March 2007 - Posts
Well one problem was solved. Or at least identified.
We've had an issue for a few years where you'd hit the reply button in the forums, then type in a message and when you hit "Post", the session disappeared. Actually I think this happens with the signup page sometimes as well. I've never been able to track it down, and being one of the most active posters, I haven't been too bothered by it. I've learned if I spend more than a minute on a post to STRL-A, CTRL-C to save it before hitting the post button.
So someone complained in a
thread recently about it, and I completely understand the frustration. Especially since I really appreciate the help from Lowell, Brian Kelly, the Ninja, and more. Since I've got more resources now, and there are really 2 full time developers working on the next version of this site, I decided to toss this their way. They're much better developers, or at least more experienced than I. I think I'm pretty good, but I lack focus. :(
So they came back after some testing in the VM and thought it was related to the recycling of the application pool. These forums leak memory and we'd get the "SERVER UNAVAILABLE" message everyday. So I started recycling twice a day. That had grown to 6 times a day when the site was sold (and it was a concern from Red Gate) and recently went to every hour. That's the sysadmin response. The boss complains, fix it more frequently :)
So anyway, thanks to Stephen and Steve, they tracked it to the recycle. We've debated a couple fixes and
got one great one from Lowell in the thread as well. Hopefully we'll get this fixed before too long since I'm not sure how long the site rewrite will take. It usually takes longer than expected, but Steve and Steve are on the ball. Now if this Steve could get on the ball, we'd be in great shape.
I was talking with Andy Warren, my partner and fellow partner here, today about the Code Camp in Orlando last week. He was down there with Steve McConnell trying to promote our training business and the local user group. So when I got home and saw
this thread on late projects, I was kind of intrigued. I actually added a post there, but there's more to say. It needs an editorial if not an article.
In any case, I thought I'd add a bit since I've been in the situation of being late on a project.
The first thing I'd say is don't panic. If you just found out things are running behind, go tell your boss and tell him not to panic. Then say you'll work on a plan. In fact, if your boss is upset that the project is late, stop for 30 minutes, go get a latte, a Dairy Queen blizzard, or something else and let your mind go.
The first thing you need is a plan. If you're a developer, go tell your PM to figure it out and get back to work. If you're a PM, then read on.
First you should get the proper mindset. Your developers build software. Help them do that. Don't make them fill out time sheets, don't make them project future work, don't make them clean up the break room or attend meetings on new HR policies or anything else. Let them be productive at the thing you most need them to be doing.
I know that pitching in around the office, knowing and adhereing to company policies, etc. are all important. And they are things that are necessary to keeping things going, just like doing the dishes and getting your clothes in the basket for 3 points are important at home. But when youre' behind, some things just need to slip and the things you want to slip are the less time critical things, which is everything except software!
I was always someone that was ambitious as a kid. For whatever reason, I've been driven most of my life to succeed. Maybe it comes from being fairly poor as a kid. When my parents split, I was about 7, and my brother, I and my Mom lived in a spare room for a few months of a friend before she got one of my Dad's rental properties to live in. We were "house poor" in that my Mom owned 3 houses, but we didn't have any cash. Literally we lived on 2 or 3 staples of food for a long time and I remember more than once scraping change together to buy bread and hamburger or peanut better and live off sandwiches.
My brother, 3 years younger, lived through the same thing, but was never as driven as I was. Over the years I've often worked 2 or 3 jobs, keeping myself busy and ensuring I always had a good stash of money for emergencies. When I started in this business, I was still driven, happy to work 80 hours a week or more to learn and get ahead. It paid off and as I approach 40, I've been very successful. And that's with slacking off somewhat over the last 2-3 years.
So I was interested to see how today's
editorial on Ambition would be received. Seems like a good split of people agreeing with me and people thinking that work is important. What I'd love to know is how many people disagree that don't have kids or are under 30. I think those two events more than anything have changed the way life works for me.
I'm still for working when things really need to be done, but I find that less and less they "need" to be done now. Most could wait an hour or a day. Heck, I still remember shutting off email at JD Edwards, a company of 6000 people, and we survived the day or two it took to eradicate businesses. We might have taken some hits in revenue, but I doubt it. More likely our customers were fighting the same battles.
We migrated to a new set of servers tonight. Actually am for the Red Gate folks and a late, 11pm-2am night for me. Things went pretty smooth. I disabled the web site to prevent access, then ran diff's of all the databases. We'd moved fulls over earlier, so once these were transferred, we loaded htem and things looked good.
We ran through tests, rebuilt indexes, and things were ok. A couple password changes that hadn't synched for some reason, but those were easily fixed. We're getting the Euro date display format in some places, not sure why.
Let us know if you see anything,