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“YESSSSS,” he says, two fists pumping the air.
I look up. I can barely keep my eyes open. There is so much to be done. I almost forgot to remind a friend he’s needed as a pall-bearer. The date’s been brought forward a day, there are flowers to arrange and sound system and catering and slideshows and orders of service to organise. We can’t find the cemetery guy. We’ve got his number, I spoke to him only just before Christmas – “we’ll be needing a plot, but I don’t know how soon,” I told him then… turns out, we need it next Thursday – but he can’t be found now. Maybe he’s on holidays. How inconvenient. That’s the way things go in the country: it’ll all work out, don’t stress.
“I think I finally got it,” my weary husband’s voice says to me through the fog of my own bereaved thoughts as I struggle to finish a website I’ve promised. I have a sales team waiting keenly now. Pressure’s on. Death can be so inconveniently timed. He has been working night, day and all hours in between (wherever they are to be found). School is back next week and they have created something out of thin air, these technical wizz-kids (wizz-men sounds so totally wrong, although Steve is the youngest at 40). Yesterday one of their sales team was *actually* hugged by a teacher who loved their App presentation so much she just had to express her gratitude.
THAT’S an App.
And he’s done it all in between ferrying, herding and nourishing our little Lolly. He’s here but he’s absent, forced to work until he works this out. They’re relying on him. Hundred of students and their school faculties. Equally forced to look after the LGBB single-handed because I simply cannot take her with me when I have been travelling to help my father and stepmother. She’s missing her Dad very much. She hasn’t been together with us all for weeks, it feels like. I’ve not been here more than two nights in the past week. I’m taking her back with me on Sunday night, we can’t leave Dad alone to wake up on his 70th birthday on Monday with an empty house.
“What?” I make the error of asking. For my own amusement, I capture most of what he says – he’s barely caring if I’m listening, assuming I’m typing as I stare blankly ahead. But really, I want to document a little of how in awe I am of what he’s helped to create here.
After a year of planning in between their day jobs, four blokes have put their heads together and come up with a winner. I daren’t count my eggs before they hatch, but I hear those chicks a-tappin’ and they’ve got “pay off the mortgage” written on them…. But they hit a stumbling block last week. The App was refusing to accept the data. The orders are coming in daily – school after impressed school – but the App… oh, Mr. Hart, what a mess.
Until tonight.
After days of solid concentration and silent internal hysteria, he thinks he’s cracked it tonight. Just for humour’s sake, let’s see if you can follow along (for the record, I couldn’t – I usually can, but with this…. nup. He lost me. I partially blame my current emotional state):
“I’ve been tailing the access log and the error log for the NGIX web server looking for errors in the PHP-FPM. The error code #502 said the upstream header was too big so I modified the NGINX.conf and added into the http section fast CGI buffers of 8k, 16k and 32k (I think that’s what I did), restarted NGINX and accessed the server from the App, requesting a full refresh of data and instead of getting a 502 error, I got a 200 response from the server… which means it’s all ok. And the app loaded the data it was getting. Finally. Was that Lolly, do you think she’s asleep yet? When I refreshed the data from the app, it sends a json packet to the server which is passed through a PHP page that requests data from the MYSQL database which loads it into an array (in memory) encodes it into json xml that’s returned to the app where it’s decoded and stored into the SQL database within the app to display all the various information.”
The moral of the story is, my husband is a freaking genius.
Oh, and… his middle name is Jason. See? All true geeks have a json in them somewhere. Fact.
I got to “error code #502″. And skipped to the moral of the story. But he is. A genius! And he shares his middle name with my husband. Which proves my point that CJ is, in fact, a true geek. But he’s in denial! Hahahahaha. Well done, Steve. Hope it’s all smooth sailing from here. And massive hugs to you all. I found it really tough helping Dad plan a funeral for his mother. To see them so vulnerable is really hard. Sending our love. xxx
Ah, Jason. That good old staple of 1970′s middle names for boys.
Thanks, T. It’s shite. But it happens.
Bwahaha yep I get that speak
Good on Steve, he certainly ain’t not Jason Lay-z-Boy!
Who better than you and Lolly to bring a little ray of sunshine to your dad on his birthday?
Much love to yous all.
You can take the Jason out of the recliner, but you can’t take the recliner out of… Jason? It’s rare to see him work so hard for such an extended period of time but he has no choice right now. I see a lot of reclining in his near future, though….
Life goes on even in the most difficult of times… don’t you just know it. Hugs to you both – sympathies and congratulations. xx
It’s sort of a comfort in some respects (that it goes on). It’s been 9 years since I’ve grieved this hard for a loved one. I am lucky.
I read it all the way through. I understood the bit where he asked if that was Lolly….
Go gently xox
AND I DOOOOOOO have a gravatar…. I doooooo. OK Meltdown over.
Oh… and there is is. OK… I am slinking away now….
And I shall follow up my first impersonation of Muttley with my second. A wheezy dastardly laugh. In your general direction. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKm5xQyD2vE
I shall do my best Muttley (from The Whacky Races) impersonation on your behalf: “Sunnumunnafunnamagkadjkjhkj;fads” with clenched fist and gritted teeth. Stoopid WP.
I got to the bit about “trailing”. Third word in, I think it was.
I didn’t understand a word of that, but I’ll accept that he is indeed a genius.
River, it’d all be white noise to me, too (and just that), if I didn’t see the outcome of said noise. Frankly, I couldn’t even be bothered, let alone hope, to put together anywhere near such an amazing thing.
I barely started reading Kirrily, I have a type of filter in my brain that just tunes out all information not pertinent to me, I never used too, but my “smile and nod” response is well tuned now.. since becoming mum….?
I did not realise the time had come for passing torches and buying plots.
The post before this was beautiful and I am very glad that Steve is keeping things going.
Be well, lovely, ox
Wow. Steve is certainly very much a genius and yep, I understood about nothing of that.
I had a squiz at it on itunes – brilliant. Can see why schools are after this!
Birthday wishes for your dad today. Hope lots of happy memories filter through.
Glad he has company! xx