My Daughter's Temper Tantrum

It is currently 11:45 as I begin to write this post. I note that because at 8:00 I sat down to hack around at my computer for a few minutes while I supervised my daughter. As is obvious, I am way ahead of myself. So let me take you back...

Yesterday I picked up my 4 year old from preschool. The teacher asked me if she could speak to me for a minute. I looked down at my child as a look of horror crossed her face. I was informed by her teacher that she had thrown 2 temper tantrums during class that involved stamping her feet, crying, and screaming. I thanked to teacher for letting me know and I took my little girl home.

I talked to my daughter on the way home, and let her know that I would decide on an appropriate punishment before I got home from work in 2 hours. (I skip my lunch and creep out to pick her up) I stayed a little late at work to try and finish a project I was working on and when I got home from work I had printed 7 handwriting pages.

1. Ms. X,
2. I am sorry
3. I was bad
4. on Monday.
5. I will act better
6. from now on.
7. Sorry, Ella

Each of these pages made her practice each word 5 times. (Additionally she lost her television and computer privilege for two days, but that is irrelevant to the story.) I let her know that we would work on 4 pages on Monday night, and finish the remaining 3 pages on Tuesday night so she could take her letter to Ms. X on Wednesday.

Everything went well and at about 8:00 this evening my daughter and I sat down to complete her remaining 3 sheets. I was going to sit at the computer and add some links from Feedburner to my Blogger Template while she worked. As I completed the Feedburner work, I decided to make a few more template tweaks since she was still on the first of the three pages. She finished her work in about 40 minutes with minimal protest and I had gotten myself in deep.

It seemed harmless enough, the changes I wanted to make.

1. Take out the double line caused by adding the social bookmarks
2. Move Google Talk icon down to Contact Me section
3. Replace Archive List with drop down box
4. Add new function to estimate reading time
5. Make comments appear on Main Page

Now I should note that the total time spent on items 2-4 was no more than 20 minutes collectively. The time originally spent on 5 was only about 20 minutes itself. However item 5 complicated the problem existing in item 1 so now I had 4 lines on the bottom of each post.

At this point a developer has a decision to make. Remove code for item 5 and deal with the small problem originally existing in item 1 OR move forward since any problem can be fixed with enough code and enough time. I opted for the latter.

Although my page may look virtually unchanged to you the viewer. The <blogger> section of the page had to be gutted and reassembled. This operation was to involve a delicate balance of Coldfusion - JavaScript - and Blogger Template Tags all working together to create this perfectly functioning and looking page I had in my head.

Time and Code prevailed and you are seeing the result of that work. I am reminded of a quote that hung on my mirror in both high school and college.

You Could have stayed home
you could have gone somewhere else
but instead you decided
to wittiness the result
of countless hours of perspiration
of my passion and more preparation
than most of us will ever know.
All for the sake of a great performance.

May you enjoy the show.