The perils of programming while sick
So, I knew my turn was coming. My one-year-old daughter was quite sick about a week and a half ago, running a temperature of 106F. We even took her to the emergency room for that one, though her fever was all but gone by the next morning.
Then, my wife got sick. No fever, but she got the aches, the cough, the congestion, etc.
Then, my son. A mid-grade fever most of yesterday and this morning, but fortunately he’s such a hardy little fellow (at all of three years old) that even at the worst of it he was still cheerful, if tired.
Yesterday was when I felt my turn really coming on. I felt that scratchy, dry feeling in my throat that we all dread. This morning I also started feeling a tingling in my nose and sinuses. Then the aches set in. And the congestion. And the cough.
And the drowsiness.
And that was when I meant to type rm -rf /var/www/releases (while testing a new release manager for Basecamp on our development box). Instead, my fevered fingers refused to type more than /var/www...
All I can say is, thank goodness for file permissions and quick (if clumsy) reflexes. Even so, I managed to delete at least one directory that was actually missed—fortunately most of it was recovered. Jason and Ryan got a good laugh out of it, all while I blushed fiercely crimson. What a way to go and impress my new employer with all my l33t sk1llz…
Anyway. They’re all very forgiving, and I certainly appreciate that. I’m not usually such a clutz!
Finally, let me just take a minute to praise David. Yah, he gets plenty of that, especially in connection with Rails, but I have been very impressed with how easy he is to work with. Many people (cough me cough) have a difficult time “letting go” of a project enough to let someone new actually work in it unsupervised. David, on the other hand, not only lets me go unsupervised (though that might change with the recent rm -rf debacle, ha!), he generally only offers advice when asked for it. And when I do, he gives it graciously and unpatronizingly.
I consider myself very fortunate to be able to work under his tutelage. Thanks, David!
