Fair expectations; or how to skin a cat by shedding your hide

The last couple of months I've been spending just about all my working hours (and obviously most of the wee hours) on a project for a customer of ours. I'm the only one in the company with the required competency (or pain treshold), so I've been calling most of the shots -- a fact that often contributes to the mentioned wee hours. Anyway, it's a fairly straight forward job, though involving a specific piece of horribly unpredictable technology. By horribly unpredictable, I mean that risk analysis voodoo gets you little further than a donkey on a steep hill. Short of coloring the project name red, it doesn't reveal much. I'm at the mercy of the API, plain and simple, and there's no way to get around that. It's all about acceptance. And breathing.

However unpredictable, I've been on several similar projects before, using the same technology. You could say I've worked my way up to fair expectations. I've learnt that any sudden movement may cause the technology to completely break down, and give my proverbial mouth a good punch. The sad fact, though: there's absolutely no way to get around the use of neither the API nor the technology as a whole. The project, and the $'s, depend on it. Can I complete the job? Given the necessary amount of coffee, and more repeats of Danko Jones' tune than I believe would be proper without marrying the guy; sure.

So why am I sharing this with whomever stumbles by the blog? It's an excuse, obviously. I've had several updates in the pipeline the last couple of months, but only managed to complete the ThreadSynch ramblings. I haven't even found time to update the Thunk32 library yet, which I believe I promised would "only take a couple of days" to someone back in December. That's it for the excuse, though. The point is that if you're here, and you've actually checked by the blog more than this one time during these past few weeks; don't stop doing so. I'll be sharing all kinds of nonsense with you lot in due time, I'll just have to power through this project first.