Rumours of my Death are Greatly Exaggerated

It's been a long time since I wrote here.  Or at least it feels like I long time.  I started work on June 14th, I think, and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride hasn't ended since.

What to tell you?

Well, firstly, work is, well... work.  My employer and I are both equally surprised to learn that they wound up hiring me for an operations job, not really (in my mind, anyway) a release engineering position. 

Yes, technically it is release engineering, but the reality is that for the foreseeable future I am doing support and debugging of applications and the existing release process.  Without intending to slight him, the person who used to do this work, and who has now moved on, had a very high tolerance for pain, errors, unexplicable behavior, and so on.  As I figure things out I need to spend time fixing things just to keep sane.  Adding simple things like, oh, error handling, would be good in a lot of places.

The house remodel project continues.  Slowly.  The original estimate was 8 weeks. We're at 16 now and still going strong.  There is visible progress and not only has demolition ended, but construction has happened.  We have a new kitchen roof, for example, and the main deck is being put into place now, though that is taking plenty of time too, and has not been without surprises.

I hope we actually get things done this year.  At this point, though there are still 5 months left, I cannot say with certainty it will happen.

There isn't much else to report right now, and until the house is done and I get to feeling like I have enough of a clue at the office there probably won't be.  I appreciate your patience in the meantime.