Unprogress

Let all your works give you thanks, O Lord,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.

Today was a bad day at work, although it was certainly a better day than for some people…. This was not anyone else's fault, but my own. Due to a small over-correction on my part, and some large indeterminate instability in my web server, I spent half the day trying to track down an intractable failure in its ability to find Java library files. Worse, my supervisor spent that time trying to help me, so we both got no work done. Eventually, we gave up by uninstalling the server (Tomcat) entirely and then reinstalling it and the applications. The experience reminded me why I so dislike system administration: there is often too little tolerance for faults.

Most of the day was wasted, and the remainder was spent undoing what I had done yesterday. I spent no time on the two major hurdles I hoped to overcome today. After having made excellent progress earlier this week, I now feel behind again. It has been particularly hard to focus at work when reading the news of late. Tomorrow will be a long day.

We have come very close to having a finished prototype. Being so close, hitting such problems feels particularly frustrating. I do not really believe the adage that the last 20% of a project takes 80% of the time, but days like this make me consider that cynicism. I wanted to have a beautiful product to show to our PI tomorrow, but now he will have to wait until at least Monday. We have so little time left, and I feel I must work more efficiently and effectively for us to be successful.

But when we are done with this portion of the work, we will have something quite special. I am looking forward to that, and to seeing it used as a research tool to help patients. I hope the project will endure a long time.

Making known to men your might
and the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Your Kingdom is a Kingdom for all ages,
and your dominion endures through all generations.