Broken Rake

2005-03-03 4:13 a.m.
Sometimes when I code I move logical mountains at the whim of my rampant fingertips. Bashing away at plastic keys, playing the monotone clickety clack of letters forming methods, classes, files, applications. Letters and symbols fill the screen in haiku like form to be interpreted by interpreters interpreting interpretations, eventually to the one and the zero destined to transmit over copper, glass and airwave to� wherever the fuck.

Other times I�m tossing rocks and small boulders around with ease...

These past two days, I�ve been sifting the dry sand with a broken rake. And it�s one of those cheap ones with the worn down screw end of the handle like the brooms from the 99 cent store, so the rake keeps flopping off.

Of course, the energy I put into my work is the same or more regardless of the feats in mind. Be it some silly one page form for some guy who has no time to learn html or a massively interactive application meant to keep hundreds of people in contact from around the world at any given moment, I dive in face first and come up for air ONLY when necessary.

When I�m moving mountains, I don�t care who�s where and how long they�re gonna be there. I�m writing computational poetry. I�m making things talk to other things, and prototypes with instant ooh�s and aah�s attached. Every time I show the client they are amazed at the complexity and the simplicity of it all. I make sure it looks far easier than it is. No sweat on my brow motha fucker, just a full ashtray and an empty rocks glass.

And then, you got the days where you toss stones around. Maybe 3 or 4 lil gigs in a day. Probably made good money, and most likely rocked shit, but I don�t really remember the specifics. I have to reread my notes in the final meetings for those guys. But they keep the lights on and the glass full.

And then you have days like today (and yesterday). After 40 hours of solid work (with a 3 hour nap in there somewhere), one would think I would raise from the ashes triumphant � chalice in hand with my green ticket in my waving fist which is about to afford me and 4 close friends our first round for the night.

No. No no no no no. Today was one of those days when you ask yourself if programming was what you really wanted to do. I coulda kept DJing. I�d probably be national by now... possibly international. Maybe I could�ve written professionally. I mean, my shit is weak, but I can deal with mediocre. There�s plenty mediocre to go around, I coulda just hid amoungst them. But programming?

I wake up Tuesday morning ready for a brisk day of a little reading, some work on a couple personal projects, some packing, put some smoke in the air�

5 Missed Calls. Hope nobody died.

10 Unreads from a client and a couple from his host. Ok. Fuck.

Bring up the site. Gone. Done. Nothing there. Ok fine, I�ve been through this hundreds of times, and a lot of them with this client�

Now I know it sounds weak as shit. It�s just a website, right? And yeah, if it were one of my larger clients, sure. Not that it�s ok for their shit to go sour, just that they can afford it. A website is a small portion of their marketing budget. Or, more likely, their site goes down because of the host, they have someone on hand to take care of it with 3 pagers, 2 cell phones and a terrible caffeine addiction. But not for the small guy. Herein lies many complexities that it takes years of college economics courses to get the FULL grasp (which I skipped � the cliff�s notes were good enough).

What we have here is a site I�ve been working on for 5 years. The guy who owns it is doing his best to support his family (wife and 2 young�ns� the site is older than the kids). This guy has been pouring money into this project for 5 years. All he�s got. 2nd mortgage, investors, friends, etc. And he trusts and relies on NOBODY but me. (Sure he got pissy and I told him to fuck off at one point. And boy did he learn how good I am at what I do then � and �what I do� has far more to do with me personally than professionally.)

He works a really shitty job and essentially is counting on this thing to make him. Will it? If it were based solely on this guy�s will and persistence, he�d be another Bezos (Amazon) right now. But it�s not my position to tell the future. I give them what my experience tells me they are looking for, and they pay my rent, bills and vice budget.

He�s fed up. Not with me, I�ve been rocking shit that I�ve seen teams fail attempts at. And this guy has been doing his share on the marketing / owner end. But after 5 years he�s almost out of money and out of ideas. I don�t blame him. So we�re on our final attempt at rocking this thing. 2 months of updates and tweaking and redesign and making things just right.

He puts out a 3 tiered marketing plan.

The morning of tier two� The site goes down in flames. Far too much traffic for what our server can handle (out of my control� also, had I known the size of his marketing plan, I may have made stronger recommendations in prepping for this � but budgets can be a bitch). Not only is the owner in my ear (panicking not yelling), but the head of support at our host is threatening me. Threatening me.

Some professional geek � probably with 1 pager and 2 cell phones - is threatening me via email.

Alright, nothing against my life and no dirty words, but he�s not being helpful. The fuckhead is threatening to erase my 5 years worth of work and shut down the whole thing.

Of course, It got under the owner�s skin. So, while I�m writing my cordial email, politely requesting he remove his head from his ass long enough to help me get this thing moving, the site owner calls every department at the company threatening everyone�s jobs and raising a shit storm. On their voice mails. In his THICK Staten Island Italian accent (the company is on the other side of the country somewhere).

So now they won�t talk to him, ALL correspondence must go through me, and I have the task of doing 2 weeks worth of tweaks and bullshit in 40 hours to get this stupid fucking site online.

Tweaks and bullshit is the technical equivalent to moving massive amounts of sand with a toothpick.

Don�t get me wrong� All three levels of work (and all the gravel in between) all have their own interesting ends of creativity involved. But the most annoying nitpicky one with such a short fucking deadline (NOW!!) is THE WORST.

I was NOT supposed to be stressed this week. Clarity. Remember? I said that. Like 50 fucking hours ago. One night of sleep after and I could launch pen across the room from the pop of a vessel in my forehead�

And now� because of this� I have nothing to talk about at dinner tomorrow. 2 days of stressful bullshit tweak coding leaves very little conversational fodder. And THIS folks� is what disappoints me. Dinner at a South African Restaurant with 2 beautiful women (friends), and all I have to talk about is what you probably couldn�t bare reading through just now. It�s bad enough that I�m prone to overly rational long-winded breakdowns of the silly idealistic world I�ve created for myself.

I guess I can talk about the weather. And how about them� (who am I kidding, I don�t give a fuck about sports unless I�m playing).