Ok, so daily may be a misnomer...

I almost walked today, and what a whimper I would have gone with.

I’ve spend my last three working days trying to test the simplest piece of code on the variety of development environments available to me and finding their disparate natures a massive frustration, after all, writing the thing had taken me not more than 2 hours, which is a very small percentage of 3 days.

Add to this that my novelty factor has worn off for my mentor, I think I’m not much more than an annoying whine for him at the moment, and I feel like I would have been more useful to the company crawling around on all fours pretending to be a cat, looking for a scratch under the chin.

I was one step away from a George Galloway, unlike Gorgeous George however, I managed to keep my cool, slip my coat on with rage shaking hands and pop out to call Wife.

Thankfully she’s at home today, struck down with London flu, so she wasn’t too embroiled in her own work to give me enough time and sensible words to get me back in there.

Sometimes I can be such a drama queen, and it was only her zen-like insight reminding me to have a bit of perspective on my hissy fit that finally brought out the well earned laugh at self.

Thus steeled, I walked back in, took off my coat with as much dignity as I could muster and sat down among the wonderfully oblivious others.

Deep breath in hand, I dove back into it and bleated at Mentor, who, all credit to him, patiently told me to have some confidence and upload it for wider testing.

After all that, and a really tasty mars bar, I settled back into fumbling ignorantly about until the world took a turn for the better.

What, you may think, could possibly be this harbinger of glad tidings? (can harbingers bring gladness?) You will be surprised to hear it was a meeting.

Usually the merry domain of middle management and the scourge of developers everywhere, this one was shaping up to be not much different until Mentor was called away; on the face of it, leaving me high and dry.

Do we wait? Can he postpone? ‘fraid not on all counts so it’s time for me to step up to the plate, and what an extravagant step I used, I might as well have been leading the thing!

I had finally realized what was going on, it was like a could had lifted and in a sense it had.

With Mentor gone, I could get my balls out, I was the biggest technical brain in the room, I was the alpha dog again, and I loved it.

We developers should probably have a little sign that says “does not play well with others”.

Technical roles are more often than not filled by men who used to be the kind of boy that played with lega and had the patience to tape load “Revenge of the Mutant Camels” on their Amstrad Amiga.

This kind of nerdy testosterone breeds a rather unpleasant masculinity. We can’t compete physically so we become guileful and snide, a subtle one-upmanship develops along with an ever increasing irritating smugness in the stronger player.

All in all an out and out scrap is probably healthier but it’s also less acceptable in the workplace, so by realizing my part in creating my own tension I can now walk away with dignity.

I realize I’m fighting a losing battle against someone who knows more than me and is on his home ground, so I think I’ll shelf my pride and try to learn something, if only until Friday when he moves on and I’m back in the driving seat.