What's it all about, Alfie?

Today has been a really stressful day. I was getting hit with production problems at the same time I was learning that the code changes I'd made in this project I inherited weren't sufficient to stand-alone, and in order to really work I had to make significant changes to the code.

Very stressful. Didn't eat until late. Gulped it down.

Had to fix the code first, it had the greater risk of me not getting it done. The problem was that I believed that the changes I had made completely removed the necessity for the config files (Spring - ick) to have this list of instruments. Instead, I wanted to read them from the database where they were held. Makes tons of sense to not have to maintain the same data in two forms. Problem was, when I removed the files I found that they had actually been referenced in other places, and I needed to get those lists out of these other places.

That didn't turn out to be as easy as I'd have hoped. With the components responsible for their own loading, it was difficult to see where I might be able to use Spring to reference the containers with their database-loaded information. But there was. Then I hit another problem - a circular reference in the Spring.

This was getting to the point I was ready to re-write the whole thing.

But I got an idea - get a 'core' set of containers and have them queried for their instruments as opposed to doing everyone. Now we're talking. With that, I was able to fix things up in a few hours. Still... the unit tests were the vast majority of the time, and a significant hassle as the containers are not easy to make in isolation.

Once I got all that done I was able to check it in and send off an email to the other developer on the project and tell him to run through all the tests to make sure that I haven't broken anything. Just making sure.

Then I could focus on the production problem... that was another toughie, but I was glad to be able to find the difference. It wasn't so much a problem as it was a difference. The production box was using specific 'Ask' prices and the users were thinking it should be using 'Bid' prices - and as you can imagine that would change things considerably.

When I matched those conditions the numbers started lining up very nicely. So I asked them if it was going to be 'Ask' or 'Bid', and they said 'Bid', so I changed production to use 'Bid' and we should be good tomorrow.

Finally, I had another production problem with the data from London. It turned out that one of the London machines had crashed on me - it happens about twice a day in London. All the other sites are fine, so I'm convinced it's the VMs in London. I passed on the information to the London guys and they said they'd be looking into the VMs tomorrow. Good enough.

Super heavy, stressful day, but dog gone it, I got it all done. All of it. That's pretty nice. Now I can go home and feel I earned my dollar today.

Well, I've had my iPhone for a few days now, and I have to say they were 100% on the money. It's a fantastic little device. The keyboard is great - I have no problems typing on it, and the auto-correct helps me when I do make a mistake. The speed of the 3GS is great, and the ability to use WiFi and 3G is really nice.

Of course, it's the price that's blowing me away today. I expected to pay a lot more for the service, and so in comparison, it seems very reasonably priced. Love it.

I've picked up a few apps, but nothing major yet. I think I need to get a nice SSH client, but we'll see how that pans out with the apps being certified now for iPhone OS 3.0 - maybe there will be something new coming out that'll blow my socks off. There are a few updates I'd like to see - specifically WordPress for iPhone, but I can wait for that.

I great little device. Amazing. Now I just need to find a clip/holder so it'll fit on my backpack...

I spent a lot of today still working on getting the unit tests fixed up for the changes I made. I've said enough on this already, but the amazing thing to me was when I got through them, I was able to add in the significant new functionality in about 30 mins. This goes back to the best way I work - create human test cases, and understand the code to know what needs to be tested in each release cycle. It can't always be done, that's true, but when I can work that way, I get a lot more done.

I'm hoping to get to do a lot more of the latter and a lot less of the massive unit testing.

Well... I took the plunge and I'm so glad I did! This evening we went to the Orland Park Apple Store and picked up the 32GB black iPhone 3GS. Amazing. The thing that really helped clinch the decision was the fact that Joseph's phone had an accident and his charger was no longer able to charge his phone. It was in the phone, not the charger, and when we went to the Verizon store, they said it was out of warranty, and yet he was available for an upgrade.

Rather than go for the upgrade, Liza and I agreed to look at the AT&T store and start the process of moving the family from Verizon to AT&T. The reason for this is simple - better service coverage. Liza goes to Jewel and Target, and when she's in these stores, she can't get any signal from the CDMA Verzion service. But her best friend, Kelly, on AT&T is able to get GSM service everywhere in these stores. It's a simple matter of frequency, wavelength and a Farady Cage.

So we moved over Joseph, and started the 700 minutes Family Plan with unlimited texting. Then, when I went to the Apple Store, it was simply a matter of adding a line ($9.95/mo) and then the data plan for the iPhone ($30/mo) and that was it! This was about $70 less than I thought I'd have to spend. What an incredible deal!

So I got it home, took about an hour to move all my stuff from my old iPod Touch and then it was ready to go! I took pictures of Liza and the kids so I'd see their pictures when they called - and sent emails. I had a blast with it. Got a few apps that I'd wanted to have once I had a camera, and even a game or two. It was fun.

So I just need to set things up at work with the second charger so I can keep it charged, and I'll be ready to go. Very nice.

I've been spending all day trying to get the unit tests for this inherited application working, and I'm closer to being done, but I'm not done. It's like the rock Prometheus has to roll up the hill, only to see it slide back down. If I want to add in new features to the codebase, then I have to face these tests, and it takes me far longer to update the tests than it does to test the code, or write it in the first place.

I know there are paradigms that say "Write the Tests First", but I can't actually imagine doing that unless you're writing small, easily testable, modules. This integration testing is not for unit tests, and I keep harping on it, as I'm continually forced to deal with them.

In order to make things work today, I had to create "Mock" services that just fed in the test data. It's again making no real progress in the testing code, we don't know that the database interface is working, and while we can run those tests, it's not doing the kind of integration testing that is going to make me feel any better.

So it's slugging it out all day with these things. I really do get very tired of it.

I've been looking at Eclipse on Windows for a bit, because I have to for this one project I'm working on at work, and thinking about what it can do made me think that I've probably been a little stuffy about the IDE. I'm probably not giving it the credit it deserves. Refactoring, automatic compilation... it's probably a nice tool, and I should give it a try.

So I'm downloading the new 'Galileo' version (3.5) from the Eclipse Download site, and going to replace the older version I have. I'm not sure if it's a big difference, but it's probably something I should give a go - if for no other reason than at least trying to understand what the developers are aiming for.

Better to understand and have a working knowledge of something than to dismiss it out of hand.

Looks like one nasty little bug was in the RC 1 of OmniGraphSketcher, so this morning they released OmniGraphSketcher 1.0 RC 2, and I picked it up. Supposedly, it' had to do with a crash associated with editing text labels, but I just think it's great that they are responding to the reports of users as quickly as they are.

Then again, I'd have had it out as well, so maybe they're just good coders.

Well, the Twins are the champs of the Panther Sports Club Slow-Pitch Ponytail league (8 to 10 yrs.) again this year. That's two years in a row, and they did it (typical) nail-biting style. The game was a heart-stopping ride for all, but in the end, they pulled themselves together and started playing like the team they have been all year long.

Coming from behind 4-9 in the bottom of the sixth to score 8 runs and be on top 12-9. They then held off the Cubs, scoring only another two runs in the top of the seventh to win 12-11. The Cubs played tough, had very good pitching, but in the end, the girls came back and played up to their ability and that was the game.

Major congratulations to Angelina. She had a great game from start to finish.

This morning I decided to upgrade Firefox on my laptop to 3.5 RC 3 just to see how it goes. I don't use it as much on my laptop as I do on other machines, so it's a perfect testbed to see how it runs. I will say the icon is subtly new, and that's nice, but I'm really more interested in the JavaScript and rendering performance as that's where a lot of my work is now focused.

Well... more when I know more.

I've been working on some interesting additions to one of the projects I'm working on and for the first time I've had to work on this Java app that runs on Windows. There's no Ant build scripts for it, though I suppose I could install Ant on my box, create a build.xml and try to make a go of it, but the command line is pretty nasty and the original author of the component used Eclipse to do the development and testing. So I decided that the easiest thing was to use Eclipse and then I'd be sure that I was doing the same steps he was.

Seemed reasonable.

Because I'm no Eclipse wizard, I had him help me set up my workspace/environment so that it'd build and such, and then I could work on the changes. What I found was not terribly surprising to me, but experiencing it was still shocking. Eclipse is an advanced development environment and it saves a lot of people a lot of time, but I found that it was constantly slowing me down.

I'm far far faster developing in Vim and using Ant - on linux. But this is one little component and so I'll stick with this way of doing things as it makes sense to mirror how the other developer is writing the code, but Holy Cow! I had no idea that it was still this intrusive.

Well... I don't have to use it every day - just those days I'm adding to this little component.