My Life With IT

I seem to have lost touch with looping. The codes look fine to me. However, the final count is wrong. I can’t figure out why. Perhaps I have really lost passion for coding at this point in time. Maybe I’m just bored with the programming and yearning for changes in my life. Or perhaps I yearn to fulfill my childhood dreams.

Anyway, this set of codes is supposed to check for the category then the location and finally count if the document belongs to the set. Unfortunately, the count is off. With 2 or 3 loops, I can’t help but wonder if I had been programming the codes all wrong from the start. Or the conditions need another way to work around.

Arrays and variables have to be used. It’s going to be tough.

I’ve come quite a long way since I have been doing IT. 7 years is a long time with me being in the support group for 4 years and development started in the 4th year. I have been demoralised in the past (from year 5) and changing companies doing the same thing didn’t help at all. It came to the point when I didn’t want to look for any job. I just wanted to stay at home and do absolutely nothing.

Just eat, sleep, surf the net and meeting friends or travel. With quite a number of years doing what I’m currently doing, I have started to get bore. Somewhere along the way, I lost my interest in Lotus Notes development. I got depressed at the thought of going to work every morning.

I want to cry when I’m sitting in front of the computer and the task that I have been assigned. I wanted to go home immediately. I felt that I didn’t want to have anything to do with development or support.

Finally, today, I nearly cried while sitting at my cubicle. I had been feeling low for 2 days and this was the last straw. There was no way I could programme anything while in that mood. I had to talk to someone. That someone was my manager, the one who interviewed me.

I spoke of my interest to pursue another path. The discussion was a load of my chest. I just have to update my resume and forward it and see if there’s any openings within the company. I have finally taken a step towards a change.

I kept having problems with a loop. It was certainly frustrating to get it to work the way I wanted it to. With the source data not being modified in any way, I had to somehow find the row that was to be read and imported.

Took me a few days to get it done because I was simply sick of it and got exasperated easily. I just had to add another loop to locate the data just above the identified source before the import. That was all it took and without all extra If-Else loops that failed to get anything.

I need a change of scope.

I’m stuck in the office because of a demo that I’m to do on Monday. It’s Friday and late and I don’t know how to solve the problem. Rats. It’s supposed to work. However, it’s not working and I think my Saturday will be burnt by one silly bug. I wonder if it’s to do with the server or the database has been corrupted somehow.

I think I go home and return tomorrow to burn my time here for 1 little bug that’s hard to squash. Too tired to continue anymore. And I want my dinner.

After working for 3 days, the code decided to fail today. I don’t even want to know why. I just want it to work. It worked for the other database using the same code. It’s valid. It’s available in the library. So, why doesn’t it work? I need to give a quick demo to my superior. However, it seems to be scared and I don’t why. It just throws me the error “Illegal reference to: FIELDSETTEXT”. *takes a deep breath*

Where did it go wrong? I don’t know. The prompts that I put in never came up. The LotusScript Debugger never came up with anything useful either. I’m just tearing my hair out. No, wait, I can’t tear any hair because I don’t want to be bald.

So, what is wrong with the code? First start with the form itself. In the PostOpen I put:

Sub Postopen(Source As Notesuidocument)
 If Source.EditMode Then
  Call Source.FieldSetText(“Form”, “frmMtnCatFNo”)
 End If
End Sub

In the QueryClose. I put:

Sub Queryclose(Source As Notesuidocument, Continue As Variant)
 If Source.FieldGetText(“NoClose”) = “1″ And Source.EditMode = True Then
  Msgbox “Please use the ‘Close’ button provided.”
  Continue = False
 End If
End Sub

Both worked, no errors. Next, I put a “Close” button. That will check if there are any changes made in the form and prompt the user. That’s where I use FieldSetText to change the status of the form:

Call uidoc.FieldSetText(“NoClose”, “0″)

So, what’s wrong with the code? Perhaps I need a break.

I had a discussion with a friend of mine this afternoon. We have just completed that final exam for the step towards our degree and I was telling her that I want to get out of programming because I feel that I am no longer able to chase after the latest technology. I do wonder if it’s due to my leaving of a challenging company a few months back. It is not the first time since I left that company and reviewed my career path. I have been thinking if I should get out of IT and do something else.

Another friend told me that life’s short, we have to do whatever we feel is the right time to execute. I’ve been doing Lotus Notes development for 4 years and I think I’m not cut out for it. Maybe the lack of challenges in the current company? I am still able to earn my keep and there is not much pressure on the system being forced to work “bug-free” during UAT.

I don’t have any users calling me. Yet. Or I need a new learning curve because I keep ending up doing client based Notes applications instead of web based Notes applications that I prefer. I like that because it’s easier to control user actions. They won’t use the keyboard “Esc” key to close a document that they don’t want to save. I don’t have so many fields to place the Formula individually.

Maybe I’m asking for too much. Who would want to develop web based applications when it takes longer to complete than a client based? Me, I guess. I like playing around with CSS and JavaScript.

Maybe I am really just not cut out for IT.

I had a breakdown. I was depressed just looking at the Lotus Notes Designer screen. I wanted to cry and go home right there and then. There didn’t seem to be any challenge in this new job that I’ve been doing for a month plus. It wasn’t what I really love to do but I have to endure and carry on.

Why the torture? During the interview, I said I won’t look for another job once I graduate, so I have to continue until the end of this contract. If not, I won’t be able to gain their trust. However, I’m worried that my performance won’t be good. Like the other time I had to leave because I was totally burnout and didn’t feel like doing anything remotely related to programming.

Maybe I shouldn’t even have accepted it in the first place. I had been planning to do something else that’s not related to programming during the break. I just want to do something nice like blogging. Yea, right, as if I can earn tons just by blogging when I can’t even put up any codes here.

My search for a host continues.

I actually miss the challenge of developing web applications using Lotus Notes. I haven’t been doing it for half a year and am getting rusty with the knowledge. I wonder if I would ever get to design web applications for this company in future or learn some new programming language.