Category: Geekery

Ethical dilemma

I’m in the middle of a big refactoring job for my work project. I’m basically restructuring all the classes that make database calls so that they use connection pooling with a per-thread “DatabaseHandle” that caches PreparedStatements. It’s a big job, and it’s going to take a LOT of time and concentration, which means that home is a far better environment to work on it than at work. The problem and dilemma comes because I was on a roll when I hit 40 hours for the week. I’m not allowed to bill more than 40 hours, and I’m sure as hell not going to do it for free. Nor can I work from home without prior approval and that’s not easy to get.

So my question is, do I quit now and hope I can quickly get back in the groove on Monday morning, or do I work on it this weekend and then when I’m done spend an equivalent amount of time at my desk at work working on personal projects, like my photoshop stuff? I’m thinking it’s probably safest, although nowhere near as productive, to shut down Eclipse right now and don’t look at it until Monday morning.

Anticipation

My new computer skinIn anticipation of today’s announcement of the new MacBook Pro, I ordered the computer skin a few days ago from iToppers.com. Today the guy producing it sent me this image of what it’s going to look like.

I can hardly wait. I hope there is an airshow nearby where I can get the team to sign it.

I guess you can call me a convert, then

A few hours ago I was complaining to a bunch of friends how annoying it was to do Photoshop with a ball mouse. My optical mouse broke (the first button went down and didn’t come back up) a few weeks ago so I’m using this old ball mouse, and no matter how carefully I clean the rollers, it seems that when I click and drag to the left, the mouse will stop. If I just move the mouse without with the button down, no problem, it follows it all over the place. But it takes multiple attempts to drag anything to the left.

One of my friends, Harry, is an extremely experienced graphic artist, and he said “forget the mouse, buy a Wacom Bamboo tablet”. At first, I was reluctant, because the logo for this thing looks like the word “Bamboo” drawn on an Etch-a-Sketch, which doesn’t say much for its drawing ability. Also, the Wacom promo stuff talks only about it as a device for mouse-replacement and handwriting, with absolutely nothing about using it for drawing or other artistic work. But I found a couple of user reviews where they pointed out it has force sensitivity, which is not something you need for handwriting and mouse-replacement. They said it was an excellent tablet for amateur artists, as well as something professionals might want to put in their laptop bag for use on the road. So on the way home from lunch we stopped off and bought one.

I’ve been using it continually since then, and as far as I’m concerned I should throw away all my mice and buy one of these things for every computer I use. I’m using it for general mouse-replacement and it’s great. The only thing I reach for my mouse for is for the scroll wheel, and that’s mostly force of habit since the tablet has scroll buttons on the top. This thing is extremely great.

Oops

I’m coming down to the wire of this database re-architecture task. I’ve been working 60 hours a week for 8 weeks now on this thing, and it’s due this Friday. Unfortunately, I have come to the stunning realization that there is a gaping problem in my design.
Continue reading “Oops”