Friday, February 23, 2007

Just wait til Feb - no, March... um.. maybe May?

So, there hasn't been a whole lot of spare time running through the offices at Intuit.

Aw, poor baby. Has to work at work.

Yeah, whatever. Shut up. The crunch is on and has been since, basically, September. Sprints come and go, and we work overtime, knowing we have to squeeze this release out so that we can actually point to something, look upper management in the face and say, "See? We weren't just surfing the web!"

The problem (or the stress) comes from this: Upper management got very, very interested in the project, decided that it was going to solve a huge hole in the online banking market and decided to invest in this solution - to the tune of 1.53 billion dollars. No pressure. Just get the project out. Early, if possible.

It's fun, running around like this, for a bit. We've been told that March 15 is the pressure-off date. I wish I could believe it. I was also told that post 1.0 (november) would be a chance to regroup (which it wasn't) and that after Jan 31, there would be some time. (Also, no) So we have to have 1.5 released right away (mar 15) and 2.0 comes out in May so that our partners can integrate.

Will May be the time when things slow down to a normal pace? One can hope but there isn't a lot of precedence backing that hope.

First thing I'm going to do when I have some free time:

Clean up my inbox. There are currently 1932 messages floating around in there. I don't know what's pertinent, I don't know what's not. I read them and move on. I'm not mindful enough to store them in their proper places when they come in.

News:

Beaver camp was great. Tobogganing, candle-making, Kub/Beaver Kars, campfire and a whole slew of other things.

I finished the Dragon story, tentatively titled 'Resurrection'. I've written my three critiques and posted them as well.

I have three or four more goals to wipe off my 101 in 1001, despite the fact I've done pretty much nothing intentionally.

Kim started taking care of Hailey (Brad and Jil's daughter) and it seems that's going pretty well.

My book-reading is not on pace for 50 books this year. It's more like on pace for maybe 12. I'm going to stop making that a goal and just enjoy reading. I'm currently reading Black Sun Rising by CS Friedman. It's part 1 of a trilogy. It doesn't seem to be anything special just yet, but I'm barely into it at all. I also bought the next installment of Steven Erikson's Malazan series, Midnight Tides. I'll probably read that when I'm done with Black Sun Rising.

Last week at soccer, I twisted my ankle, so I've been avoiding sports and doing cross-stitch at lunch instead of soccer. Good progress has been made. I'm just about done the first batch of leaves on the Samurai cross-stitch. Someday, I'll post a picture of my progress and you can "ooh" and "ahh" all you want.

Kim's brother, sister-in-law and niece are here for the week.

That is all. You are now caught up. If not, too bad.