It’s 6am.
My alarm is blaring. I turn it off, open twitter, and pull down the top of the screen to refresh. A new blog post about Go comes across my twitter feed, along with the newest tech controversy. There’s not enough there to figure out what’s going on. I scroll on. A few more twitter posts down, there’s a screed on how the world’s going to pot because of the Republicans. The next one says the same thing about the Democrats. Both have replies that start with “Thanks, Obama.” One of them is Ironic. I’m not sure which one.
After breakfast, I pull my phone out again, and this time I see an update to the #Ferguson shooting on my twitter feed. @AntonioFrench is relaying the latest. Being 1,000 miles away, I can do little but Retweet.
I check my follower count. Lost two in the past day. Was it something I said? It’s probably the confusing nature of my political tweets: Conservative leaning one second, liberal the next. All libertarian, of course. No one wants to follow a libertarian. We’re nutjobs.
I head to work. On the metro I read the latest tweets I’ve favorited over the last few days. There’s a new blog post about SQL Server restore strategies, and something about another security breach, this time affecting Home Depot. #GamerGate is still going strong; although with the subtweets, I don’t understand what’s going on. Someone is mad about something someone else did, but no one links to it, so I have nothing to read more about. I take their anger at face value. Anything I say will be misconstrued, so I say nothing.
At work, I settle in, today I’m working on automating restores with 500 databases across 4 servers. There’s a new post from SQLServerCentral, and working on the script it provides, I find out it doesn’t do what I need it to do. I look to see if the author is on twitter. They’re not.
Frustrated, I look for their blog and leave a comment detailing the problems I’m seeing. I don’t know enough to know if I’m wrong or if the script actually has a bug. The author isn’t on twitter so I can’t send them a quick note. Instead, I reply to their blog post. I get a reply a day or two later. Definitely not twitter speed.
After lunch, my @ParallelsMac installation decides to crap on me for the second time this week. I tweet with pictures, and their support people get back to me and ask me to submit a bug. I do, and then they ask me to try to reproduce it. As a programmer, I know that’s a not so subtle brush-off. No one wants to work on a bug that only exhibits itself sometimes, on some configurations, and only when the moon is full. No one. The twitter rant makes me feel better though.
Write code. Compile. Wait for launch. Check Twitter. See funny post. Ctrl+tab back to development site. Still JITing. Go back to twitter. See twitter post I want to RT; remember that the original tweeter still has me blocked for a snarky comment I made in 2010. Manually ReTweet. Back to code now. Realize there’s a runtime error in the String.Format() call. Back to twitter. Open new Tab. This time to Linked In. Yet another recruiter wants to tell me about an ‘Amazing opportunity’. Doesn’t say what. Check Facebook. Facebook’s a mess. Log off of Facebook.
Back to code. It’s almost the end of the day, and I’ve spent most of my time on the internet. Scramble to get some productive work done. It’s going to be another nighttime of coding.
My wife picks me up with the kids in the car. They’re always happy to see me, giggling and laughing as they see me approach the car. I get in, kiss my wife, and ask how her day has been. She responds with a perfunctory ‘good’, and we take off for home. “Let it go ipone, daddy?’ My 2 year old wants to watch Frozen on the iPhone. I say no; partly because I don’t want her to use up our data plan that’s already at its limit, and partly because I really want to have my phone on me in case anything happens on the internet.
We’re almost home now, and I check my phone under the guise of making sure the servers haven’t melted down in the 20 minutes since we left the office. They haven’t, although there are some issues with the code I checked in right before I left. I tell my wife I’ll need to work for a few minutes when we get home to correct the problem. As I say this I switch to Twitter, and see if anyone’s replied to me today. I feel validated when I see people Retweeting my tweets or replying to me.
At home, my daughter repeats her demand for “Let it go ipone”. We settle on the iPad, and she starts the movie. She’s pretty apple savvy, she can open the app, find the movie she wants to watch, and she can skip around to her favorite scenes. I don’t know whether to think it’s awesome or to be horrified. My youngest daughter plays at my feet while I fix the code I messed up earlier. While the build is running, I check Twitter again. Four Retweets today, that’s a good day.
After dinner, we play for 30 minutes. I show my daughter how to do a back flip in my arms. ‘AGAIN?’ she asks, for the 6th time. My youngest daughter, almost a year, wants to do the same. I oblige, and my wife chides me, reminding me that she’s not a toddler.
After the kids are in bed, I check Twitter again. Sometimes I make what I think are funny jokes, only to have them fall flat. Other times they play off of the humor. It’s hard to gauge humor on the internet. I decide to work on some of my side projects, whether it’s the HTML5 based game, or one of the stealth ones. Twitter again.
I look up, and it’s 10pm. In 8 hours I have to be up. Time for bed.
Walking into the bedroom, I see my wife on her phone. She’s waiting for me. She can’t sleep unless I’m in bed too. She’s on Facebook, letting me know about the latest drama in my family. There’s always drama. I set my alarm, check twitter, and confident that I’m up on everything, I plug in my phone. I need the battery for the morning commute.