July 1–31, 2004 — Malformed queries

Our first month at the office was mostly adjusting and making do.

The hardest part was waking up so early. I did pretty well, getting up at around 8:00 am on most days and making it to the office around 10:00 am. I became less punctual as the month went on, but I still made it in before noon most of the time.

I had so much work to do that I was in on most weekends. Even if I didn’t have work to do, sometimes I would go in because I didn’t have a computer at home that I could check my email on. And then it just made sense to do some work while I was there.

We started out with just our desks and computer chairs, but we knew it would get better. We added a side table that Douglas Coupland designed and that we paid too much for, and we ordered a couch that we also paid too much for and would have to wait until the start of August for the arrival of.

In the meantime, I would lie on the hardwood floor using a sweater as a pillow, hoping I wasn’t doing any permanent damage to my back.

Eventually the automatic button press arrived. We’re sharing an office with Andrew’s pin company, so with the button press came Mike — the Beav, apparently — and a maximum output of about 2000 pins per day.

The only problem was all of the programming work. The way our projects are shaping up, I’ll be doing more programming work during my first eight weeks at Doublenaut than I did the entire year before. I don’t know how sane I’ll be when the middle of September arrives.

It makes me think too much of the summer I spent programming in Ottawa, and I can’t tell if that desperate urge to escape is something I’m feeling or just something I’m remembering. When I start having to sleep at the office I think I might have a better idea.

So I still don’t know. I’m writing a lot less, and I’m barely doing any design work at all. I’m getting much better at database management and writing reusable PHP code, but I hate doing both, so I’m not sure that’s anything to be proud of.

Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that I’m never looking down at the keyboard anymore even though I have no typing method at all; my fingers don’t really have a rest position, but I’ve stopped losing track of which finger is where and can stare straight ahead for my entire day.

Also, the smallest finger on my left hand is the one that operates the shift key, and now it pops back and forth instead of having a complete range of motion. I’m not sure how I feel about this.

But I can type pretty quickly. And my arms hurt less than they did when I had a computer at home and would go to it first thing in the morning and before bed at night.

So I’ve separated things a bit. Now I just need to convince myself that a carefully conceived database implementation is its own reward.