Big Friendly Vegan

I haven't blogged for a while now because I have been distracted by some outside projects. The first outside project was editing a book by a friend of mine. I am still doing it, but it is almost done, honestly. I would have done *that* sooner, but I was distracted by another outside project, which I have now done (sort of). The second thing got priority over the first thing because the second thing was actually first before the first thing was first. Let me explain.

My aunt teaches Irish dancing, which is a style of dancing done with the feet and legs only. Your arms are held rigidly by your side during the whole dance. It is a very nice style of dancing and just as difficult and technical as any other form of dancing. Anyway, my Aunt is an Irish dancing teacher. I mentioned this before. My Aunt, as an Irish dancing teacher, runs an annual dancing competition. This competition is mainly for beginners and provides the little kiddies with a fairly non-threatening environment in which to test and display their skills.

I won't get into the whole Jon-Bennet thing here (although I could, I really could), but I will rather get back to my original point, which I haven't revealed yet. My Aunt is an Irish dancing teacher. Did I mention that before? She runs an annual competition. She wanted some software written that would assist her in organising and particularly scoring the competition. Currently this was being done with a variety of generic tools such as Excel which simply didn't do the job properly. What she needed was a database, but didn't know how to create or use one. This is where I came in.

She asked me because she knows how seriously uber I am when it comes to anything technical. I am. In my mind. I can plan in an uber fashion. I can tell people what to do very uberly. But when it comes to actually doing something I am just like everyone else. This is why I like being an academic, because I never actually have to *do* anything. This time, however, I had to because sometimes you have to shit because getting off the pot is not an option.

The upshot of all of this was that I wrote a very good system that could be easily extended and networked to make my Auntie's life a whole lot easier. I worked my program in conjunction with the normal method of scoring and was able to do things faster and more accurately than the current method. Given that I can also do things that simply can't be done the old way, my system rocks. That was not the case last year, however.

Last year my package fell over within 10 minutes. I looked like a complete tool. I got the whole, "There, there, you did your best" type of condescending bullshit, but the truth was that I had no idea of how the whole dancing scoring system worked in reality. The only thing I had to go on was a half-arsed description from my Aunt, who is an Irish dancing teacher (in case you didn't know) and definitely NOT a software engineer used to writing exact specifications.

There we have it. The point of this whole piece: the first time often sucks. Regardless of the amount of theoretical knowledge you have, when you actually do something for the first time it may not come off as well as you think it would. A very good book, "The Mythical Man Month" suggests that when writing software you should plan to "Throw one away". Great advice. It is good to know that other people have the same problem.

I took this suggestion to heart when proposing to my wife and it worked beautifully. When I first proposed, I was nervous and pathetic. Very, very un-romantic. She said "Yes", of course, but I could tell she wasn't impressed. On our one year proposal anniversary I filled the house with white balloons and to each balloon was tied a card with "Will you marry me?" written on it. Which proposal do you think she tells everyone about? Which program do you think my Aunt is bragging to her colleagues about?

I bet you thought this article was about sex, didn't you? Well, it isn't. I was perfect from the first time giving my lady many, many orgasms during the hours of satisfying sex. Get your mind out of the gutter.

The moral? I guess the moral should be that if the first time isn't the only time, then don't expect the first time to be the best time. Maybe. Maybe it should be something about experience being the best teacher. I don't know. I will fix this bit later.