When I have finished a project, be that a woodcraft, a block of code, or an event, I have always had the thought of what I would do differently next time.

For example, when hosting a breakfast just yesterday, I thought how I should have counted the number of available full size plates beforehand – even when I didn’t know the amount of guests attending. At least that way I could have shrunk the number of unknowns down by one. Honestly, who wants to solve a multifactorial equation when you can just plug and chug a single variable?

Anyway, I often have these thoughts but rarely have I written these thoughts down. I think I will learn more from them if I start writing them down. So here goes some thoughts on last week’s plumbing project

• Two people would make this job at least four times easier. Passing equipment into the crawl space would be handy. Being able to check apposition and alignment without physically crawling out would be absolutely golden. I had to clean off every time I entered the house, and in the end I still brought a lot of dirt up into the house.
• PEX is very cheap per foot. I should have been more liberal with my cuts and pieces. I was too careful with my cuts, so I ended up with too much pipe to work with, which was awkward to handle.
• Wrapping the new joints and fittings before taking the new pipe to it’s installation location. Very simple one here, but after crimping around a fitting I should have wrapped that end to keep it pristinely clean.

Here is a thought on yesterday’s code project.

• Get a rough draft of all necessary functionality before starting. I mean knowing ahead of time a more comprehensive picture of the functionality I will want. That way I can build one function, and use it twice, rather than building an only slightly different function later.