My weekend was interesting, thanks for asking.

On Friday I had to cut my workday short due to lack of energy. I’d been feeling the effects of a nasty cold since late Tuesday. I missed a goodbye party for a co-worker and a movie with other co-workers. Towards the end of the day, I started feeling severely dehydrated - really high fever, headaches, dizziness, the works. Around 9:30 I went into the basement where it was cool, and drank a gallon of water. Started feeling better around midnight, then went to bed. I have a new appreciation for water.

Saturday I was feeling much better, so I went out and ran a few errands and did a few things to start cleaning the house for my sister’s rehearsal dinner. At 9 I went to watch the guys play soccer (I hated not being able to play), then we hit the bar as normal. Looking back, I probably should not have gone, but I’m glad I did, ’cause I got to play a few games of euchre with some strangers from another table. Unfortunately, we were seated at a smoking section, which, again, probably wasn’t the best for my current health situation. Especially since the smoke smell infused itself in the mucus caking my lungs and nasal passages so every time I blew my nose or coughed, I would get that wonderful cigarette fragrance. YUCK!

Sunday I tried to get rid of some of that mucus so I picked up a thing of Mucinex on a recommendation. Unfortunately the side-effects of this particular drug (nausea, headaches, vomiting) hit me pretty hard. I didn’t hurl, but I had to summon all of my limited iron-stomach powers not to. I won’t be finishing the bottle - the side-effects are certainly worse than the symptoms it cures.

How was your weekend? How much water have you drunk today?

Scoot.

Try to use it in a sentence before I come up with another word.

The project I’m currently working on has failed to hold my interest nearly as much as the last one. I would spend a half hour typing out some code, then I’d find myself on Kotaku or something browsing through comments. I didn’t have that problem with Smart Tan.

I’ve been trying to figure out why this is happening, going through a few explanations like ‘it’s a dumb idea for a site’, or ‘the customer is too fickle, doesn’t know what he wants’. On my way home from another Saturday at work catching up from another week of lack of progress, I think I’ve pinpointed the problem: my own perceived inadequacy as a programmer.

When something is broken in the hardware and software industry, be it a server or a website, it’s very easy to please the customer. They see the broken thing before and they see the fixed thing after and there is a definite metric of improvement. I like these customers and the prospect of working on these types of projects makes me happy because I know the customer will be happy in the end. Smart Tan was one of these ‘Fixer-Upper’ projects, and I didn’t mind putting in 10 hours/day on it.

When dealing with new hardware or software, here’s where the industries diverge. If someone wants a new computer, they call us, we send the specs to Dell or whatever, then Dell makes the computer for us. It’s really a simple process; more simple, really, than fixing a broken computer.

Creating a brand new website, on the other hand, is much more stressful than fixing a broken one. The customer doesn’t have a ‘broken’ site to look at for a metric for what’s ‘better’. All they have is other sites - that have been in development for years - to use for ideas for their new site. When I receive phone calls from a new-site customer, 75% of their requests are met with, “No, we can’t do that in our time frame/budget.” It’s especially frustrating when the sales person originally tells them that something is doable, but I’m not completely aware of the scope when I give my estimate. The overall negativity in new-site projects really drains me after a while. Repeatedly telling a customer ‘no’ makes me perceive myself as an inadequate programmer subconsciously, and it takes away from the focus I try to put in every day.

Hopefully, now that I’ve found why I feel so crappy after working on these projects, I’ll be able to psych myself into coping with telling a customer ‘no’. Some requests are just too difficult to complete, and that doesn’t make me a bad programmer.

Know what that means?

Have a listen to this.