I just spent the last couple of hours searching freshmeat and sourceforge for php-based online calendar systems. Gah, I’m tired of them I tell you! One of my clients has a client that wants (basically) what Lotus Notes does but without having to buy Lotus Notes. They want to share calendar events with specific people, see public events, color code, etc.
I am not sure if they actually know what they want, because all I heard until today was “they want a web based calendar that they can share information with”. Not a lot to spec out a coding project, or search existing projects for. Finally today I was told they wanted the color coding of categories, and to share with specific people. Still haven’t recieved any specific features other than those though, so I am doing what I always do, put in the proposal what the system does already, and see if they go for that (if I am writing it from scratch I just sort of guess on what the customer will want, and hope I’m right… have had good success with that method so far).
I’m heavily on the side of using an existing open source project because frankly, I don’t want to write it. I have little time as it is and if I can simply implement someone elses system, and not have to duplicate the code/debug/fix cycle that someone else has gone through already, I’m happy. Besides, that way they get a cheaper system, because if I were to write it from scratch it would cost them more, because there would be that long creation process. I know there are nice modules to do all this stuff already, and building it wouldn’t be that bad, but it’s still time that I’d rather spend playing squash, vegging on the couch, or something else, because all that time would come out of my evenings.
I like knowing what I have in store for me. I just completed my side of the flowcharts we set up at work a few days ago and it was great. I just traced in the workflow and added the code, tested it, checked off that box or triangle, and went on to the next one. Jim is going to be done his side (the super_saver() routine that should take all the stuff that we now do in multiple places (and multiple ways) and put it in one place). Think of it as extreme programming separately.
The last couple of days of work have still sucked though. I get hungry around 11:30, the day drags on and on, and my energy in the afternoon is approximately nil. My lunch is not enough and I’m hungry or something mid-afternoon. I had granola bars today but they didn’t help, I was practically a recipient of keyboard face, and would have killed for a chocolate bar of some sort. Waking up an hour early probably helped with that though.
Being that it’s almost midnight I’m going to hit the hay now, and hope that the 7 hours will do me good, and a nice big breaky of scrambled eggs again will be wonderful.