This poor blog has seen better days… I don’t seem to have much to post lately, largely because of the amount of mental energy going into work right now. It turns out I’m pretty crap at estimating the hours required for various tasks, because I keep forgetting to multiply everything by three. And right now I’m in a pretty foul mood, largely thanks to Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005. Because of its buggy crapulence I’m going to lose at least a day of my weekend just to keep from falling further behind. Until recently all my development was using the relatively stable VS2003, but for various reasons I find myself converting several projects to 2005, and instead of taking the half hour or so that I expected I must have toiled for at least five at this trivial task (staying back until 9PM)– and I’m still not sure the same mystery problems won’t come back because I’m still not sure what caused them (basic symptom is linker errors as it tries to link to non-existent object files, without even trying to compile the damn things first).

So anyway, I think I have to start acually doing something interesting in my spare time again, so at least I have something to write about here. If email correspondence is anything to go by then my primary focus should be on JujuEdit and Drivey. The following is my favourite piece of feedback to this effect (received late last year):

Quit your day job, focus on your craft (Drivey) one time. Before it’s all over, you’ve died, you’ve squandered it, YOU FUCKIN’ ROBOT.

Love,

Scott (and the D)

Thank you Scott (last initial J) – I hope you don’t mind me reposting your message here :) I appreciate your, er, enthusiasm, and the point is well taken, but since I am just barely solvent right now it will be some time before this becomes a realistic possibility. To be honest it’s not time so much as energy that’s required, especially for Drivey. I just need to find some enthusiasm to restart development, which is one reason the MacBook appeals (will be buying one shortly I think, although my recent experience with XCode at work has cooled me a little on doing direct development on OSX– the version I was using didn’t even have syntax hilighting!).

And now, since this has been such a whiny post anyway I’ll finish up with my top 5 Things Which Really Piss Me Off Right Now:

1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
2. Credit card insurance which is made deliberately tedious to opt-out of, so basically they get away with extorting about $50 a year from me.
3. Rory, for changing his mind again and choosing not to spill his guts and end his career.
4. Websites which can only be accessed using a www prefix, ie when www.example.com works but example.com returns a 404 error… DUH! Here at intepid.com I actively discourage the use of this redundant nine-syllable prefix– go on, just try prepending a www to the domain name!
5. People who rely on ad hominem arguments, as well as the people who call them on it but insist on using the term ad hominem when doing so. Too many people don’t know what it means, and there’s got to be a plainer way to say it.