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This is why the code breaks March 11, 2008

Posted by Aaron in : Quotes, Work , add a comment

This is it now, everybody get down, this is all it can take, this is why the code breaks.
These are real bits of code or sample data found in projects that I’ve worked on. I wonder how many other code monkeys stumble across old code or bits of sample data and wonder how many cans of pop they’d drunk before writing it…

Once mocked, now respected…. December 31, 2007

Posted by Aaron in : Work , add a comment

They mocked me for being able to walk to my car and pull out a tent, tarp, chair and shovel out of the back
For having a coat, hat and gloves with me most of the time
For my deck of cards, my frisbee, my flash light
But today it is I who laugh
Today, the office is out of toilet paper
But I am not.

Loose Referers August 12, 2007

Posted by Aaron in : Work , 2comments

Warning, there be nerd rocks ahead, abandon all hope ye who read on… To avoid nerd rocks, Goto SafeHarbor.

I always have the worst time spelling the word referrer. When I’m working with PHP, or several other web-based development systems, I alway spell it incorrectly and have to go back and correct it. None of the development tools I use have built in spell checkers for obvious reasons, even well organized pretty code isn’t going to pass any conventional spell checker. I’ve always considered this typo to be an extension of the double-strike phenomena that bothers Michael so much and causes me to loose the dogs of war, when I really wanted to lose the dogs of war. An inconvenient typo to say the least when being chased by said dogs.

All that said, after I fix my spelling of it, the word always looks wrong, again I’ve just attributed it to my brain’s tendency to pick certain words and cling desperately to an incorrect spelling. But while poking around I’ve discovered I’m not crazy after all, at least not for this particular thing. Proto web-nerds from the 90s so commonly misspelled referrer as “referer” that the http specifications actually use the misspelled form which has as a result been adopted as a standard industry spelling. To which I would like to stand up and with my sternest look, tell the tech industry: Bad industry bad! There is enough creating of technical words, there need not be extra bastardization of the english language just because you kan’t spel guud.

SafeHarbor:
    And as a result of all this, we routinely have to reverse the polarity on the substrates… Oh sorry, you caught the end of the nerd rocks. Hope you weren’t drinking pop at the same time, I hear nerd rocks and soda can make for quite the rumbly tummy.

And I can’t quite explain it… updated July 10, 2007

Posted by Aaron in : Life, Work , add a comment

Tomorrow is likely to be an odd day. A 3-part project landed in our lap today based on a very sound business plan, not only that, a key portion of it is aimed at helping non-profit organizations raise money. The man would prefer to make us partners rather than pay us large sums up front. I have little doubt that if we built him the sites he wants, we could make large sums of money. On top of it, though parts of it are boring and simple, there are several core system integration issues I would relish tackling. On top of even that, but should it succeed the print company that is part of my company will get orders that could help it get into the black in the first year of operation, rather than after the 3rd or 4th year. The actual time spent developing the first part of the project which will help fund the other parts will not actually require us to divert so much of our time that other projects are endangered. Tomorrow the board meets to make its decision on what agreement we would consider sufficient compensation for our part.

When we meet tomorrow, as the minority partner, I’m going to tell them I believe we shouldn’t take the project. Though he approached us and said that God had inspired his plan and that he wanted to help these people give back to their communities, that explanation just doesn’t seem to quite jive with the vibe I got from him. This decision is made all the harder by my belief that the core concepts behind his idea would actually work, and would generate repeat fund-raising income for organizations that desperately need it. But it does so by encouraging/exploiting materialism, instead of direct giving. Ironically materialism came up yesterday (ok technically at this point its now 2 days ago) during the sermon (maybe I’ll summarize it at the end, it was a good one). To make a parallel with the sermon, just because I know people will gamble doesn’t mean I should be building casinos, even if some of the money is going to schools. Yes, some people will always find a way to be financially exploited, but I don’t want to be involved in doing it. Spooky how that first part of what I’d intended as an analogy seems so close to what proponents of casino building say. I wasn’t the only one to get a funny vibe from this guy, I’d sure feel a lot better if its the other two board members have reached the same conclusion (or are fine with it). I really don’t want to have to try a david and goliath with my puny 15% against their 85%.

Now for those who aren’t in town to hear the sermon I referenced… Rather than continue with the study of Acts that we’d been doing, the pastor apparently rewrite his message when he should have been sleeping. Every year the churches in the community get together for a 4th of july outreach/fireworks display. This year for various reasons outside our control, the choice was to not have it or have it on the grounds of the horse racing/casino (aka the Racino, and yes, it is a stupid name). The churches decided that the outreach was more important than making sure we aren’t seen near it. However editorials have been surfacing for weeks outraged that such a decision would be made, the latest of which actually came out and said that this person refused to take the Lord to such a place and begged the other christians in the community to do likewise. But on to the sermon, rather than try to re-preach it which would not be enjoyed by any of us, let me just retype a couple of the key points he made (well ok, I extrapolated a couple of them from what he said, but it still fits the intent).

Updated: We officially turned the work down this morning having made the decision to do so a couple days ago.

I think I’ll go to the office March 20, 2007

Posted by Aaron in : Work , add a comment

Its 2am, two new cds are ripped and ready (Augustana: All the Stars and Boulevards and Ben Folds: Rockin’ the suburbs) I sit here in the office krinkling my fingers, making sure they are nice and loose.
Good morning computer,
I am a monkey,
wearing a grey cotton shirt.
You want some code?
maybe some splines?
The web-app combo is only 395k
Its ok, you don’t have to run
I’ve still got to debug

Everybody knows
It hurts to fix code
not everybody does

meh, ran out of parody, I should get started, I’m hoping that by dawn I’m either asleep or watching the sunrise from the roof (yes mom, I’ll stay away from the edge). I’d pay to get to it from this side, but man I would like to watch the sun rise.

Moments of monumental absurdity January 15, 2007

Posted by Aaron in : Work , 3comments

I have a career of monumental absurdity. Think about it, I sit around telling a little box to do things, and having it mock me in a simple way for instructing it poorly, or not anticipating that another little box may have a slightly different world view, and so may need to be instructed in a slightly different fashion. That is my job. One of the many questions I’ve always had though isn’t about my career, its about others. Do you other people outside of the IT industry also find your day to day life beset by monumental absurdity as well, of either tool, coworker or another source?

While I’ve wondered this for quite a while, Dan provided the inspiration to turn it into a post….

Dan: last night, I dreamed that I made the coolest JS thing ever
AC: lol, were you in a scripting contest with the devil?
AC: and today did you set out to make a tribute to the best JS thing ever?
Dan: no, sadly
Dan: to make it nerdier… I think it had to do with data abstraction

Well I guess thats about it September 11, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Work , add a comment

Today I let my current employer know I was leaving and passed my official acceptance on to the other. Final move is still up in the air because I’m giving my current employer time to figure out how long they absolutely need me. Oh and for the record, I never want to be put in this situation again, that talk with my manager really sucked.

Hmm its 1am September 1, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Life, Work , 3comments

1AM has snuck up on me, I’ve been listenning to music, playing with site configuration and copying music to an Ipod shuffle that my new bank gave me for using direct deposit. Incidentally I’d love to get some feedback from someone who has used iTunes under both windows and mac environments. I guess with all the publicity over things I expected it to be this amazingly functional and intuitive program. I’ve only been using it for a few hours now and maybe its because I have virtually no mac background… but it feels clumsy and worse still inexplicable. I’ve closed it several times simply because I started some operation by accident that I didn’t understand but didn’t want to complete and couldn’t figure out how to cancel any other way. I’m pretty sure the big status thingy at the top of the screen should allow me to cancel operations but so far all my clicks have been ignored. I guess I’ll figure it out, but I’d much rather have an MP3 player with better software (since I don’t care to use iTunes as a purchasing tool).
Tomorrow I head to oklahoma for a bit. I haven’t talked about it much because frankly I haven’t really known what to say. Sufficient to say that things got better at work, but its only making the vast differences in approaches more obvious. Oh and when my manager gets angry he gets quiet. Kinda wish I hadn’t had the opportunity to find that out (and I certainly had a deservidly pretty large share in why he was angry at the time) but oh well. Time will tell, I’m keep hoping for a hand with no apparent body to write something on the wall, be it stay here or go. *shrugs* I’ll be back by wednesday night and much pondering I will do.

Supper break August 20, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Work , add a comment

Well I’m at work right now putting in some hours toward my upcoming vacation over labor day. I just went around making sure to check if I was the last one left (there were 3 others at one point, and I got here at 1 so possibly more) and turning off lights as I went. Supper at this point consists of tootsie rolls left over from candy that was brought in on Friday, though when I go home in about an hour I’ll probably eat something real. Last night I sat down to write a post about the canoe trip but was too tired to finish it (you try paddling a kayak by yourself for 3 or 4 hours and see how motivated you are to use your arms in any fashion), so it languishes in draft-land right now, I really haven’t much more to add to it so I’ll try to remember to get it up later tonight.

Rocking out February 28, 2006

Posted by Aaron in : Play, Work , 2comments

Its silly, but I’m really enjoying myself. I’m sitting here in the office, having decided to put in some extra hours on a big project. I’ve got PFR’s title album, Pray For Rain on and at the moment track 2 (Do you want to know love) is blaring. Not quite an thousand code-monkeys at a thousand keyboards, but I’m feeling mischievious so lets see what I can come up with.