A trip to the Swamp and life is heating up
Over Labor Day Karen and I headed south and west. Our “real” destination was Caddo Lake, on the Texas/Louisiana border. Friday night we called it just north of Memphis.
Saturday we meandered our way across Arkansas and early Saturday evening we pulled into Uncertain, TX. We rented the only accommodation around (well, the first one we found, actually) a rather large trailer at Johnson’s Marina. I set up a boat tour for the next morning, and Karen was on the fence. Until she saw the boat. Then she got off the fence and told me to wake her up on my return.
So the next morning Captain Billy and I shoved off in his john boat and wandered through a narrow straight and into a bayou full of water lilies and cypress trees. And birds. And Spanish moss. It was a great trip. Captain Billy was entertaining and contributed some creative ideas to the photographic fun I was having. It ended up being about an hour and a half, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
We headed back through the middle of Arkansas to grab a room in Branson, then pick up Karen’s son and our dog and head back to Saint Louis on Monday. A good time was had by all.
Work has gone a little crazy. The project I was working on is still dragging on, but only because I don’t think anyone’s deployed it yet. The project I was going to pick up for this client didn’t happen because they didn’t like our time estimate. I’m quite pleased our business development people let this go rather than try to accommodate the client – there was a reason why the estimate was what it was.
I picked up another project though, as a tech lead for a J2EE project. The project is rather small, but it’s just the first piece of work in a year-long string of work. Just as I was getting comfortable with this idea the client asked that I convert my role from lead developer to straight lead and spend most of my time designing another project. That’s where we stand right now. This will likely stretch my rather poor organizational skills quite thin.
Stephen and I are meeting relatively regularly to work on our stuff. Right now this is a quick (month-ish) project to get used to working together. It’s going as well as can be expected.
I’m working on a personal project as well, which I hope to wrap up by the end of the month (Java back end, Flex front end).
So – lots of development/design stuff in my life. Which is good.
Today I weeded the little garden and potted some plants which have likely been left in water too long. We’ll see.
