27 March 2001
Last year: I'm so sleepy this morning that I'm awake. No, that doesn't make any sense, but it's true.
It is practically an axiom in the software business that if you are given a new piece of hardware with which to work, the hardware will, in fact, not work. It is especially true if the new hardware must interface with your current equipment.
My new project at work is developing for a WinCE device. It's not terribly surprising; our three most recent contracts have involved WinCE at some level. This project is an enormous change from the last one in that it has a very precise purpose, well-laid-out designs, and a fixed deadline. I'm happy about all these things.
What I'm not happy about is the WinCE device they gave me. Wait; I take that back: The device itself so far hasn't been any trouble. It's a little hard to read its screen when it's sitting in the cradle on my desk, but that's got more to do with me being a short person at a tall desk than a major design flaw.
My problem is with the cradle. It's supposed to allow me to connect the handheld with my desktop computer, giving me an easy way to transfer files. R.P., the person in the company who previously worked with this device, had to send his cradle back to the manufacturer to have the cradle's firmware updated before it could be detected by the desktop-to-handheld software. He thinks my cradle has the same problem.
Now, this isn't an insurmountable problem. Obviously, he's already seen it fixed once. And he says that he got his cradle back in only a few days. Of couse, a few days lost is a lot when you're on a tight schedule, but there's not really any help for it. I'm hoping I can familiarize myself with the SDK (Software Development Kit, for those of you who aren't engineers but who have been brave enough to keep reading) without actually needing the device on-hand. If worst comes to worst, I suppose I can pester Mike to upload my test files to his device in the interim.
But given what I've heard of WinCE's finicky behaviors, it makes me a little nervous. If our customer has a slightly different version of the firmware, things that work perfectly reasonably on our end may fail to behave on theirs. Matt was telling me yesterday of a problem he'd had with the WinCE devices he's using, in which writing to a file failed - but didn't generate an error. The whole point of my project is to read and write a file.
Gonna be a fun project. I can tell.
It's a good thing I didn't get all excited and plant my vegetables last night. It's freezing this morning. Literally, even - the weather report that woke me up this morning said that the temperature was 31 degrees (F). Darnit, it needs to hurry up and get warmer so I can have vegetables!
(Of course, I still need to go to Lowe's for a trellis for the cucumbers, but that's beside the point.
Word of the Day:
transpontine - situated on the farther side of the bridge; (Brit. only) on the south side of the Thames
Currently Reading:
- The White Plague by Frank Herbert
- How to Play In Traffic by Penn and Teller
Current Projects:
- Kris' afghan
- garden