I’ve been working on this project off and on since the summer - to upgrade to the latest version of the compiler we use to build our product (itself a dependancy to the project which lets us upgrade our OS). It’s proceeded in fits and starts but starting last week I began gaining momentum on the rollout phase. I had tested it every way I knew how and deployed it to a half dozen production machines when I found a problem which manifested on only one host.

I spent the last couple of days debugging it and today I finally figured out what the problem was, and more importantly, what the fix is.

And this is when I felt like the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train...

The fix is going to require that I work w/our IT group to develop and deploy a separate install package which will need to be installed on our production hosts before my install can be deployed. I’ll need to test for backwards compatibility (i.e. that our existing built package works on this new package) in addition to testing that my new build works on this package.

I’ll then need to restart the rollout phase, coordinating not only deployment of my build but of the dependant library package, and praying that the that no new problems are left lurking...

If I’m lucky this has “only” set me back a week.

It’s days like to today I’m really wondering why I’m manifesting events like this, this project has been suck a frakkin’ PITA...

To top it off, this afternoon we also had our quarterly company meeting. The company is doing well (yay! really, it beats working for a company that isn’t doing well) and I like my colleagues but I’ve noticed over the last year that whenever we have an informal event like this that I usually find myself feeling alone and isolated.

Today was no exception.

So it’s in this frame of mind that this evening I was reading a friend’s blog and came across this:

“...I again remembered Cabil and his assurances that if we find ourselves alone, feeling separate from others because of a lack of understanding (them for us), if we can reflect on our actions and be reasonably sure that we did the right thing, then we are traveling on our spiritual path, not shirking it. It’s such a depressing thought on the surface - that the further we advance spiritually, the more likely (and important) it is that we be alone. But with what I have experienced (with myself, and with others), it seems to be a quite valid observation.”

Like Kelli I’ve also come across this idea through my own reading and experience and I don’t know if it’s a depressing thought or not.

I realized this evening though that I am grateful for a couple of things: that I found the problem now, and not a month from now and that I did debug the problem and know what the fix is, even if it is a PITA...