right on bro!

Someone’s shooting a movie on my street today. It looks to be pretty big as they’ve taken up pretty much 3 blocks around here (bastards - parking is a pain in the ass around here).

So the Webcam is pointed out the window. I doubt that you would see, like, Keanu Reeves walk up right to the camera and wave at you, but maybe you’ll see something cool.

Or, the monochrome version of cat-tivity.

Cat’s gone. Now I don’t have to walk through the apartment with fear of tripping over her (more worried about me than the cat on that one), and I don’t have to try to prevent her from eating plastic bags anymore.

This weekend kinda flew by. I could use another one right about now. Played some Halo, worked on some new songs, played some more Halo, drank some alcohol, played some more Halo.

Cat-tivity

I bought like three weeks’ worth of groceries today at the Food 4 Less on Sunset Blvd. Since this is the place that UFCW picketers are recommending as an alternative to the local Vons and Albertsons, it was jam-packed. I had originally planned to buy a couple of things only, but once I saw it was so crowded, I decided that I don’t want to go into another grocery store again until the strike is over.

They had a giant freezer chock full of horizontally stacked Banquet frozen dinners there. It looked like a library of frozen food. I was so compelled by this display of product that I bought five of them. Now I have a library of frozen food in my freezer, too.

Okay, the Webcam is fixed for real now.

Okay, I stayed up to fix the webcam. Here is the deal: At the request of my friend, I have put the camera where the cat usually sleeps. I will probably have it in this position through Saturday. So you may see a cat here. You may not. Keep checking.

Only the finest in entertainment here at rightonbro.com.

Given that yesterday pretty much went off without a hitch and I woke up today actually really wanting to go into work - today I was solidly worked all around.

Working #1: The application/Website I was designing is launching next week. Now, I haven’t touched this thing in about 2 months. It wasn’t all that great to begin with, but it drastically increased usability and met the four primary business goals that we had in this version.

Keep in mind that the reason I was on the redesign for this application is because a product manager decided that I “took too long” to develop the last version and handed interface/design duties to the programmer. That is, I took two weeks to develop a customer application that supports a $30 million business. That is, at any other software company, you have entire teams who take 3-6 months to develop these kinds of applications. Oh, but the reason I’m on it now? Because the coder completely fucked it up.

So the product manager who is responsible for, well, managing the product, has known since I released the first version of the technical specifications (which she was supposed to write but didn’t know how, so I ended up covering for her ass because I happen to think that she’s actually pretty good at what she does and just need some training) that there was one last round of minor changes that needed to be done before QA occured. That was about 2 months ago. I was told that the application would be launching next week, but given that I’ve been re-structured into product managing and designing a couple of other things at the same time, it wasn’t really in the forefront of my mind. We had just hired a new developer and he seemed very capable and easy to work with.

So today, the product manager comes up to me and says the application is already in QA, ready to launch next week, and I need to finish my stuff by tomorrow to get it done. Oh, and they cut out two major pieces of functionality that I slaved over, because they couldn’t get it done in time. Which happens to mean that the application doesn’t meet two of the business goals. WTF?

So today, I had to immediately finish one project that I had been given last night in about an hour (which, in most companies that are serious about product development, would’ve taken about a week), drop another project which was already late, and cram these revisions in.

That means that by the end of today, I have completed two half-assed projects intead of one good one. And yet the people at my workplace seem to think this is acceptable.

Imagine that you go to, let’s say, the Gap. You walk into the store to buy a new pair of jeans, and there are holes some pairs, and stains on others. You ask the sales rep about it, and they say, “Well, yeah, our jeans have problems, but we had to sell you something, so buy it!” Would you buy these jeans?

I’m really uncomfortable with this new management’s model of software development, which basically is, “Get something to market using low standards that would be laughable by any other company in our league, just so we can look like we’re doing something. We’ll fix it later.” Granted, software is not jeans - it can be patched. But cutting out basic requirements and trying to patch them later is an abuse of the patching system.

Working #2: I was eating while surfing the net, and I didn’t notice that the cat jumped up and started eating my dinner which I couldn’t eat any more after that.

Working #3: The new episode of CSI was pre-empted tonight due to the Yankees/Red Sox game.

Working #4: Is it just me or has everyone else gotten a huge increase in spam email lately?

Potential Working #5: Jamming these changes in may require me missing my team’s outing to Oktoberfest at Alpine Village tomorrow.

Oy…thank god for whiskey.

As I predicted earlier, I went to the Kings game tonight at Staples Center with the Montez. The Kings stage a great comeback from being down 3-1 and eventually beat the Senators, 4-3. It felt really good to cheer for something (or at least yell “C-YUH!” when one of the Senators got sent to the penalty box). I don’t think I’ve cheered for anything in a long time.

You know the old joke, “I went to a fight, and a hockey game broke out?” Well, there was a fight tonight, but it was in the stands. Two fools start going at it. Security breaks it up, and one dude is ejected. The woman he’s with, who was apparently part of the fight, refuses to leave. Finally, about five security people pick her up and carry her out like the dude who put his feet on the table in “Casino.” The crowd cheered madly. It was an incredibly solid and memorable working.

Since when did Trent Klatt join the Kings? He used to be a Flyer. Then again, I haven’t watched hockey regularly in about six years.

Also, surprisingly enough, work went really well today. I created some stuff, analyzed some data, and there were no major issues. That is quite a rarity these days. I hope it continues.

I’m going to the L.A. Kings game tonight at the Staples Center. Skybox, brew, and hockey. Bust.

Did you ever write down somebody’s phone number and then lose the paper? Well, that is what I did today. Nice work! So much for returning phone calls tonight.