Depression and the Software Developer: The Last Straw (Conclusion)
Photo © 2007 Jason Eppink CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Here’s the last part of this series of posts, “Depression and the Software Developer.” This last story I started on Monday, part 4 of “Depression and the Software Developer”.
[Note: You can read the story from the beginning in order to catch up.]
No client or employer will ever admit to you that he doesn’t want to deal with reality. What he really wants is for you to just deliver what he needs, with zero effort on his part, in zero time, for zero dollars. If he gives you any more than that, it is only in grudging acceptance of the fact that you are not the omnipotent God. But a surprising number of project managers still act as though developers are superhuman, even if they accept that we are not divine. And a surprising number of developers are willing to accept that they are superhuman, even if they can’t deliver the actual goods.
And that was the case with this project. So I had no idea what made up the NOKWID feature that I was supposed to be developing (called NOKWID, because No One Knew What It Did), and Pointy-Hair 1 (the developer-turned-manager) and Pointy-Hair A (the manager-turned-developer) both seemed to be going out of their way to keep me in the dark.
If I were a voice talent, it would be like giving me a stack of ill-digested notes scribbled on sticky pads and saying, “Okay. Here’s the voice-over script. We need this by Thursday. When can you have it recorded?”
Needless to say, it stressed me out.
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Teaser Tuesdays: In the Eye of the Beholder
Last week, I started reading I See You by Holly Lisle. I still am reading that book, and loving it. The entire story so far has been written at least competently, and in some instances, Holly has excelled. I totally get her characters, even when they don’t make normal sense, because she shows me who they are.
That’s my paper book. But I’ve also picked up an ebook by Sharon Cathcart (who will be visiting with us on this very blog on Thursday), her short novel (about 50K words) In the Eye of the Beholder. My first impressions: If 90% of everything is crap, then this definitely falls within the remaining 10%. I’m about ¼ through, and I’m very much enjoying it. Unfortunately, time flies when you’re having fun, and so do books; I’ll probably have finished both of these books in a blink of an eye, and then I’ll be looking for something else that I love reading.
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Depression and the Software Developer: The Last Straw
Photo © 2007 Jason Eppink CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Here’s a story I’ve been keeping on the back burner for almost a year now. I haven’t published it until now, because it still hit too close to home. But this week, I’ve scheduled an interview with Sharon Cathcart, author of In the Eye of the Beholder, which I am currently reading, and a memoir Les Pensées Dangereuses. And parts of her story reminded me of certain elements of my story.
This is the story of the software-development project that plunged me into a deep depression (a continuation from part 3 of “Depression and the Software Developer”).
[Note: You can read the story from the beginning in order to catch up.]
It was only a couple months long, but it was the straw that broke this developer’s back. It was the project that made me realize how much I enjoyed making a difference, as I did in my first job after college. It made me realize how important it was to make a difference, rather than just being a cog in a useless, corporate, perpetual-motion machine. Most development managers simply don’t know how to let their developers make a difference, possibly because they’ve never known themselves what it feels like. And to this day, the memory of this painful project keeps me from taking the software-development industry seriously.
The project itself wasn’t that bad. I joined it as a consulting developer, along with a couple other consulting developers. The client had been desperate for short-term help, and I took on the project as a favor for a friend, who was already hip-deep in it. They were also on a limited budget, and so I offered a reduced rate, again as a favor to my friend. That was Idiotic Decision #1.
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Friday Fun: When Bread Comes Out of the Oven
I’ve had migraines on and off all week this week— That’s not the fun part. On Wednesday, my Beloved put in a loaf of bread to bake in the bread machine, and it reminded me of the following bit in From the Ashes of Courage:
“G’d m’rning,” she mumbled. “Aren’t you supposed to be the one who sleeps in?” She had always awoken at the break of dawn, while he had always overslept. And here she was, the morning half gone already. It had been a long time since she had slept in, and the experience refreshed and relaxed her. She assumed that everyone one else was out, maybe walking along the beach, maybe boating, or maybe even at church.
The strong, succulent aroma of clams blended with a different, fluffier, yeastier smell, like that of a bakery. She turned to see a loaf of piping hot bread cooling on a rack on the counter.
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Reaching across Generations, an Interview with Sandra
I’m sitting here in my virtual living room with Sandra, of one of my favorite blogs Add Humor and Faith…mix well. I absolutely love her stories, especially the ones about her and her Hubby. And I actually wanted to have her over (virtually) for Valentine’s Day, to talk about love and marriage. But because of things happening on my end, I couldn’t pull it together. But I’m happy she’s able to spend some time with us today.
Hi, Sandy.
Hi, Tim!
As I understand it, you and Hubby will be married 45 years this coming June—the day, in fact, just before I turn “only 42.” A city girl and a country boy. And you’ve been in love with him since you were 15. How did you and Hubby first meet?
On New Year’s Eve when I was 15, I was staying overnight with my friend, Robyn. Her boyfriend, Wayne, called from a party he was at to tell her that he would like to stop over for a little while at midnight to see in the new year with her. But, she explained that I was there. No problem. He said he had a friend that he had wanted me to meet anyway, and that friend just happened to be right there at the party too! Okay, Robyn told him they could both stop over for just a little while.
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Teaser Tuesdays: I See You
I just finished Taxed to Death, which actually did get better near the end. I’ll post a better review later. For now, I need to pick a next book to read. Now, I did download a number of ebooks from Smashwords, where numerous authors (including yours truly) are offering their titles at 25% off, 50% off, or even 100% off, for Read-an-eBook Week. (Which is probably why the site is often down this week, because it’s getting hammered by voracious eBook readers.)
However, I think that for now, I’d like to read one of the out-of-print Holly Lisle titles I picked up recently. I plotted and schemed for a long time to get my hands on those… OK, that’s not exactly true. But it is true that I’ve wanted to collect more of Holly’s books for a long time. And I See You would really hit the spot right about now. This is one of Holly’s romantic suspense titles, the story of paramedic Dia Courvant, who rescued the sole survivor of a terrible car accident, to find her own husband dead in the wreckage. Now, four years later, a series of deadly car crashes has brought handsome detective Brig Hafferty into Dia’s life. She’s drawn to Brig, but can she trust him enough to tell him of the terror that stalks her? Because Dia has received a message warning her of danger and death, a message that seems to have been sent to her from beyond the grave.
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Friday Fun: The 5 Rules of Book Reviews
Photo © 2009 Trevin Chow CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Authors and publishers, in my opinion, spend way too much time sucking up to literary critics, which is why I decided to become a book reviewer.
Of course, no critic actually deserves the respect he gets (myself included), not for his opinion in any case. And I dare say, publishers wouldn’t give critics the time of day, were it not for the fact that bad reviews can severely hurt sales of a good book, and that good reviews can severely boost sales of a mediocre one. That’s why it’s more important to pander to the tastes and whims of the critics, than to publish books that would actually please ordinary readers.
Authors are not much better, because most authors believe, on some level, that literary critics actually know what they’re talking about. So when a critic doesn’t like the book she wrote, she believes that there’s something wrong with her, because the critic said so. Fortunately, there’s a simple antidote to this line of thinking: the 5 rules of book reviews, which I’ll get to in a moment.
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Interview with Author Jess C Scott
I’m sitting here in my virtual living room, talking to indie author Jess C Scott, who wrote EyeLeash: A Blog Novel, which I just reviewed a couple weeks ago.
Hi, Jess.
Hello there!
Now, EyeLeash is your first book.
It’s my first published book. I have another two or three that literally “see the light of day” on an annual basis, on average.
Excellent! I’m looking forward to reading a lot more from you in the future.
What inspired you to write EyeLeash?
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Bamboo Tiki Torch (Indie Music Video)
Photo © 2007 Tony Unruh CC BY-ND 2.0
I really needed a quick and easy post for today (because I had spent so much time and so many words getting carried away Monday). And I had no idea what I was going to write about. But you know what we always say: The Lord will provide.
And provide He did.
First of all, I want to state, for the record, that ever since George Orwell, the term “big brother” has gotten a bad rap. Big brothers are older, wiser, and in this case, more promiscuous. That is, they’re like pride-blinded parents, fawning over their little ones’ performance and gushing about how good it was, even though we all know that it sucked. But before you get the wrong idea, maybe I should explain…
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Teaser Tuesdays: Taxed to Death (again)
I’m about half-way through Debra Purdy Kong’s backlist novel Taxed to Death. (And all you rabid readers are saying, “Get on with it already, will ya?!” Remember, however, I have other things to do all day besides just reading novels. 
I expect this one to take me at least another week.)
I’m not an expert on the mystery/suspense genre, but are the characters supposed to be this flat?
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