Dev Log: May 13 Wrap-up

Overview

Today was a bit of a mixed bag. I spent the morning getting the foundation laid for a new personal project, then shifted gears into some necessary maintenance and reporting tweaks for work. It felt good to balance some clean-slate architecture with real-world bug squashing.

What I Worked On

Kicking off a new project

I finally bit the bullet and started a new repository for my 'HomeAlone' project. It’s still in the 'empty room' phase—mostly just setting up the environment so I don't run into formatting headaches later. I spent some time configuring Prettier and EditorConfig to keep the TypeScript and Angular code clean from day one. I also got the VS Code launch configurations ready so I can debug directly in the browser without faffing around. It’s just scaffolding for now, but there's something satisfying about a fresh, clean .gitignore.

Hardening the data sync logic

Back in the main workspace, I had to revisit a decorator used for our object-pulling logic. We were seeing some weirdness when users would enter low timeout values, so I added a validation check to ensure the API timeout is at least 30 seconds.

I also ran into a classic case where a missing key in a composite array was causing things to blow up. I refactored the validation logic to use optional chaining—honestly, obj?.currentForm?.controls is a lifesaver for preventing those annoying null-pointer crashes. I also hooked up a proper alert service to give the user some actual feedback instead of just failing silently.

Sometimes the most important work isn't the complex algorithm, but just making sure the app doesn't crash when a form field is empty.

Expanding report visibility

Finished the day by updating one of our feedback worklist reports. The current view was a bit too thin on details, so I added several new columns to the configuration. Users can now see things like patient names, identifiers, and specific location data (like floor and bed numbers) directly in the list. It was mostly JSON configuration work, but it should make the worklist much more functional for the team actually using it every day.

Wrapping Up

Solid day overall. The new project is officially "alive" (even if it's just a config file), and the work apps are a little more robust than they were this morning. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to dive deeper into the actual logic for the new repo once the initial setup excitement wears off. Catch you later.