Application goes live tomorrow

The application we've been working on since June goes live tomorrow. As with most software applications that are pushed to release faster than they should be, we've got a laundry list of issues that still need to be fixed. The last week has been spent trying to resolve issues that have come up, and unfortunately they've been popping up faster than they can be resolved. Ultimately we're going to put out a broken product tomorrow and going to spend several more weeks of long nights trying to get things fixed and regain our ability to see the customer without wanting to run away.

In other news its Sunday, which means a trip out to the airport to get a haircut and some football tonight. I'll probably be focused more on work than on the Giants - Cardinals, but hopefully I get some downtime to watch a quarter or two.

Combat programmer!

My job in the US Air Force was a computer programmer, and I essentially did then what I'm doing now, except I was doing just outside Washington, DC supporting HQ Air Force and the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. When the war here in Iraq started I tried unsuccessfully for volunteer for deployments. There are no jobs for programmers in Iraq, I was told. Me and the guys used to joke about the concept of a computer programmer in the desert with a laptop jumping out of a plane and programming in the desert.

Aside from the jumping out of the airplane part, I realized last night that I'm now fitting the mold. Laptop in hand and body armor donned, I got onto a Marine helicopter early in the morning to come out to Al Asad Air Base in Anbar Province. I'll be out here for a few days to train some of the users of my application on how to use it, as well as some performance testing in low-bandwidth environments.

Pictured above, a combat programmer in the flesh.