montecristo

McGuffin is proceeding oh so slowly. It is proceeding with a maddening slowness. This is the steep end of the learning curve. Robert and Tom and I, and to a lesser extent, Don, are attempting to define what the company we are building is, in essence. We're trying to get our project defined well enough to explain it to investors and set up milestones and establish criteria for judging the success of the goals and set up the budget. Robert has come up with all of the milestones and budgeting and I am the one who is having to turn this mess into some kind of meaningful narrative. I need a really solid block of time to sit down and read and take notes so that I can stitch this all together so that we can explain it to others. We need some large scale investment to pursue this thing and that isn't going to happen until we can sit down and spell out what we are up to effectively and succinctly. We're grabbing up every free minute that we can to work on this thing. Last night we ate at Jim's Coffee Shop in Alameda, (they have great chili) and sat at the table for about two hours trying to pound our document into some sort of useful form. I've been hauling a memory stick with our work on it back and forth between my house and work. We don't do any work at all on this thing during our day-job hours, but we do tinker with it during our lunch hour. We drag a laptop computer up to the Marina Gourmet Coffee Mill and work there, most days.

Squeezing in McGuffin work is hectic, especially since things are heating up at "The Tar Pit" which is what we call our day job, because our methods there are so outdated. Right now, we are each up to our necks in alligators. I've got software revisions to our top of the line capacitor bank controls and Robert is chasing down a distressing memory corruption problem that has crept up on our hardware lately. The place is kind of tense with scheduling considerations, and they're moving some of our manufacturing from San Jose to Alameda, which means closing the San Jose office and stuffing the personnel into the Alameda office with the rest of us. One of our best accounting people has decided to jump ship at the end of the month, and one of our best application engineers is planning on retiring soon too. On top of this, another of the software engineers has a side project going, which is about to start paying off rather handsomely, and when it does, he will be leaving too. If Robert and I are not dilligent and lucky, the place will come down before Robert, Don, and I have the opportunity to get McGuffin funded so that WE can leave. Heh, when that happens, and the three of us are gone, possibly taking a few other talented individuals with us when we do, they WILL have problems, although I don't think that management will understand that immediately. It's funny how management is always the last to understand when the company suffers a brain hemorrhage.

I was sitting at my desk this evening around quitting time when Robert came over to talk to me about our progress. It was his contention that we have to do something to get some more work done in the time we can grab here and there. He pointed out that I should get a laptop like him so that I'm a bit more portable and can take advantage of more impromptu opportunities to do some work. He's mentioned this before, and I've told him that I'm just not really able to budget a new computer right now. So, he told me that he knew that, which is why he ordered me one. When I protested, he told me to consider it a birthday present. What? I had no idea he was aware of it -- I know his birthday is in April. Hey, well...I guess. I can use one. I guess once we get this thing going, laptop computers will not seem like such a big expense at all, but right now, I'm pretty impressed with the gesture, not to mention somewhat dumbfounded. I had no idea that he was up to something like this. I hope we can wrap this planning phase up by the end of October or the first week of November at the latest. One thing is for sure, I'm going to be putting that laptop to rather extensive use.