The Year is Winding Down
Well, you know when I miss more than one day in this journal that there just isn't much going on.
Work has been... interesting of late. I spent much of the last couple of weeks doing programmer QA for the newer developers. Which was okay. But I've noticed a trend that I seem to be getting an awful lot of the PQA; basically, it seems like every project which is "important" they want to run past me. But I'll be spending all my time testing if we do that. I'm a big believer in throwing people in and letting them swim. Moreover, it's a Catch-22; if guys don't start tackling the big projects, they're not going to get experience with the big parts of the system. So today I started turning away PQA requests, partly on that basis, and partly because I genuinely have other things I need to do, which I've been putting off because of the PQA and other little tasks.
Plus, as I've said, I go stir-crazy if I don't do some real programming once in a while.
Actually, the task that occupied most of my day today was not programming, it was algorithm design. I'm working on a project which is basically taking my most complex project from our last release and making it even more complex. It requires a lot of thought. The first pass was not as efficient as I'd hoped in the first place (although not tragically so), so now I'm not only adding new kinks to the algorithm, but I'm trying to streamline the algorithm to make it faster.
And the underlying data structures are a little weird for the new kinks we're putting in. But I've nearly convinced myself that the alternate structures would not be any better.
This is one of those projects where I spend long minutes staring out the window watching the cars on the street beyond the mall and mulling over the problem. It's one of those algorithms that relies on multiple cacheing schemes, temporary indexes (temporary because of the potential size of the data being manipulated), and interleaved looping. It really puts the old programmers' memory to task.
It's fun, though.
Of course tomorrow I have to shift gears and work on another important problem. But I can cope.
I haven't taken a lot of advantage of the weather, though. If it's nice this weekend, I will see about biking around Lake Monona.
Last night I did go down to the SF3 weekly social thing, for the first time in weeks. It was kind of disappointing, though. The lively conversations seemed to be at the other end of the table, and when I eventually moved down there to join them, everyone was ready to leave - about an hour earlier than yesterday. Bummer. Other than the fact that I was bringing a book to lend to someone, and picking up some Babylon 5 tapes I lent to someone else, I'm not quite sure why I bothered.
Technopolis, from Caliber, is worth a look. It takes place in 1949, about 18 years after an alien ship landed on Earth and built the city of the 4-issue series' title. So it's a sort of science fiction noir mystery. It starts off really strong, although it kind of peters out towards the end. The protagonist is definitely something of an anti-hero.
Superman/Batman: Generations is John Byrne's latest project for DC. It follows the main characters through stories set in the 9th year of each decade starting in 1939, and presumably will focus on their children eventually, too. Byrne does an updated emulation of the prevalent styles of the heroes for each story, and the first issue has stories in 1939 and 1949. Byrne's work has frustrated me ever since he ended his Next Men and Danger Incorporated series; he's been writing light super-hero fare with simplistic layouts and some downright ugly faces. I really haven't much cared for it, and I outright loathed his Spider-Man: Chapter One re-launch, and dropped it after two issues. It's a far cry from his fine work of the 70s and 80s.
Speaking of which, I've been collecting Iron Fist, his first series for Marvel, which lasted 15 issues (plus three appearances in other titles). I haven't got the whole thing yet, but I'm looking forward to having them all so I can sit down and read them in one sitting. They are pretty expensive, but fortunately the most expensive one - which goes for upwards of $80.00 - was reprinted not long ago, so I grabbed the reprint.
A new collection of Kurt Busiek's excellent series Astro City came out yesterday. I picked it up - and then realized that I've been buying the collections in hardcover, not paperback! My store says they expect to get a copy of the hardcover - apparently it's late - and that I can get a refund on my paperback and buy the hardcover when it arrives. Yay! Astro City is a superbly written and drawn series which examines how people might really feel about having superheroes around: What the normals think about living in such a world, and the pressures, responsibilities and joys that the heroes feel. It doesn't focus on villainous schemes and big battles; quite the opposite.
I understand the long-awaited hardcover collection of DC's 1985 series Crisis on Infinite Earths - which a cover price of $100.00 - has been delayed because of an unspecified printing defect. Boy, I bet someone's mad about that one!
Busiek is also writing the 12-issue series Avengers Forever, which is a real treat for fans of the longtime Marvel series. It involves former Captain America and Hulk sidekick Rick Jones, and references to characters and events past, present and future. Quite entertaining. I don't know how much it would mean to a newcomer, though.
Finally, I was saddened to hear that DC's series Chronos is coming to an end, just as it seemed to be stepping things up a notch. It was a classy series about a time-travelling anti-hero, and the time travel was used as more of a way to get him in trouble than to get him out. Sigh. I ought to draw up a list of excellent series that were prematurely cancelled. All-Star Comics' 70s revival, Danger Incorporated, Omega Men, Clandestine, Dynamo Joe...
On the plus side, I did finally track down copies of those out-of-print Prince Valiant collections from Fantagraphics. So now I'll have a complete set. Woo-hoo!
I've been wondering of Hill Street Blues is in re-runs on cable. I rarely watched it when it ran in the 80s (I think I'd nearly given up on TV when it was being aired), and I'd like to watch it now.
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