Excellent Book

I just finished an excellent book, On Basilisk Station by David Weber. It was a Christmas present from treebyleaf and retcon, a gift that included the first five books in the Honor Harrington series.

I should point out that when I say Christmas, I am referring to Christmas 1998 -- or perhaps it was 1997. My memory is a bit dim in that respect. In any case these books have sat on my bookshelf for several years now patiently awaiting my attention. Every now and then Treeby would politely ask if I had read them yet, and I would offer an embarrassed apology that no, I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. All I can say is... she was right, this is a series of books that I absolutely love. I am truly sorry it took me so long to finally open them up, and I suspect I will be sucking the next four down in very short order. As a matter of fact, according to Honor-Harrington.com I have at this moment 38 days, 13 hours, 39 minutes, and 7 seconds left to get caught up before "War of Honor" is published so I had better get cracking.

Deadlines Revisited

Remember how I busted my ass for two straight weeks, taking over a software component that I had not looked at previously and making the final push to get it done in time for an absolute-can't-slide-critical-for-operations release?

The release is sliding.

It seems the business stakeholders, after months of signing off on things and agreeing to things, took a look at the final product and said "hey, wait, I didn't actually mean it."

Bear in mind that the dev tree had forked so that work could continue on the 1.5 release, a silent release that optimized a few hundred stored procedures. Because the date for 1.4 has slid, and work for 1.5 is now complete, we now have a logjam. We can't roll the two together, that would be a QA nightmare. We can't test 1.5 until 1.4 is out the door, and we can't begin work on 1.6 because there is nowhere to put the code.

I am annoyed by that, and I am more annoyed that I worked my ass of for apparently no good reason. With all that being the case, and knowing that I won't have a damn thing to do next week while the business stakeholders get their shit together, I am taking next week off. I actually left work at noon to day for a "five hour lunch". I won't go back until September. Hopefully by then someone will have pulled their head out of their ass.

I intend to take a drive next week. I have no idea where. Mostly I want to go sit on a rock somewhere off the beaten path and read.