Crunch

Beep beep beep...

Hand hits snooze.

Black

Beep beep beep...

Hand hits snooze harder.

Beep beep beep...

Groan. Movement somewhere. Kicked. Ow.

Upright. Somebody said something. Stand up.

6 AM. Dark. Cold.

Scuttle to next room. Turn on the lights and head to the desk. VPN in to work, check email. Disaster != true.

Kitchen. Coffee: 6 tablespoons light roast coffee and 10 "cups" of water. Squirrels at bird feeder. Bastards.

Bathroom. Shower. Warm. Hot. Soapy. Steam. Happy. Awake-ish.

The clock reads 6:45 and that moment of massive annoyance as I realize that I'm not going to be on-time. I needed to leave 15 minutes earlier. Nothing I can do will get me out the door enough to matter but I'm still moving around the room really fast. Looking for keys, belt, wallet, blackberry and watch. The wife is trying to say something under the covers. She's saying "bye, I love you". I move to her head and give her a smooch, say “bye” and then run down the stairs to the kitchen and grab the thermos I at some point filled with coffee and then head to the car.

It starts and I'm backing down the oddly curved driveway. Its on a slope and you can't see the back of the car in relation to the road. I drive over a little grass since I don't have any features to line up with. NPR is on the radio, the sun is up, sun glasses on and heading down the road. Got gas and less than 300 miles on the tripometer? True, I can make it to work.

NPR doesn't talk much about anything except for the Presidential Candidates. Bored. Groggy still. Traffic on the highway is going fast. No slowdowns for 30 minutes until 2 exits before mine. Still late and nothing to do but arrive. Can't get into an accident, wife will be angry and really sad if I die. Getting tired again.

Garage. 4 flights of stairs. Cube. Sit down and check email. Disaster != true.

Need coffee. A few paper cups are still in the cube from a previous hording run. I like having the big cups and they go fast. Pour a cup and head to the cafeteria and get some cream. No one is around and something is amiss. Holiday? There were cars in the garage. Meeting? Better get the cream first. Check the uber-manager's office and then the conference room. 15 minutes late for daily status meeting but I'm probably ok. The team looks bad: all have gray faces and a blank expression. Two other guys haven't arrived yet. Meeting goes on around me but I'm not really able to focus still. Sort of catching up. High priorities are bugs and new testing assignments. Meeting adjourned but I stick around to apologize and catch up on anything that is really important. No problems.

Testing is higher priority right now than bugs. I work till noon on the test matrix containing different UI parameter combinations and data validation. Coffee and cookies are helping to keep the brain from giving up and retreating into a restful state. I have to make it through the testing and validate the data. Data validation is nuanced and difficult and needs focus. Its boring, so boring though.

Noon, get up from desk and find people who want to walk to the sandwich shop. Gather group and wander out. It's early spring and cold. The wind is on the main street one block away. At the end of the hill, turn right and then left, on to the main road. Colder but people are talking about the wind and moving fast. Bad jokes and really strange comments start happening. The group lightens up. The wind is uncomfortable but it got people to talk.

Sandwich shop is warm and smells good from the pasta and freshly baked bread. The staff is moving really fast, speaking Spanish and yelling "Next please!" and "With everything?" I order a different sandwich every day of the week. Today its a kind of prosciutto sandwich and I always answer “yes” to her question about the sandwich's contents. Pay, tip, wait outside in the wind for the others to finish. The group gathers and we walk back. Much more animated now. People are laughing but sometimes turn sad at the prospects for the day.

Lunch and more chatter. The topic turns to the development schedule, a dev's quest to be master of Guitar Hero, a vacation in a couple of months, a nasty bug and putting away snow blowers. People get up as they finish and wander back to their desks. I do the same.

Cube and more coffee. The brain is finally firing on all cylinders. It took 5 hours to get to the point where some real concentration could occur. Check email, disaster == false.

Time to fix bugs. Most of the UI bugs are easy mindless things. They can be knocked out in short order. Two or three are really difficult. Gonna keep those for another hour or two and work on the easy stuff. Progress on the easy stuff cleans out the bug queue faster, gives the impression of serious progress. 3 PM, time to kill a big bug. It requires making changes across the entire application stack, better drag a team mate into the equation. Meet with him, explain the bug, collaborate and design a solution that will really work. Not much time left to make mistakes so the solution has to be right and work. I head back to my desk and work on my part of the bug, test, commit the code, reassign to the other developer and move on to the next bug. When he's done he'll assign it back to me and I can wrap up the integration. I fix a different big bug. I get the old bug back, update to the latest code and integrate it. Everything works and the day is going well now.

A meeting will start in ten minutes. Need a clean build and now is a good time for it. Start the build, get more coffee and head to the cafeteria for more cream. Snacks! Head into meeting to talk about a major bug fix. It was not very interesting. The biggest problem isn't the bug but the time left to test the fix. Finish up meeting in an hour after deciding to make a minimal fix that can be tested and documented.

Head back to cube and fix another bug. Time still to test everything on the other browsers. A few cleanup issues are making things look strange between browsers. I guess it's just another day end in Y (MondaY, TuesdaY, etc).

Eight PM rolls by. The wife calls to see if I'm ok. I miss her and she misses me. Two more hours to go though. Fix another bug. A few of the team leaves early. Then a few more. I have to clear out a couple more bugs before the morning build. Two more done.

Ten PM. Time to send the "End of Day" report about how things went today. A nice long list of testing results and bug fixes. A lot of stuff done. On track for crunch hours, maybe I won't have to work the weekend. What day is it today?

Drive for 40 minutes while talking to the wife with the cell phone and the ear-piece. Thank God for noise reducing earpieces! Those engineers got some great gifts when the Big Guy was passing out skills. Really tired.

Home at last. Dinner with the wife and a little conversation. She talks about her day. She did stuff: good and interesting stuff. She asks me something and then reminds me that we talked about it yesterday. What day is it anyway? How many days have I been in the crunch? Watch TV for half an hour, don't care what it is, probably won't remember much of it. Dinner is settling in, blood sugar rising. Time for bed now though, but have to check email. Disaster still != true.

Sleep. Black. Wake up. Just realized that I messed up a fix and it won’t work except in the simple case. Sleep. Black. Wake up. Bathroom. Bed. Sleep. Wake up. Sleep.

Beep beep beep...