Bashed a Bug

Only 31 hours for a single bug.

Bug fixing on any project can be a very welcome experience, or on a project that generally isn’t going well it can be really rough. Unfortunately I’m on one of those spinning out of control projects with a failed history going back more than 2 years, so it’s not unusual to get a rough bug that takes hours just to research and replicate in a test. Anyway last Friday I started on a what looked to be a pretty easy bug and I finished it today after putting in 31 hours on it. I ended up writing about 150 lines of new code, but the bulk of the time was researching a host of problems with each attempted fix. Anyway I guess this isn’t really the point of this conversation.

The point is that when you can’t finish a bug at the end of the day and I spent Monday and Tuesday night this week in the office until 9:00pm it can be immensely frustrating, especially when your brain is constantly wandering back to the topic of whether the rather large growth on the right side of your neck is a cancer tumor or merely another branchial cleft cyst. Anyway it felt really good to lick this bug at 4pm today. Of course for the project we’re still falling a bit behind with all the new bugs, and I really need to spend a ton more time mentoring staff to really multiply the effort, but that’s a story for another day.

One tense moment today at 4:00 right after fixing the bug I called into my doctor’s office to see about the results of my PET scan. The nurse yesterday claimed they would send over the preliminary results, but they said they didn’t have them yet. So I’ll wait it out til Wednesday. Of course it’s not the sort of news you generally give out over the phone, but I was really hoping to get some clue about exactly what I’m facing.

Went to the movies with my parents, Sky Captain and the World of Tommorow. Quite good, not great but at least interesting and entertaining. It’s still really nice to escape once in a while.