10 June 1998: The Iterative Process

Wednesday, 10 June 1998:

The Iterative Process

Yesterday was the day of the big push for this Big Project I've been working on at work. A whole bunch of us stayed until after 11 pm working on various aspects of it, and got a lot of the grunt work done, which was good. It was pretty exhausting, though. The big pushes take a lot out of one. (In particular, they take a lot out of me.)

One nice thing, though, was driving home afterwards. It was dark - nearly midnight - and it had been drizzling all day. The night air had a quality reminiscent of Cape Cod after a rainstorm; cool, humid, calm, mostly quiet. It was nice. If it hadn't been so late, I would have gone out for a walk afterwards.

I decided to bike into work this morning, which makes three major rides in four days. I'm building up muscle and endurance quite rapidly, as I'm resting less and for the first time ever I was able to bike up the Hill of Death on which Epic stands. (A huge hill at the beginning of a ride is okay, but at the end of a long ride? Ugh!) I think I overdid it ever-so-slightly, as my right hand was shaking a little during the first hour there. But I got over it. I should get a good night's sleep tonight, though.

One thing I'm finding with all this bicycling is that I'm in better shape than I think I am, which is to say that I can tackle some challenges that I think I can't. I guess I really proved that a year ago when I first biked into work, and it wasn't quite as hard as I'd thought it was. Now I'm getting to the point where biking to work is almost easy, and I'm starting to wonder if soon it won't be enough exercise.

I probably shouldn't worry; if I get to the point that I'm biking to work 3, 4, or 5 days a week, plus whatever I do on weekends, I bet that will be plenty of exercise. My weight has held fairly steady over the last couple of years, so if my eating habits don't change then I should lose weight. (Of course, that "if" is the big question.)

Work today involved mostly shoring up the efforts done by diverse hands last night. It was a somewhat lighter day than yesterday, and I met at least one more milestone in this project. (The milestones are a little fuzzy - sometimes we've only been about 4-to-8 hours ahead of our next step before we find out what they stop is - but I figure that any time I complete something so I can pass it off to someone else, then I've reached a goal.)

I've been trying to decide whether this sort of frantic pace is rewarding or not, and if it's good for me or not. As a programmer, I tend to be of the "iterative" variety rather than the "checklist" variety, which is to say I like to build things and play with them, and improve them over time, always taking the time to play with them and see how they work (and enjoy the pleasure of having built a little machine I can play with). This approach is fairly well-suited to long-term, organic, evolving projects, but not so well-suited to deadlines by which a certain set of functionality has to be present.

After work today I stopped by the comic book shop. Some good stuff came out: Marvel is publishing some good comics lately, and Iron Man is perhaps the best of them, as it features better characterization than the other titles. The deluxe-format DC comic Batman: Scottish Connection is a fairly typical Batman detective story, but the art is quite lovely, and worth picking up just for that.

And then, of course, there's James Robinson and Paul Smith's Leave It to Chance, from Image, which is a wonderful book. Chance Falconer is the daughter of the mystic protector of the city of Devil's Echo. An only child, her father won't let her follow in his footsteps because she's a girl, so instead she often strikes out on her own adventures, along with her pet dragon. Smith's art is perhaps a little too cartoony (I wish he'd draw some real eyes!), but overall it's a terrific book.

And then I went to the record store and picked up the new Sonia Dada album, My Secret Life, which after one listen-through is not quite as good as their first two, but does has several excellent tracks on it. I also picked up the new Carrie Newcomer album and Stevie Wonder's Music of my Mind, neither of which I've yet listened to. (I decided to listen to the Brewers game instead.)

Tonight's Babylon 5 episode was "All My Dreams, Torn Asunder", which was an ambitious episode which wasn't really treated as such. It seems like this whole season just seems to involve people being maneuvered from one position to another like so many chess pieces, and working through some of the implications of that are only casually tackled.

That said, I did enjoy Zack confronting Garibaldi about his drinking, especially how he defused Garibaldi's accusation that Zack didn't have the right to judge him. (The dialogue was a bit over-the-top, but the general approach was good.) I was irked that after Garibaldi's failure to monitor the White Star transmissions Zack didn't go do Sheridan about it. But it's nice to see Zack not being treated as a stumblebum by the scripts, which was really starting to irk me.

Sheridan's tirade at the Alliance ambassadors was also satisfying. I guess the fecal matter's going to hit the rotating oscillator next week.

Fantasy Baseball Update: I'm still in last, and the margin is growing. Just shoot me.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)