Flashes of Panic

I wound up making a quick hack to my PHP forms to email a copy of every new update to my editor. I’d push it to the database, then start on the next one; once she’d read it, she’d either email an edited version back to me (seldom) or tell me which changes to make (more common.) Most of the changes were on the level of when numbers are spelled out and when numerals are used, terminal commas, and things like that, but once in a while we’d have a more interesting puzzle (“Is it appropriate to describe someone as a casualty? Is there a good metaphor for describing the way the men’s pack is spread across two lanes of road?”)

Other technical details were annoying but not crippling. My wonderful hyperlinked bios turned out to scramble the front page of the site, so I ended up going back after the race and filling them in rather than using them while the race was in progress. I also had issues with updates which included line breaks; it turned out I needed to do some addslashes() and stripslashes() work to make PHP and MySQL play well together again. This sort of thing always gets me in trouble, because somehow I end up with multiple-escaped apostrophes (\\’) and I wind up just replacing them with ’ to make them work.

The wireless network in the press room was sketchy for the first half hour or so, then once it was stabilized we had no troubles with it. (Others reported continuing issues through the race, but I didn’t experience that.)

By going to the NYRR to help out for a few hours after the race, I got to leave NYC after the course had been re-opened to traffic, which made it simpler to get out of town. Traffic was heavier than I had expected, but I made it back to Medford in just under four hours, which must be some kind of record, to the glee of one lonely kitty.

Now Playing: 10:15 Saturday Night by The Cure