Or, WTF (as in "where") have I been the last month?

Just over three or so weeks ago, I was contacted about a Drupal project. I was asked about my availability over the upcoming weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. My work schedule wasn't full (my project schedule is always full), being near to launching the most recent site I was working on, so I offered 25 hours a week for the next three weeks, ending, of course, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Before I started working on the project (a straight forward Drupal install, with a few extra modules and a theme added onto it), before I even went to the client's location, I started sensing a bit of urgency in client.

Mike had worked with this client before, and had let me know his schedule was full. If I said yes to the project, I was on my own: I'd have access to Doyle, but not any of his hours.

Red flag, number one.

The client was building a community website for a client of theirs. When I arrived at their (my client's) offices, the sense of urgency was even more apparent. When I looked at the site specification and documentation, I started to understand why.

The original specifications were dated August 2005. The site was launching at a conference the week after Thanksgiving. There was no site to launch.

No site. No working code. No built functionality.

Worse, the specifications weren't complete: all the pages and functionality weren't defined. The CSS hadn't been done for the pages, there was not HTML to put into the theme. The workflow was also missing. And, some of the functionality was still in flux.

Doyle and I had to build a site from nothing to rocking in three weeks, and, after a week, we still didn't know what we were building.

Eventually, the specification started to solidify for parts of the site. We began building out the site, with small demos to the client, discussing over the phone. Doyle and I worked in parallel with his getting some site functionality, my getting the rest.

We soon started to realize the biggest problem with the job was feature creep. I felt a bit caught in the middle. I had agreed to install a Drupal site and fix the theme; my client was promising altered workflow and features to their client. If my client can't produce for their client, they look bad; it reflects up to me and I look bad. But, the work promised to my client's clients was going to take a lot more work than I had anticipated.

What to do?

Mike encouraged me to push back on the various parts of the project. He talked to the client (Mike having a better, long term working relationship with the client than I), mentioning the feature creep. From the client's perspective, there was no feature creep - all of these features were in the Drupal modules, those that I had agreed to install. They didn't realize the workflow and features they mocked up actually didn't exist in Drupal, and that many would need to be created.

Three weeks, 60 hours from Thanksgiving through the Sunday after Thanksgiving, 3 missed parties, 5 nights of missed ultimate, 4 stressed lunches, a dozen dinners left early, five friends blown off, two clients potentially lost, one potential client lost, and three weeks of butt-numbing work later, the site launched on the Monday after Thankgiving.

Just in time for me to get on a plane and fly out to Colorado to scramble with projects for another client. Good lord, how I hate heading to meetings, projects, appointments unprepared. Hate it.

I think I recovered with that client. At least I hope I did. I'm not sure any more. With four weeks of seriously hard work, and desperately missing Kris, I have to say I haven't worked this hard in a long, long, long time. My hips show it, too. I can't sit any longer. It hurts to sit. What has this world come to when sitting down hurts?

So, yeah, am I a little wiser after this? Maybe a little bit. I know how hard I can work. I know that Kris gets annoyed when his four days of vacation are spent by himself because his wife is off sitting in a corner wiggling her fingers in front of a computer for 15 hour days. I know that I really can't stand practically losing a dozen friends because I can't head out for the Thursday night drink-fest, or meet up with them for communal dinner, or throw with them, or go see a movie with them. I know that this site works only if I put time into it, and working too long each day means there's really nothing to put into it, which sucks (hey, sat on my ass for 15 hours today! got lots done for someone else (again!)). I know that I should run away from a client who, when told the functionality hasn't been added to the site yet, says, "Sure it has, look at this." pointing to a static, mock-up web page that's supposed to do fourteen things after I'm done with it - a page I had never seen before.

And I know that when the person I think works too hard is telling me, "You work too hard," it's time to stop, close the laptop, and go play ultimate.

So, enough of that. Let's not do that again, okay?

I've been here in Colorado for three days now. Something about a witch's tit comes to mind. The weather has been pretty cold, but ultimately (heh) bearable. I thought I came prepared, but San Francisco cold really doesn't compare to Colorado cold (not that you could tell with my complaining about San Francisco weather). Kinda like double black diamond skiers from California thinking they can ski Colorado double black diamonds - not gonna happen with those different scales.

Normally, the only thing I really notice about being here is the dry air. I'm not able to run as far as fast as I do at home, when I actually head out for a run instead of working 11 hour days, but that effect usually fades in three or four days.

This time, I'm not having such luck.

This time, my stomach is killing me. I'm drinking a lot of water, and avoiding the altitude induced headaches I might normally get. I'm sure everyone is amazed at my numerous trips to the bathroom, as I'm journeying to the other side of the building every fifteen minutes or so. Of course, I'm not heading there for just the water (see the stomach mention above), so I'm sure everyone isn't really so entertained by the trips.

There's a good chance I'll be able to head home tomorrow. Once again, I was unable to finish up all the work I want to do. I'm really not sure why I can't finish all the projects I want to do. Why does software always take longer than I want it to (yes, yes, I know, it always takes as long as I think it will, but I still want it to be shorter!)?

"You can't deny people the right to go to the airport."

Huh?

That's a quote from some LAX/LA official arguing that two gates cannot be closed at LAX. The argument is about fixing LAX, which hasn't been updated in the last ten years (boy, did I get out just in time!). Some people think it should be fixed, and many of its problems should be addressed: the noise, the horrendous environmental impact, the delays and congestion. Other people, like said official, think fixing the problems can't be done: heaven forbid people should be inconvenienced when a problem is being fixed.

What is it with people and their inability to "look forward to the long term" as another person commented on the other side of this argument? Closing two gates. Two. Gates. WTF?

Of course, the only reason I even noticed this story was because I can't find KQED in the radio cast on iTunes. So, instead of listening to San Francisco's public radio, I'm listening to Los Angeles' public radio.

It's terribly strange to hear about the old freeways I used to drive. "The worst place to be this hour is heading north on the 605. Congestion near the 10 has traffic backed up to the 405."

The walk from my house to the Bergeron-Gull house involves dodging bullets, dancing around dangerous brush, skipping over potholes the size of the Grand Canyon and jumping over dead rodents. On my over this morning, the bullets were in rare form: the form of stinky, smelly, icky ginko bilbo seeds.

Kris and I used to have a female ginko tree in our front yard. We had quite the surprise the first fall when we unknowningly walked over a few of the seeds and they crunched under our feet. When they broke, peeeeeeeeee-yewwwwwwwwww! Didn't take long before we nicknamed the seeds little shit-balls.

Ginko might be great for the memory, but it's awful for the nose. We accidently tracked the stench into the house, and, oh my lord, did our house smell like crap for a long, long time.

My bullet dodging on the way to Kate and Mike's house involved dragging a rollerbag through the ginko seeds littering the sidewalk in front of one of their neighbor's houses. We suspect they don't realize the city will replace the trees if they end up being female ginkos instead of male ginkos. I thought my dodging in the early morning to be successful, but, well, my sense of smell is a bit off, so I'm never quite sure.

Fast forward six hours, when I'm in Kyle's office, talking to him about his web application and work I've been doing for him. He didn't have a seat in his office, having just moved into the office space less than two weeks before, so I plunked my butt down on the stepstool in his office and started talking to him.

After about 10 minutes, I noticed Kyle looking up at me sideways. I kept talking until I noticed an unpleasant smell. Now, for me to notice the smell, lord, it has to be an overwhelming smell.

And it was.

Turns out, I wasn't as good with the shit-ball dodging, and caught one in the grooves of my shoes. When I sat on the stepstool, I squished the seed on the step, and crushed it. By the time I noticed it, I had smeared the seed in the grooves of the stepstool and into the office rug.

In Kyle's office.

No amounts of apologizing and cleaning up was going to get that smell out any time soon. Poor Kyle. His office smells like crap now.

I'm heading to Chicago at the end of January for the 37 Signals Workshop entitled Getting Real. I think I'm more excited about this one than I am about heading to my first SXSW conference.

I wonder if it'll be as good as Cal's was...

Eh, the best non-technical part will be seeing Dad and Jess and Jenny again. Whoo!

Well, assuming I don't convince Jess to move out to SF before then.

While on a walk with the dogs tonight, Kris and I walked past a huge house in the neighborhood where a family of six live.

"I hereby dub their extra two children, our contribution to society. There. We're done."

"How many kids do they have?"

"Four."

"They're probably Catholic."

"Indeed."

"We need to have more to dilute them!"

"Yeah, right."

"We do, we can have twenty!"

"Heh. That wouldn't wreck my body at all!"

"We could have five sets of quadruplets!"

"Uh huh."

"Think of the tax benefits!"

"That's me! A tax credit factory!"