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Doing the Right Thing

Entry 771, on 2008-05-16 at 22:04:57 (Rating 1, Activities)

How far should we go to do the right thing? Charitable and non-profit public service causes are important and deserve our support, but where does it end? The reason I ask these questions is a project I am currently involved with which is taking up a lot of my time and I must admit that last minute changes and problems are starting to become just a little bit concerning!

Its a charitable auction for the Otago Hospice and I'm the official "IT Guy" for the project. I have created a web site which displays the catalog and provides on-line bidding, I am working on a slideshow of the items to be auctioned, I am setting up several computers to allow bidding on items at the auction itself, and I have created a database to accept those bids.

The whole project is really fun and I'm not complaining about having to do it, but it is becoming a bit stressful because there are still changes happening in the catalog and the auction is tomorrow!

A while back the University I work for ran a course on managing stress. It was total nonsense, and they probably only did it to cover some legal obligation, but it was interesting to see different people's attitude to work stress. Most people were bitterly complaining about how tough their life was, but I just said something like: bring it on - you only know you are alive when you are in constant panic mode!

That's true to an extent. If everything works out well in the end (and I am confident it will) its going to be great to think we succeeded despite so many problems! Being in panic mode, changing code on live databases, and doing high risk hacks to make the data work are all part of the fun in working in IT.

I'm not saying that I would rather work this way than do things properly with plenty of time to design and test everything. Its more that trying to make something happen where many others would just say "it can't be done" is fun!

I'll report on how the whole event went on Sunday and maybe I won't be quite so positive then, but whatever happens its going to be interesting!

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