bluegargantua

So, the server normally sends a message to the Roster letting you know your friends have gone offline. This lets the client update it's display and show you that your buddy Fred has left.

Unless, you're in the same chatroom as Fred. Then, the server just notifies the room that you're leaving and expects the Roster to figure it out from there. Only that's not an accurate depiction of what's going on.

I'm leery about touching the server code this close to a release, but my client-side hacks can only solve one problem by creating another.

Off to the server code:

  When DroppingUser
  {
    If this
    {
      If that
      {
         SendRosterNotice()
      }
    }
  }

So, we do a bunch of fancy conditionals to determine if we should send that Roster notice? How about we brute force it instead?

  When DroppingUser
  {
    SendRosterNotice()
  }

Now, I suppose you might get multiple roster notices that the person has left, but you know what? It doesn't matter.

And guess what? It works like a charm.

Brute Force wins again!
Tom

CRAP! -- I misunderstood what a co-worker said which means I was waiting for 2 days on something that was already done. That delay meant that I kept another co-worker (or two) late for the past couple of nights so that we could complete a project before End of Business on Tuesday...and by End of Business, pretend we have an office in San Francisco that's doing the work. :/

HOORAY! -- What I finally produced not only worked on the nominal, baseline case, but also on the advanced case (which is what the client wanted) -- even though the advanced case was kinda fixed at the last second without any testing from me. :)

HOORAY! -- I finally tracked down this infuriating, intermittent problem with event chats. Plus, it has a fairly simple fix. This has gone a long way towards restoring customer confidence in us and it's helped improve our code and also given us insight into our assumptions about event chats.
:D

CRAP! -- In a total brain-fart I hosed some important archives in the code repository. None of the archives contained current development or production code, but we didn't necessarily want to throw all those old builds away. Here's hoping the ops guy can pull the data back. :(

I should probably just go home now...
Tom

Baby, why you got to be like this?

I wanted to get to know you better. I'd heard stuff, good stuff about you. Sure, there were a lot of trash-talking haters out there, but I was willing to look past all that. Certainly, you're the name on every job description's tongue so I knew I had to find out more about you and get some of that sharp, sharp lovin'.

So here I am, takin' a chance on you with a small project that was pretty much due yesterday. And I'll be the first to say "I'm in a rush" and Smoove Blue knows that you just can't rush the foreplay. So I'm expecting trouble.

But, baby, I needed an array. An array, baby, the simplest data structure there is. It's nothin' more complicated than a numbered list (that starts at 0 like a crazy mofo, but that's just a messed up math geek thing everyone does so I ain't blamin' you for that). And every other language I've ever seen pretty much says that if you want to get the 4th item in that array you just say arrayName[3] and there you go (3 cause it starts at 0 all mad-ass).

But you're a fussy little bitch. You want the size of your array declared up front. Well, baby, I'm pulling back results from a database query, I don't know how many results I'm getting back. I need a little something more dynamic. Well, you've got this ArrayList and a ListT (one for every Type of data), and those can grow as big as the tower case in my pants, so I think, "hey that's all right". But none of these arrays will let you just grab any item out of the array. No, you either go through the whole damn array or you have to know exactly which item in the array you want. Which doesn't do me a bit of good. What I want is the 4th item in the array. I don't know what it is, I don't want to have to loop through a million times to get it, just give me item #4 off the list!

Somehow, my buddy Joe helped me through all the hassles but baby...damn.

no love
Tom

p.s. Now if you could be a bit more like that ActionScript 3.0 -- there's a classy, classy lady who I can love all night long.

Hi,

Two days ago, I thought work was going to eat me alive.

Today, I'm doin' the happy dance.

(Cautiously, there's still the rest of the day to go, but I'm doin' it anyway.)

Honestly, much of the heavy lifting was already done, I just had to hook up the pieces, but it was looking dodgy for awhile there. And my boss (who is the expert in hooking up these particular pieces) is on vacation in the Caribbean so just doing it without a spotter is a good feeling.

Also, I mentioned having enjoyed Blindsight the other day? The author has a website. In one part of it, he talks about the biology behind Vampires (there's a vampire in Blindsight). It's set up as a power point presentation by the pharmaceutical company that revived the vampire species. The presentation is several minutes long, but it's a real hoot. If you've got a little time, check it out.

later
Tom

Hey,

• Today I saw a pretty large turtle crossing the on-ramp to Rte. 2. It was a bit bigger than our cat. I have a fondness for turtles. They start with the letter T.


• If you have my EstateWorks email address, I don't work there no more and you should get a new email address from me. deadwinter, tisana I'm looking in your general direction specifically because that's where your email went.


• Last night I stole a cargo plane to fly to some other country where I stole an old Russian cargo plane so I could sneak into Russia for some secret mission. Mostly I just groused about how awful Russia was. On the way out (via comercial airline flight and not stolen air-conveyances), I ran into Sammy Davis Jr. and warned him about how crappy Russia was. He agreed but a gig was a gig. Classy guy, that Sammy, classy guy.


• My mom is flying out to Seattle (again, via commercial flight) to visit my sister and pick up my nephew to take him back to NE for the summer. She's travelling without my dad. But she's not going alone. She's going with my Aunt Jeanene. Pretty much a fate worse than death.


• My mom will also be travelling in the company of an as-yet undetermined quantity of frozen meat. This is the latest episode in my mom's constant (and constantly failed) attempts to ship food to places that...uh...have food. My bet is that whatever system she rigs up for carrying the meat will fail and she'll have to explain why her luggage is leaking blood to grim-faced security guards. If this happens, Aunt J. will probably have a brain aneurism right then and there.


• Finally, my first job here at work is on a Flash project. I haven't done very much Flash and I haven't done it in awhile. No one else around here has a huge amount of experience with it either. The docs are pretty much non-existent and the action script debugger...well, there isn't a debugger. If people know of some really solid places to get examples or if they know a lot about why scrollbars don't actually change when you change their properties, drop me a line. (OK, I've got a ton of questions besides scrollbars and most of them are more important, but scrollbars are visible and show progress, whereas namespace event handler extensions are invisible and show nothing.)
  

later
Tom

How about -- I've got a new job!!!

Whee!
Tom

p.s. Lucas, no it's not MRC, I'll let Andy know next week.

Hi,

Had two interviews today. The first one went really, really well. The second one also seemed to go pretty well, but it was hard to tell. They did keep me for two hours and I spoke to a fair number of people. I got home to discover that there might be a third interview for me in the next couple of days.

So all and all, I'm feelin' pretty positive.

later
Tom

Is like going up a level in D&D.

Huh, I get to add +4 to my Javascript skill....oh, and +2 to my T-SQL...and I took the XSL Programming Feat!
Tom

Hi,

I got laid off today.

They decided to stop all development and focus exclusively on sales and as I was their remaining developer...

So here's my goal: I will find a contract position starting ASAP and running until the end of July. I can then proceed with my original wedding plans and find a more permanent employement solution when I get back.

So if you know of anyone who needs a short term XML/VB/ASP/SQL guy, let me know. I will, of course, entertain permanent positions as well, but considering that'd I really want my dream honeymoon, I can see where an employer would be reluctant.

thanks
Tom

Ugh,

So a few months ago we hired this new guy as a developer. This was great because aside from me, there was only one other developer and he was a part-time contractor who was working on a special project leaving bulk of the development to me.

The contractor's contract will end this month and then I will be responsible for regular development and work on this special project. So having the new guy around was really useful for getting work done. And he was a nice guy.

So it was quite a shock when he got called in for a meeting this morning and walked out without a job. I had a few hours of gut-churning tension where I was terrified that the company was running out of money and letting people go.

Then *I* get called in to see the boss...

...who tells me that the new guy was skipping work to go out on interviews and that the boss didn't want new guy to take on all this work and then give notice. The new guy confessed that he had, indeed, been taking interviews and had some hot prospects lined up and that he didn't really like working here. My boss offered him a week's pay to just up and quit now and the new guy took it.

So...in less than a month, I will be the only developer they have here. The on-coming workload is going to be heavy no matter how they dole it out. I'm glad I'm not being fired and that the company isn't suddenly imploding, but still.

It's a very unsettling day.

I'm also worried about staying at this job. On the one hand, it's absolutely fabulous. They pay me a good salary, but I'm not a slave to the job. Everyone is pretty flexible and the guy who runs the company seems to have an endless well of money (or perhaps he's just running it for the tax write-offs). The problem is that we're not a cutting edge shop. I've learned a lot of new things while I've been here, but I'm afraid they won't be sufficient to help me land a job somewhere else.

Of course, this may be a moot point since I don't really want to live in this area for too much longer. I'm thinking about moving to Western MA, and I know from the hard experience of other people that computer jobs for me will be almost non-existent. So perhaps it doesn't matter so much because I'm going to have to do something else anyway.

In a sea of change, I just really need to figure out how I'm going to build my next lifeboat.

grm
Tom