Following Edge

Keith and I (mostly Keith, of course) are making great progress on The Project since setting up our dungeon office a bit over a month ago. It fact, I think there are only 3, or maybe 4, milestones for us to complete before the system goes "into production".

As confirmation of my expectations for how the system we've developed will help the company's software development, much of the work in the last week has involved changing or fixing the application based on user input and the changes have been a breeze to implement. Usually, when you get to the end stage of a project, significant changes can no longer be made without significant reworking of the programming. This is much better than that.

The second confirmation is related to a new group that the company is starting that will do onsite service. Brian, the excellent fellow taking on this new operation (and who really deserves to be managing something like this), talked with me about the new software he'll need to track the onsite service. When I showed him the application we're working on now and explained how it can easily be changed around to serve his needs, it seemed like he was blown away to see how this solution eclipses the other options available. As this project is able to expand to other business needs, it should show how the cost can be spread and quell the great concern over the labor cost. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

All of this brings about a problem. Two of the remaining milestones are things that I am uniquely qualified to take on and are waiting for my attention. Unfortunately, unlike Keith, I am not employed as a programmer. Instead I spend about 75% of my work time managing and supporting technology of every type for this multiple division company. I get to program in the 10+ hours I week I usually get after finishing that work.

However, spring (and early fall, actually) is a curious time in our company. Company management have the time to pressure store and department managers to improve their operations and to take on new work. Then those managers start that work (and "spring cleaning" of their own) and discover that some part of it requires some bit of phone reconfiguration, computer programming, network reorganizing, or other bit of technology. Then, the emails start to arrive in my mailbox and the phone calls start to come in. So, right now, when I need 15 hours a week to program, I am getting about 5 and am still falling way behind on responding to emails.

Oh, and I've figured out that my worsening sore throat and stuffy nose aren't allergies. Both Lauren and I have an increasingly bad cold, so we're going to take a sick day tomorrow. It's an anti-programming conspiracy.