Of the ten percent

Was today a good day? I'm unsure. I spent far too many hours beating on code, and at the end of the day I had very little actual progress to show for it. Judging by the line numbers, something around an even hundred lines of code today. But they're good, solid lines, and they really and truly work.

The conversation with Heather, shortly after a breakthrough:

Amy: FEAR ME. :D
Heather: Well, yes.
;)
Amy: The query: SELECT DATE_FORMAT(((entry_date) - INTERVAL 300 MINUTE), '%Y%j') as querystring FROM qt_entries s WHERE site_id=1 AND (UNIX_TIMESTAMP(entry_date)
Heather: daaaaaaaaaayum.
Amy: What that does:
That's just one of the system. ;)
Heather: yeesh.
Amy: Creates a unique list of dates (year 4 digits + day-of-year 3 digits) on which an entry has been posted. It disregards entries postdated later than now (corrected for timezone) and allows private entries, since this user has privs to see private entries. Oh, and it groups it, newest first. :D :D :D :D
Heather: Shit. You are the code queen.
Amy: End result is that I can use that to generate a query string, such as (Link: http://domesticat.net/archives/period.php?d=2002218) http://domesticat.net/archives/period.php?d=2002218 which would show all entries posted on the 218th day of 2002.
Heather: schweet.
Amy: How to call it:
list_periodical_archives($period, $sort, $show_private=false, $monday_start=false);
or…
list_periodical_archives('week', 'desc', 'yes');
that equals weekly archives, sorted newest first, with private entries taken into account if the user has privs.

oh, and that starts weeks on a Sunday.

Heather: Ok, damn.
  * Heather highfives j00.
Amy: I can't decide whether to do the happy dance, get a beer, or cackle maniacally.
Heather: All three.
Amy: ohyeah—and it corrects for timezone! I knew there was something else.
I have this horrible feeling that this conversation is going to show up on a website somewhere. *heh*
Heather: *rofl* It should. On yours.

Done.

Yesterday I crossed five display functions off of my to-do list. Today I crossed off only one; one that I mistakenly believed would be a quick and easy coding job. Instead, it turned out to be more along the lines of nightmarish, what with chasing the possibility of a bug in mySQL, not to mention blips in my own code.

As usual, Gareth saved the day.

I'm starting to think that Quarto, when it's done, should carry the following tagline: "Gareth is responsible for 90% of the really wicked code in this app. On the other hand, I am responsible for nearly 100% of the crappy code in this app."

Geof brought me beer this evening, and I made fajitas for the three of us. It helped. I stopped thinking in terms of db queries an hour or two ago, and it feels … hmm. Good, I think. I realize that I'm coding fast and furiously so that I'll feel justified in taking a break while Andrew and Joy are here next week.

I am pushing myself hard. I know this. I think I can have Quarto done and successfully running on cat.net before we go to dragon*con, but I realize that it's going to take quite a few more days of just pure, grinding effort on my part to get it going. I've promised myself that my recompense for the hours upon hours of work I'm putting in here will be to go to dragon*con with a light heart.

The plan, as I tell everyone: take last year's dragon*con. Work the same amount. Drink more. Sleep less. Be up for the three a.m. radio checks this year. Do my best—via apple pie, sleep deprivation, and massive overloads of caffeine, to burn the code out of my brain…

…and come home, exhausted, but rested.

Yes. A plan. A good one, I think.

Comments

It was nice, over the course of the evening, to see Amy start to use polysyllabic words again. :)

Gepf- YOu now score a bit higher on that geek quiz you posted.... You used a word with Poly in it for normal conversation.

Actually, Sean, I don't ... I marked myself as using it in conversation fairly often. :)