I suppose it’s time I write again. I’ve been a little lax on the writing with trying to help put the boys to bed and getting chores done and relaxing before 10PM. Sometimes when I come to blog really late, I end up doing work until like 930, and then don’t start winding down until 10ish, and then don’t ever go to bed. Bad habit, so I’m trying to modify that a little.
EPIC is almost complete. I have one more thing to do–show the archived stories, and perhaps allow them to be unarchived. Then I’ll look into dragon-drops a little more. Friday, we are going to do our second take of the hot kata–so I really need to practice that kata–Game of Life!
It feels really cool that EPIC is nearly ‘complete’ at least as a MVP. It works, and it will do what we need it to do. This is the first bigger project that I’ve done. Granted a lot of it was copied from Poker, the majority of it was new–I even ‘drew’ up some new & different components and changed a lot of the behaviors. It was a good first project to work on since it had an outline and a stencil that allowed me to build on top and extend it.
Testing is hard. In katas, it’s very straightforward. In bigger apps, it tends to creep a little more. I am confident that everything is tested, but in hindsight, I think a lot of my tests probably could have been broken down a little further. Once that happens, however, things start to get or at least feel unorganized with tests all over the place. Then you find that the bigger tests test the smaller stuff, so are they really necessary anymore? I suppose they are as they are a good way to troubleshoot down the line. A big test leaves question–which part of this failed?! Which function failed? Having the smaller, helper tests, would help to pinpoint exactly what failed.
But then you have a lot of seemingly redundant tests, so I’m not really sure what the answer there is…
So long as EPIC is for the most part complete, and perhaps even if it’s not quite there, I’m going to ask to segway from my normal responsibilities next week.
Next week, if allowed, I want to focus on customer reach out. First I need to build a quote for another company that would like help with their mechanical database. But what I would really like to focus on is reaching out to potential clients. Learn a little more about their problems and needs.
My husband told me a few weeks ago, that they turned down a company because their software/database/smart-communication was significantly less than that of another company’s. This perked my ears of course. Like “You turned someone down because of their software?” Essentially yes. So I’ve compiled a list of companies that I’d like to spend some time reaching out to next week. I will probably email them all, but there are a few I’d like to call, and a few super-local companies that I’d like to pop in to and say hello–maybe bring donuts or something.
Then there are a few former contractors of mine that I would like to call and catch-up and tell them about what I’m doing–of course, as it is a sales call, it will actually be all about them and only very briefly about me–so weird that the roles have swapped.
The ones I want to reach out to are those who used to sell to me. I was the customer that they needed to please and make happy. Now I’m going to go back to them and swap roles. Fortunately, I will have a leg up, because I have been their customer before, so I know what their customers are looking for, and thus, I know what they need to make their customers happy. Weird, but also pretty cool. I feel like it’s cheating… Then again, we’ll see if anything pans out.
Rex: Rex ate his entire dinner tonight for the reward of cookies and ice cream. He then asked or milk. I told him that ice cream has milk in it. He replied, “No it doesn’t. Milk is in a cup.” He’s not wrong. It was very cute.
Leo: Leo loves to take anything big and long (especially spaceships) and go “Tree! Bash-oft!” Translation: “3-2-1 Blast-Off!”