for a week; among other things, we were supposed to go over the project plan with them. Well, as I mentioned already, there was no project plan, so we wound up creating it in front of them! What a pain in the ass. Anyway, a week or so later we found out that Derek & Bob had a bet - one of them said we'd never get the spec signed, the other said by Dec. 31st.

We had it signed by Oct. 29, for something like 25% more money than Derek & Bob had planned. And we haven't missed a deadline since. So, we pulled off another deadline on 4/1, by the skin of our teeth. That's certainly been keeping me busy. The fun part is that they're about to sign a CR to keep something like 75% of Rich's time and 50% of mine occupied through November. Not to mention another couple of CRs I've already sent and another couple I'm writing for a total of something like another 8 weeks worth of work. So far.

And on top of that, J's coming back around - I got them interested in our 6.5.1 product. Their biggest problem has always been that they had trouble deploying our Java client because of the wide variety of desktop environments they have. Now, I'm really looking forward to getting involved with them again; they're pretty good and they've been my customer since I started with the company. The thing is they're taking a long time to sign the agreement, and we keep having to push out my visit. At the rate we're going, I'm going to wind up going sometime in June instead of this week. Whatever. The longer they take, the less impact it will probably have on the work we have to do for M.

Anyway... I think I also told the story at some point about getting Rachel a t-ball set late last summer. It has a big inflatable plastic T with a ball a lot bigger than her head and a big, thick bat. She loved it. We have some really great pictures of her with the bat. The really funny thing is that one day she wanted me to pitch it to her, so she goes off and stands, facing the correct direction for a right-handed batter at the plate. Then, as I get ready to pitch it, she picks the bat up off her shoulder, taps the "plate" twice, and puts it back on her shoulder! It was great! I guess she'd been paying more attention to the baseball games we watched together than I thought. Then she wanted to pitch to me, so she, again, stands facing the right way, rears back, kicks, and throws. Of course, she didn't let go of the ball until her hand was under her other arm, which sent the ball flying behind her. But, it was great watching her trying to mimick the ballplayers!

So, tonight, as we finished up dinner, I asked her if she wanted to watch a little bit of the game before bath. She looks at Dawn and says "Barry Bonds hurt his knee. He's waiting for it to get better." We couldn't stop laughing.