Straight Edge Life

Ever listened to the show “Coast To Coast AM”? I’ve been burning the midnight oil lately, cranking through to complete an overdue project and this show has been keeping me company for the last few nights. It’s a trip. It’s sort of like x-files, only the late-night am radio version without Mulder and Scully. People call in and talk about their crazy experiences with aliens and the host has psychic guests and all sorts of experts of great acclaim in the world of the abnormal. It’s the kind of show that will get you through an entire night of driving across a lonely desert.

Yeah, anyways. I’m finally finishing up this project for the local school district. And by “finish up” I mean bring it to beta, where it can be slaughtered alive and rebuilt at the request of the serveral hundred users who will rely on it to complete their daily work. Freaks me out a bit. This is the highest user load system I’ve ever built. Sure, I’ve built systems that handle more overall load on the server, bigger databases, and far larger bandwidth demands. But this thing is likely to be pretty transaction heavy, and that’s a slightly different ballpark. One in which my skills have yet to be tested. But this is the typical life of a programmer, learn as you go, baptism by fire, etc.

I feel sorta crappy right now though because I haven’t been spending any time with anyone for two weeks or so. The other night, when I actually managed to meet my girl for a plate of Kung Pao chicken at Maple Garden on campus, I realized that I’ve truly been working way too hard. She said she missed me and I realized that I hadn’t missed her. I hadn’t because it felt like I saw her just a day earlier, when in fact it had been more than a week ago, and only for a few moments at that. When on deadline, time passes way too quickly. And of course I made the mistake of saying that I didn’t miss her, and had to try and explain the whole time warp after the fact, failed miserably, and probably left her feeling like I just don’t give a crap. How much does that suck?

Lesson learned? When extremely tired, overworked, and mentally exhausted, don’t say ANYTHING unless you say it in your head at least three times to check and make sure it doesn’t make you look like a complete ass.