For the 77th consecutive month, FNC finished first in total day and prime time ratings during May. FNC was the sixth highest rated cable network on all of basic cable during prime time for the month (CNN and MSNBC finished 19th and 26th) and the seventh rated network in total day (CNN and MSNBC were 19th and 27th).
But WHAT
so tired. so very very tired. It’s my 2nd to last day of work. I went out and “happy hour”ed with a few folks on Tuesday. But today I just got the “let’s all go to Conolly’s! Wilson’s leaving…. CHAAARRGGEE!!!!” email. I can’t even hold my head up. THIS looks like a job for Diet Dew and Nodoz! So if I get a smidgen more snarkly later, it’s probably because I’m a little teensey bit twitchy.
I love/hate the internet:
“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare; my business is to create.”–William Blake
Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.
If you want to read something enlightening about the notion of charity and the fruits it bears, read The Lucifer Principle by Bloom. It’s a truly important work.
I haven’t seen one of these I’ve liked enough to cross-post in a while.
I Didn’t Slap You, I High-Fived Your Face
Dude: I didn’t steal the Bentley. I hijacked it.
Girl: [Slaps him.]
–Oean Isle, North Carolina
via Overheard at the Beach, May 24, 2008
been busy.
details aren’t for public consumption.
:)
I just got the most awesomist piece of spam EVAR LOLOMG!!!1!!
The subject line was “BLOOD BLOOD”
Check THIS whacky shit out:
SOMEONE YOU CALL YOUR FRIEND, WANTS YOU DEAD.I felt very sorry and bad for you, that your life is going to end like this if you don’t comply, i was paid to eliminate you and I have to do it within 10 days.Someone you call your friend wants you dead by all means, and the person have spent a lot of money on this, the person came to us and told us that he wants you dead and he provided us your names, photograph and other necessary information we needed about you. If you are in doubt with this I will send you your name and where you are residing in my next mail.Meanwhile, I have sent my boys to track you down and they have carried out the necessary investigation needed for the operation, but I ordered them to stop for a while and not to strike immediately because I just felt something good and sympathetic about you. I decided to contact you first and know why somebody will want you dead by all means. Right now my men are monitoring you, their eyes are on you, and even the place you think is safer for you to hide might not be.Now do you want to LIVE OR DIE? It is up to you. Get back to me now if you are ready to enter deal with me, I mean life trade, who knows, and I might just spear your life, $8,000 is all you need to spend. You will first of all pay $3,000 then I will send the tape of the person that want you dead to you and when the tape gets to you, you will pay the remaining $5,000. If you are not ready for my help, then I will have no choice but to carry on the assignment after all I have already being paid before now.Warning: do not think of contacting the police or even tell anyone because I will extend it to any member of your family since you are aware that somebody want you dead, and the person knows some members of your family as well.For your own good I will advise you not to go out once is 7pm until I make out time to see you and give you the tape of my discussion with the person who want you dead then you can use it to take any legal action. Good luck as I await your reply to this email contact: dopybastardsemailaddressgoeshere@gmail.comBye.William yahman.
I took that post down. Not because I’m ashamed of it or winced when I read it.
But in order to tell that story accurately I really have to involve several other people and it rather crosses a line. There’s a bit of crossover and without violating it the retelling just looks whitewashed and diluted.
It really wasn’t a matter of “oh my god I can’t believe I drunk posted that!”
I went out tonight with a bunch of internet people. Now, that means a couple things. Primarily it means that most communication across this little social cluster is via email and discussion board. The net on that is that people feel comfortable saying things that they ordinarily wouldn’t and frankly, shouldn’t. Because after all, on the internet nobody knows you’re actually a scumbag.
I arrived there and eventually found my way to someone I’d never met who was part of the crew and he had a lot to say which, upon reflection was actually quite telling.
Including such representative gems as:
“Yeah, I was married once. Never again. If other people want to get involved with that outmoded institution good for them. Not for me man. No way.”
“You know what a woman is? A life support system for a vagina.”
Frankly there was a lot more, but I’m not going to involve other characters in this since they’re real people.
A sailor (of which there were few in the bar) came up to him and said “Yo, when’s that librarian getting here?”
The “librarian” is a sweet girl, strangely placed in NYC frankly; generally without much guile. She and I had had a couple interesting conversations about, among other things, the fairly disgusting levels to which the online discussion sank with this group of people, wondering where that comes from in someone’s head.
“She’ll be here soon.” He responded.
It took me a moment to process that. But I came to a conclusion that caused a scent of brimstone to follow me around as I seethed.
About a half hour later we were outside looking at the fireworks at the Brooklyn Bridge.
I heard him on the phone and he held his hand to it and said “she’s on the wrong side of the island” and directed her cheerfully to where we all were.
Turning back around, I watched the fireworks for a couple minutes until I couldn’t contain myself any more. Without turning around, I opened the bleeder valve on my skull.
“You know… If she gets here and a bunch of sailors start harassing her we’re going to have a serious fucking problem on our hands.” I was absolutely seeing blood.
“Dude, calm down. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
“This isn’t the fucking internet man. This is real life.”
He must have walked off because there was no retort.
The fireworks ended and A few of us were deciding where to go. I mentioned that I wanted to stay until she got here just to satisfy my sense of order. A lady present said “don’t make more of this than it is.” and, while thinking about it the one thing I did realize is that I was fuming and either I was righteous and right or my judgment was impaired.
So no. I didn’t put him knee deep in cobblestone. I still don’t know that lashing out physically would have completely lacked utility.
I’m not a violent guy. The very notion would be laughable to anyone who knows me. Unless I’m tweaked in a very particular way. I’ve been in exactly two physical altercations in as many decades. Frankly I think that’s a pretty good record.
But god damn. I’m not sure that number shouldn’t be three.
I just got off my daily conference call with my team. We’ve been talking about how to measure the actual productivity of the software development process and individual teams.
It turns out that’s a remarkably hard thing to do.
The first impulse is almost always to measure ‘lines of code’. But the volume of code is almost perfectly orthogonal to a measure of the utility of that code. These aren’t widgets.
So you back off and say something about “measuring the produced functionalty.” That’s a great idea in the abstract. You’re producing features, measure the features produced, right? Well… what’s a feature? How big is it? Does a single large-effort feature scale up in relative productivity in a consistent measurable way from a small flashy feature that increases utility? Does team B measure a feature the same way team C does? No. Team B doesn’t even measure a feature the way team B does.
You can’t measure ‘number of software releases’ because frankly, past a certain point that becomes a measure of team disfunction.
Measuring the number of bugs produced yields a negative correlation to the quality of software produced, but only insofar as it relates to the amount of new features and code being produced, which brings us back to where we were. Besides, if you’re working on a System Of Unusual Size, finding a tremendous amount of bugs can represent an increase in productivity as testing capabilities increases. It would really suck to penalize that.
Anyway, this is coming up because upper upper management has started asking if they’re getting their money’s worth. A perfectly reasonable concern.
So what do you think? Is there a reasonable way of measuring the productivity of software development effort on a team? How about dispensing with a simple metric and measuring teams only relative to each other?
My boss came up with an idea that I think qualifies as brilliant.
No, actually I’m not going to share, not having asked yet ;-)
(nyeah nyeah)
Well this is weird…
It’s as simple as folding over a sheet of tinfoil a couple times, and then cutting it repeatedly with the dull scissors. It doesn’t really grind a new edge or anything, but it has a similar effect to honing a knife edge on a steel sharpener.
I’ve got to noodle around with that a bit.
So CruiseControl is supposed to be the be all and end all of continuous integration systems. I’ve been tasked with setting it up in conjunction with FitNesse to create an instruction set for other people to follow.
Fine.
I’m trying to get it to build a simple C# “class library” project which is not under source control.
The documentation and error reporting are positively abysmal, giving me no indication what I might be doing wrong at all.
I even tried using the “ccnetconfig” GUI tool for generating the config file, though it really doesn’t really add any intelligence to the process so much as save you from having to look at an editor.
My current config file follows. Any CC.net people know what’s up ?
<!--<ccnetconfig><configurationVersion>1.3</configurationVersion></ccnetconfig>-->
<cruisecontrol>
<project name="FoobarMathLibrary">
<triggers />
<tasks>
<msbuild>
<executable>c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\msbuild.exe</executable>
<workingDirectory>C:\home\mpwilson\site-itg\src\csharp\FoobarMath\FoobarMath.sln</workingDirectory>
<projectFile>FoobarMath.sln</projectFile>
<buildArgs>/noconsolelogger /p:Configuration=Debug /v:diag</buildArgs>
<targets>Clean;Debug</targets>
<logger>C:\CruiseControl.NET\server\ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.MsBuild.dll</logger>
</msbuild>
</tasks>
</project>
</cruisecontrol>
So I’ve recently discovered the utter delight of macadamia nuts.
I keep buying these “Planters Select” thingies (mixed nuts with cashews, almonds & macadamias) but it’s becoming increasingly clear that I need to just drop the pretense and get macs.
I’ve been noodling around on YouTube (not actually from work) and while looking for a video of Buddy Hackett doing the “Wax Job” bit I started watching some old Tonight Show clips. By old I mean 30+ years old. I noticed something interesting.
People were funnier than they are now.
Comedy now consists of Jim Carey’s rubberized face. Sure, it’s good for a chuckle.
But watch this. It’s less than 3 minutes (iirc. I can’t exactly watch it here.)
That’s comic genius. Carson’s ability to let it happen then quip at precisely the right moment with the one phrase that could possibly have fit there is incredible. He doesn’t spit out a punchline, which would draw attention to him away from what’s actually going on. He doesn’t mention what’s going on explicitly, which would destroy the subtlety of events.
He just adds the perfect bit of spice to the conversation.
You think Leno’s even capable of that? Any of those other nightly retards? It’s all become plain old low-brow stand-up comedy and an interview show. It’s gross.
Kids these days!
:p
something.
This is hilarious.
I don’t mean I got a Buddy Hackett styled “wax job”. I just meant that kiss was that good.
