How Was Your Day Honey?

How Was Your Day Honey?

I find this to be an interesting question from my wife.  Being married to an accountant has it pluses and minuses.  I never have to deal with bills, reconciliation of the bank accounts, or taxes.  The minuses, saving for the future, i.e. College for the kids, home improvement, watching what I spend etc.  So when she asks how my day went it's tough to answer, because I know the look I'll get when I start to tell her.  I'll get that glazed over look of, I have to look like I'm paying attention, but I don't have a clue as to what he is talking about.

Those who are of a technical nature know what I mean:  Boy that query to SQL server was a pain.  I had to write a stored procedure that took dynamic data to form a select statement based on the input from the user to use in my command object. Then manipulate the data to display the output in a format coherent to the user.  She nods and goes uh huh or you don't have to give me the technical details.  Well then I say, okay, I got some data and displayed it to a screen and it was hard.  As anyone, can tell, that last statement lacked some punch.

But in the end, I answered the question.  Unfortunately, it's my turn to get the deer in the headlight look. I ask, "And how was your day?"

Caught In the Middle

So here we go again another development platform.  Rather, according to M$, another improvement to the framework and development tools.  This time we are also going to go to a new source control.  So what does this mean?  Meetings, meetings, meetings, training, training and training.  I guess the upside is that we will be getting training, considering the state of the economy.

What I find amusing is that each project manager sends their "lackey's" to the meeting to act as messengers to ensure their agenda is not at stake.  So here we are stuffed into a room to "discuss" how we are going to move to a new platform and source control.  Everyone plays nice in the beginning, but as we get into it, people's agenda's come out.

Isn't it my/our jobs as developers to find solutions to problems?  So, why complicate matters by bringing things that don't belong in the meeting.  We have a problem....migrating our applications to this new framework and finding a way to version and keep the source code.  The problem is big enough, leave the extra baggage at the door.