Wrapping things up.

I’m back in Woods Hole, MA with the EOL software development team this week.  We’re wrapping up the development of EOLv2 with a flurry of documentation, bug fixes, formatting changes and the typical refinements you discover after living with a nearly-complete system for a month.

Tomorrow we’re going to take a nice long tour as a group through the product and review everything.  Again.  There will be other opportunities to review everything, but this is the dress rehearsal.

Yesterday we were in the middle of our weekly D&R meeting (for “design and requirements”) when our colleagues on the other end of the Skype in Washington, DC hollered.  At first we thought a large bug had flown into the room.  Seconds later, we learned there had been an earthquake.

“Can we get back to the call?” we asked, safe here in Woods Hole.

Two minutes or so later, the building rocked gently back and forth.  Outside I watched the trees do the same.

That was the end of the D&R call.  So all of us will know exactly where we were and what we were doing when the Semi Big One hit Virginia.

The next big adventure is getting all of the translation strings loaded up and making sure they’re complete.  Hold on to your hats, kids.

(PS: I actually did an interview with a reporter from a Cape Cod newspaper on this story - not the state of EOL, but about what we were doing when the earthquake struck.  How about That.)