With everyone talking about their flights to LA to go to PDC, I'm feeling a little under-appreciated here. I remember a couple years ago I saw a T-Shirt that read "PDC - because I'm worth it". So does that mean "Not at PDC - because I'm not worth it"? -- lol
It's just one of those days/weeks/months ... is it the whole year?? But sometimes the weight of 'producing' every day can get to you. Engineering, for me, isn't like a job that I learn a task then do it for 30 years, go home, put my feet up on the coffee table and have Princess bring me a beer. So you chase down the technology, and sometimes you guess wrong and chase the wrong thing. It may be fun, and even fulfilling, but not lead toward a good career choice.
There's only so many hours in the day, and only so many things you can cram into that, and when 7AM to 6PM is involved with transit and the work that keeps the roof over your head and allows you to eat, that only leaves (for me) from 5:30 AM to about 6:30AM, and from maybe 7 to 9 or 10 PM, ocassionally midnight, and that assumes no time spent with family.
I tried to find the peanuts cartoon for today. The online one is not the one that was in the morning paper. I don't know the characters but the one is telling the teacher:
"No, Ma'am, I'm not happy.. I feel ignored."
"I raise my hand, but you never call on me, Don't I mean anything?"
"What am I, the two of clubs?"
The two of clubs indeed!
OK... particularly fugly code... wow.
I'm about 2/3 of the way refactoring this huge beast of an application. I'm pulling SQL out of the code behind and putting it into the database layer. I'm using StringBuilder to avoid the loooooong chained together strings they used. Anything possible, I'm pushing to Oracle.
But some of the worst is the client-side code. Multiple times I've found 60 or 80 non-breakable spaces to move something to the right! Data entry forms with 6 rows of data to fill out, and when I try to fix up the UX, things blow up and I find a label that's only in there to space something out... sigh.
I've mentioned some of this before, but today's challenge is a 6-row form that's not-exactly orthogonal in it's layout. Of course I didn't really notice that until I started working on it. The reason it's not lined up both horizontally and vertically is because it's a table cell of a set width, and all 6 display rows are just non-breakable space-separated elements that wrap and make up the display ... seriously!
I missed out on classic ASP, and came in on the tail-end of .NET 1.1, but I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be advisable in either of those, and it's a total Pain in the A$$ to straighten out.
Just thought I'd share ... at least I know what I'm going to be doing all morning!