Project Vee, which (I will now admit) is the next major update of my product The Journal, isn’t done yet. So I can’t do a proper post-mortem.

 

However, it is what I spent most of 2008 working on, so I’ll do a quick post-mortem-like review.

 

 

 

I even worked on it some yesterday (Xmas) afternoon. Because, yes, I program for fun.

 

 

Granted, a lot of that “looking good” comes from the third-party skinning component I bought. But still, it’s beginning to look like a major update, “The Journal Done Better”, and not just “The Journal Warmed Over”.

 

 

 

 

 

My major conclusion has been that I will never fully master project management. Or programming, for that matter. Some things you never master, and you only get better at them when you practice. And make mistakes. And practice some more.

 

-David

 

Late last year, after the debacle of trying to buy a pricey board game for my birthday, I decided instead to invest in my present and future health and took my refund and started a new hobby: weight training.

 

My goals weren’t particularly high:

 

As I’ve mentioned any number of times: I’m a geek. I know I’m a geek (though not always a Geek in Good Standing). As such, I’ve never looked like George Clooney, never had sixpack abs, never had particularly broad shoulders, and while my long fingers would kill you at schoolyard “mercy” games I’ve always been an easy mark when armwrestling. Hell, I weighed only 130 lbs (60 kg) when I started college–and I was 6′ 1″ (185 cm). “Ectomorph” hardly begins to describe me.

 

So, yeah, I didn’t dream big dreams. I kept my goals manageable. (And promised myself that no matter what happened, I would never become an amateur bodybuilder and/or photograph myself nearly naked [I had a friend who did both of  these when he turned 40; he sent me the pictures before I knew what he was doing; you should never do that to your friends]).

 

This is my review of my first year’s progress.

 

 

 

My overall physical fitness has improved considerably. My waistline is about the same as it was–but the paunch that hung over my waistline is much reduced. I’m measurably stronger (I have the log sheets to prove it). And my upper arms, shoulders and chest have filled in noticeably (noticeable to me and my wife, anyway; remember: no pictures).

 

In addition, my legs show a nice, new definition in the muscles, and (for the first time in my life) I have a non-bony back.

 

 

I worked out 5 days a week this entire year, missing only a couple weeks early on due to illness and one week I deliberately took “off” back in October.

 

I do my workout in the morning, after eating breakfast. It takes about 35-40 minutes on average. The most grueling day (currently Monday) takes longer than the average, and usually requires at least 3-5 minutes of rest afterward (dead lifts are great for the lower back, but are exhausting).

 

So far, it’s been a great way to start the day.

 

 

The initial investment in equipment was rather more than I expected:

 

It all adds up (especially since I decided–for good reasons–to go with 2″ Olympic-style free weights and bars). But, once you have them, they don’t exactly wear out.

 

Over the year I added:

 

And last week, celebrating my 40th birthday (sorta), I bought:

 

All told, though, it still cost less than paying for a health club membership for a year (and certainly less than I’ve invested in third-party components for Project Vee). And I still have it all for next year’s use.

 

 

 

I’m a guy doing weight training on his own, by himself. As such, I have to be very careful.

 

So far, so good.

 

Seriously, I try to be conscious of what I’m doing any time I’m handling the free weights, dumbbells and barbells. My father’s back went out on him when he was younger than I am now, and I want to avoid that.

 

For the same reason, I’m very conscious of my form when doing exercises. I want to improve my physical condition, not brag about how much I curl, press or squat. (OK, fine, I’ll brag a little: 45 lbs [per arm], 100 lbs, and 200 lbs, respectively, in 2 sets of 10 reps.) And if I think I’m “cheating” on an exercise, or just being sloppy, I’ll scale back the weight involved. Results (and remaining injury free) matter more than bragging rights.

 

For example, a couple months ago I noticed my forearms were remaining sore for 2-3 days (I called it “wrist splints”; I’m sure there’s another name for it). So I started paying closer attention to my bicep workout, and discovered a couple of places I could improve how I was performing the exercises, plus I scaled back the curl weight a bit. Those changes have made a difference.

 

 

I haven’t just blindly followed a workout plan I found somewhere on the Web or in a book. I’ve read up on weight training and fitness throughout the year, and tweaked my workout based on what I’ve read and what I’ve experienced first hand. I’ve added exercises to fill in gaps that I saw, and dropped at least one exercise because it was having an adverse effect on my shoulder joints.

 

 

Nothing really went wrong in my weight training (I refer you back to the lack of injuries). But there were a couple of things that weren’t expected.

 

 

It seems that working out 5 days a week, every week, for an entire year produces merely “significant” results. Not so much “dramatic”.

 

I can see two main mitigating factors:

 

I have no doubt if I changed one or both I would speed up my progress. Currently, though, I don’t plan to do either. Because I like being (reasonably) pain free, and I don’t want to pay even more for groceries than I already do.

 

Or, as my wife likes to point out: It took me years to get the body I had at the beginning of 2008, so I should be patient.

 

 

Sure, I knew I was thin, but I had no idea I how skinny I was (for a guy with that much middle) until I was a few months into the year. In my own mind, I was … more or less … “normal”. I was wrong. Sure, my gut had expanded as I went through my 30’s and I had added a new chin or two, but the rest of me had remained pretty much as thin as before.

 

That’s another reason I think I don’t obviously show the results of nearly a year of effort: I had a lot of filling in to do.

 

 

I plan to continue my weight training into 2009 and beyond. The daily workout is a part of my life now, and I even enjoy it.

 

My goals for next year remain much the same as they were this year:

 

I’m looking forward to both.

 

-David

 

 

This is where I found my original workout plan:

 

Though I’ve changed the specifics quite a bit, my workout still looks a lot like Mark’s Workout Plan to Build Muscle.

 

This is my primary reference on the exercises I do:

 

ExRx’s Exercise & Muscle Directory has been incredibly useful to me.

 

I sat down last weekend and added up the time I had spent on Project Vee since September 2007. Come the end of December, I’ll have clocked a full man-year.

 

One man-year might not seem like that much. But try it all by yourself sometime, with no one paying you, and see how long it seems then.

 

If I had known when I started the project that was going to be at it this long, I would’ve trimmed it back. Way back.

 

Instead, I looked at my planned additions, changes, and fixes and estimated I would be in testing in 6 months of so. Those 6 months or so were past nearly 6 months ago now. I trim the list now, of course, but that only manages to bring the light at the end of the tunnel into view again.

 

I guess I should’ve seen this coming.

 

While the prototype/first version of The Journal took only a month to design and build, the first shareware version took 4 months. And The Journal 3, a ground-up redesign and rewrite took over a year, 14 man-months spread over 1999, 2000 and 2001. The Journal 4 took most of 2004 in one big chunk.

 

Development of Artifact 1 spanned 1997, 1998, and 1999.

 

The unfinished Paintball Net project ate up most of 2002 and large chunks of 2005, 2006 and 2007 (time I’ll never get back).

 

All of those projects were originally estimated to take much less time.

 

There are a couple of lessons to be drawn from this. First, estimating project timelines is hard. In fact, it’s probably impossible. You make the best guess you can based on past experience, and know that once you start working you’ll have to adapt to changing requirements and external pressures and just, well, life.

 

Second, the nature of software development and programming is becoming more and more complex. This makes it even more impossible (are there really degrees of impossibility?) to accurately estimate project timelines. And makes me wonder how much longer we lone developers will be able to continue doing what we do.

 

I’ve always been more likely to buy a solution than build it on my own. But even if you can see the savings of time versus the money spent, it doesn’t remove the need to learn how to properly use and integrate that newly purchased solution into your project. In Project Vee, for example, I bought a third-party database component (because I’m not stupid). But I still have to wear the hats of database designer and database administrator and database coder and coordinate the database schema with the internal data structures (also designed and implemented by me). I bought a third-party library that provides simple skinning of the user interface, but I still have to get into the guts of the code to figure out how to best use it–and deal with the little oddnesses that inevitably crop up when you dink around that intimately with the Win32 API.

 

High level design work, medium level integration, and low level bug hunting, I have to do it all, often piling on hats and grinding gears multiple times within a single day.

 

It’s almost enough to make me long for the days when I was a specific type of programmer, and knew that on a given day I’d be facing problems within a narrow, well-defined domain. And when I wasn’t directly responsible for either the original timeline estimate–or the inevitable slippage.

 

Ah, well. I’m a man-year in now, and closer to the end than the beginning. I can actually see the end now, which is a nice change.

 

-David

 

Project Vee is now in self-imposed semi-crunch mode.

 

Originally, I planned to be in testing by the end of summer. Then I shifted the plan, aiming to be in testing before the end of 2008 in time for a January release. Now I’m just hoping I can have this behemoth finished someday.

 

Shikata ga nai. Karma, neh? (Yes, I have been reading Shogun. How’d you guess?)

 

As always happens when I focus on programming/software development, my writing and photography get short shrift. That’s why this blog (and my other blogs, as well), have seen very few posts the past few months. I miss both opining and shooting, and look forward to diving back into them in the post-Project Vee universe that I have to believe must exist somewhen.

 

A few random thoughts:

 

-David

 

 

Grocery stores conspire to keep you in the store as long as they can.

 

Eyeglass prescriptions expire.

 

Dentists suggest replacing fillings put in less than 6 months ago. Crowns make them salivate as they see a double whammy: replacement cost and the ability to melt down any gold from the crown pried out.

 

I hate being viewed as a cash cow.

 

-David

 

Sales been down lately? Mine have.

 

August 2008 was down 25% compared to August 2007. September 2008 was down 21% compared to September 2007 (and just barely managed to not be the worst month in the last 2 years). And October 2008 isn’t exactly off to an auspicious start (though it has had some good days).

 

Do I think the current economic troubles are affecting my sales? Yes I do. No doubt about it.

 

But that doesn’t mean I’m powerless. I can’t control the economy, but there are still things I can do.

 

Over the summer, as the news started looking bleaker, I worked to reduce my business expenses. As a part of that, I cut back on my advertising. It’s probable that reduction in advertising helped push my sales down. I’m pretty sure, though, while I might have limited growth for the past few months, my trimming of Google’s profit margin benefited me more than it cost me. And I’ve used the opportunity to make my Google and other search engine ads work better for me. When I’m satisfied that my ads are performing well again, I’ll be happy to push more money into them.

 

I’ve also continued to work on improving the product and the supporting Web pages. I’ve implemented a bit more automation, as I’ve mentioned, and just generally worked to improve my sales copy. I continue to offer the same level of customer support I’ve always prided myself on. And I continue to work on product updates like Project Vee (and only minorly fret that they aren’t getting done as soon as I had hoped).

 

I chose the title of this post as a play on the book title Fooled by Randomness (which I still need to read; and just requested from my library).

 

My point was that even though there is an obvious economic downturn, and it will almost certainly cause a reduction in sales of such non-edible, non-shelter-providing products as my own, I shouldn’t just accept what happens. Instead, I should continue to do everything I can to improve my products, my marketing, and my business practices. Because it’s not just the economy holding me back.

 

I’m not going to let some global recession give me an excuse to be lazy.

 

-David

 

Everything seems so damn gradual this year.

 

Not only is Project Vee moving forward at a snail’s pace–and not for lack of time spent working on it–but odds are, even if you were related to me and/or saw me several times a month, you wouldn’t know I’ve been working out 5 days a week since January unless I told you.

 

I’ve actually achieved significant progress in both software and fitness. But I can’t produce a lot of evidence thereof, except strike-throughs in the long list of Project Vee’s implementation phases and page after page of hand-written logs of weights and reps. And receipts for investment for both.

 

To demonstrate progress in Project Vee, I would have to show you source code and database schemas from before and after. I’d have to use a lot of handwaving and anecdotes to explain why I’ve made some of the design changes I have, and what I foresee using those changes to accomplish in the (hopefully near) future. Because if I run the software for you…it looks a lot like it did before I started working. I only recently launched into significant UI changes. And those are going as slowly as you might expect if you’ve ever tried to re-tool a 12-year-old UI (I never had; now I know: it goes damn slow).

 

To demonstrate progress in weight training–let’s just stop that right there. I (very) intentionally took no “before” photos of my white, pudgy body with the skinny arms and lack of chest definition. Consider the universe spared. I didn’t measure my biceps or quads and chest or anything. I didn’t even weigh myself regularly for the first 2-3 months of the year.

 

The important point is: I can’t usefully show off what I’ve been doing this year. Because I seem to have launched projects with no real appreciation for how long they would take. I might be forgiven for underestimating how long it would take to build up some real shoulders, being a newb to weight training. But I launched Project Vee after nearly 20 years of professional development experience. Just another project manager blithely believing the estimates he gets from his engineer. Silly me (the project manager) believing me (the engineer).

 

I only recently learned that to move out of “novice” category in weight training, you need to have been training regularly for 2 years or more. And even then, you just get to wear the “intermediate” label for another year or so. In fact, I only just moved into the “novice” category. (My wife likes to point out that it took me a couple decades to get the body I had at the beginning of the year, and I shouldn’t expect rapid changes; she is liking the slowly improving me, though.)

 

Once again, I’ve learned that significant progress requires significant work.

 

Just once, though, I’d like something to be easy.

 

-David

 

In typical American fashion, when I think about contentment–I tell myself I should learn more about that. So I can be the most contented person ever.

 

It’s probably un-American, anti-globalization and so-not-the-21st-century to not be striving towards 100%, maximum profit  potential utilization of free time and available resources.

 

But here we are. Or there I am, anyway.

 

I’m trying not to look at contentment as a competitive sport.

 

I used to joke that every plan I make starts small–and then balloons until the last bullet point is “Rule the World”. I’m pretty sure that any plans for enjoying life more are unlikely to provide opportunities for world domination.

 

Or maybe that just makes it more of a challenge!

 

Seriously, though, I want to be more content. With what I have. With who and where I am.

 

At least we’re having wonderful autumn weather here in Tulsa. Perfect for sitting on the back porch, watching the birds flutter around the feeder, spying the bunnies and squirrels sneaking over for sunflower seeds, and just being … content.

 

For a few minutes, anyway.

 

And then it’s back to work. Because Project Vee isn’t developing itself.

 

-David

 

Well…the IRS doesn’t consider it so very “minute”, but finalizing my 2007 taxes was just one of a number “chores” that kept me occupied last week and into this week.

 

The hard drive crash back in the spring, just 2 weeks before 2007 taxes were due to be filed, rather put a crimp in my life. Then and now. I had to completely rebuild my financial data for 2007 before I could report my taxes. So I filed for an extension, which gave me until October to file. I decided late August was enough time spent not getting them done and sat down last week to be done with them.

 

It was … uh … fun? Scouring through bank statements and credit card statements (online and hard copy), tracking down all of the various sources of income (4 different payment processors plus PayPal, check stubs, invoices–those that survived the crash–and so on) and expenses, hour after hour for several days in a row isn’t what I like doing.

 

But it’s done now.

 

Oh, and in the middle of that, my daughter–who uses my wife’s laptop “like a rental”–evidently clicked on a malicious email attachment or a popup Web ad or something. Wee! So in the middle of the Joy of Taxes, I have to pause and take a day to rebuild my wife’s laptop. Fortunately, ever since late March, I’ve kept very good backups of the main computers in the house. Still … bleh.

 

And then, somewhere in all of that–probably related to the simple cause and effect of file-your-taxes-get-your-stimulus-check–I got obsessed with buying a Wii. For the family, of course. Not just so I can play Madden 09. And not just because … well … the NFL season is starting.

 

From what I could see, Amazon.com is colluding with Wii scalpers to sell the consoles for a 20% (or higher) mark up. That is, Amazon isn’t selling the consoles directly. Instead, the Wii console can only be purchased through resellers, for a minimum markup of $50. The Walmart near my house received 16 units Tuesday–and before Tuesday night all of them had been purchased (for $250). And–I’m assuming–were immediately offered for resale on Ebay and Amazon Associates for at least $300.

 

When will people ever learn the lesson that what was hot and popular–and out of stock–the previous Xmas will not be in such short supply again the following year? I’m betting on: They never will. Enjoy the coming glut, assholes.

 

For the record, I ordered my Wii and related accessories (and Madden 09 and LEGO Indiana Jones) from Walmart.com. Sure, I had to pay a bit of shipping, but: (a) the resellers I could find were charging shipping on top of their marked-up prices, so I was already ahead (Walmart charged the MSRP); and (b) the “special buy bundle” I purchased included a bit of savings versus buying the various pieces separately, so I’m even further ahead.

 

The last distraction preventing me from working on the longsuffering, somewhat neglected Project Vee was caused by my slight overpayment of 2007 taxes. I’m getting a refund. Which, frankly, irritates me. I prefer to underpay and owe a bit (figuring I can better spend/save my money than the government). But there it was: I overpaid. My wife and I decided to plow the money into the house (sure, I could’ve put it back into the business–where it came from–but “Keep the Wife Happy” sometimes trumps “Business Development”). The Home Depot and the Home Decorator Collection were very excited to see us and very happy to help us out. Presto! No more pesky refund.

 

So, yeah, that’s been my last 2 weeks.

 

-David

 

Yesterday I decided it was time to automate how I offer my coupons for The Journal.

 

For years I’ve offered discounts (20% off) for students, educators, US military and people with a hardship (and in November I offer a discount for NaNoWriMo participants). The only requirement has been that people had to ask, which meant emailing me.

 

I made it easy to email me, of course. I setup mailto links on the Discounts Available page. And most often, all I had to do in response was copy-and-paste the appropriate coupon code information from The Journal and send it right back.

 

Over the last year or so, though, I noticed a few issues cropping up.

 

First, and most irritating, was that by including a link in the response email I was just begging for the major email services like Yahoo to declare the email “junk”. So people sometimes wouldn’t get the discount they asked for.

 

Second, not everyone who asked for a coupon used it.

 

Third, the whole process added more emails to my daily quota.

 

So, as of yesterday, I’d like to think I’ve (at least partially) solved all of those issues. When interested people look over the available discounts, they can check the discount they want and click on the associated button. This will take them back to the “Buy” page with the chosen coupon active. What could be simpler?

 

The first and third issues get solved because they don’t email me and I don’t email them back. The second issue, I’m hoping, is reduced because I no longer have an email “speedbump” interrupting the purchase impulse. Since I’m out of the loop, of course, I won’t really know. But I’m always optimistic.

 

The remaining question is: Will this be abused? If so, how much? And really, do I care?

 

I used to worry about the abuse of the discounts. Now, though, I’ve decided it’s in my best interest to worry less about potential abuse and focus more on making the experience pleasant (and easy and fast) for the customer.

 

Pizza Hut and Papa John’s (and, I suppose, pizza delivery services I don’t use) offer their coupons right on the order page. Just pick the one you want, and they help you fill out your order to match. Or even at Borders, when my wife and I go into the store to use one of the coupons they email us, most often the cashier has a printout of the same coupon, and they scan that one. We didn’t even need to bring ours.

 

Like Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, and Borders, I’m happy to make the sale, even if it costs me a slice of the profits. So it makes sense for me to make it easy for those who want a discount to get it with the least amount of effort (from me and them).

 

-David