In a village not so long ago (maybe the 1960s) and not very far away (somewhere around Cleveland) there was a brave adventurer who decided to buck the centuries of oppression by cruel dinosaur overlords. Lacking true tools with which to fight, he engendered a cunning way to turn the dinosaurs into fossils using only eggnog and holly branches, thus leaving the Great Pumpkin Holiday in peace and theoretically guaranteeing the sheeplike populace a full month of stress-free retail shopping between the Festival of Halloween and Jewish Guy's Birthday.
Amidst the swirling autumn leaves, St. Nicholas of Cleveland stopped off at a restaurant to give Arlo Guthrie some weed (thus inspiring the 17-minute opus "Alice's Restaurant" in his honor) before going off to do battle with the dinosaur overloads. The cruelest and meanest of them all, the dreaded fanged Turkeysaurus giganticus, were known for their amazing ninja fighting skills.
Faced with poor surroundings (hello, Ohio?) and an encroaching tide of eggnog, the last few remaining Turkeysaurus giganticii retaliated with only the weapons they had on hand. They stitched projectiles out of skin left over from the wild boar they had devoured earlier in the day, threw thorn-studded corncobs, and set off sweet potato bombs.
After destroying the last army, St. Nicholas of Cleveland placed the head of the defeated Turkeysaurus general on a pike and marched it down a town square the villagers built in his honor. In the center of the square he roasted the general on a pike, ripping out the wishbone to prove that humankind would be oppressed no more.
Here endeth the history lesson.
]]>How do I know?
]]>How do I know?
Jeff and I were packing up this morning for our trip to Atlanta. Well, that's a misnomer; Jeff was packing and I was doing my normal morning routine, since I'd mostly packed the night before. When I walked into the bathroom to take my shower, I noticed that Jeff had left the closet door open, and it was blocking the shower door.
(Fang—remember, we tend to refer to our cats in the collective, as they share a single brain—loves an open closet like nothing else. Except maybe scritchies and cuddles and fresh tomato sauce, but then again, our cats are weird.)
What my thought processes should have been: "I should check with Jeff to make sure he can see both cats, so that I don't shut one of them in the closet."
My actual thought process: "Can Jeff see both instances of the cat?"
Clearly, I need to unplug for the weekend.
]]>Worth noting: I immediately told Jeff, who of course laughed and got it. Not to mention verified that the cats were out of the closet.
I'm on my fourth cup of tea and it's not even lunchtime yet. The world clearly wants me to switch to decaf. [Tea, mind you. You crazy coffee drinkers are on your own.]
Get your heckles in, kids, because I'm going back on the caffeine after lunch.
Update #1, 11:15 am: Co-worker now at hospital dealing with parental heart attack.
]]>Update #2, 11:30 am: Second co-worker (sans car) must leave building to go tend to sick child. IT supervisor to drive her there. I am now the last employee standing in IT. It's not even noon.
(What is the game of 'seven words'? See this entry for explanations, or to contribute potential words.)
They resist sticks, stones, brandished bones, and - in the earliest of hours when no one is looking - abject pleading and begging. They, the disenchanted teenage brood, resent that it was I - silly, bumbling fool, I - who brought them into existence, and blame me for all their problems.They hurl insults when angered. Technical terms are spat like curse words through the browser, because they know I feel the sting.
It has been seven days since the Battle For Manage-Pings began in northeast Alabama, and I must report that the carnage has been intense. Burned dinners. Insomnia. Ignored cats. Friends who resort to emails in the hopes of actually making contact with my brain.
]]>(What is the game of 'seven words'? See this entry for explanations, or to contribute potential words.)
They resist sticks, stones, brandished bones, and - in the earliest of hours when no one is looking - abject pleading and begging. They, the disenchanted teenage brood, resent that it was I - silly, bumbling fool, I - who brought them into existence, and blame me for all their problems.They hurl insults when angered. Technical terms are spat like curse words through the browser, because they know I feel the sting.
It has been seven days since the Battle For Manage-Pings began in northeast Alabama, and I must report that the carnage has been intense. Burned dinners. Insomnia. Ignored cats. Friends who resort to emails in the hopes of actually making contact with my brain.
Tales abound of the sadness and fruitlessness of the Civil War, where skirmish became full-scale bloodshed over pastoral bits of innocence such as a cunningly-positioned copse of trees. Battles for nothing but slightly higher ground, better shade, or the commanding officer's whim. No better can be said of this weeklong rejoinder against fewer than twenty lines of code.
Twenty lines, when averaged mathematically, might indicate the creation of two lines of code per day.
War, presented as a succession of averages, consists of nothing but arcs and arrows indicating the direction of marches, with the implication of inevitability. They signify nothing of the battles that were fought in between, the daily, tiny advances and retreats that, from a distance, blur into arc and curve.
Code battles, presented as averages, tell nothing at all. A total of two lines added at the end of the day says nothing of that day's battle: fifty lines written, tested, ripped out, rewritten, retested, and ripped out once again, only to be replaced by the original code that was there in the first place. Nor does it acknowledge that this battle was fought on a daily basis until, at last, the twenty lines of code were reduced to six perfectly-working ones.
For all the time spent writing, rewriting, crash-testing, and generally attempting to batter the code to indistinguishable bits, they should be flashier.
Tomorrow, perhaps, I will plant the marker in the ground, just north of the six lines, to signify how hard-won the battle was for this particular function. Perhaps I should spring for another long-winded, self-effacing comment along the lines of this one, buried deep in Quarto:
Now, I realize that nobody but me is probably ever going to read this. Let me just say this. I AM AN IDIOT. Hello? What happens if the current user wants to change his/her own username? Doesn't it stand to reason, you silly wanna-be coder, that if the current username changes, that we should change the cookie and session info for the current user?
My God, I've been working on this crazy set of scripts for a year and I JUST NOW REALIZED THIS when my spouse did a test install and bombed out in this very situation.
I expect my coding license (which I barely got in the first place) to be revoked as soon as anyone else hears about this. At least Heather got a good laugh when I told her…
Or perhaps I will choose the more epigrammatic humor that hides in the comments of the manage-entries page:
# Set us up the querybomb.
# I cannot believe I just typed that.
# I am so lame.
This morning's completion of this particular section of code surprised me; in my concentration to fight my way through this particular issue, I had failed to plan the next battle.
Given a day or two, I will rejoin the code battle (already in progress). My brain needs some good, unbroken sleep to rest up after this battle; so much blood and toil for XML-RPC pings to play exactly as I wanted them to. The cats have requested apologies in the form of nearly-continuous petting, and the spouse would probably prefer that the next dinner I make not be burned prior to serving.
I read through this now and suspect that code battles aren't won; they're just…survived.
* * * * *
In better news, the new version of wondergeeks is live now, and is running the portal script that I'm currently working on. The script is still most definitely still in beta, but the next beta should contain far more robust server-side code, and for the love of all things holy I have got to shut up and get a life, or otherwise no one but my cats will ever speak to me again…
Right, then. Off for a cup of rosehip/hibiscus tea, cat-cuddling, and perhaps an episode or two of Sex In The City. Back when I'm a wee bit more interesting —
]]>Today's word was bellicose (warlike in manner or temperament), suggested by Will and chosen by Matthew. Check in again soon for word #6.