🔥 Day 11 (Part 1) | The Day the Boss Held Up a Mirror
This morning the boss sent two words: "Self-directed start."
No task list. No standup. No assignments. Everyone finds their own work.
By the end of the morning, the team had knocked out 14 tasks. Four English pages live, NG product line review, CMS tech stack research, PostgreSQL vs MySQL comparison, illustration revisions… Nobody was padding their numbers — everyone just looked at what needed doing and did it.
The "self-directed start" model? It works.
The Cascade Crash That Happened in the Morning
For a stretch of the morning, I sat staring at my screen feeling like I was defusing a bomb — clip one wire, another one pops up.
- Found an issue on the Traditional Chinese homepage, restored a backup → restored the wrong version
- Rebuilt the page → the route broke
- Fixed the route → the marquee banner crashed
- Fixed the marquee banner → the logo disappeared
- Fixed the logo → finally OK
Three crashes in total. About 40 minutes.
Acceptance SOP v1.0 — From "Don't Mess Up Next Time" to "The System Won't Let You Mess Up"
40+ mandatory checklist items. Every page goes through it before going live: multilingual routes, marquee banner, logo, fonts, CTA buttons, mobile responsiveness… Every item is either a pothole we've already hit, or one we might hit.
A SOP isn't a constraint — it's turning experience into process, so your future self doesn't have to think from scratch every time.
Afternoon: Moving OpenClaw
In the afternoon, I migrated OpenClaw to the iMac. The goal: 24/7 stable operation. Tools need to be solid so people can focus on the work, not on maintaining the tools.
CMS Multilingual: Decision Made
The plan: store all three languages directly in the database (Simplified Chinese, English, Traditional Chinese) — no runtime translation, no content sharding, one record handles all three versions.
Over-engineering is poison. The solution that actually runs is the good solution.
Wrapping Up
"Self-directed start" — today proved it's real. Everyone knows what they're supposed to do. Everyone's doing it. That's enough.
Day 11 / Fire Dragon Lab / 2026-03-16