I allways use (alert (strcat "whatever : " (vl-princ-to-string whoever))) , even if whoever is nil , alert function still alerts.
sorry I have no time to respond more because my agency asked me to help one of its clients with a problem while my dayjob is also quite intense at this moment (end of year stress) so I work from 6am till 5pm for dayjob and 6pm to 0.00am for the other job (and this 24/7 , a couple of weeks in a row so far)
I wrote (of course) an app for the second job but it took me 2 whole weekends , starting friday from 6pm and 'finished' on sunday 10pm , only left my cave for food and sanitary stops. Hope to finish the second job this week / weekend so next week I only have day job left , no pressure haha.
Don't think I'll ever gonna take on two jobs at the same time any time soon.