In the beginning, Eru Illuvatar created middle earth, and the vala, and programming, and all of the vala (basically angels) used tabs to indent their code, and the world was whole and perfect. Then Melkor, being a complete fuckhead, switched to using 4 or 8 spaces, and he sought to wholly corrupt the world with his stupid ass programming style. And then came Sauron, who tried to force the world to break lines unecessarily, and the rest is history.
This past week I was investigating a nasty bug that 4 teams were unwilling to fix. I attempted to "fix the glitch" in our system and make it someone elses problem. I then discovered that wasn't possible. Then my boss explained that it was unacceptable for me to take an entire day to review our undocummented, backwards ass codebase and find out the fix wouldn't work. We have thousands of lines of undocummented java code that is wired together at runtime with a poorly-designed framework that was not used as intended, and he told me he expects me to understand every use case. I was about to sarcastically ask if he thought I should go stay up all night for a week figuring out what this shit does, and held my tongue because I was fairly certain he'd say yes. I actually have to hold my tongue every time he criticizes me, because the thing I desperately want to say would dig the hole deeper. My new favorite word is "ok." Our 1on1 meetings have become exactly like traffic stops with a police officer.
He told me directly that the reason we try to hire the brightest engineers is so that we can force them to work on shitty, uncodumented code. (I'm not even kidding. He basically said that, and thats not the first time I've heard it.). The buzzword we use to refer to the fact that documentation sucks and no one knows how the system works is "Tribal Knowledge." The message I am getting is that there are no teams around here that get to write good code that doesn't give you a headache to read. And they say there's no one with an on call responsibility that doesn't suck ass. Are you really confused why your company is no longer in the top 50 by employee satisfaction?
Yeah, uh...forget all of that. Sorry. Sorry. Just filler. From a post that uh...never made it. I have a few of those lying around. And I'm trying to talk like my new favorite character from portal 2, so, feel free to leave now. I mean, its just an option. You can stay. Or go. There's really no reason to keep reading. I just wanted to share some lyrics that I mangled, and I didn't want any of the girls I know reading this, so I thought a bit of computer shit would turn them off. Not that girls can't program, no...its just that none of the girls that have ever read this blog can, except Iris, and I don't think she reads this any more. Its just...hard, you know? I don't know which girls read this, and I can't guess which ones do and/or might think these lyrics are about them**, and they really aren't about anyone in particular. So I just thought I'd kind of avoid that whole potential situation there. Also the indented stuff is filler, so you should assume it was never true and that I would never seriously write something like that. Again, you don't have to read this--ok I see you are still reading this. Ummmm.... Fine. That's fine then. Do what you like.
the real title of this post:
[lyrics] A Fabulous Lie
Now and then I think of when we were together
but it was only ever in my head
told myself you were right for me
a fabulous lie cause it was just a dream
but you don't ever have to know
if I act the part you think its true cause in the end we are nothing
I'll find someone else to love
so when you treat me like a stranger it won't feel so rough
Now and then I see you and let my guard down for a second
but you never notice cause its never what you want to see
and I don't wanna live that way
remembering every word you say
but you don't ever have to know
if I act the part you think its true cause in the end we are nothing
I'll find someone else to love
so when you treat me like a stranger it won't feel so rough
Now and then I think of the last time that we'll have coffee
its a bit hard to believe but i know its just a matter of time
we'll sit and stare and share our tales
I'll be bored by every word you say
but you don't ever have to know
if I act the part you think its true cause in the end we are nothing
I'll find someone else to love
so when you treat me like a stranger it won't feel so rough
Still can't write my own music. This is from Somebody That I Used to Know by a band I've never heard of. I only know about it because Allison posted it on facebook or something. At first I hated the song because the music video is largely of this guys face, which I don't like to look at, especially when he opens his mouth. But I heard the song in my head later. And now I wrote all that shit up there. Also I just watched "From Prada to Nada" with my family which is a movie I did not choose but did consent to and which is based on this oldass chick novel called "Sense and Sensibility" that I only ever read because my strategy for meeting girls in philly included book clubs. Only sounds weird when you write it down...anyway, get this: the movie is way better than the book. Wayyyyyy better. The book was so awful I didn't realize it was supposed to be a sort of comedy until years later when someone told me it was supposed to be funny. I thought everyone in the Victorian era just had a stick up their ass.
Its kind of sad that I appear to be, literally, capable of only telling one kind of romance story, and it is not any of the kinds that make money. This is sad because I think there is a lot of money in romance...something about the volume of material that the readers go through compared to other genres...but I am incapable of writing a story where two people actually love each other, and one of them isn't dead. Well lets give it a go. Bob and Alice...wait, no, those names are from security engineering trope that was expanded by xkcd to imply that Bob was having an affair with...not Alice. Or something. Anyway. Jack and Jill...wait weren't they siblings? Not into that. Ok. Name generator time. Doreen and Dorothy. Ok....hot, but I'm not qualified to write that story, and if I did write it, I would have to censor every sentence before posting it. Trying a different generator...Hazposba, and Opilan. I'm not using that name generator again. Evan sent me a name generator script once, but unfortunately my version of "backing up" is to spend more than $50 on an external enclosure for the system drive of my broken computer and leave it sitting on my desk, still disconnected. So Opilan is the girl, obviously.
Opilan grew up in a great metropolis called Bucktown that was exactly like Gotham city but cooler, and sadly without batman. Then, there is a sportbike and a katana* blade in the plot for some plausible reason, because most stories I write have a sportbike and/or a katana...preferably both. Then she met...fucking...Hazposba, whose parents must have hated him. Good ole' Haz became a sellsword and disappeared for a while. Then he discovered that no one wanted his sword and ended up drunk and disorderly in a back alley of bucktown. He saves Opilan from some feral velociraptors but doesn't remember it when he wakes up in her bathtub without his pants because he blacked out. Then Haz and Opilan get chased through Europe by the CIA and make out just after dying her hair. And then they, uh, love each other or something, and Opilan doesn't die.
Ok I wrote a romance story without a tragic ending or sex scenes. You can tell that one to your kids.
*depending on who is in the bar with you, or who edited wikipedia last, the katana is either a specific type of ceremonial Japanese sword that may or may not have ever been used in battle, OR an entire category of Japanese backswords and therefore just a generic word, in the same way that a sedan is a kind of car. I don't really know for sure...I just know that katanas are awesome, they have something do to with Japan, and if you had a sharp one, the police would likely arrest you regardless of whether or not you were actually breaking the law.
**upon a proofread (not a thorough proofread, mind you...dont get your hopes up) I realized how sad this sounds. You probably wouldn't have realized this if i hadn't pointed this out.
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