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Overburnt but in Good Company

May 02, 2010 06:08 +0000  |  Family Stephanie TheChange.com 1

So the launch didn't happen as planned. Due to an absence of a few features, Annalea wanted to push back the date to May 15th and I had a hard time arguing with her on that one. The fact is that the site is very featureful and frankly, I just don't have enough time to invest in it to get it all the way to 100% done. As it is, we'll be launching on the 15th with a fraction of the features she wanted to have from the start.

One truth about web development though is that these things never go they way you plan them. Plan for a Facebook-like site and you'll never get there because the investment of time, energy and money is just so high that the site will never get off the ground without going live (at least partially) at first. So I'm not bothered by the fact that we've cut a number of features -- it's normal, and we'll launch on the 15th with something that's both useful and pretty.

This weekend, I'm up in Kelowna with The Fam. Bowing to pressure from the parents, I've brought Stephanie with me to finally meet them and it was a little rough on her but she's managed admirably. The full family showed up for dinner though, which was more of a surprise than she was probably prepared for, but she seems alright. Most of you reading this blog know that my parents are pretty cool people, but it's rough your first time out if you're in the Girlfriend role, and she seemed to do alright :-)

As for how we got here, yes, I drove. Some of you may find it hard to believe, but I am in fact a licensed driver, capable of traversing rain, snow, and hail-drenched highways -- a feat I was forced to perform yesterday, on a moonless night. The highways were really quite scary, but we did fine, so a big :-P to the doubters out there :-)

We've got one more half-day here tomorrow and then we're heading back home. I have to get some work done in that time, but tonight I think I'll just get some sleep because I'm really quite tired. Steph's hopped up on candy at the moment though so I may have to kick her out of the room. As a closing note, I'm sorry that I've not been posting much in here lately. I've just been too overrun with work to do on these three fronts. I'm not going to abandon this site, but it's likely that I won't be posting as often as I have in the past. I do have a private post up though for those who are interested :-)

If I Don't Post Something, My SEO Will Evaporate Completely

March 16, 2010 05:40 +0000  |  Personal Life Self Development Self Reflection Stephanie TheChange.com Work [at] Play 3

I thought that I might take this opportunity to post a little catch-up. I've been neglecting this blog for a while now and since it serves a number of purposes, not the least of which is personal record given my shoddy memory I should at the very least keep it up to date with what's going on in my life.

I'm busy. Incredibly busy. Some time ago Shawna pointed me to an article about how busy people live a sort of half life. We never do anything completely, are never able to invest ourselves in something whole-heartedly because we're constantly juggling too much. This has always been a problem for me, but at least now I'm starting to recognise it. The next step of course is to do something about it... suggestions are welcome :-)

So, lets chronicle this latest incarnation of "busy" shall we?

Let's start with the awesome. There's a girl. I've mentioned her before, but now that we're officially together (Facebook says so!), I want to gush a little more again. All that stuff in the aforelinked post is totally true. My heart skips when she smiles and she gets excited about the coolest, nerdiest things. We have a lot in common and this has led to a number of fun conversations and potentially a new project or two. It's all that good stuff that a new relationship is supposed to be, with the promise of some staying-power to boot. I'm going to work really hard not to screw this one up :-)

There's also the paying job, a.k.a., my role as senior programmer at Work [at] Play. They've got me doing a lot of Drupal work lately (boo!), but in the wake of my trip up to DjangoSki, there's a chance that we'll be doing a big project in Django soon (yay!). This is rather exciting, since I'm probably the best versed Python/Django person in the office, so I'd be working in more of a mentorship role rather than just a grunt programmer.

Then there's my new company: theChange.com. Bigger, meaner than a job, starting a business is exhausting work. I suppose that it wouldn't be so rough if you could build the company 9-5, Monday-Friday, but when you have to eat, it's a little more taxing. We have 3hour meetings now, twice a week, after I've been working for a previous 8, and we've broken down the "stuff to do" list into 5 (well, 4 now) week increments in preparation for our Big Public Launch in April. Annalea is super-hardcore, and an amazing person to work with... I just don't know if I have the energy some days.

Lastly, my father is working on a project of his own that he hopes will help my parents retire. It's a complex machine that requires, at the heart of it, a Sheevaplug running software I've written to handle talking to a PLC and magnetic card reader. It's some fun and crazy code, and so far, it's mostly worked... mostly.

Outside of the above, much of my former priorities are fading away. My involvement with the Greens has tapered off considerably, though that's due in large part to the absence of an election (or sitting government) for some time. My work with the VPSN pretty much died over the summer with our last cataloguing of the CCTV cameras in the city. I don't really miss the VPSN stuff, but my work with the Greens was really rewarding.

I suppose that somewhere in there, I'm supposed to find some personal time, but if I ever do, it always ends up being an evening of me wrestling with the fact that I could(should?) be working on our site. Mentally, I'm rather worn out of late.

And that's it for me. I'll do what I can to come up with something super-exciting for my next post. ...or maybe it'll be a lame meme. I haven't done one of those for a long time. Suggestions?

Gush

February 14, 2010 21:28 +0000  |  Personal Life Stephanie Women 3

Blogs are part personal record, part external communication, and lately, due to my own over-capacity life, I've been neglecting it to the detriment of both these factors. I apologise for this, and there's a lot more I want to write about but I simply don't have the time lately.

I wanted to get one thing in though -- if only because it's been going on for some time without a public note and this is the kind of thing you want to write in a blog. So at the risk of sounding a little too much like the XKCD guy, I just wanted to record the fact that I've been dating this amazing girl for a few months now. She's smart, and pretty, and she smells really, really good :-)

That's all for now. Back to work!