On August 26 I woke up at 9 a.m. Martin had told me yesterday that he would start bombarding me through every communication channel from 10 a.m. if I was not awake, but that did not happen. Martin only wrote to me at 11:12, and only after several text messages from me. He just wrote that the 12:43 meeting in Navsi was still on, so I still had plenty of time, because my sister was waiting for me to leave for Martin’s place so she could at least drop me off at the train and then drive straight into town. And since nothing had changed since we agreed on it yesterday, I did not reply to that text from Martin.
I caught the train with no trouble and even waited there for 20 minutes. I would have waited only 10, but the train was running about 8 minutes late. Since I had left the phone with my VF SIM card at home, and Martin texted me there once more asking whether I was already on the train, I had no idea, and right after I boarded the train Martin was already writing to me on Jabber, asking where I was and why I was not answering his texts. You already know the explanation. In Bystrice I wrote to Martin that I was almost there, and Martin came to meet me. Then the conductor caught me, I bought a ticket for 43 CZK and paid with 50 CZK.
The conductor gave me back only 3 CZK. I stared at it, but I could not work out exactly how much change I should get, or how much was missing, so the conductor himself had to break my mental vacuum by saying “I’m losing it already” and gave me another 4 CZK. I thanked him and a moment later I was in Navsi. I got off, and in the distance on the opposite platform Martin was coming; then he started waving and greeting me. I waved back, he smiled and sped up, came through the underpass, and soon we were walking together to Martin’s house.
Martin showed me into his room, where I had never been in my life, even though I had already been at his house about 3 times. I took out my laptop and started by creating and sharing a folder called “Hackaton I. – Code Editor”. For some unknown reason I had to verify my e-mail address again, and right after that Martin received an invitation to my folder in his inbox. Martin gave me a task straight away: convert the code from a Windows Service into an ordinary Windows Forms program and try to send some messages to the server in the sample application.
That was still very easy. Then Martin gave me the task of building a basic GUI, while he was still designing the API on the server in Erlang. The biggest problem for me here was once again my own stupidity: I had set a fixed delimiter on one SplitContainer and then wondered why it would not move. I thought it was just that complicated (6 SplitContainers nested inside each other in total, but now I know how silly that was). Only when Martin asked me how it was going did a saving memory come to me of what I had set and then promptly forgotten.
So I spent some time on it, but at home it would have taken me much longer. Only at a quarter past 5 did I have this (Martin had long since finished everything and I was just slowing him down 🙁 ):
It was great at Martin’s place, fairly quiet, good light even with the blinds, and above all I had someone next to me who, unlike me, is intelligent and is about 106 times sharper (and not only at programming). And good food too: at 6 p.m. I got graham rolls with a cheese spread, because I, a picky eater and a spoiled little lord, had turned down a bread pudding that looked delicious from Martin’s mom. I also got 2 gorgeous tomatoes, which I did not eat either – those 2 graham rolls filled me up so much that I did not need anything else.
After that Martin’s Mom brought in a whole bowl of fruit, from which I took just a little for the taste, because, as I said, after such an excellent dinner I really was not hungry. Once I finished that, I started working on the connection to the API that Martin was building on the server. Martin had it all documented very nicely in Google Docs, so it was not that hard – all the more so because Martin explained everything in great detail, and I was a bit unhappy about that, because I knew there would be less time later and there was no need to waste it on things that were crystal clear to me.
So much wasted time :(. Then I finally plucked up the courage and told Martin that it was enough to tell me briefly, and if I did not understand or forgot it later, I would ask. Not only could I be chatting with Someone, but I also knew that once I got tired my brain would shut down completely and I would just stare at it and come up with nothing! 🙁 And that is exactly what happened, but more on that later. From 7:30 p.m. I was chatting with the Dearest Person, and only at a quarter to 10 did we try to connect to the server, and everything worked:
Then Martin’s mom came in, with no idea what Martin was planning – to stay up all night. So she just tidied up Martin’s room and said that Martin would sleep in the guest room and I would sleep in Martin’s room, because she did not have the energy to tidy 2 rooms. After that my task was to improve the chat. I spent a while looking for the simplest way to write colored text into a RichTextBox, but when Martin saw I was still getting nowhere, he found me a snippet right away and sent it to me over Jabber.
With that it was a breeze:
Then I was given the task to pick colors that are clearly visible on a white background and to build a color generator and assigner – once Martin had red, all further messages from Martin had to be red, never any other color. Also, of course, where possible and with enough colors available, nobody should get the same color as someone else, and so on. Next I was supposed to create a form for changing a person’s color so that the change would take effect immediately. I still do not have this last feature – or rather, I have it only halfway.
Martin then gave me another task – since he had changed the API a bit, I had to apply that to the client. The changes included both changes to existing things and new functions and exceptions. After I said goodbye to the Dearest Person at 0:30, it was already too late to do anything. I was falling asleep, listening to music, but I was definitely not working, and so once again I was only slowing Martin down :(. Only at about 5 a.m. did I go to rinse my face in the bathroom nearby. Ugh, that woke me up a little, so I started doing a bit of work again, but it still amounted to nothing.
All night I could only think about taking the train home and getting some sleep. I was already checking train times – Martin had counted on me staying until the afternoon of August 27 at least – so I had to disappoint him terribly 🙁 when I told him that I wanted to go home at 7:02. Later I went to rinse my face once more. We stopped working at half past five and then talked for 2 hours – about what, I will not write here. At 7:30 Martin went out to take care of something, because he was getting ready to go to Tesin with me – me to VF and Martin to the optician.
Meanwhile I lay down for 5 minutes on Martin’s bed with my feet on the floor.. Shortly after 7:45 we prayed a little together – for what and for whom I will not write here either – and then we slowly headed for the train. Well, of course I, the idiot, forgot something there, namely my phone charger. But I only found out at home, when Martin wrote to me about it on Jabber. It does not bother me much, as long as I do not lose the other charger too, because I now have 2 identical chargers for 2 phones. I really seem to have this head of mine just to keep the rain out of my throat :'(.
We came into the station hall so that Martin could buy a ticket (I had a return ticket from yesterday), and it was full of girls, I thought I was going to die! To my bad luck, once Martin had his ticket, they announced that the train was about to leave, and the girls started crowding toward the exit and the way to the platform. I asked Martin whether we could go a little bit further back, so that I would not be there with those girls. Luckily Martin agreed (Thank you!) and a moment later we were speeding toward Tesin.
Martin dozed off a bit on the train while I listened to music; at almost every stop Martin woke up and checked where we were, so I did not even have to wake him up in Tesin. Once we got there, Martin asked where the VF store was, and I told him it was on Main Street near the border with Poland, about 300 m from there. Martin kindly offered to go there with me. What happened there is not public and not meant for everyone, so I will not write about it here.
From Tesin I then walked home, where I was already dying of exhaustion, so I lay down in bed and fell asleep; I slept from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and then from 5 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. I programmed 90% of it until my Dearest Person wrote to me – after that I just chatted with her, and later I was so tired that only one thought and command kept running through my head – sleep! So, to sum up – after 17 hours we have a client that can log in to the server, log out of it, or join an existing room, plus a chat program and a few small extras. 🙂