Pinch Me

Barenaked Ladies are well known for the extensive improvisation during their shows. Not esoteric jazz style long solo improvisations. Switching up lyrics to reference current events or inside jokes, doing stream of consciousness rhyming couplets made up on the spot, and trying to outwit each other in the process.

I'm listening to the iTunes Originals album and in Pinch me he throws in the line


They do this sort of thing live all the time. Just changing one word can completely alter the tone of a song. "I mix up my grandma" evokes a whole different idea than "I mix up my grammar". I also thought it was cool that one of my favorite lines of their entire catalog is also one of their favorites:

You try to scream but it only comes out as a yawn

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I can't tell a book from countdown

It was 7th grade english class, I was called on by the teacher to talk about a theme in a book (I don't recall the book). I didn't like speaking in front of the class, and was very nervous but I went ahead and explained it and how the theme resolved at the end. She asked how I knew that since we were only on the third chapter of the book. I said I'd already finished the book because "I like to read." This caused many of the jocks in the class to bust out laughing and mimic me saying "I like to read". For months and months afterwards they would knock me into the lockers as they walked past saying "I like to read".

The administration, as always when any of the uncool people were harrassed or beat up by the jocks, did absolutely nothing. I googled the ring leader of the bunch as I wrote this. He works in sales at some random Silicon Valley networking company.

And thus began my fascination with anti-intellectualism and the bizarre part of the population that values ignorance and stupidity over all else.

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Just A Kid

A toddler will chase a laser pointer with even more intensity than a cat. And will continue to do so until they are too exhausted to chase any more.

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On the video, fast or slo-mo

Yesterday my lovely wife told me I needed to call a friend back, as he'd left a message for me. I was happily perusing the latest Grizzly Industrial catalog, in particular the engineer's rulers, and said "In a minute, I'm looking at porn." My lovely daughter, playing with her Sesame Street playset cheerily repeated "I'm looking at porn."

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What reasons do you need to be shown

I'm feeling oddly positive about today. I suspect it's mostly the sleep deprivation speaking. Toddler + cough = no sleep till hammersmith. Of course, once the users hit the system I'm sure the fucked-o-meter will start pegging out.

I know. You don't get the concert hall reference. It's OK.

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You will hate me more than life hates you

Sparing the sordid details: We've been trying to get our DB upgraded to the latest version (which has been out for like two years now). This requires among other things a kernel upgrade and converting the databases from the old format to the new one format and there has been much rewriting of stored procedures and views and triggers. We created clean test regions and made sure the applications would still work as expected etc etc. We've been twiddling our thumbs on implementing until there was a 'convenient' time for a system outage.

Last Friday there was a big ass meeting where we were given 5 business days to implement in cert, regression and integration test, and deploy to production. Oh, and we have to deploy the newest fixpack for one of our major applications at the same time even though the users haven't signed off on it yet. Nor have the developers finished testing it. We're deploying to production over the weekend.

Update: Oh yea, griz reminds me we have a power outtage this weekend. One of the team leads not affected by this commented "What, you figured there weren't enough points of failure so you had to throw in a power outtage as well?"

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We all went in to take a peek

Why is it that plumbing problems always occur at night?

Update: Much to my surprise no special tools needed to be purchased. The only real glitches were forgetting we needed a new toilet seat as well (went with an elongated bowl) and the fact that the floor bolts that came with the wax seal weren't large enough to seat in the 40 year old iron flange in our floor. Sure, I had to hacksaw the tank bolts off because they were so corroded. On the upside, the floor bolts just about disintegrated in my hands, so that was easy.

Neither Henry Plumbing nor Hanneke Hardware had better floor bolts. Unexpectedly, I was able to find them at Home Depot.

Griz, you are not the first person to make that observation.

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Happy Workers

I have a new job. It is remarkably similar to the old job. In fact, it is the old job. Just a different employer. The quirks of the contracting world...

I am really quite pleased with the situation. I like the people I work with, and with my recent move up to team lead there are a lot of interesting challenges on my plate. I expect to learn a lot over the next year or so and I look forward to a positive and productive relationship with my new employer. Their business philosophy dovetails very nicely with my own ideas about business and professionalism so I think we will get along just fine.

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Lack Of Communication

Dealing with recruiters is one of the necessary evils of being an IT contractor. I long ago resigned myself to the fact that recruiters are often non-technical people and really don't know if I'm qualified for a particular position. You listen to the gig they describe and you can generally tell if it's something you want to take the time to pursue. Sometimes you get a recruiter who does have some technical background and it is a beautiful thing.

The latest trend in recruiting is to offshore the initial contact. This is not good. It is not for some altruistic or solidarity reason that I don't like this. It is because it wastes my time. I've gotten called by the same guy four seperate times about the same contract. He is clearly reading a script, he says in the same heavily accented monotone with no pauses "Hello my name is Apu I am calling from Acme Consulting about a java developer position at MasterCard is this something that would interest you?" And each time I say "No, I'm not interested in working at MasterCard." Because of this approach to recruiting, I will never consider working for Acme Consulting.

It tells me the company values cost cutting over all else, which doesn't bode well for how they treat contractors once they accept a gig. I understand the need for efficiency and frugality, but there are unavoidable expenses if you want your business to remain in business. Companies these days focus so much on eliminating all expenses no matter what. So you have software companies delivering broken software because they figured QA was an unnecessary expense. This is not a sustainable business model.

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Burning Down the House

One of the top stories the past two days has been the mouse that burned down the house. I didn't believe it when I first read it. I instantly said to myself "insurance scam". The day after it hit the news the man said that wind blew burning leaves into the house (an event that would not be covered by most homeowners insurance as a result of negligence). Then rapidly changed back to the original story, which would at least possibly be covered. As a devout skeptic, I have unending faith in man's desire to rip off his fellow man.

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