Updated.

It's Tuesday, May 12 and not much is going on here at work. I mean exactly that--not much. Work is slowing down and although I have a few things to keep me busy, this soon will dry out as well. What's to blame? The economy of course... No, I don't buy it. My philosophy will have me believe that I made this happen because reality is based on my observations. But how did I make this happen? Why would I want to look down the possibility of layoffs? I don't and I'm arranging different projects to keep me busy. But I'm very unmotivated right now.
My health is not good and I haven't seen a doctor. Frankly, I'm afraid that the doctor will give me bad news so I'd rather stick my head in the sand rather than face him.
Is all this due to stress? Possibly, I'd like to think that it is because this stress will all soon dissolve one way or another. The other thing that keeps my keyed up is Max. I'm always afraid that something is going to happen to Max and the thought of that gives me a stomach ache. I understand that this is normal but I still can't help what I feel.
I have to pull myself together and do it quickly because I feel like decision makers at my job are making decisions that won't favor me and this is not a market I want to find a job in.
I'm concentrating on writing and gardening, and apparently stress.

Nervous? Yeah, we're all nervous...

Things are going well at work for now. There is always this hanging feeling of doom and gloom that hangs over everyone, kind of like a fart that you walk into after someone floats an air biscuit. You look around as though something more is going to happen and then realize, Oh, it's just a fart. Ok, enough of bodily gases, I guess it's just the mood I'm in.

I called in sick today because I'm still feeling a few cold symptoms and I need to heal quickly for our trip to Wisconsin. I'm looking forward to, I always do. It's beautiful and the people are delightful. I should now, I married one of those delightful people from the land of cheese and sausage. I have a cold because Max sneezed on me about a week ago, then again, Amy was sick as well and she didn't sneeze on me, not intentionally of course, but maybe she kissed me and didn't know she was sick. Either way, I'm laid up today because of one of those folks.

Let's see. Work--yeah. There is doubt in the air, sort of like the economy in general. Everyone so stressed that crime is on the rise. Although it's hard to say if crime would be increasing anyway. Hard to say, but the economy is in the toilet, unemployment rates are climbing and I have a cold.

Despite our melancholic work environment, our spirits are well and we are for the most part, happy. Work is coming in steadily and we're making deadlines as usual. It's really difficult to say where things are going to go. They could get better if we focus on a better solution but they tend get worse by themselves.

I'll stay healthy

Breakfast at work.

"For you?" says Laurence the short-order cook at work... This guy is amazing. I guess I've just never actually witnessed a short-order cook create hundreds of customized breakfasts a day in such a short period of time. He's not necessarily fast but his technique is flawless and makes for an entertaining display of culinary dexterity.

"... and for you?"
"I"ll have a Denver omellete, no tomatoes, swiss cheese but not a lot and easy on the oil...", says a hungry customer...
"ok, and you?" repeats Laurence while lookin at the next customer in line.
"I'll have a breakfast burrito, no cheese, no salsa and extra sausage..."
"...and you sir?" Laurence says to another waiting customer as he swings to the ingredients cart and grabs a handful of semi-chopped bell peppers.

"umm, I'm not sure...let's see..."

It didn't seem to matter to Laurence that the customer wasn't sure about what he wanted for breakfast. He simply spread out a finely flattened egg pancake, threw a combination of onions and ham on the fryer and followed by some sausage and poured a little more oil on the fryer.

He swung back to his chopping table and with four quick chopping motions had diced bell peppers for the Denver omellete and threw those into the ham and onion mix. The customer still wasn't sure what he wanted... Laurence then stretched out over the grill to grab a handfull of pre-fried bacon and set it next to frying sausage.

"ok Laurence, can I have a.... oh, I'll just have some oatmeal..."
"ok..." says the hurried cook as he swiftly swings back to fryer to turn over the frying bell peppers, onions and mushroom combination and reaches over to another counter to grab a large styrofoam cup. He reaches into a large steaming pot of oatmeal, carefully fills the styrofoam cup and with a smile hands it to the customer that requested it.

"here you go sir, there's some brown sugar and cinammon down here if you like, some people like to throw a pinch of salt in it--but that's up to you..."

Amazing, despite his rush orders for breakfast, he still had time to give the customer instructions on the proper way to prepare oatmeal.

He made the finishing touches to the steaming breakfast burrito and Denver omellete, carefully placed them in styrofoam containers and handed them to customers, all with a smile and a complimentary salutation.

"here you are--have a good weekend..."
"yes sir, for you?"

And the cycle continues for Laurance the cafeteria cook,

Tough week...

I hope I didn't just jinx myself by typing in "tough week" as the title of this post. The fact is, I think it is going to be a really difficult week. But somehow, I know that I'm going to resolve everything, or it will be resolved in a way that is agreeable to my situation, whatever that situation is.

I have to think about the parts that I have to assemble to program this PROCESS MANAGER and understand what the database system is going to look like. I'm mostly referring to the data structure. Curtis had mentioned that using a BLOB (Binary Large Object) would be something interesting to consider and using XML to access the data. I'm not what he's talking about but he said he'd show me.

What I have to do is to establish the look and feel for all of our products so that they start getting more of a finished look. *this coffee sucks*... There are also some things that I need to resolve in having Dreamweaver MX use MySQL and what the database's records are going to look like, what the structure is like...

Ok, enough wining and pseudo planning... Here's what I have to do...

1. ESTABLISH TOOL SETS.
   
2. ESTABLISH SITE LOOK AND FEEL
3. UNDERSTAND WHAT THE DATA FIELDS ARE GOING TO LOOK LIKE.
4. GET DREAMWEAVER TO WORK WITH MYSQL
5. GET LATEST PROCESS MANAGER SRS FROM RUTH.
6. BY THE END OF THIS WEEK, FINALIZE ALL THE DESIGNS THAT RUTH WANTS TO IMPLEMENT IN THE PROCESS MANAGER.
7. TALK ABOUT A SCHEDULE ONCE ALL THE PARTS ARE IN PLACE.

This should give me enough to do all week. I'll be surprised if I can get all this stuff done like I'd like to. But it's good to have goals and aim high.

Gettin' down to the wire...

I had a deadline of "last-week" to turn in to my boss a sample of how we were going to design a Process Manager. Basically, it's fancy word for a hybrid strange type of task manager that has to play nice-nice with Outlook.

I turned in one part of the design and met my deadline but he sensed that I didn't have a grasp of the process manager's relational data base system. How perceptive of him to notice that I didn't know what I was talking about... He was right, I didn't. But neither do a lot of people in software... I have rarely seen a situation where a developer knew all the ins and outs of what he or she was going to develop.... Usually, they haven't a clue, hence the name that was coined for IBM, "vapor-ware".

That's what I was trying to sell him. He noticed that I was struggling so he gave me another week to try and figure it out. Well, here it is, another week and I'm still not sure how we're going to arrange the data and what kind of tables are involved in the database. Now, I'm working with a very experienced co-worker that is quite knowledgable of data-structures, algorithms and data base search engines. He told me about a few and although they sounded interesting, didn't immediately solve our present dilemma. In fact, I am now more confused than last week.

Well, we're down to the wire again and still, no design... I have no idea what my boss's reaction is going to be. It can't be good. But actually, I do have a plan. Only that it requires that the really experienced programmer agrees with it. If I can get him to do this, we might have a product that we can work with. It's all written in php/mysql, a standard multi-platform development environment. Because it's written in this common language, it can be implemented and edited to suit our needs.

More to come.