Trystan/12 13 02

Release Dates

It's become kind of common in the industry to not give release dates and over the past week and a half I found out why – in the hardest way. There's two "free time" projects I'm involved in, and three "it's work, gimme my money" projects I'm involved in. The free projects I'm involved in have stayed with a "when it's done" type of date system. This aggravates the community and does seem to prolong things but I can tell you now it's the best idea.

The "it's work, gimme my money" projects I'm on don't follow that attitude. That's to be expected. People are paying me for my time, they want results, and they want results on a timetable. Unfortunately the past week I've had a rather serious set of illnesses attack me: a sinus infection, an ear infection, and the flu, to name three of the worst (Yes, simultaneously). I've done nothing but lay in bed. Today, Friday the 13th (heh, maybe I'll just stay home ), is my first day back at the job in almost a week and a half – where I now get to wrestle with reorganizing priorities to accomodate the dates that the work projects have to be finished by. I'm going to make two of three groups unhappy no matter what decision I make. It will simply come down to corporate politics who I piss off.

But this journal isn't about the work projects, it's about the free projects. Not only have I been sick for the past week but the major developer of the first project has been MIA for about three weeks. Let's face it, Real Life Happens. Although we were slated for a release almost two weeks ago we haven't been able to make that because of the MIA programmer. It doesn't affect us so much because we never had released a firm date in the first place, although we'd like to release the update to our mod. The community grows antsy, but that's somewhat their issue.

The end result is you can never tell what's going to happen in real life. You may think you can dedicate two hours a night to programming, perhaps four. That is until finals start, or your CEO gives you a large project to be finished in a week. You haven't a clue as to what's going to be thrown at you and you should always give yourself the freedom to maneuver when and where you can. By providing yourself with the maximum flexibility that you find possible in all projects you're involved in you should be able to find a way to make everyone happy and keep light the amount of stress you yourself have to go through.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go take some medicine..