Thursday, September 14, 2006

here there be dragons

Sometimes, I am far dorkier than I would usually care to admit (in this instance, "sometimes" actually means every hour of the day).

As an example, consider one of the (admittedly many) allegorical devices I use every day at work: dragons. I grew up with a rather fantasy-based imagination--King Arthur, Tolkien, plastic swords, Dragon Warrior on the NES, the Dragonlance series, etc.--so I suppose it's really no wonder that I've drawn that cognitive set with me to the present day, but the thing that gets me about it is that I've made it work so well (at least, as far as I'm concerned).

So, here's how the dragons work for me now. In the current setting, "dragons" refer to considerations or parts of the software that we have acknowledged but not yet dealt with. It can apply to both business risks (say, the terms of an NDA we haven't written yet) or parts of the design that have yet to be implemented (such as a stub function within a larger sequence). I even made a definition in my little task-list plugin in my IDE for "//HTBD" so I can denote places in the code that I have to come back to and finish.

In general, the reference comes from the practice of ancient cartographers drawing serpents or other mythological creatures at the edges of the known world (the title phrase of this post loosely comes from the Lenox Globe, ca. 1503). Those parts of the system that have yet to be defined are hence "off the edge of the map" and are thus "dragons".

In any case, it keeps me entertained at work. I always used to daydream about slaying dragons, and now I get to.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

killing me sweetly

I think my job is going to kill me.

Not because of the stress, not because of the potentially long hours, but because of the adult-onset diabetes.

Granted, programming isn't the healthiest job in the world anyway; I stare at a computer monitor all day (eyes), type into a keyboard for hours (wrists), and sit at a desk doing very little in the way of exercise (heart). But what takes the cake in this case (ha!) is the sugar.

The office fridge is stocked with Pepsi, cream soda, etc. We've even made a little pop-can tetrahedron, which is currently starting into its eighth triangular layer; right now it's at 86 cans. Figuring most of those are Pepsi and only a couple are diet, I'd say we can look at an average of around 140 calories and about 38 grams of sugar. All told, that brings us close to 12,000 calories in the stack and about 3,200 grams of sugar consumed. Granted, it's not all me and it's taken us a few months, but still...that's a lot of high fructose corn syrup.

Maybe we should switch to diet.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

fiddle me this

For future reference, all else being equal, girls who play the violin are far more attractive that those who do not.

Especially if they're Irish.

Friday, September 01, 2006

backtalk

Something has really been annoying me lately, and even though no one seems to want to provide me with any feedback on this blog of mine, I figure I'll open it up to the community for further discussion.

First, here's an example situation: last night about seven o'clock, I was sitting around watching football and trying to figure out what to do with my night. In the process of doing this, I talked
back and forth with two friends about the prospect of going downtown. The first exchange ended around 7:30, and I was told "I'll call you when I'm ready". The second exchange ended around 8:30 with "I'll give you a call back when we leave here, which should be in just a little bit". Having supposedly settled that I was going to be going downtown in a while, I threw on a belt, shaved, etc. and finished up watching the college football, expecting to get a couple of phone calls when the time came. Around 10:00, all the games on TV were over, so I wandered over to the computer to check the postgame reports on the other ones, still patiently waiting for the phone to ring. About 11:00, I started getting a little impatient and decided to call my people to see what was up. No answer. No return phone call. No contact of any sort. I heard through the grapevine that both actually did end up downtown, and supposedly had a great time.

Now, I don't know what the rest of the world thinks about this, but that pisses me off. And I feel like I'm completely justified.

If I'm not justified in that sort of situation, then where's the disconnect? Did I miss the lesson on interpersonal interaction that gives the rules on when you call someone back and when you don't? Is there some unwritten law that forbids giving someone a call if you decide to cancel pending plans? Have the common-courtesy police decided that there's no need to apologize for basically ditching someone?

I can understand if some plans just sort of fall through. If the situation is like "Hey, I'm going downtown too--maybe I'll call you when we get down there", then I don't really expect a call. When the voice mail says "Hey, just thought I'd see what you're up to--give me a call", there's no real responsibility to return that. I can understand if something comes up and you just can't answer the phone, or if you're too busy at the moment to respond immediately. There are valid reasons out there to miss a call or be late on returning one. But if the plan is specifically to go out with someone and it's down to the "call me to tell me where we're meeting" phase, that's a call you need to make. When it's "Hey, I need to buy tickets tomorrow. Call me back and tell me whether you're coming or not", that's a call you need to make.

I'm not saying that people should always follow through with social plans and should never cancel. That's fine. But is a phone call to the cancelee to tell them you're calling it off too much to ask?