Naked Came the Vampire (Hypernaturals 1)

Projamming

Despite being a lovesick teenager, finishing the programming contract turned out to be less of an issue than I would have thought. The code flowed.

This contract is a rework on a code that has been giving the company fit's for years. An application that organically grew over time and was composed of ugly bits of code bolted to other ugly code from someone else. A hodgepodge of who knew how many different peoples work going back a dozen years. Some of the modules have no source code at all anymore, so they just worked around them. A buggy patchwork, yet central to the entire application. Sooner or later a change someplace else made this junk start acting up again. They finally decided to fix it. People like me make our living on problems like this.

Sometimes, as a programmer, when you sleep, your mind solves programming problems. There are these "Ah Ha!" moments in the middle of the night. Mostly working from home, I have the freedom to hop up out of bed and write the 'Ah Ha' code right then. This is way bigger than those kinds of moments. I am untwisting years of spaghetti logic and undocumented inter-module interactions. It needs to work well, quickly, and be documented and maintainable going forward.

Danny reported that me not being available and finishing with my part meant they were going to delay the release. That is complete crap. This code has been the way for a long time, and they could roll it out this way one more time if they needed to. Someone somewhere needed a scapegoat, and usually, it is the contractors that get blamed at moments like that. I wondered who is the one that really did not finish their part.

Whoever they are, they are not going to be happy with me.  This is a fixed price contract, so I am required to solve their code problems no matter how long it takes me. I knocked out the code for this release in record time, my fingers flying in an amazing blur over the keyboard. The whole time I was in hospital La-La-Land and therefore on the 'Nightwing' with Jessica, another part of my brain seems to have composed the needed code. Built all the logic and interfaces required to purge the undocumented and un-sourced parts of the application I was assigned to fix.

I turned the project in after a few marathon days of coding and testing. It is amazingly bug-free and even better, my code made it in time so that the release is not going to be delayed. Not because of me. Someone somewhere is going to have to walk back some internal communications about dates. Not my problem. I got out of corporate America just because of political BS like that. I am pretty proud of that code. My best work.

If another contract is in the offing from them for the next part of the application that needed a re-write, it would be as they started up the new coding cycle after this release and there is a whole QA cycle between now and then. This company still writes code the old-fashioned way. Lather / rinse / repeat, rather than the new way: Lather all the time.

With time in hand and a big check headed my way I could consider how to find Jessica and I could work out. I feel good. I should get mortally sick more often if I can program and exercise this much better afterward.

At the gym, I decided to start out easy. An injury can put you much farther back than just not working out for a few weeks. It was nothing. Did not even break a sweat.

The next workout session I ramped it up. I added 20 pounds to the curls, and to the triceps, and the bench press. I doubled my reps. No problem and literally no sweat. Wary of overdoing it, I stopped there. When I was not sore the next day, I decided the next session I would really go for it. Find my odd new limits.

Danny and I do not spot for each other. We nag each other to get to the gym, but then each of us does our own program once there. He prefers the machines, and I recently converted to the free weights. The little gyms free weight area is equipped with four rows of hand weights, ordered by increasing weight and pre-hospital I had just moved down to the second row. The big muscular body-builder types are in the third and fourth rows. Danny and I were alone in the gym tonight. He was on the stair-stepper, working out hard. I guessed that extra energy is because of Lori. They were seeing each other a great deal. I think Danny moved from 'get the girl' to 'keep the girl'.