I'm back to my normal life, which has created quantum superposition of emotions within me: I'm relieved to be off the hectic OSCON schedule, I'm very happy to be back home with Gloria, and I'm uninspired to be back at work trying to get things done with stone knives and bearskins.
Ok, so maybe MS SQL and Win32 aren't stone knives and bearskins, but they aren't Wusthof and kevlar, either. I spent a lot of time yesterday and today trying to reimplement Epitaxy::Substrate's persister with Class::DBI, and MSSQL has not been co-operating. Part of this problem is ActiveState's fault. I installed the PPM package called "Class-DBI-0.96" but it actually installed 0.95. Meanwhile, the Ima::DBI installation seems too up-to-date, so not all the methods are in the right place. I want to play around with removing objects from the cache, but I can't in 0.96, because it doesn't exist.
I just want tools that are deterministic. Is that too much to ask of a computer?
At least next week is time off. I will be turning off my phone, ignoring my email, and trying to do some reading and relaxing. I feel very stressed out, lately. Or, rather, very burned out. I need to relax and enjoy life.
Yesterday I started rereading The Tragic Sense of Life again, and today at the gym I started going through Saussure for Beginners. Both are very enjoyable. I've been reading a lot of apology on the web, lately, and I think I want to read some Kirkegaard next week. I've been remembering my joy at reading about the absolute relationship to the absolute. It's just so good.
Gloria and I have no plans, yet, for next week, but hopefully we'll be able to have a good time. Maybe we'll head to one of the nearby Big Cities for a day or four; maybe we'll sneak around the non-Musikfest-ridden parts of town and eat good food and watch lots of films; maybe we'll just drive somewhere weird and chill out and do nothing. I'm just looking forward to being really off and not worrying about work at all. Lately, everything feels so touchy and tentative! I want simple goals with total buy-in. Maybe we'll confirm that we have that, soon, so I can stop feeling dubious.
Module::Starter is on hold while I continue to think about stuff. Jeff Bisbee gave me some time and ideas, but now I'm questioning my conclusions. I'll be writing the problem down and asking for the input of Andy and some other key customers. If I don't get a good solid way forward, I'm calling the current release stable, suggesting that people use aliases to avoid too many switches.
I think I'm going to go to bed, now, and try to do some relaxing.
(Oh, and a final note. We just watched Annie Hall, and I think it was great. It was nice to get confirmation that Woody Allen did get famous for a good reason. It reminded me, in its non-linearity and nuance, of Radio Days, another excellent film.)
