This was my day yesterday. A reasonably typical day for us, except for the content of my work. Normally I would spend most of my day on a larger feature but on Fridays we focus on fixing bugs. Compare and contrast this to last year’s post.


5:30 Nurse Adrian, semi-awake. Check his nappy (we use disposables at night) and of course it has leaked again and there is a big wet patch on his pyjamas. Rouse myself enough to strip off his wet pyjamas and nappy and put on a clean nappy. Can’t be bothered to go downstairs for dry pyjamas so I take him in under my blanket. Both quickly fall asleep again.
6:30 Woken by Adrian who is now clearly awake for the day. We nurse.
6:40 Get up and go downstairs with Adrian so we don’t wake the others. Change Adrian into his cloth nappy and put some clothes on him. Groggily potter around and cuddle with Adrian. Bring toys for him to the bathroom.
7:00 Take a shower while Adrian plays on the bathroom floor.
7:10 Pack my lunch for the day. Brush breadcrumbs from around the edges of the kitchen floor. Get the porridge going. (2 dl mixed grains, mostly oats; half a finely diced apple; 4.5 dl water; a chunk of butter.)
7:20 Go upstairs. Pull up the blackout blinds so that Eric and Ingrid can start waking. Get dressed.
7:25 Go downstairs. Take the porridge from the stove. Set the table for myself, Adrian and Ingrid, who will all be eating the porridge.
7:30 Eat breakfast. Help Adrian eat by loading the spoon for him. Adrian is not very interested in breakfast and would rather nurse some more, and pick with the groceries in our temporary pantry.
7:45 Brush teeth. Notice that I have a few minutes to spare before I have to leave so I photograph our newly painted bird feeder and our Halloween pumpkin which is still looking pretty fresh. Put on my coat and hat and gloves.
7:50 Leave for work.
8:00 Get to the train station, arriving at the platform just as the train rolls in. Get on the train. Read the most recent issue of the Economist.
8:10 The train stops at a red light just before Karlberg. The driver announces that due to a fracture in a rail, there is a queue of trains in to Stockholm Central and we will be going slowly. I continue reading.
8:30 Finally reach Stockholm C, 15 minutes late. Unlock bike, cycle to the office just off Östermalms torg.
8:45 At my desk. Check our support inbox, archive yesterday’s email conversations with customers.
Email our server host about problems with our outgoing mail (which is getting blocked as spam by one major US internet provider) and ask them to get their mail server removed from the blacklist.
Notice that the nightly regression tests have come up red with an error message that we have sporadically seen before; set the regression tests to run again. (They come up green 20 minutes later.)
9:00 Continue where I left off on Thursday: working on our tool which analyses our application’s translation files for unused translation strings. Improve the parallel processing code in the tool; fix some bugs in it; go through the results and remove unused translation strings.
11:11 Note that it is 11-11-11 11:11. Text message arrives from Eric, saying the same.
11:30 Break for lunch. Go upstairs to our shared kitchen, heat up the packed lunch, eat. (Jasmine rice, vegetables in satay sauce, blueberry muffin baked by Ingrid and Eric.) Chat to colleagues while eating.
12:00 Back at my desk. Fridays are bug report days which means I am free to choose which bugs or minor improvements I want to work on. I decide to improve a feature in our test runs module (which will update test runs with any changes that have been made to the test cases it contains).
12:45 The code works but the user interface is not updating as expected. Take a break, spend some time answering customer support emails.
13:00 Investigate why the user interface is not refreshing. Discover weird caching code. Fix it so the cache is invalidated when appropriate.
13:30 Remove some unrelated code that I noticed during that work, and remembered it is no longer needed. (We used to validate VAT numbers entered by our customers against a web service provided by some EU agency, but the web service is so unreliable we’ve been forced to give up on this.)
13:45 Fix a bug: a link from our login page needs to be updated because the URLs in our public web site will change as of the next release.
14:00 Fix a bug: on certain pages, the navigation menu does not remember its state. The reason turns out to be a different ClientIdMode setting on those pages.
14:45 Talk to colleagues about some planned changes to our public web site.
15:00 Fix a bug: a particular value in a special field is not sorted correctly in the charts in our application.
15:15 Fix a bug: a certain user setting should be saved in the database instead of cookie, to match the behaviour of other related user settings. Notice that the code could do with some refactoring first. Refactor.
15:40 Start working on the actual bug.
15:55 Pack up and leave.
16:00 Cycle to Stockholm C.
16:10 At station.
16:13 Train leaves.
16:25 Train arrives in Spånga.
16:35 At home. Ingrid is playing with a friend and in their game I immediately get the role of grandmother. Luckily I am not expected to do much more than talk a bit. Adrian throws himself at me. Go upstairs to get changed. We nurse. A quick trip to the basement to fetch my winter coat – the weather has turned cold almost overnight.
17:00 Eric starts making pancakes. Dinner will be half an hour earlier than usual (17:30 instead of 18:00) because Ingrid’s friend E tires earlier than Ingrid and will be going home just after 18:00. Adrian and I hang around in the kitchen. I can’t do anything productive because Adrian won’t let go of me.
17:15 Adrian looks very hungry so I put him in his highchair and give him a pancake.
17:20 The girls come to the kitchen asking for pancakes. We set the table, get out all the accessories, and start eating the pancakes just about as quickly as Eric can make them. I alternate between eating and serving more pancakes to the children. Adrian squirms out of his highchair and comes to sit in my lap.
17:45 The girls are done eating. I continue. Adrian also decides to eat some more.
18:00 All done. Start cleaning up the kitchen while Eric finishes eating.
18:15 Friend E’s father J arrives. They and Ingrid hunt for E’s clothes – for some reason she and most of Ingrid’s other friends change into Ingrid’s clothes when they’re here. They go home.
18:30 Continue cleaning up and other minor household tasks.
18:40 Adrian looks ready to go to bed. Change him into disposable nappy and pyjamas. Brush his teeth. Take him upstairs.
18:55 Nurse.
19:05 Adrian tosses and turns and sits up and lies down and does his best to wind down.
19:15 Adrian falls asleep and so do I.
19:45 Wake. Get downstairs. Check email.
19:55 Play Ludo with Ingrid.
20:20 Ingrid is getting too tired to sit still and focus on the game so we pack up. Eric prepares Ingrid for bed while I read some blog posts.
20:30 Go upstairs with Ingrid. Read a story. Sit by her bed and read blogs while she goes to sleep. She has difficulty falling asleep so this takes quite a bit longer than usual.
21:15 Go downstairs. Talk to Eric.
21:25 Work on a Christmas felt applique/embroidery project.
22:40 Adrian wakes and “calls” for me. Quickly brush teeth. Go upstairs. Nurse. Fall asleep.