dmaze

Work has been extremely busy recently. (Mostly in the "I have three high-priority things all to do right now, plus four people wanting attention in person" sort of way.) Ignoring the root causes of this, does the world have any suggestions on things I can do to just calm down? Angsting over how terrible the code is (much of it I wrote, even) or what other people consider crises doesn't really help actually get things done.

I took advantage of the above-freezing temperatures yesterday to actually bike into work for the first time since, well, I worked at MIT. This worked out pretty well; at just over 3 miles, the trip took 25 minutes, time-competitive with the bus but not requiring careful synchronization. On the route I took it was probably faster than driving in rush-hour traffic. And they've converted a couple of parking spaces in the garage into a locked bike cage, with five or so ordinary bike racks inside, which converts to "lots of parking".

Now, if I can (a) get my bike research/shopping done and (b) increase my bicycle carrying capacity I'll be set...

A year ago today, they herded us on to a bus (just one bus, the conspiracy theorists noted) to announce to us to our deep and not-entirely-hidden surprise (the conspiracy theorists correctly named the event, other party, and had the right order of magnitude on the dollar amount) that our little startup was getting bought by IBM. It feels like it's gone pretty well to me; our group has by and large been kept together, there seems to be internal interest in the product, and our processes haven't become bureaucratic beyond the point of recognition. The move across Cambridge was even pretty reasonably handled, aside from the Powers That Be taking a really long time to decide if, and where, we'd get moved.

The work has pretty much been the same, which is good. It feels like there's been more customer-related email and bugfixes (but also more customers) and more weird bugs (for me, largely related to the hardware project I was on well before we got bought). So I'm still doing XML-flavored bit-banging and compiler work...plus, one of the person information items in the [authors] property of the XML Schema specification is a floor away.

Using Lotus Notes isn't that bad either. (Since it came up in the acquisition meeting.)

ObPlug: we're hiring. I think. Rumor is that we're starting a new support group in the not-too-distant future, and that engineering is still looking for people, but I can never find the reqs when I'm looking. Ping me if you're interested.