8th Feb

 A little better again. 

Actually managed to make something for dinner yesterday. Pretty shit. But it was something.

Standing up and doing shit like that - when I am in a bad state - is amazingly hard. No stamina. No energy. Palpitations. It's crazy. The old - all the warning lights start blinking on and off - routine since I was fucked over 2 years ago.

Eh well.

Roll with the punches. I suppose.

So, a lot of my life is lived like a defensive general always trying to keep one step ahead of the enemy. It's stupidy exhausting, demotivating and yada. No fun. And. Sometimes, well, most of the time, it's just not worth it. All that paddling. Just to keep at a so so level of shit. But I do it anyway. Locked in a constant battle of wits against a foe I can never beat.

Meh.

There are times however when I can absolutely lean into being a complete dickhead and I will stick my finger in the wound, just to see how much it hurts. Go on. Stick your head in the blender.

Because. Yeah.

Today a new bag of food arrived for Athena. I keep all dog food in big plastic sealable bins. Keeps it fresh, tidy, away from any pests. Tip top. I have four of them. One for Poppy. Two for Athena ( because she has to be on two different feed types ). And one for Ares.

I know. Ares is no longer around. But his feed bin remains. Empty - I slowly used it all to feed Poppy and Athena.

Like most everything in my house little moves, nothing changes. A year is nothing. A decade is a short span. I will have been in this house 22 years this year.

So Ares feed bin is still there.

I loaded Athenas food bin up today. And just because. Sticking your finger in the live socket to see if you're still alive.

I opened Ares feed bin. And breathed in. The familiar smell of his biscuits.

Just because.

Of course it made me stupid sad. Of course I knew it would. Of course I shouldn't taunt the devil.

But I did it anyway.

Why ? I couldn't tell you. Because I miss him. Because I wanted a reminder. Because it seems crazy how shit moves on, things change, and yet, it feels like just the other day, he was standing patiently by my side, waiting for me to get his food. And it feels like, if I just do something like that, maybe, everything will go back to how it was. Just a bad dream.

Like a broken record, I return to a source of grief.

I don't suppose I will be any other way at this point.

The dreams I have been having of late have the exact same vibe. All the things I have lost. All the things I missed at. Failed at. All the people in my wake that drifted away.

I really. Am super terrible bad at letting things I care about go. Of course I can let them go if it's better for them. Absolutely. Yes. But that doesn't mean to say I don't pay a price for it. It fucks me up.

Eh well.

Noodling with work this week, Andy is away.

Before he went we talked about what a client wanted. And as the days have gone past I've realised Andy was entirely out of his depth. A redo of a clients site has come up. But. On one of the devs being queried about the direction. It's clear Andy doesn't have the understanding of what's required. Or the weighing up of tech. When I quizzed him he danced around it. Laughed. It was clear he didn't know. A reskin he said - so just a simple facelift. But with modern technology. So not a facelift then. He didn't know.

I suspect that it's been so long since he even looked at a bit of code, and stuff has come on so far, that he doesn't even know how to lay out the basics of what tech does what. Add to that, he wants a new site, but, doesn't want to spend time or money on it. And sticks to the word reskin. Whilst also being aware that's not what he really wants.

The opinion of the dev was that he - of course - just wanted to do it in the tech he most recently had fun with. The one that Andy let him fuck about with for an entire year, on a single client, on a single tiny website whilst I ran around and did everything else.

And he managed to scar the dev into being something of a princess. I only want to work on one thing. In one technology. Leave me alone.

Well done.

As it stands the dev has been lead out of his shell into other stuff and has done pretty well. But. Still. The shadow remains.

So this week, whilst just doing a "reskin", I've properly realised Andy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about at all. Dithered. Avoided. So. I've binned the work I already did and am starting from the ground up. Because. That's what he actually wants, whether he realises it or not.

Meh.

This is some of the meta bullshit that I get. It gets into IT strategy and people management. One - ignoring the pet projects of devs and having to cajole them into not throwing their toys out of the pram when they don't get their way. Two - teaching and leading others through tech they don't properly understand without them admitting they don't understand it.

It's tiresome. All of it. But necessary. Because people are people. And as it turns out, unfortunately, IT is often as not more about massaging egos than it is about getting a machine to do something.

Devs as a whole are an irksome bunch. They get to have their favourites. One of their perennial cries is - I Want To Do X. Typically followed by some bullshit rational. Because X is Proper. Good. The Best.

It's always bullshit.

The dev only sees what they enjoy working with. Oh I like this. Oh this was fun. Oh this is good for my career.

Great.

In the scale of things, none of that fucking matters.

What matters is -

TCO - Total cost of ownership. How much does that tech cost to buy. To maintain. How many hours does it take to fix a bug. How expensive is it for the client. How much bang do they get for their buck.

I can tell you now, no dev I've met ever thinks about it from that angle. And arguably, they don't need to. Not their job mate.

Other things also matter like -

Can you get resources that know this tech to work on it. How quickly can you get resource in. What is the longevity of it. Will we be ripping it all up in 12 months time and having to do it again. How resilient is it - will it break if one partner decides to chuck it all in.

Those are some tricky questions.

But the bottom line is, you need to do right by your client. IE something that lasts, isn't stupidly hard to keep ticking over, good security, yada blah waffle.

The least important thing is what your devs preferences are for the tech they would like to work with.

However. From the devs perspective. It's the most important.

So you have an issue.

You need to get the dev from that point of view, over to one of the actual reality. Depending on the dev you can get sulks, pouts, ongoing arguments et al. People stuff.

Infamously I had a junior argue with me constantly about tech choices. Six months experience. Telling me how it should be. No clue about business costs. Hiring. Legacy technology. Training. Maintenance.

Excellent.

Spare me.

In that case I gave him a choice. Do what had been repeatedly explained, or do not. If he chose not to, then his business case had best be watertight, and he would need to bring results.

As it turned out he did it his own way, fucked up, never completed the project, it crashed and burned, and hung himself with the rope I gave him. One of my not so great capabilities. Here's some rope. Let's see if you can actually do what you think you can do or you just hang yourself.

Somewhat unfair. Because it's human nature to be excessively good at hanging yourself. People tend to be incompetent, particularly at new things. Still. If you talk the talk. You better damn sure walk the walk around me. Or I will burn you. No time for bullshit. Professionally speaking.

Personal relationship wise the same rules do not apply.