I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams

I don’t have a lot of hard and fast deadlines at work. Things tend to fall into one of 2 categories: ASAFP or As Soon As You Can Get To It. And the closer you are to the corner office, the faster ASAFP becomes. I’m pretty good at what I do, so ASAFP usually ranges from 15 minutes to a few hours, depending on how many numbers are involved. A really good challenge might eat up an entire day. So, generally speaking, if you tell me you need something in a couple of hours, or first thing tomorrow, you’ll get it.

Until my latest project. I was asked to work on the budget for next year – a convoluted bit of forecasting that took about 4 days to plow through. The deadline was 5, though, so everyone was happy. Then the corner office asked to see it in more detail. A lot more detail. I figured I already had all the data, it was just a matter of reconfiguring it, so I needed maybe 2 more days. Then one of the VPs changed his numbers. And we rolled over to a new accounting period. And I realized I had to rebuild the entire thing from scratch to provide the detail they wanted. Still, the meeting was over a week away, so “no problem” said I. That meeting was May 21st. I have worked on nothing else (my in-box is awash in pleas for assistance from lesser mortals, which I have ignored) since May 13th, and finished the damned thing yesterday.

Lesson learned. Next year, I’ll tell them it will take 6 weeks.

Then give 2 weeks’ notice.

I suspect that people at work think I’m a bit odd. Not off-odd, like someone who perhaps might show up and machine-gun the shop one day, but quirky-odd, a person who doesn’t do things quite the same way as other people. I think this is largely as a result of my habit of taking off my shoes when I’m sitting at my desk. During the warmer months, that actually means taking off my sandals and padding around barefoot, which is seen as odd for some reason.

I don’t understand why, really. Our feet weren’t designed to be wrapped up in shoes multiple hours per day. Why people think there’s something peculiar about preferring to go barefoot, I don’t know.

Anyway, in a complete non-sequitur,  a software application is like a building. There’s a foundation. There are structural members. There is stuff to keep the elements out, analogous to roofing and siding. And there are the decorative things, railings and trim and closets and stoves. In a traditional client-server application, the foundation is the database. Most N-tier applications are really just fancy client-server apps, with the middle tiers working as server layers for the tiers above them and as client layers for those below them.

In most business applications of any size and usefulness, the foundation is a relational database of some kind.  As with housebuilding, if your foundation is shaky then everything is shaky. And as with housebuilding, if you’re going to put up a building, you should design and lay your foundation first. You should do this before you pick out the stove and lay the tile in the entranceway.

However, many (many many) software applications don’t do this. They lay the flooring on the ground and build the stairs to the second story, propping them up with bigger and bigger timbers when they fall over. They pour a concrete footing wherever a stray board happens to hit the ground. Sometimes.

And then they wonder why the place falls over when the first windstorm hits.

After that, they hire a guy like me and give me the job of pouring a foundation. This is, as they say, a non-trivial task. Right now, in addition to everything else, I am engaged in connecting up a series of footings that look like they were poured by an incompetent flower-arranger.

It’s weird. You wouldn’t buy a house from a contractor who was really good at cove mouldings, laminate floors, and newel posts but that knew nothing about foundations. Why do so many companies fail to grasp how fundamental the database design is?

As is traditional at this time of year, our local law enforcement officials have stepped up their roadside checks for folks driving with a little too much holiday cheer. I got stopped in one such last night, returning home with HA2.0 from her dance class. Her Highland Dance class. Where they dance traditional Highland dances with traditional Highland gear. As one officer asked me the usual questions, the other examined the car with a high-powered flashlight. Just as I replied to “So where have you been this evening?” with “Just picking up my daughter from dance class,” there was a terse comment from the officer with the light. My interrogator turned back to me and asked, “So I’m assuming the really big sword is for …?”

HA2.0 and I laughed all the way home, although I’m sure, somewhere in their data base, I’ve now been identified as a possible domestic terrorist.

It is Friday afternoon, I go home in 12 minutes, and I don’t feel like working. This is actually fairly rare for me.