Entries this day: Ack Paint

Ack

10:27am CST Wednesday 21 November 2001

Okay, I'm here at work, and I have one task that has been irritatingly on my list since the dawn of time and I really don't want to do it, but it will make my boss really happy. And I can see the value, but I still don't want to do it.

The task is to comb through my pile of code and fix all the spots that cause "uninitialized" "unreferenced" or "WARNING" to appear in the logs. When I started coding, no one cared about these. Now someone does. But it's not just this simple task because all the code is live and we don't have a good mechanism for testing. We have a testing box, but not a systematic way to test every conceivable possible scenario that could occur. And there is no definitive authority on what is the live source code for sure. My solution to that is just to test the whole operation and move everything online. I'll need big support or a ton of patience to make sure that is done completely and correctly.

But we're in a lull now -- very few people hitting our servers, so now is a good time to mess something up, if that's what's going to happen.

Or I can just procrastinate some more.

10:44am

Okay, here's my plan: Instead of fixing all the code and moving all the stuff online, I'm just going to fix it all on the test box, and then get support in moving it all online next week. Aww yeah.

1:15pm

This is going much more smoothly than I hoped. With Dave and Minh's help, I am able to pretty quickly check for the offending messages in the logs. I've come across only 2 that I've been unable to solve. Soon I'll be done and going to Paint This! to paint.

Paint

1:16pm CST Wednesday 21 November 2001

Oh! yesterday I purchased some acrylic paints and brushes to begin my canvas painting career. Karla had donated some old (20 year old) canvas and the woman at Texas Art Supply dispensed plenty of advice to get me started effectively. Only $30 for paints (8 colors, 2.5 ounces each) and brushes (5 different sizes and a mixing thing) and a thingy on which to mix. (what's that called?)

I really enjoyed the process - lovely colors and lots of fun mixing and blending and shading. There's lots of cool stuff still to be done. When I finish it, I'll put an image of it online.