So I just finished writing another technical document. It is two APIs for inserting data into two tables I designed. Fourteen pages to describe what are essentially two procedures. They each have 15-20 parameters which must be described a little, and there are some notes. But that's a lot of words for two procedures.

It's taken me three days of work to get to this point. This of course includes all the time I've been goofing off the previous two days, which meant a twelve hour work day today to get it done. After reading the documentation, the designs, what we're trying to accomplish; after taking a bunch of notes of how I see how data will be inputed; after reducing some 6 APIs to 2 big APIs, when I started to write everything down, that's when I start finding the holes.

It seems that it's only when I start writing the document that I really start thinking about the wholes in the design. I write a section and I'm thinking at the same time, so I tend to go through my notes and see that I'm totally wrong here, or confusing here, or missed this case here. So then I have to rethink and rewrite and it really makes the writing process longer than it should. And the end the first draft is still a piece of shit that I had to finish and left a few things out, thinking I'll fix it in the next draft. Which I should be able to, although meanwhile the document is not complete to my satisfaction. And you have to write clearly, since this is the bible that people will code to. So it does pain me to deliver a subpar document.

Now I have to actually implement the API so that people can test their code that uses it. Like I've ever written PL/SQL code. Well, it's about time I learned to use the language that 95% of the other developers at my company use. Really sucks to be the only person assigned to a project -- have to do everything myself, or steal time from some other person by getting their help.

After reading The Hunt for Red October I decided to watch the movie, which was quite inspiring when I saw it in 1990. Back then I saw the movie with my friends for the sole reason that Sean Connery was in it. I wasn't into war movies or high tech thrillers, and Sean Connery was particularly popular at that point in time. So as I reread the novel (finished reading yesterday) I could picture the characters just like in the movie.

As many adaptations, the movie follows the essential elements of the novel. Naturally, there is a lot more going on in the book which doesn't make it into the movie. Some characters are eliminated or combined, some events are also combined. Still, the essence is there and interesting to see the parts that did make it into the movie.

Jack Ryan, the hero in the movie and one of the major characters in the book, has appeared in other Clancy books. I think in his last book, Ryan had become President of US. Ryan is probably the character with the most words in the novel, but he's not the hero. A lot of people do a lot of things to get everything done. Ryan mostly tags along and comes up with a few good initial ideas. So the movie has him doing more things than in the book, and as I keep watching the movie, Ryan is doing a *lot* more things than he did in the book. He's *the* man. And it does set him up for the two sequels that Harrison Ford did.