Success and Tragedy

For the last two or three weeks I've been totally buried in a high-profile, date-driven rush project at my new job. Had to be done on June 30. The engineering/test team worked 60-70 hour weeks for the last two weeks (or maybe it was three - you lose track when you're working weekends). It was a completely ridiculous schedule, with the final feature slid into the code base on June 28. We had absolutely no business actually making that date, but we did. I have mixed feelings about that - hard work, engineering skill and good intra-team communication contributed to our success, but there was also a huge dose of good luck. I sincerely hope that Management understands that, and doesn't take the wrong moral from this, as Management so often does. In any case, we announced product shipment on Tuesday, and most of the team took the rest of the week off, truly primed for a carefree Fourth-o-July weekend.

Today our luck ran out, I guess. I just got a call from my grand-boss, Barb. "I have some sad new," she said. Of course, my first thought was, "Rats! They found some terrible bug at the last minute and cancelled the release." Much worse, unfortunately. One of our little test department, Stewart Hsiao, had drowned. I didn't know Stewart really well on a personal basis, but had been working with him fairly closely on this project. He was a bright, hard-working, and pleasant young man, with an adorable little girl (I met her briefly during this last hectic week) and no doubt a lovely wife (never got the chance to meet her. I suppose I'll see her at the funeral). It's all terribly sad.

It's the Fourth of July! (well, almost)

For the first time since we've been throwing a room party at Convergence, the con weekend actually coincides with the Fourth of July. Yikes! I guess that means we aren't going to make it to Powderhorn Park this year, for the first time in a long time.

It just occurred to me that we can still have a little bit of our usual ceremony right there at Convergence by having a reading of the Declaration of Independence on Friday night. Usually we do that at Barb's house after the fireworks, at Eileen's instigation. Anyone up for that? Is anybody reading this actually planning to attend the fireworks on Friday? Coming back to the con afterwards? If so, we can schedule it for 11:30 or something like that.

I should have thought about this sooner, but I'm just starting to recover from The Big Project at work, and feel a little like Rip Van Winkle. Assuming, of course, that Rip woke up and discovered that not only had he missed the past 20 years, a bunch of people were showing up at his house that night for a party. Eek!