The Twilight Report

For the second day in a row Annoying Cube Neighbour comes over to ask for the password of his VM for which he set the password to. Yesterday I told him what the usual password was. Today I told him that it was whatever he himself had set it to, when he remembered that we'd done this whole thing yesterday. Tomorrow I will just remember what he set it to and remind him.

Today I overheard Richmond Guy asking one of my fellow devs if we could start using a Restful API, since it is all the range now (is it?), and also proudly announced that he was using reusable grocery bags (on a related note, the company is going green so we have to throw out all of those styrofoam cups). The vibe that I get from Richmond Guy is that he does things because they look like the right thing to do and they will help the stock price when and if we become a public company. This is not always an entirely bad motivation for doing something, but I usually think about how easy or hard things will be to maintain in the future and things like system performance.

My favourite overheard thing today was when PHP Guy compared women and the perl programming language saying they were the “same”. PHP Guy, as I mentioned hates perl so by the transitive property PHP Guy is a misogynist. Anyone who has ever worked in an organization that is mostly men will not be surprised by this sort of language, and women do sometimes make generalizations about men. I think it's much healthier to have a more balanced mixture.

I disagree with PHP Guy though, there are many things that I like about both perl and women and they are nothing alike. I was going to insert a joke here about perl being easier for me to understand, and then deflect the implicit criticism by pointing out that this is due to my own limitations, but I actually interact quite well with women. In fact I would love to see more women in programming, not for gender equity (although I am all for that), but because I think it would make a better work environment. Work environments with mostly men tend to behave badly, but if you throw in even a few women, it tends to moderate the worst behaviors. On a smaller scale, whenever Lena comes down to Maryland to visit, it alters my behavior in a positive way.

For now of course, what I think is academic, until my Plan for World Domination proceeds a little further. For now I am tracking the character flaws of the people around me in case I need to use thing information in my rise to the top.

Kim was arguing with Andrew last week about something pointless and I had a sense of utter joy at the fact that it wasn’t me having a pointless argument with her. The more that I think about it though, the more I realise the reason Kim irritates me so much is that she is a computer. She was carping to Andrew about this silly “fun factoid” billboard on the way to work isn’t precise enough for her. “People should be more precise!” She was saying. Andrew was arguing that people don’t have to be so precise when they are talking to other people because they can understand the meaning through context. The reason this pleases me is that for a long time I believed that there were significant advantages to working with computers over with people^[1]. Computers tend to do exactly what you tell them to. This is both their greatest strength and their greatest weakness. People are more flexible, and as a result tend to do exactly what you tell them not to do. In Kim I have finally met someone who is more like a computer than a person. What pleases me is that I finally enjoy much more working with people.

1. though, not to the point where I would exclude working with people

Today right before I left work I asked Kim how her vacation was. Not good, she answered. Not enough excitement, she said. Only one amazingly beautiful sunset, she said. My instinct was to point out that some people live their whole lives and only get to see one amazingly beautiful sunset if they are lucky.

I was leaving (mentioned) and I was just trying to be friendly. The America in me wants people just to answer in short positive statements regardless of actual mood. The rest of me doesn’t like that, but it is hard to deny that it is there.

SOAP::Lite is like a mule. You can often coax it into doing what you want it to do, but not without a lot of headache. SOAP::Lite reminds me that designing good APIs is not easy. The Perl community, despite a lot of good work, has unfortunately produced some turkeys; there are warts everywhere. Boxing Day this old lady declared that if everyone just did as she said then the world would be a better place. I think anyone writing an API is something like that: either arrogant or deluded. Usually both.

Needless to say I spent the whole day coaxing SOAP::Lite

The other day, someone at work asked me (not entirely out of the blue), if I “had anyone useful” in my family.

Without missing a beat I answered: “No, they are all scientists.”

Because it’s true, at least in the context of the conversation, which made the question more like do you have anyone with skills that are useful to ordinary people in your family. I mean, they contribute to the sum of human knowledge, and arguably do important things, but hardly useful skills, such as being able to cut hair (like Nina’s husband) or even fixing a Windows XP machine full of viruses that you stupidly downloaded (like me. er, the fixing part, not the downloading of viruses part).

“But wait,” I added, “it gets worse, because I grew up in a company town, where the ‘company’ was a federal laboratory, and everyone who lived in the town were also scientists.”

Later, when I was explaining this conversation to my mum (who didn’t seem to find it as inherently funny as I did), she pointed out to me that there are also engineers in Los Alamos.

“Well, they can be useful.” I said.

“Not those engineers.”

Mum seems to hold engineers in the same esteem as people who live in Melbourne (“seriously,” I can imagine her saying, “if you are in Australia, why wouldn’t you live in Sydney?”).

I know this attitude sort of filtered down to me, unfortunately, because early on when I met my friends in New York who also worked at The Company, I said with some disdain that I wasn’t an engineer, when one of them described us as a group of engineers. I have always preferred the term “programmer” or “coder” (which is actually different from what my friends do), although I do have to admit my job title was “software engineer” for those six years in New York.

They are pretty cool engineers though. They do things like make the processors that go into all of the next generation video game consoles. (When the dust settles from this round of the Console Wars, I don’t know if Sony or Nintendo will be left standing, but either way The Company stands to make a tidy profit either way). More importantly, they are cool people, who know how to have a good time and be good friends.

I told my photography teacher what my friends did once, and she thought those GPUs The Company was making were a waste of resources that could have been more appropriately allocated. Seriously though, who is she kidding, she is a professional photographer. What is she contributing to the world that is so awesome that she can go around judging other people? There is nothing wrong with being a photographer, but there is everything wrong with being judgemental and condescending.

Here is an old photo that reminds of the days when I would get up earlyto capture the morning light. Brrr. I think it was cold that morning!

Today, in contrast was quite nice! Weather wise I mean.

Today was the farewell lunch for Rory (not sure about the spelling), which I was sort of not looking forward to on account of having to be social and stuff, but it actually went pretty well. After ordering my lunch at the bar I got to the tables reserved for us, and all of the seats were taken at tables that had people so I had to colonize a new table. Sitting alone in a group like that is pretty disturbing, especially if you are mildly socially phobic antisocial. Some office folk with mildly recognizable faces came over to my table shortly after and introduce themselves. I think I talk too much in those situations. I can't think of anything to say so all sorts of irrelevant stuff starts to regurgitate without my thinking about it. I had this theory that it would be easier to deal with my shyness in a place other than New York, and I think I was right, or maybe I'm just getting older and more able to deal with this stuff.

Ah, but the really good news is that Cicely, Joe and (allegedly) Brian^[1] are coming out to visit for New Years Eve! NYE is, quite simply, the best time of year to be in Sydney, and Sydney is, quite simply, the best place to be for NYE. I was just thinking this morning that I really love Sydney and I am fairly certain that Sydney is the greatest city on earth (no offense to my friends in New York, which I also adore), but of course I miss my friends! I am super excited about having some friends out and being able to show them around and hang out with my friends.

Yesterday my new 23" Apple HD monitor arrived and I am using it right now. It looks really good. It's a new toy that is yet another reason for me to despise the inferiority of my work equipment. My friend e was telling reminding me that most places are like "that" ... and she's right to an extent (but at least she can IM from work!), but I think I will continue to complain about work anyway. It beats complaining about my personal life!

Not much else to report.

1. I say allegedly, because he said we was "for sure" going to come to Salt Lake for at least one of those ski trips that I organized, but he waited till the plane ticket prices were astronomical