Out of Office

(For those of you who have no interest in software development whatsoever I’d advise you to skip the first couple of paragraphs as they may just cause your head to explode). After a lot of pain, tracing code, monitoring processes on different servers etc and trying to figure out why the deployment of our application is failing on the Live servers, but working correctly on both ours and the clients test environments; I think I’ve finally figured out the problem.

Firstly it seems that whoever wrote the code in the first place; has a policy of just swallowing exceptions and not handling them correctly. If there were 12 commandments to be followed in software development, “Thou shall not swallow exceptions” would surely be one of them; if these exceptions were handled in the first place, we might have picked up the cause of the problem a lot more quickly. Secondly the issue that we have been experiencing seems to be the result of different customized settings on the servers, specifically with regards to date formats…at least now we know what the problem is and can hopefully resolve it relatively quickly.

Speaking of date problem’s I can’t remember the last time I went on a proper date. Do people even go on dates anymore? Think the last one I went on was before I left for Joburg and that was quite some time ago. I’ve been so busy with work and having a torrid love affair with my computer that I haven’t had a chance to even realize how long it’s been. Hmmm perhaps it’s time to put myself back into the game…all work and no play is certainly making Jack (or in this case me) a dull boy!

Anyways the sun was out in full force today! I reckon all the positive thinking and wishing for the worst of winter to pass us has finally come to fruition! If I could have, I would have most definitely snuck down to Camps Bay for an afternoon siesta on the beach, but unfortunately being office bound this was out of the question. I did, however, manage to sneak out the office briefly and wander down Kloof Street to grab some lunch!

Ahhh fresh air! It really was therapeutic to get out of the office, even if it was for only 20 minutes. I believe the fresh air does one a world of good, and it sure beats breathing in that lovely, bacteria laden, possibly virus infected, recycled stuff that goes around the office (as is accustomed to centrally air-conditioned environments). Definitely going to add a mandatory out of office time in the future and would seriously recommend it to everyone else too.