For years, I've noticed my right hand has more blood flow in the morning than my left hand. Every morning, when I compare the color of my two hands, my right hand is always redder than my left hand. Always.

Well, not exactly that. When I'm in the shower, I notice the difference in colorings. And for years, I've puzzled about it. I wonder if the difference is because of the lighting (nope, same thing happens at my parents' houses), or the season (nope, occurs in summer as in winter), or the time of day (nope, happens in when I wake up early, wake up late, or just stay awake).

I'd be lying if I said I haven't puzzled over this for years. Typically, only in the shower, though, and only in passing.

Well, this morning, I finally figured it out.

Finally!

Turns out, as most right-handed people do, I primarily use my right hand for most things. I noticed when I was standing in the water this morning, after also noticing my right hand was darker than my left, that I stood with my arm bent, and my right hand at shoulder height.

In the hot water.

Yes, I take long showers. Long, long, loooooooooong showers. They always bothered my mom. They sometimes bother Kris. They don't bother me at all.

Before I turned up the water heater, I would shower until the hot water ran out. Cold water? Shower's done.

Now, though, with the water heater cranked, I can stay in the shower until I'm done, which is sometime after my finger tips have pruned.

Turns out, my hand in the hot water was turning it red/reddish. By the time I woke up and noticed the difference in coloring, I had already been standing with my hand up, apparently a natural, comfortable position for me.

To verify, I, of course, finished the shower in a reflection of my usual stance, with my left hand up in the warm, warm water. Sure enough, my left hand was darker than my right by the time I finished my shower.

Another mystery in life solved.

Hey, I'm getting better at this train thing. Certainly not as good as the commuters, but certainly better than I used to be even three months ago. Big "Yay!" to Messina, Andy and Cal.

Heading up to the City today to meet up with Mini and her crew to discuss the next steps for her site. The day started off a little rough, though, with Kris waking me up by calling from the shower, "What time is it?"

"8:17. When's the train?"

"8:17?"

"Yeah."

"Can we leave in three minutes?"

He made the train, but it was closer than I expected, in as much as we did leave in three minutes. We caught each and every red light on the way to the train station. I'm beginning to think those lights sense my driving and are compensating.

The Muni, on the other hand, not so much.

"See? We'll be there by 2:40. Didn't I tell you?"

"Sure, unless we get lost."

"When do we ever get lost?"

"Uh... When you're driving, and you ask me for directions, and I give you them, and you listen."

"Oh, yeah. We do get lost then."

We really are going to have to come up with a different numbering scheme for these events. At the rate we're going, we're going to be at SHDH 47 and will have no idea how to distinguish it from 45 or 46.

SuperHappyDevHouse 6 is next Saturday night to Sunday morning, overnighting on the 10th. This time, the theme is speed, encouraging on-site development. We'll still have trophies, but we'll also have the buttons I've grown so fond of. We'll have both, because I have ordered both.

The older I get, I swear the more I realize things happen because someone makes them happen.

I'm just happy that I'm involved with making things happen.

Very happy.

And very happy looking forward to Saturday night. This time, I'll actually program.

Or, WTF (as in "where") have I been the last month?

Just over three or so weeks ago, I was contacted about a Drupal project. I was asked about my availability over the upcoming weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. My work schedule wasn't full (my project schedule is always full), being near to launching the most recent site I was working on, so I offered 25 hours a week for the next three weeks, ending, of course, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Before I started working on the project (a straight forward Drupal install, with a few extra modules and a theme added onto it), before I even went to the client's location, I started sensing a bit of urgency in client.

Mike had worked with this client before, and had let me know his schedule was full. If I said yes to the project, I was on my own: I'd have access to Doyle, but not any of his hours.

Red flag, number one.

The client was building a community website for a client of theirs. When I arrived at their (my client's) offices, the sense of urgency was even more apparent. When I looked at the site specification and documentation, I started to understand why.

The original specifications were dated August 2005. The site was launching at a conference the week after Thanksgiving. There was no site to launch.

No site. No working code. No built functionality.

Worse, the specifications weren't complete: all the pages and functionality weren't defined. The CSS hadn't been done for the pages, there was not HTML to put into the theme. The workflow was also missing. And, some of the functionality was still in flux.

Doyle and I had to build a site from nothing to rocking in three weeks, and, after a week, we still didn't know what we were building.

Eventually, the specification started to solidify for parts of the site. We began building out the site, with small demos to the client, discussing over the phone. Doyle and I worked in parallel with his getting some site functionality, my getting the rest.

We soon started to realize the biggest problem with the job was feature creep. I felt a bit caught in the middle. I had agreed to install a Drupal site and fix the theme; my client was promising altered workflow and features to their client. If my client can't produce for their client, they look bad; it reflects up to me and I look bad. But, the work promised to my client's clients was going to take a lot more work than I had anticipated.

What to do?

Mike encouraged me to push back on the various parts of the project. He talked to the client (Mike having a better, long term working relationship with the client than I), mentioning the feature creep. From the client's perspective, there was no feature creep - all of these features were in the Drupal modules, those that I had agreed to install. They didn't realize the workflow and features they mocked up actually didn't exist in Drupal, and that many would need to be created.

Three weeks, 60 hours from Thanksgiving through the Sunday after Thanksgiving, 3 missed parties, 5 nights of missed ultimate, 4 stressed lunches, a dozen dinners left early, five friends blown off, two clients potentially lost, one potential client lost, and three weeks of butt-numbing work later, the site launched on the Monday after Thankgiving.

Just in time for me to get on a plane and fly out to Colorado to scramble with projects for another client. Good lord, how I hate heading to meetings, projects, appointments unprepared. Hate it.

I think I recovered with that client. At least I hope I did. I'm not sure any more. With four weeks of seriously hard work, and desperately missing Kris, I have to say I haven't worked this hard in a long, long, long time. My hips show it, too. I can't sit any longer. It hurts to sit. What has this world come to when sitting down hurts?

So, yeah, am I a little wiser after this? Maybe a little bit. I know how hard I can work. I know that Kris gets annoyed when his four days of vacation are spent by himself because his wife is off sitting in a corner wiggling her fingers in front of a computer for 15 hour days. I know that I really can't stand practically losing a dozen friends because I can't head out for the Thursday night drink-fest, or meet up with them for communal dinner, or throw with them, or go see a movie with them. I know that this site works only if I put time into it, and working too long each day means there's really nothing to put into it, which sucks (hey, sat on my ass for 15 hours today! got lots done for someone else (again!)). I know that I should run away from a client who, when told the functionality hasn't been added to the site yet, says, "Sure it has, look at this." pointing to a static, mock-up web page that's supposed to do fourteen things after I'm done with it - a page I had never seen before.

And I know that when the person I think works too hard is telling me, "You work too hard," it's time to stop, close the laptop, and go play ultimate.

So, enough of that. Let's not do that again, okay?

I've been here in Colorado for three days now. Something about a witch's tit comes to mind. The weather has been pretty cold, but ultimately (heh) bearable. I thought I came prepared, but San Francisco cold really doesn't compare to Colorado cold (not that you could tell with my complaining about San Francisco weather). Kinda like double black diamond skiers from California thinking they can ski Colorado double black diamonds - not gonna happen with those different scales.

Normally, the only thing I really notice about being here is the dry air. I'm not able to run as far as fast as I do at home, when I actually head out for a run instead of working 11 hour days, but that effect usually fades in three or four days.

This time, I'm not having such luck.

This time, my stomach is killing me. I'm drinking a lot of water, and avoiding the altitude induced headaches I might normally get. I'm sure everyone is amazed at my numerous trips to the bathroom, as I'm journeying to the other side of the building every fifteen minutes or so. Of course, I'm not heading there for just the water (see the stomach mention above), so I'm sure everyone isn't really so entertained by the trips.

There's a good chance I'll be able to head home tomorrow. Once again, I was unable to finish up all the work I want to do. I'm really not sure why I can't finish all the projects I want to do. Why does software always take longer than I want it to (yes, yes, I know, it always takes as long as I think it will, but I still want it to be shorter!)?