It’s not perfect yet, but I’m coming close to a point where this journal is going to be very, very easy to maintain. Whereas before I had to update several HTML files in order to post a new entry (the current entry, the one before it, and the main index page), I now only have to write up a journal entry in plain text with HTML markup, upload it, and update a database. I haven’t gotten to the point where I can do it all with a single on-line form (password-protected, of course), but it’s getting much closer. The PHP program that I’ve written takes care of updating the journal index page and building the individual entry pages on the fly. All new entries from this point on will be built dynamically and the URL will have a .php extension. The bad thing is that until I get a bit more clever, I won’t be able to link the first PHP page to the last HTML page. So bear with me; there are earlier entries than this one. Some of the other problems that I can think of already are the lack of ability to add supplemental information to the sidebar, and a difficulty in placing images. But those will be pretty easy to fix, I think… just a few clever tweaks to my PHP code and the database, and I’ll be golden.

This has really been the first time in several weeks that I’ve had a chance to sit down and practice with something new. My job has been insane lately, with longs hours spent out of the state, and a workload which borders on the impossible. While working on our new release, I’ve been neglecting other projects that have been on my plate for some time and which now have looming deadlines. Last night I received a nasty e-mail from our sales manager demanding to know what progress I had made on a tool I had promised her which would report on all new accounts registered at the trade shows we visit. I have yet to reply to her, because I’m worried about coming across as defensive and offended, but the truth is that I simply haven’t had time to work on her project since the development of our new release was announced. Fortunately, now that we’ve managed to stage this release in the QA environment, things are going to be a bit easier for me. Initial development is over; catching bugs is the QA team’s responsibility, squashing them is a responsibility that I share with about a dozen other developers. That’s going to be much easier, I think, than initial development… unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong.

On a more positive note, I received my first performance evaluation from my boss last Thursday, and it was a good one. My boss pretty told me that my greatest strength is my eagerness to learn and my willingness to take on new responsibility; and that my biggest problem is my eagerness to learn and my willingness to take on new responsibility. It’s true. I’ve been excited about new technologies that I get exposed to, and I’m interested in taking on a whole host of projects to prove my worth to the company… and, I suppose, to myself. But for me it’s unusual to be in an environment where I can take on new projects without being seen as a threat to someone else; when at the University, if I volunteered to take on a new project which would require a new skill, I was frequently voted down by people who wanted to do that same project on their own — not because it was something challenging, but because it was something different. Nothing wrong with that, but it frustrated me frequently. I’m still not used to a new mode of operation here: now, when I volunteer for a new project, it’s given to me. But it’s still far too easy for me to take on more anyway. I think I’m getting better though; at one point last week, our product manager came up to me and said, "I’m very proud of you, Richard. You didn’t volunteer for a single new task during today’s development meeting."

Lots more has been going on in the time since I’ve been able to write regularly in this journal. But for now, I’ll close, since this entry is more a test to see if my new system is working than anything else.