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.

Quick update in point form

  • Knees : stabby
  • Database code: not working 100%, but good enough to let QA start hammering it
  • Due date: today
  • Overtime: ending today
  • Airplane: booked
  • Weather: doubtful
  • Other plans for weekend: massive amounts of sleep and TV watching
  • Mood: cautiously optimistic

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”

Sigh

Eclipse dialogSee this dialog? I’m seeing a lot of it. I’m working on a very large project, and this one particular file is the main GUI for our system. The guy who started it was in love with Visual Age For Java, and didn’t like splitting his stuff into separate classes, and after I took it over I’ve pretty much continued along the same lines, so this file is over 10,000 lines long. Yes, you read that right, ten thousand lines of poorly documented code.

Just about every word you type into Eclipse in this file either leads to a long delay as the CPU maxes out and the disk churns, or this dialog. I’ve tried quitting everything else to provide more memory for it to work in (you’d think 2Gb of RAM would be enough for Eclipse, Safari, iChat and iTunes to get along, and you’d be wrong).

Sigh.

UpdateOk, what sort of moron declares a method to throw “Exception”?

My irony meter exploded

Last night, in a parking lot I saw a bumper sticker that said something like “Live lightly so that others may live”. A great sentiment, except I saw it on a gigantic SUV. And not one of the semi-practical ones that looked like it was on its way to a cabin in the woods or was full of climbing gear and skis, I’m talking one of those pristine, shiny, leather seats and chrome monstrosities that never leaves the pavement.