Booty call from an old project stirs old pains

Posted under A Geek Dad's Life, Blog Posts, Software Design

Do you have an old project that you haven’t seen or heard from in a long time?  When you last saw that old project, did you vow never to speak to it again?  Or maybe you and your project drifted apart as your priorities changed, and your project just faded away, or you just stopped calling each other anymore.  Regardless of how you broke up with that old project, have you healed your emotional scars to the point that you don’t think of it anymore?

Well, one of my old projects e-mailed me tonight.  It was a shock.  I didn’t quite know what to say.  The minute I read that e-mail, I was overwhelmed with emotions and memories; the thrill that I felt when I first met the project, the promises we made to each other, the hopes of growing old together, the long hours that we spent together. 

Then I remembered all of the hard work and energy that I devoted to that bitch just to have her break my heart and my spirit.  That project embodied so many promises to me, and it failed to deliver on any of them. I remembered the bitter disappointment in myself for not making our relationship work, and the way the project finally made me feel.

Sure, I tell myself that it wasn’t all my fault but we all know that relationships are what what we make them, and they are only as good as the effort that we put into them. I put PLENTY of effort into the relationship, but I now know that it failed because I was working on the wrong things in the relationship.  Maybe I was focusing on the easy parts, and the parts that I enjoyed, the parts that fed the infatuation, while ignoring the parts that I did not like, or was not good at, and the parts in which I feared failure. 

The project was a “baby name guessing game” web site that my wife and I started in 2003.  I had made a simple version of it for when my first daughter was born so that our friends and relatives could guess the new baby’s gender and name.  Several of our friends asked me to build baby guessing games for their impending babies.  And an idea was born; Why don’t we build a web site and sell these baby guessing games?!

It was my first .NET web site using the brand new .NET platform (when it was released in 2002).  I spent several hundred hours developing that site and learning 80% of what I know about .NET development today.   

My wife and I set up a corporation and spent a couple thousand dollars on server hardware, OS licensing, hosting, legal fees, and we did some very minor marketing.  Of course, the idea was so awesome and it was so going to be a huge success.  We were going to do affiliate deals, brick-and-mortar cross-promotions, gift deals, corporate branding, and more.  The sky was the limit.  We would build the site, people would tell their friends about it, and the site would grow to be a huge success, and we would be able to send our kids to college.  We would be able to wipe our butts with Benjamins.

In the end, we failed to sell the idea because neither of us “do sales,” and the site had some glitches, and I was burning out working 50-hour weeks at my day job and another 20 hours a week on the site.  My wife was busy wrangling our newborn and feeling bad about not being good at sales.  Ultimately, we failed to execute.  duh. 

“Failure to execute the business plan.”  That’s what every business veteran warns new entrepreneurs about.  Few people truly understand that until they have lived through it.  Every book, magazine, and expert will tell you that most businesses fail because they fail to execute a well-rounded business plan.  A business requires a sales and marketing plan.  The plan must consist of more than just “and we’ll figure it out when we get there,” or “then people will find it and buy it.” 

So, burnt out and disillusioned, I moved on to other hobbies, had two more kids, and have fallen in and out and in love again with my full-time employer since then.  (I have always been and continue to be in love with my wife.)  The web site continues to run to this day… which brings us to this blog post.

I received an e-mail from a person who used one of the many Gift Certificates that we sent out over two years ago.  The person started a game, and the web site allowed one of their friends to guess twice even though the game preferences were set to only allow one guess per person. 

The e-mail asked if we could fix that for her.  Fair enough.  It was a simple inquiry from a customer.  But that simple e-mail re-awakened the angst, stress, and emotion that I thought I had moved past.

It had been so long since I even dealt with the site that I had to configure an e-mail address to respond to her.  I had to clear the cobwebs from my memory and try to remember how the web site worked.  I spent a good amount of time looking for the source code.  I’ve been through three computer upgrades/moves since then, so it took some effort to find the source code.  I’m still not sure that I have the latest version.  I had to upgrade it from VS 2002 (yes, 2002) to VS2005.  It won’t compile.  I can’t fix the problem anytime soon.  I replied to the lady and told her that we could delete one of the two guesses from her friend, yada-yada.

Now that I have been through the ordeal of remembering the bad times, I am also remembering the good times.  I am remembering the hopes that we had for the project. 

I am wondering if it deserves a second chance.  Nothing definite, no promises, just another look.  Given the advantage of hindsight, what have we learned since then, and how might we apply what we have learned to make another go of it.

Would we be satisfied to lower our expectations, balance our efforts against the needs of our family and full-time employers, honestly re-assess the project’s shortcomings, and align our efforts to the project’s needs?  Does that bitch deserve a second chance?  *sigh*   I still find that project attractive.