Fighting Murphy's Law

Today was, in retrospect, a fine day indeed. Quite a few things I'd planned at work had started to go wrong. I had to go and reverse a decision, thanks to a new input on a microprocessor I was working on. Then there was buggy software that almost went along with a product to the field.

The strange thing is, we managed to stop all of this just at the eleventh hour. While I would say this ain't good management, it is strange that (at least) some of these things showed up before we got products on the field. I was running around quite a bit all through morning understanding before everyone else did, what was at stake. Everyone thought I had a panic reaction and finally after addressing the situation, people were quite happy about the way I'd rushed through it.

Afternoon was much more relaxed. I was supposed to meet somebody or rather the other way around by evening. Unfortunately the person was attending TI's Developer Conference and I chose to leave a little earlier than my published 1830hrs.

There has also been speculation on the dates on which my Company is actually shifting location of operations. That's adding one more uncertain variable specifically a disproportional increase in commutation cost and time. The sooner it comes, the sooner I would be forced to consider addressing it as a risk that I'd rather not take. Perhaps, this got me a bit worried in the morning, but nothing actually got to me to snap my cool.

The one thing I could learn today was, "So long as you react quick enough you can prevent things from going wrong later." Although masked by urgency, addressing problems quickly can potentially prevent a catastrophe. The other rule was of course to take responsibility for what you've done earlier. That makes it easier no matter how everyone reacts.