Archives, eh
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# And just look how happy he is
Do you remember the episode of The Simpsons when Sideshow Bob runs for mayor of Springfield? After the votes are counted, Bob takes the podium at Bob headquarters and chuckles then laughs manically, turning pink and then red.
An interest rate rise tomorrow would be the “final straw for Sydney’s property market”, driving prices down 10 per cent, a real-estate consultancy says.
I am Bob.
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# Links for 2006-07-31
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# Way too good
I guess a lot of people are Kiwi today. It was an awful game from the Wallabies. The telling statistic, nevermind the score, was the turnovers – the All Blacks didn’t turn the ball over a single time.
The Wallabies are probably third or fourth behind New Zealand and France. I couldn’t compare France because I don’t seem them play often, but New Zealand aren’t just better than Australia, they are orders of magnitude better. I hope England in the World Cup group with the Kiwis, because the chariot can swing as low as it likes, it won’t stop England getting destroyed. And after all it doesn’t matter if Australia doesn’t win the cup, just so long as England doesn’t either.
All week leading up to the game there was a lot of old tosh about the haka. The new haka, I mean, the one with the throat-slitting action at the end. You can split the debate into a few camps. There were the wishy-washy New Zealanders who were genuinely concerned about the image it presented. I don’t care what they think, the new haka is intimidating as get out, even without Umanga who performed it out and out scarily – about the 1:10 mark in the video above is the point that chills my spine every time. Then there is the Australian media who can be ignored because they are ratings-chasing shitheads. Lastly there is the Australian rugby establishment who are trying to wind up the All Blacks.
I wish people would stop trying to counter-act the bloody haka. You can’t. Nothing you do can wind them up, it just makes them angrier and better. That goes for the silly debates on whether the throat-slitting part of the new haka is “inappropriate” as much as it does for turning your back on the performance or the latest bit of idiocy, having a training session on the field after the haka. Dopey.
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# My sister
My sister flew into Sydney on Friday evening for a visit before she departs these sunny shores for a land of dubious merit. She is going to England to teach in some public school which actually means private school, the opposite of public school. The English have always been upside-down that way; take the rewarding of their dross and petty criminals by sending them to a far superior land as the definitive example.
It’s funny. It was mentioned in passing by my new employers that most recruitment agents in Australia are from the UK because Australia just doesn’t seem to be able to train native ones. It was also mentioned to me that the UK loves Australian teachers. Just doesn’t seem a fair exchange, does it. Lovely of England to continue dumping their dross on us.
She finishes up at the Australian public school – I believe that means comprehensive school, you crazy poms – on the 18th of August…the same day I finish up at $company. We shall have to compare notes on farewells given. It will be an interesting comparison – she’s at a school with all the implications vis a vis alcohol associated; I am at a company owned by two borderline alcoholics.
She’s packed up. Ten years since she moved out of home, she has sent back a single bag of the belongings she couldn’t bear to part with and has two bags to take with her. One of those is her carry-on bag. She sold and gave away everything else. Madness. I still have a bag full of dice that haven’t rolled a THAC0 for nearly seven years.
Flies out on Sunday the 20th, stops in Tokyo for a night and then straight across Asia and Siberia to Heathrow. Spend a night in Earls Court – I think – and then out to Brentwood on the tube – the pink line for those of you playing at home.
She has been instructed to tell all those who ask that England is 18 months behind Australia with respects to Neighbours. She has also been instructed to not reveal anything specific, but to make dark aspersions towards Harold, warning anyone to watch out for “the shovel”. I suspect the crossover of Brentwood students/staff and Lugradio listeners is vanishly small, but you never know…
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# Links for 2006-07-28
- Make Dapper Drake Perform on Old Hardware
I have Dapper running on a P2 333 and it is a bit creaky ✴
- Make Dapper Drake Perform on Old Hardware
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# It begins
And so it begins. Sixteen days left of working at $company and the vultures have already started circling. The 19” LCD monitor that I have, one of only three or four in the office, has been claimed and a counter-claim followed soon after. I’ll have to make sure to just stand back out of the way when the pack draws near.
When I first told management I was leaving I was told they would be outsourcing any active development I would otherwise have been working on, at least until they could find a replacement. I was pleased, because it meant there was a good chance my replacement would be competent. Yesterday I was told instead that they were going to hire someone ASAP, preferrably by Monday. This coming Monday that is.
Short of going down to the street grabbing the first person they see with a laptop and a lack of fashion sense, there is little more $company could do to ensure that they replace me with a no-hoper mouth-breather than to say to an agent, “We need someone to start in three business days.”
And I get to train whoever this person might be.
I can’t really blame the guy who is handling this, the solution architect/IT manager. He is really doing the best with a bad hand. I have to spend the next sixteen days telling myself that so I don’t get pissed off when he is frustrated. I’d like to leave with prospects of a good reference in the future.
Update: Received a phone call just now. The “manager” who was sick is coming into the office sometime before 14:00 so that he and I can review a resume ahead of an interview at 14:00. I just reached behind my ear to flick the “Give a fuck” switch to the OFF position.
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# Links for 2006-07-27
- RPG Motivational Posters ✴
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# Internet Explorer 7 rollout
CNET is reporting that IE7 will be pushed to users via windows update. This has serious implications for e-commerce websites whose functionality might be affected by any bugs in the software. Also to have end users suddenly using a new browser right before the holiday shopping season could magnify the cost any bugs that might create a bad user experience on sites.
I find that vastly amusing, the idea that IE users are all of a sudden going to be stricken with bugs. Why, the very idea shocks me to my core.
Bearing in mind that no-one in their right mind pays any attention at all to what a slashdotter says about Microsoft, you almost have to feel a little sorry for the poor little biggest software company on the face of the earth.
On the one hand they inherited the title of Worst Browser Ever when IE 5.x became the new Netscape 4 and everyone still has to support its damn niggle faults because the percentage of IE users who update their version of the damn thing is down there with the percentage of people playing professional lacrosse.
On the other hand, when Microsoft takes steps to upgrade old browsers automagically, they get criticised.
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# Post Modern Sleaze
A long long time ago in a city far far away, that is to say seven years ago when I was still in Brisbane, D and I were carrying out our relationship over the interwebs. Back in the days when such things were newsworthy and somehow interesting. Now I am about to go work for a company that commercialises the facilitates this kind of thing, and my mum’s first reaction upon being told was “sleazy”. Gee thanks, mum.
Then again, it reminds me of a minor exchange between D and I back then. I can’t remember the exact circumstances but I had sent D a copy of the Sneaker Pimps song Post Modern Sleaze. D thought I was calling her a sleaze.
No, it was more a comment on how what we were doing, meeting and such over the interwebs, was considered sleazy at the time but even then I couldn’t see what the issue was. Asserting oneself and chasing after what you want isn’t sleazy, no matter the means you use. When I fell for D, I didn’t even know what she looked like, so surely it had to be the anti-thesis of sleaze.
No, no message in the above. Just random memory.
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# When I leave
I have an extremely close relationship with the clients on $project. Not close in that they are my friends because not so much. Close in that I talk to them a lot, and the account manager is quite often nothing but a spectator. The only time I get the account manager to do his job and manage them is when I am pissed off with the clients and can’t trust myself to write an email without liberal use of the word ‘fuck’.
I am currently working on a pretty big update to their application, to be released into UAT sooner than I think. Well, it was supposed to be, but the chances of that are approximately the same as that of George W. Bush playing flyhalf for the Warratahs next season. When we tell them this, there is going to be blood on the walls. If there was any justice in this world at all it would be the blood of the owners of $company but let’s face it, there is no justice; it will be my blood.
All the same, they should be told as early as possible that I am going. I’d bet my left one that they haven’t been told yet. If prior experience is anything to go by, they’ll be told at the last minute possible. We went through a three month period last year when the only developer left – I took over – then the client service manager left and then the account manager left. Each time, I am sure the $client was told late rather than early.
I wonder if I should tell them. Stealthily, mind. A phone call to $client’s account manager’s mobile after-hours. Is that advisable? Or do I just let $company handle it, let the chips fall where they may and disavow all responsibility for the resulting mess. It really isn’t my mess, the owners of $company are the ones who have engineered the situation wherein if I or the other co-worker dedicated to paying client work left, there would be no back up, no-one to even hand over to.
I am of two minds on that. On the one hand I’m not really leaving because of the $client’s, I am leaving because the owners of $company put me in the position of being a single point of failure1. So the $clients kind of deserve to be told. On the other hand, I am more or less leaving on good terms and I don’t really want to jeopardise that.
Meanwhile, there is very good reason for me to believe that $company are going to make no effort to replace me. Which is bad for me, because it means there will be no-one for me to do handover to. I will leave behind me documents, but specifications were something that happened to other people for the longest time around here. I can brain dump a lot, but inevitably there will be missing context – why was something done this way, what are the consequences of this change, so on and so forth. It would take longer than four weeks to handover that kind of knowledge anyway, but by answering questions I could at least give some nominal replacement a start on understanding. By replacing me after I am gone, it means the questions will come over days and weeks by phone and email. Unsure if it will be a greater pain in the arse for me or the replacement.
UPDATE: The weekly WIP meeting just happened and surprise! The clients were not told of my departure. In other news, fire is hot.
1 Which is funny, because by leaving I make the system fail – I wonder if there is a technical term for that kind of causality, where the consequences and the cause are the same.
