Day 7 - Thursday 12th, submission day
Week 2 of design contest is about to start, so if anyone reads this, to keep you from boredom I'll post the last day's report from the previous design, the interesting night it was:
"Well...that was interesting, not a day I'll soon forget. Anyway, I shall start at the start - due to CS tutoring of students at Uni, I have to start at 11am, which means walking to the busstop at 9. It's also going to be a 35 degree day, and I'm bringing my laptop in so I can do some more XMI documenting from within the CS labs. By 2pm, I've got a software design lecture (ironic?), and as I've documented virtually everything except the new SQL stuff that I haven't added in poseidon yet, there's not much to do until after I finish at 5. At this time I also start up my list of tiny one-point things that need to be fixed, like incorrect names, missing attributes, extra things to add to documentation, etc...
Get home, finish dinner by 6:30, pull out the Iced-Coffee and peanuts {my staple design fuel}, turn on the Dream Theater {the official soundtrack to UML} and fire up Poseidon. I modify the SQL to accomodate what I had wanted to change, and finish the documentation for it. That pretty much finishes the zuml completely, it's now a matter of writing up the component specification (CS), adding any sample doc. files that will help the reviewers, and finally, submit :D. I never really like the CS, but much of it is copy-paste from documentation, and some other standard things. The only 'hard' parts are the initial writeup (like a prose description, kinda fun), the algorithm section (exact details about trickier sections, means you need to know what you're doing), the configuration section (easy, but you need to be careful) and the demo. The writeup bit is ok, and for the demo I can luckily copy the AJAX code I'd been testing.
So, 9pm thursday night, 90 minutes until submission time. It's been a long, hot day (over 100F), when suddenly....BOOM - power outage! Laptop saves me at first, as not all my work is lost, and I can still save all the documents and work while battery lasts. But that's not the worrying bit - to submit I required internet connection, and that requires a working modem, which needs power! There's 90 minutes left, I have about 60 minutes of work, and no power! What's more, power is out in the suburb thing I'm in, so I can't go to a neighbour. I could risk hoping the power comes back on, but instead, I end up ringing my friend, asking to leech off his power and net connection. I cram everything I need into a bag (laptop, cord, USB stick, license, ...) and after a 15 minute drive, I get to his house, complete my design on the floor in his bedroom while he's finishing off some homework. I get the sample config finished (not perfectly, but close enough) - I manage to find a cached version of the java code, and edit it frantically to a submittable state. After zipping the .zuml and all files, I successfully submit at 10:29pm!
As an epilogue, I should add that if anyone ever thinks that UML designing can't be high-paced and frenetic, I suggest you try it in a blackout. I owe that friend (Bodie) a lot for doing that - turns out you get disqualified if you don't submit, so yeah, letting me use power and net late at night was very helpful indeed. Oh, and on the way home I had to swerve to avoid a Koala, certainly an interesting night. Stay tuned for design week #2!"
In other news, I've heard back from Google - as I thought, the interviews went well, no matching positions in Sydney, but I'll hear back in 2-3 weeks while they're trying to match me with US projects. Uni is coming to a close, very few pracs left, BlogWatcher is getting a small javascript-aided improvements, and until next time, there's always talking cats!
"Well...that was interesting, not a day I'll soon forget. Anyway, I shall start at the start - due to CS tutoring of students at Uni, I have to start at 11am, which means walking to the busstop at 9. It's also going to be a 35 degree day, and I'm bringing my laptop in so I can do some more XMI documenting from within the CS labs. By 2pm, I've got a software design lecture (ironic?), and as I've documented virtually everything except the new SQL stuff that I haven't added in poseidon yet, there's not much to do until after I finish at 5. At this time I also start up my list of tiny one-point things that need to be fixed, like incorrect names, missing attributes, extra things to add to documentation, etc...
Get home, finish dinner by 6:30, pull out the Iced-Coffee and peanuts {my staple design fuel}, turn on the Dream Theater {the official soundtrack to UML} and fire up Poseidon. I modify the SQL to accomodate what I had wanted to change, and finish the documentation for it. That pretty much finishes the zuml completely, it's now a matter of writing up the component specification (CS), adding any sample doc. files that will help the reviewers, and finally, submit :D. I never really like the CS, but much of it is copy-paste from documentation, and some other standard things. The only 'hard' parts are the initial writeup (like a prose description, kinda fun), the algorithm section (exact details about trickier sections, means you need to know what you're doing), the configuration section (easy, but you need to be careful) and the demo. The writeup bit is ok, and for the demo I can luckily copy the AJAX code I'd been testing.
So, 9pm thursday night, 90 minutes until submission time. It's been a long, hot day (over 100F), when suddenly....BOOM - power outage! Laptop saves me at first, as not all my work is lost, and I can still save all the documents and work while battery lasts. But that's not the worrying bit - to submit I required internet connection, and that requires a working modem, which needs power! There's 90 minutes left, I have about 60 minutes of work, and no power! What's more, power is out in the suburb thing I'm in, so I can't go to a neighbour. I could risk hoping the power comes back on, but instead, I end up ringing my friend, asking to leech off his power and net connection. I cram everything I need into a bag (laptop, cord, USB stick, license, ...) and after a 15 minute drive, I get to his house, complete my design on the floor in his bedroom while he's finishing off some homework. I get the sample config finished (not perfectly, but close enough) - I manage to find a cached version of the java code, and edit it frantically to a submittable state. After zipping the .zuml and all files, I successfully submit at 10:29pm!
As an epilogue, I should add that if anyone ever thinks that UML designing can't be high-paced and frenetic, I suggest you try it in a blackout. I owe that friend (Bodie) a lot for doing that - turns out you get disqualified if you don't submit, so yeah, letting me use power and net late at night was very helpful indeed. Oh, and on the way home I had to swerve to avoid a Koala, certainly an interesting night. Stay tuned for design week #2!"
In other news, I've heard back from Google - as I thought, the interviews went well, no matching positions in Sydney, but I'll hear back in 2-3 weeks while they're trying to match me with US projects. Uni is coming to a close, very few pracs left, BlogWatcher is getting a small javascript-aided improvements, and until next time, there's always talking cats!
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