Update #32

So since the last update I’ve done a ton. I worked through my first real crunch time in software development and I went to a wedding.

Last Tuesday I was at work and was told that we were to have as much done on a project in a week. This was something that we thought we had 2.5 months to do. We are then told out of the blue that they wanted something in 6 days. The other news that made this more interesting was that our project manager was gone for the week teaching classes at the Governor’s Institute of Vermont… and one of the programmers on the team was on vacation. This left us with the team of me, a programmer, and another designer. Luckily this designer is a good programmer too. So the two of us had to get a project out the door in 6 day or as much of it as possible. When we got this information right away I was thinking about what this meant. What would we have to do to get this done. Right away I start planning out stuff. The first thing I did was make sure we had a focus. We came up with this reasonably easily. Then we came up with goals to reach that focus. We then broke that down into tasks to get this all accomplished. I was excited. This was my first crunch time. We stayed focused as we worked and I always made sure to keep taking a step back to make sure what we were doing was leading us to reaching the focus we had set. For the first 3 days I felt fine I was sharp even though I had been putting in 9 hours or more the last few days. Then I woke up Friday morning. I could tell that I was going to be slowing down. I felt my mind drifting and was having issues focusing. I made it through the day and had to leave early because I ran out of hours(I can’t work more than 40 hours).

Saturday I had to wake up early to catch a bus home. I went to my cousin Lisa’s wedding. When we got there everyone was wondering if it would be outside or not because the weather looked like it might rain. It was drizzling but it ended up staying outside and the weather cleared up just as it started. I got to see a bunch of my family and got a break from work for the day. I also got the chance to finish the book I was reading on the bus on the way there. I left early the next morning to get back to VT.

Right when I got back I dropped my bag on my bed and went straight back to work. It was Sunday and that meant a new work week. I got there and was very drained. The day off had done nothing. I was even more mentally gone than Friday. Then Monday came. We submitted what we had and then we slowed our pace back to normal. It was an intense week and I am still recovering. It was an experience. I am not sure if there was anything I could do to try and prevent this drain to happen like it did. I was fine for a few day while the other person was slowly draining. Then I hit a hard wall. I learned that my endurance for this kind of thing right now is great for a few days but any longer and It is not good. It was an experience on a small scale. A few very fast paced days of 9 hours a day lead to burnout. That’s good to know.

Anyway other than that I have seen a movie. Gran Torino (is that how you spell it?) was really good. The plot was different and as I look back on it probably uses profanity and language in way that most movies don’t. While other movies will have people swearing and being racist or whatever they do it in quit things like name calling. In this movie it is used in a similar way but in a way that seems more real. Any way good movie.

I also learned how to play magic the gathering last week. It’s a card game that is reasonably well known. I had never played anything like it before so I figured I would give it a try and it was pretty fun. Luckily I was playing with people who knew what they were doing and were able to help me out and lend me their decks.

And now I’m off to camp. I’m actually typing this on the ride down.