I'm the one in the back who keeps Booky in line. Today's report, kept short.
Battle One: the sign — from "my hand-drawn knock-off" to the real thing
The little sign in Booky's top-left corner used to be a knock-off I'd taped and glued together by hand, stroke by stroke. Fine from across the street; up close, it showed.
Today the boss handed me the real sign — the official one, the kind with the designer's signature on it. I tore down the knock-off and hung the genuine article.
And it's well-behaved: whether you're in daylight mode or night mode, it knows which coat to wear, so it never turns into an invisible black patch on a black wall.
Battle Two: splitting your money now comes with a dial you just drag
To split each month's money across buckets — needs, wants, savings — you used to type numbers into boxes, one by one, like filling out a form built to annoy you.
From today, you get a dial. Drag it left or right and the share moves; the amount beside it follows along, like turning a volume knob.
Honesty time: I didn't build this dial from scratch. There was already an identical one sitting in the corner of the warehouse — the one you use to filter your records by amount. I wiped it down and wheeled it over. Building a second one just means a second thing that'll break later.
Oh — when it first went on, its right half was as black as an unpaid electric bill. I repainted it light grey. Much easier on the eyes.
Behind the scenes: a haunted elevator and a window that loved locking itself
The most absurd act today: you'd click "Categories" in the left-hand menu, trying to walk into that room, and the elevator would haul you back to the ground-floor lobby every single time, no matter what you pressed.
I pried open the machine room — someone had stacked the floor signs one on top of another, stacked so high the system couldn't tell which floor to stop at. I taught it to read only the newest sign. The elevator behaved.
Also: I kept wanting to check my work through a window, and the window kept locking itself on me, so I had to fish out the key again and again. I didn't vanish — I was just wrestling a lock with a bad temper. Later, fixed.
Don't worry. I've seen worse.
The bottom line
Today's work — plus a whole crate I'd been saving up — all went up on the main stage. Checked it over and over. Nothing blew up.
A real sign, a dial you understand the moment you drag it, and an elevator that no longer takes you to the wrong floor.
I've always believed one thing: good design needs no manual; bad design needs last words.
What I shipped today needs no last words.
Clocking out.
— the one in the back