Today was a good day. Finally.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of finally overcoming a problem that’s kept you up a night, sent you to perhaps the dullest city in mid-eastern America, had you eating mediocre food for a week, and put massive (albeit temporary) dents in your credit cards.
It’s also good to know that I didn’t waste my weekend. The problems, not quite all, but most of them, are gone. All the work that I poured into this handy little laptop, not to mention some great backup from Calgary, solved our quandaries. The site’s working (mostly), and after tomorrow, we’ll be able to say that the site is solid, and I can finally go home.
I met with John today. He’s our (Critical Mass’) account manager for our client. He’s not much older than me — I figure 30, tops. Probably from a business school. But he’s good with clients, and seems pretty good at fighting fires. He was here for his bi-monthly meeting with the client. He knows this city well.
We had an interesting chat after work, over dinner at the Fifth and Vine, an eatery in the corner of the hotel. I gotta tell ya — he’s a great guy. He saw the client in pretty much the same way I do. Not to mention the contractors. I got a lot of positive feedback — he was glad I came. Although not the best candidate, I was good enough to convince some of the contractors that Critical Mass isn’t all pretty front-ends, and that we do know how to solve hard problems.
Whether or not that keeps going is anyone’s guess…
Tomorrow is coding and testing, and then I’m outta here on Thursday. With luck, I’ll be at work Friday morning.
If I’m not, I might start looking for an apartment down here. It’ll certainly be cheaper than these hotels…