Ok, not sure that’s strictly accurate, but if you haven’t heard, SiC Media will be officially CLOSED on Feb 1 2010. Sad, yes, but hopefully I’ll have more time to devote to some open source projects, projects around the house, and my personal life.
Currently about to happen Thursday is:
Also going on: Ashley’s engaged, Jenn’s preggers, Dad’s getting married, Mom’s going to school and I’m going to the Texas Mile in March.
Normally I do websites that are fairly visually pleasing, and have a little bit of decent programming to them. A well placed e-mail form, a bit of AJAX.. nothing too spectacular. I’ve written a few C# windows mode programs that were all, well, functional. Repair a database by doing this, set an AD attribute to this if another attribute is this… etc. Generally speaking, the design is good, and the programming as good as it needs to be, all culminating in a little CMS I’m still doing that helps a group of people with very little time take over their website, and runs off one codebase for my sanity. The latest project for me is a bit different. It’s a property listing site, with all the cool bells and whistles: list your properties, search them, swap them, pay for it too (hopefully).
Everyone says programmers have youthful optimism- I like to say I have pessimistic optimism. This time however, I got ahead of myself. I bid the project too low, decided immediately I’d write it from scratch, and then got behind and have thus far refused to push back the roll-out date. Any one of the little pieces are swallowable: upload and resize photos, no problem, add a listing, no problem, register for a membership, etc etc. Then you start to see the intermixing: allow editing of the property, but only select things, and only if the person owns the property and their account is active. Then, make it reusable, make it safe, and sanitary to use: make it secure! They all compound into a code mess.
To make matters worse I started without utilizing a SVN/Versions system. This late in the game, it’s impossible to add it. The bug-tracker will get put into use after the first rollout is done now, and I expect it to be full. I’ve been recently re-reading “Dreaming in Code” and feel a bit like the Chandler developers. It’s time to put something out: it doesn’t matter how bad it is, I need a place to start improving from. It’s only been ~1.5 months, and I feel like I’ve been tossed under the bus. It doesn’t help that tonight I’m writing this at 1:00 AM because I’ve been up puking pizza hut for the last 2 hours. My throat is sore and swollen, and I have a runny nose. It’s either the worst incarnation of a cold I’ve ever had or the flu. Either way: it’s killing my timeline. Normally a sick day or two happens, in a release timeline involving daily goals and weekly releases, it’s a big problem.
This all brings me to the title: this is really the first piece of full fledged software I’ve written. I didn’t dub it as such starting, but it is. I’ve got roughly 2000 lines of PHP and HTML and CSS that need to be hewn into something pretty in the next few weeks. I need to setup a bug tracker for the inevitable post-release bugs. What gets released right away? What features come after the first release? Internet companies of the past suggest now is the time to be setting up a $$FREE$$ ‘beta’ version of the site to find the last of the bugs and push it into a stable release with all the bells and whistles. Unfortunately the owner of the site doesn’t have that in mind, financially. Now that I realize where this project has taken me, and what this means for me and the company, I want to make good, nay, I want to make it excellent. I want to be able to put this out there saying “look, 2 months, and a usable piece of software…”: it needs to be a building block for making SiC fund me (and others) more completely. I always think with just a bit more time the company will really start to take off, problem is to get a bit more time out of my schedule requires making it pay for a bit of the time.
Well, with the vette finished up and running, I’ve had some more time to work on work stuff although the current major project for SiC Media is behind schedule big time. Hopefully I’ll catch up this week with lots of hard work. (ha, house on Monday night and Idol Tuesday – Wednesday… doubtful!) Been looking around at places to move to as this furnace thing keeps not getting fixed, and have found some nice options. Lots of the “Less sqftage for more money” options, and then a few that are truly intriguing. For instance, going to look at a historic building in downtown Dell Rapids with shop space (For SiC!) below and a 2200sq ft (!) apartment above. That’s 4400 sq ft of space! I’d have to buy it, but my mortgage payments would be all of $450 for it.. (erh, makes the $900 rent seem retarded eh?) Details aren’t sorted on the property yet, as in I don’t know what kind of Internet I can get, and it doesn’t currently have a garage (must see if I can fix that before moving!). Otherwise it looks promising as an option. Lots of people are suggesting that Dell Rapids isn’t close enough to Sioux Falls, but I think I might like the separation. I’ve begun to feel like a lot of people feel like I can’t run my life. Like they need to constantly push me in the right direction. I’m capable of living without someone constantly nagging me, and some people can’t see that yet. I know they all mean well, but it’s starting to get annoying!
I got back from the grocery store with cat litter for Luci only to witness one of the funniest things in history. I tried new litter, for “small spaces” that has a better odor blocking ability (Luci’s #2’s occasionally rival mine in smell factor) and upon dumping it in Luci went strait for it. That’s normal behavior if you don’t have a cat: clean the box and the first thing they’ll do is use it. This time though she jumped in and started sneezing! Turns out the ’scent blocking’ bits were really just smelly bits. I was nearly dying laughing. Luckily the smell wore off and Luci’s back to normal.
Today is a blitz of cleaning and working as I need to get the propswap beta site moved to the new server and some progress done on it. In the middle I’m doing laundry and cleaning the house up after 2 weeks of non stop going and no cleaning. The prop swap should get a full sign up system by the end of today and the ability to add properties to an account. Tomorrow I hope to have the basic searches done as well as the mortgage calculator. Also hoping to get to watch the Vikings loose with Dan-o Later!!
