Everyone must read Brent Simmons’s Anatomy of a feature!
Day: July 30, 2009
Today’s Status Report
Today is far from over but I feel a status report is in order. My wife had important meetings today that would keep her out of the house most of the day and early evening so I’m in charge. She left, two neighborhood children joined our horde, and I attempted to meet my goals. Of course, the older two children were off doing their own things all day so I had no true backup. My goals were simple: write a business proposal in the morning and walk a client through the changes I’d made to their application in the afternoon; if time permits, prospect for more work.
We had no causalities on my watch, but the collateral damage is awesome! Only one dog was so muddy that she needed a bath. Only one child needed a midday bath. We had only 1 temper tantrum and associated bout of tears, otherwise a happy day. There was lots of laughs and much bouncing on the trampoline. I realized that my yard needs to become a much higher priority. I failed to get the proposal done. The chat with the client went well but didn’t end with the "all done" that I’d hoped. I did, however, get some long overdue to do items off my list, such as ordering the dogs’ flea preventative, and that felt great! Now I need to cook dinner and see if I can begin digging our house out of the rubble.
You can have your jet ski
Keep your jet ski! I’m getting a Jetlev flyer!
From the mouths of babes
Looking down at the trampoline I see one child drawn and quartered by four other children. They waddle to the edge of the trampoline and start rocking the captive child back and forth as if to throw her from the trampoline to the ground. Then they release sending the captive nearly to the other side of the trampoline with a flop.
Me, opening the window and softly calling down into the valley: "Hey Noah! Do me a favor and make sure we don’t go to the hospital. I don’t have time for that today."
Earlier it was:
Me: "Evan. We have guests. They don’t want to see your penis."
You know.. there should be a book they give to new parents titled, "these are the ridiculous things you will say" with a list of the absurdities you will utter. I’ve said them all!
Today is marketing and sales day
As a freelancer, I wear many hats. I am a programmer, quality assurance engineer, project manager, gopher, sexy intern, accounts receivable, accounts payable, technical support, information technologies (IT), customer service, human resources, facilities manager, accountant, marketer, and sales person. I’m sure I forgot a few. Today I am wearing my marketing and sales hats. I have committed myself to getting a proposal out the door by lunch.
PHP is exactly the same on Linux and Windows…
PHP is exactly the same on Linux and Windows as long as you are using good coding practices, are not using deprecated variables and functions, are not suppressing error messages, are not porting code from an older version of PHP. See, I maintain code on a project that was originally contracted to someone in the United States who failed to tell his client that all he was doing was outsourcing the project to a foreign company. He lost the contract to me when that foreign company became unresponsive to change requests. Many of the comments and variable names are in a foreign language that I do not recognize. The code looks like the foreign company had once written a CMS and just resell it shoehorning new features with hacks. There are many weaknesses to their code but this is not about judging other developers. This post is to warn that although PHP should conceptually move seamlessly from a Linux environment to a Windows Server environment, in reality it doesn’t.
From the mouths of babes
Evan, 4 years old: "Dad, wassit?"
Me: "It’s called a Slinky."
Evan: "WHOA! Cool!"
