Taking a breather and trying to relax — next week will be either triumphant or a world of hurt, and exhausting either way.

This was the calm before the storm. Except before we could even get to the storm, we had to make it through a gauntlet of gatekeepers.

We’ve built a whole new software platform to replace a production system that is firmly entrenched, FDA-certified, and critically important to a billion-dollar company. No shortage of people needed to personally sign off on our launch, some of them quite adversarial and not without reason. Those approvals kept coming in right up to the hours before our target date. Our team’s managers fought those battles, but they needed documentation tailored to each gatekeeper, and producing that documentation is what I spent most of my week doing. As of right now, we are still go for launch.

Read

About a third of the way through Starter Villain. The setup is nearly complete and it just keeps getting more charmingly ridiculous as it goes. I’m looking forward to seeing what Scalzi does with it.

Played

Not much. I opened Starfield for the first time in ages to poke at all the features and content Bethesda has shipped since I last played, but I didn’t have time to really dig in.

Cooked

Juniper’s swim team had their year-end banquet, and she made sixty deviled eggs entirely by herself. After some quality assurance “sampling,” she still had nearly four dozen to bring.

I made a batch of Korean fried chicken and had extra batter, which led to some experiments. Korean fried deviled eggs? Fantastic. Korean fried neeps and tatties? Fusion fritters made in heaven. I now have to resist the urge to dunk everything in my refrigerator into that tempura-and-potato-starch batter and drop it into hot oil.

Thinking About

Next week. Overnight support shifts, takeout eaten alone instead of big team meals, high-visibility successes or failures with equally high stakes. I’ve been in this position before, but never quite at this scale.

What’s Next

For the flight to San Francisco and back I got a window seat. I’ll be curled up against the bulkhead, which means I won’t be constantly jostled and grabbed at by aisle walkers — and I’ll get to see the sights.

If the launch goes well, I’ll be writing next week’s weeknotes from a place of relief. If it doesn’t, I’ll be writing them from a place of triage. Either way, I’ll be writing them.