Only one or two hours….

I have a bad habit of starting projects late in the evening (around 8:30 or 9) after my kids go to bed. I begin, truly believing it will only take one or two hours. Without fail, these typically take me well into the night and I suffer the next day because, let’s face it, I make bad choices.

Let’s take this domain change as a very recent example. A month or so ago I got the idea to rebrand and change domains (wastedgenius.ca still works, it just points here). For the past few weeks I mulled over what the new name should be and how it would affect various aspects of my online presence.

Should it include my name? Should it be specific about something like a hobby or viewpoint? Should I attempt to be clever? No. No. And absolutely not.

Saturday evening: Kids are in bed. Time to start down this website upgrade project. I settled on a new domain name and bought the .com and .ca. It should only take an hour or two.

4 hours later: WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE DNS RECORDS? (At least the site is still up). THAT’S IT, I’M GOING TO BED!

Sunday morning: Kids are fed and playing. Ok, let’s get to it. Should only take one or two hours. DNS is working (woo! eat shit internet), back everything up, update the database, update the site config, point apache here, restart and MOTHERF ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Later Sunday morning: The live site was on its knees for over an hour. I managed to resurrect it by restoring from a site backup. SSL has wandered off like a child in a grocery store and got lost for the ENTIRE afternoon and evening. I’ll fix it later.

Sunday afternoon: Okay, let’s update the look and feel. No, not that. Nope. Close. What are you thinking? Yes, that’s better. Do I have a graphics editor on my laptop these days? (Does anyone remember Paint Shop Pro?) GIMP, I knew you were here somewhere. Cool, now we’re getting there. Wow, a lot has changed in CSS. WordPress themes are INVOLVED. Who the hell uses this many divs? A few more tweaks and, ok, great!

Sunday evening: Kids are in bed. Time to get SSL to work. This should only take an hour or two.

4 hours later: DONE! Write everything you did down in case you need to do it again. Write a post about it (seriously? this was a terrible choice for how late it is). GO TO BED.

2 comments on “Only one or two hours….Add yours →

  1. I call this shaving a yak. By the time you do this and this and that – OMG you’re shaving a yak!

  2. So true Matt! Unfortunately, there are no better times to tackle the work… Unless that is at your day job, while you are running around after your kids, or when you are focused on your relationship with your wonderful wife…. Not exactly a plethora of free time. 🙂

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