As cars go by I cast my minds eye….

Its Friday, it’s the last day of the week, its less then a week until my new endeavor is supposed to launch, I want to buy a new toy, and I am using to many commas. I have started to explore CSS again and I am finding now that I have explored other types of coding more fully I am getting a better understanding the structure of the css. Things that I just accepted before I now understand the why. I feel that it is time for me to redouble my efforts on my outside projects and see where they can take me. I like what I am doing but I don’t like who I am doing it for. There seems to be an attitude that developers are like any other commodity and that there is nothing more valuable about one developer then the other. You would think if you were going to open a new line of business you would have the foresight to include the people who will be building the code that the new line will run on. I heard a story the other day that shows both ways of doing this. Some time late last year two companies were trying to form some type of partnership company A and company B. the marketing folks (sometimes I have to show I am from the south) from both companies got together and decided it would be a right fine idea if we helped push our products on our respective customers. After several months of discussion between the two companies marketing departments they had every last detail worked out except for one small thing, IT had not yet been brought in on any of the meetings. So the head marketing pixie from each company gets there IT folks and there to come to a large meeting with both companies marketing pixies and the IT trolls. After a few short minutes the IT troll from company b makes a statement “you do understand that we are less then two weeks from code freeze don’t you?” to which marketing replied ” yes but we just thought that…” and before marketing could finish that phrase IT jumped in and continued “ there is no way this will happen at this time we go to a code freeze in less then two weeks and we WILL NOT be making changes of this scale in that time frame if you would like to readdress this after the code freeze let us know but until that time we are through here.” And IT proceeded to get off the call. Now I don’t think that that sets a very good image for company B in the eyes of company A but if marketing had brought in people form IT before the last minute then the whole thing would have been worked out better. IT and development knows what there schedule is better then anyone else and if you need to use those resources you should consult that department before you make commitments based on that need. Now I am rambling again so I will flutter off.