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I guess it's been a good long while since I really posted anything besides Snow White updates. I have mentally written about a dozen posts in the past few weeks, but just never got around to actually typing them up and hitting the submit button. Ah, well. So here's my attempt to catch up. Part 1, the Seattle trip.
So I came up to Seattle for work a couple of weeks ago, and overall I would say the week was a smashing success. Kris came up as well, although at the last minute she really didn't want to go because she didn't want to go through the leaving part again. I can't say as I blame her, I know how hard this move has been on her. We arrived in Seattle on Monday evening, and were put up at the Grand Marriot downtown right next to the Cheesecake Factory. All I can say about our room is "Oh. My. God." We had a corner room on the 24th floor with a panoramic view of downtown and the sound. It was a stunningly beautiful view, especially at night. The room itself was also very nice, and the bathroom was to die for. It had a huge, deep bathtub that Kris wound up soaking in pretty much every night. It was far and away the nicest hotel room I have ever stayed in, and I was more than a little pleased to share it with Kris. Oh, and the bed? Comfortable beyond belief.
So anyway, work for the week went extremely well. There were a number of new people that I had not yet had the opportunity to meet in person, including the new dev manager and the new CIO. I was a little nervous to meet them, if only because they already had a very high opinion of me and I didn't want to spoil that by turning out to be a goober in person. On day one I wound up having a one-on-one lunch with Larry (the CIO), and I also spent a fair amount of time talking to Ronny (the new dev manager). I also spent most of the day just walking around and chatting with people, just to catch up on all the latest. The biggest focus of the week was my actually performing the "Uber Breakup". For a variety of reasons, some good and some bad, our application up until a few weeks ago all lived in a single solution that contained 43 projects. The directory structure was haphazard, with some things carefully thought out and other things just slapped into random places. Worst of all, our namespaces were in many cases meaningless, and did not even remotely map to directory structure. About six months ago I started agitating for a grand refactoring of the application, splitting it up into three logical solutions (pure code libraries, web code libraries, and then the actual web interface). As a part of the refactoring, all of the namespaces would be sorted out, and there would be a one-to-one correlation between namespaces and directories. With my last visit to Seattle, I was able to sell this breakup as being vital to the evolution of the application (which it is), and got the entire team on board. Since that trip, I had spent hundreds of hours carefully planning on how to perform the breakup in a clear and consistent way. Now it was time for me to actually execute the plan. So, you know... it was pretty much the single boldest, riskiest thing I had ever done in my career. Just a wee bit of stress there. So far it seems to have come off very well. Everybody is pleased with the new structure, and so far there have been no catastrophes discovered. Plenty of bugs, of course, but I fully expected that. We have a longer than usual test cycle for this release which should allow us to catch any problems, and thankfully the entire company is fully supporting this effort and understands why it is so important.
While I was working every day, so was Kris at her old office. She really had a great week, getting to see her co-workers and lots of patients that she had known for years. It worked out really well all around.
There is an entire other post I could write about that Friday. It begins with the phrase, "It all started innocently enough...." and ends with a 3am cab ride from the dev manager's house in West Seattle back to the hotel. I may actually go back and write that story at some point, but I don't think I have the energy to cover it tonight. It was a hell of a night, though.
The cruise on Saturday was ok. I mean, the ship was nice and all and the dinner was nothing short of spectacular, but when it's all said and done I wasn't exactly swept up by the cruising life. Getting to spend a few hours in Vancouver was good, though. I got my lunch at Death by Chocolate. I got to visit my other favorite stores in the city. Right now there is a citywide art thing going on where there are all of these whale sculptures painted by different artists and celebrities, and they are way cool. I think the best one was the Elvis whale (or possibly the Sebastian Haff whale, for you Bubba Ho-Tep fans).
That night I finally got to see Shaun of the Dead, after being excited about it since early spring when I first heard about it. It absolutely lived up to my expectations, and I will certainly be owning this movie on DVD the instant it comes out. It has easily become my second favorite zombie movie of all time, which was no easy feat. I just loved all the little details sprinkled throughout the movie. (The store that Shaun works at? Foree Electronics. Go look at the cast list for Dawn of the Dead to see why I laughed out loud when I saw that on his nametag.). If you haven't seen it yet, shamble on down to your local cinema and treat yourself. It's funny as hell without sacrificing the true horror aspects of the story. Plus, you'll never think of Queen's "You're My Best Friend" in the same way again.
Ok, that pretty much covers my week in Seattle. More later about everything else that has been going on in my life.
So I came up to Seattle for work a couple of weeks ago, and overall I would say the week was a smashing success. Kris came up as well, although at the last minute she really didn't want to go because she didn't want to go through the leaving part again. I can't say as I blame her, I know how hard this move has been on her. We arrived in Seattle on Monday evening, and were put up at the Grand Marriot downtown right next to the Cheesecake Factory. All I can say about our room is "Oh. My. God." We had a corner room on the 24th floor with a panoramic view of downtown and the sound. It was a stunningly beautiful view, especially at night. The room itself was also very nice, and the bathroom was to die for. It had a huge, deep bathtub that Kris wound up soaking in pretty much every night. It was far and away the nicest hotel room I have ever stayed in, and I was more than a little pleased to share it with Kris. Oh, and the bed? Comfortable beyond belief.
So anyway, work for the week went extremely well. There were a number of new people that I had not yet had the opportunity to meet in person, including the new dev manager and the new CIO. I was a little nervous to meet them, if only because they already had a very high opinion of me and I didn't want to spoil that by turning out to be a goober in person. On day one I wound up having a one-on-one lunch with Larry (the CIO), and I also spent a fair amount of time talking to Ronny (the new dev manager). I also spent most of the day just walking around and chatting with people, just to catch up on all the latest. The biggest focus of the week was my actually performing the "Uber Breakup". For a variety of reasons, some good and some bad, our application up until a few weeks ago all lived in a single solution that contained 43 projects. The directory structure was haphazard, with some things carefully thought out and other things just slapped into random places. Worst of all, our namespaces were in many cases meaningless, and did not even remotely map to directory structure. About six months ago I started agitating for a grand refactoring of the application, splitting it up into three logical solutions (pure code libraries, web code libraries, and then the actual web interface). As a part of the refactoring, all of the namespaces would be sorted out, and there would be a one-to-one correlation between namespaces and directories. With my last visit to Seattle, I was able to sell this breakup as being vital to the evolution of the application (which it is), and got the entire team on board. Since that trip, I had spent hundreds of hours carefully planning on how to perform the breakup in a clear and consistent way. Now it was time for me to actually execute the plan. So, you know... it was pretty much the single boldest, riskiest thing I had ever done in my career. Just a wee bit of stress there. So far it seems to have come off very well. Everybody is pleased with the new structure, and so far there have been no catastrophes discovered. Plenty of bugs, of course, but I fully expected that. We have a longer than usual test cycle for this release which should allow us to catch any problems, and thankfully the entire company is fully supporting this effort and understands why it is so important.
While I was working every day, so was Kris at her old office. She really had a great week, getting to see her co-workers and lots of patients that she had known for years. It worked out really well all around.
There is an entire other post I could write about that Friday. It begins with the phrase, "It all started innocently enough...." and ends with a 3am cab ride from the dev manager's house in West Seattle back to the hotel. I may actually go back and write that story at some point, but I don't think I have the energy to cover it tonight. It was a hell of a night, though.
The cruise on Saturday was ok. I mean, the ship was nice and all and the dinner was nothing short of spectacular, but when it's all said and done I wasn't exactly swept up by the cruising life. Getting to spend a few hours in Vancouver was good, though. I got my lunch at Death by Chocolate. I got to visit my other favorite stores in the city. Right now there is a citywide art thing going on where there are all of these whale sculptures painted by different artists and celebrities, and they are way cool. I think the best one was the Elvis whale (or possibly the Sebastian Haff whale, for you Bubba Ho-Tep fans).
That night I finally got to see Shaun of the Dead, after being excited about it since early spring when I first heard about it. It absolutely lived up to my expectations, and I will certainly be owning this movie on DVD the instant it comes out. It has easily become my second favorite zombie movie of all time, which was no easy feat. I just loved all the little details sprinkled throughout the movie. (The store that Shaun works at? Foree Electronics. Go look at the cast list for Dawn of the Dead to see why I laughed out loud when I saw that on his nametag.). If you haven't seen it yet, shamble on down to your local cinema and treat yourself. It's funny as hell without sacrificing the true horror aspects of the story. Plus, you'll never think of Queen's "You're My Best Friend" in the same way again.
Ok, that pretty much covers my week in Seattle. More later about everything else that has been going on in my life.