I just found this quite humorous guide to writing unmaintainable code. I got a special chuckle out of Naming Tip #7.
Too bad the author of the page on "Unmaintainable Code: Naming" called the HTML file "unmainnaming.html". Something like "bravo.html", to indicate it was the second file, would have been more appropriate.
During the fifteen minutes that I was looking for a parking space in that garage, a monster SUV was trying to get into a spot. It knew it was going to take some doing, so it pulled to the side so I could get by and get on with my own search. I should have grabbed the spot the SUV was waiting to get into, as it was in an area marked "small car only". On my next trip back through that area, I saw the SUV successfully parked. Well, as successful as it could be for a "small-car" spot; it stuck out several feet past everything else. I mean, this wasn't just a typical SUV; I didn't say "monster SUV" earlier because I like to couple the word "monster" with "SUV" for effect.
Kinko's computers are running some version of IE that doesn't handle the MS Web Exchange that my company uses. And for Netscape? 4.7. Ironically, it was the old, truly obsolete NC that I was able to use to check my mail. Kinko's, PLEASE upgrade your browsers, especially Netscape.
This is the main rant for today. It will serve as a rough draft for an e-mail I will send out to a few people, hopefully tomorrow.
After four or more weeks of me trying to fill out the blessed paperwork to get a permanent NOAA badge (I won't go into all the things that held things up, but I was all set to turn it in about two weeks ago, but lots of people were out, signals crosses, etc.), I was given my paperwork back this week and told I could go to Silver Spring to get my badge made. So I drove out to Silver Spring, and spent about 15 minutes driving around the parking garage, from top to bottom, looking for a parking space. It was lunchtime when I got there, and I knew the place would be closed, so I went to lunch. Then I went to Caribou Coffee, and got myself something nice to keep me warm and keep me company. I didn't realize at the time just how badly I would need that company.
It was a bit difficult to find the building; there are no markings on the outside of the buildings saying "this is SSMC IV". But really the hardest thing about it was the amount of time it took to walk past the other big buildings to get to the one that happened to be the right one. I walk in the door, and what do I see -- a metal detector, complete with the standard African security guard. I had to actually pull out my paperwork, in addition to my ID, and he had to fill out some stuff before he was ready for me to put my bag on the conveyor belt. Seemed to take about five minutes.
So I got upstairs to the office of the girl that does that. I gave her my paperwork; she looked at it and said, "what does 'SAA'" mean? I responded, "same as above"; she said I would have to write that out, else "they" would not accept that. Then she found some place where I didn't provide a phone number for something at Maryland (couldn't find one at the time), and that I didn't have an address for the University of Maryland. I mean, the University, not the Dept. of Computer Science at Maryland, not the John E. Wakefield Band Room at Maryland, but the University of Maryland. I could tell by her attitude that I would get nowhere in trying to reason with her that if anybody actually does check up on these things, such people would surely have a much better idea than I would of what address would give them the information they need, certainly for a school which they probably see more often than any other on their security forms, so I didn't try.
She also mentioned something about taking an online test. Thinking that she would be administering that test at the appropriate time, that made me think that there might be a computer I could borrow to look this stuff up. I asked her if there were such a computer, she said no, unless I knew somebody in the building. I asked her if she was sending me back home; she replied, well, not as such, but she wouldn't be doing what I came there for until those things were addressed. I asked how it could be that I had turned my paperwork in to the people at Suitland, and they had cleared me and told me I was all set for getting my badge, and now I had gone through all this trouble to get to her office, and she was telling me I was not all set. She had nothing to say to me; basically had the attitude that it was not her problem. I asked her if there were any Internet cafes around. She didn't know. I left her office.
I walked out of the building, still working on my cappucino(sp?), and started wandering around East-West highway, wondering as I wandered, whether I would resign myself to not being done, and go back to Suitland and try again tomorrow. I just couldn't bear that idea, so I kept wandering, and toyed with the idea of asking someone in the coffee shop if I could rent their computer for 15 minutes while I did my research. I couldn't bring myself to do that, but I remember the one hellpful thing the girl had said; call information. I found a pay phone at the gas station at the corner, dialed 411 (free!), and got the number for UM. I think I'll skip these details, and just say that I got all the info I needed with two phone calls. I went back to Caribou Coffee, sat down, did not feel too shy to borrow a pen from another patron, and filled in the missing parts.
Back into the building. I still had my peel-n-stick visitor badge from earlier that day, so I just had to lay my bag on the conveyor belt again. Went up to her office, she rather reluctantly accepted (accepted as in "this is acceptable") my new submission, but said I still hadn't done the online test. That was when I realized that I was supposed to have already taken the test, which I was just hearing about for the first time today. I asked her who was responsible for making sure I at least knew I had to take the test before she would take my picture, and she said, "your supervisor".
Livid, I walked out again, still not having solved the problem of how to get on the Internet without going back home, only this time, getting on the Internet was actually explicitly required. She happened to follow me only a few steps behind as I was leaving, and I asked her how I would show that I had taken the course. She said I would print out a certificate. Ah-ha. So I would need to find a computer *with a printer*. That somehow triggered something in my mind; I remembered that Kinko's copies has printers, and then I remembered that Kinko's copies -- the one in College Park, at least, also has computers. If I could just find a Kinko's, I could overcome what appeared to be the last hurdle in accompishing my mission (though I told myself that it only looked like the last hurdle, time would tell whether it was in fact the last one). But first, that cappuccino was starting to do its work, so I needed to use a toilet. Back to Caribou.
I can't remember whether I accompilshed the dump and the kinko's query in the same trip to Caribou. Anyway, I asked the guy behind the counter if he knew where a Kinko's was. This guy had a very strange philosophy of customer service; he seemed to feel he should help people. This seemed totally wrong, but yet I had this weird, ineffable feeling that this had been the norm some time in the distant past. He actually walked with me out of the store, and pointed down the street, rather embarrassingly almost exactly where I had been looking earlier, thinking, "where might I find a Kinko's?"
Off I went to Kinko's, got on the computer, spent probably more than 5 minutes trying to get the gist of their usage policy agreement, and signed on with my credit card. Now, I haven't talked about time so far. It was about 1:15 when I showed up at the girl's door. But now, at Kinko's, it is about 3:15, and the girl closes up shop at 4. And I haven't checked any sort of email all day. So I'm racing against time to get through this training and take the test. At this point I don't give a rat's ass about whether I really learn anything, but I don't know how the test works; God knows, maybe they set it up so that if you jump straight to the test, they don't let you go back, and if you mess up, you have to wait 24 hours before taking it again. So I study as fast as I can, trying to determine which material is either obvious or not likely to appear so that I can skip it; trouble is, you really have to read the stuff to figure out whether you needed to read it or not. What I do notice, with ever-increasing fury, is that a preponderance of the training material has to do with the policies and procedures of the Silver Spring facility, a building which, hopefully, I will never go to again. So I was sent out of the office because I hadn't studied material that has nothing to do with my actual duties?!?!
Finished the test, printed out the certificate, and speedwalked back to her office. But first, I had to stop by the parking garage to buy more parking time, as it had just run out. I only needed to spend 25¢ to get 40 more minutes, but the machine would only take quarters and ones, and I didn't have any quarters, nor did I have time to go and get change. Car was safe again. Had to go through the security check again, but this time some other guy who was going through the first-time procedure, like I had done earlier in the day, had parked his packages on the conveyor belt, and they didn't want to roll his stuff through before finishing his paperwork. \there was a moment when the guy tried half-heartedly to convince them to just send his apckages through, but they made him take his things off first.
Got back to her office to find the door closed. This is just perfect, I thought. "It's 7 to 4, and that's close enough for her; she's gone". A woman I met in the hallway told me it looked like she might still be in, and if not I could try some other door where some other people might be able/willing to do her job for her. I knocked at the door repeatedly; no answer. I tried the other door; and there were people there, and she was there, behind some wall. To my surprise, she asked to see my paperwork, even though this implied that she would be making my badge if all was done correctly, and that this would take her past 4 o'clock. She had me sit down in front of the camera. And I waited. And she asked me a question or two. Then she told me to take the sticker (my visitor's badge) off. I tried to smile. I kept on trying to smile; I eventually inferred from the rhythm of her activity on the other side of the desk that the picture had already been taken, she just hadn't told me. I stopped smiling. She did my fingerprints. I got my badge. It said:
IS
NOAA
I did not go back to Caribou Coffee. I went straight to my car. And I fought some vicious (as in "heavy") traffic going back to wherever I was going, which ended up being ISI. I'll stop there.
I have followed the usual pattern I seem to have of jumping back and forth between present tense and past tense. I hate that; it just happens, and each tense seems to work so well for that particular part. Wonder if I'll fix that later. This is a long-ass post.
As I said two entries ago or so, it's hot, and they haven't turned on the AC in my apt. building. So I leave the window open most of the time. So do most of the other people.
You'd think Asian graduate students, modest lot that they appear to be, would try to make sure they weren't heard when they're having sex, whether by not screaming a lot or by keeping the window closed while they're doing it. But no. The funny thing is when you first hear the sound, you don't know if it's a crying child, a crying animal, or what; it sounds kind of like sex, but in a building like mine, you just don't think of that as something that actually goes on here, so your mind immediately looks for other answers.
Upon realizing what it was, I was pretty torn between amusement, anger, and, uh, horniness, I guess. Next time I may yell out my window to keep it down.
I hate when I hear or see something, and I think, "I should write about that in my blog". Then I get home, actually remember to log into my blog, but I can't remember for the life of me what it was I had wanted to write. One particular thing was bugging me and bugging me, for a week or two.
Well, I remembered that one annoying thing, because the thing that triggered the thought happened again. Here it is.
It seems that "Groundhog Day" has moved into the popular parlance to refer to a situation where each day seems to be the same as the last. I've heard it being used on one or more of the various NPR talk programs I listen to while I drive. I think that's cool.
Whew. That's a load off.
CBS's "60 Minutes" reported Sunday night that Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, has promised Bush that Saudi Arabia will..."
I have a headache.
I've followed the French style in only capitalizing the first word in the title of this post. Of course, the stupid stylesheet puts the whole title into uppercase (you didn't think I was consistent in actually typing every title in all uppercase, did you?) so the effect is lost in the main part, but you can see hohw I really capitalized it in the "Recent Entries" listing on the main page (only good while this entry is fairly fresh), or possibly in other ways which I can't think of off the top of my head.
Anyway, it being only April (forget what the actual temperature is), they haven't turned the AC on in my apt. bldg. yet, Yesterday was hot; not a good day to be sitting around the apartment. Hard to motivate yourself to do stuff. And of course, hard to sleep, which OTOH makes it easy to get up in the morning.
At least once a week, for the past several years, I've woken up and found myself thinking, "Why all the metal and silicon? Why isn't there a way to store large amounts of digital data on a piece of paper?" Well, as of today, I no longer need to ask that question; my prayers have been answered.
Now, before you go running off buying a TOPPAN-Sony 25GB paper disc, some things to keep in mind. One, they are not yet actually in production. Two, you're going to have to start getting more careful about what "random" scraps of paper you grab and take into the bathroom when you've forgotten to buy toilet paper for the past two weeks. And three, if you decide you don't want it anymore and decide to make a valentine out of it to send to your sweetheart, make sure you've deleted all the naked pictures of your last girlfriend that you've been keeping.
Putting a filesystem on one of these badboys is going to give a new meaning to the term "dead-tree format".
Well, this is the first time I've gotten home from work/whatever not horribly late, and actually had some time, in a week or more. Now I just need something to do. Hmmm.... what should I do. It's a Wednesday evening in mid-April. Hmmmmmmm..... what, what, what.
I know! I'll spend a couple of hours poring over mobile phones to try to help me figure out what cell phone service I want to get!
Unless there's something else I should be doing instead....
God, that was an awful drive home. Rained all the way to DC. After having tried two places in Pgh., I tried in three places en route to get wiper plades for my car. The current ones are in decent shape, except some lock-type mechanism is gone from the ends of the blade on the driver side, so the blade always slides out, until it's not being held at all by the one end of the bracket. Luckily, it was still mostly effective in that state, and, again luckily, it did not fall all the way off and end up on the white line on the PA Turnpike. I would adjust it every time I took a break, but almost immediately, it would shift out. Anyway, because of some rusting on the wiper arms on my car, I have to use a blade with special kind of attaching mechanism... and nobody had those. Not CarCraft or whatever the name of the first place was, not Pep Boys, not the Sunoco on the Turnpike (which is, I swear, where I bought the current set two years ago or so), not Sheetz in Breezewood (they didn't even have blades), and not the Interstate Emergency Center in Breezewood (interesting place, it's sort of like a police station that'll help you get your car back on the road). But I probably spent 1½-2 hours trying to get better blades for my car.
Also, now that I have something broken related to the suspension on my car, I am much more acutely aware of potholes... and there are potholes GALORE in PA. They make driving unhappy :-(
I was checking out Eiffel Software Downloads, and noticed something I don't think I've ever seen before. This company makes versions of their software for various platforms, including Linux -- but not just on the Intel architecture. It's also available for LinuxPPC! Normally companies that put out a version for "Linux" do so only for Intel, and don't specify that they only mean Linux on x86. They don't even acknowledge that there are other architectures that Linux runs just fine on.
This page falls a bit short of ideal, though; you see "Linux" as one of the OSes, and "LinuxPPC" further down, as if that were something different from "Linux".
May try to download the free version just for the halibut, and see if I can get it to run.