A Good Imagination and a Pile of Junk

So something happened over the last few days. Not to me. In fact I’m not even sure what it was.

On twitter I follow lots of people. Close to 400 actually.

Last night from the programmer/agile contingent I started seeing a lot of..well…whining. It was whining and complaining about some award, who it was granted to and who it wasn’t granted to. There was bitching about too few women being in the nominee list for the award. There were complaints about whose fault it was and who were the stakeholders and who REALLY made the decisions around here and the “after all I’ve done for you”s, and on and on.

These are people I’ve respected, some good minds in the industry and they were behaving like a bunch of fucking whiny 6 year olds. Scratch that. I in fact know six year olds who behave better. Not an exaggeration.

I’ve watched this go on before. It seems to happen whenever there is an inner circle of something, and no area of human endeavor is immune.

Within this field I watched it in the late 90’s on “The Patterns List.” I’ve seen it in the early 90’s when I ran a hippyish pagan semi-annual 3-day weekend/camping trip. (yeah, THERE’S a special kind of drug induced nightmare, Mikey as a neopagan liberal.)

This is where I’d say “people are always like that so I shouldn’t blame them.”

Fuck ‘em.

If you can’t conduct yourself like an adult, you need to stay in the little inflatable pool where everybody knows you’re just standing there wetting yourself anyway.

It really makes me sick to death. But I get the impression with this last bout of whateverthehellthisis that it’s a really severe temptation of the soul, to jockey for your place “in the club.” People get crushed by it. They even create their own clubs for the express purpose of being a part of them.

I wonder…

I haven’t thought this through yet, so I’m not sure what I’m going to land yet. I’ll probably refine my head then go post about it elsewhere.

(No, this isn’t mine. It’s a classic. I’m just afraid it’ll disappear some day and besides, most people reading this have NO idea what they’re in for. So, without further adieu I present “I put on my robe and wizard hat” the transcript of two ostensibly ‘intimate’ chat sessions.)

From bash.org, of course:

#104383 +(12821)- [X]

bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears14: Aight.
bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.
bloodninja: Me too baby.
BritneySpears14: I kiss you softly on your chest.
bloodninja: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
BritneySpears14: Hey…
bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 chicken of the Infinite.
BritneySpears14: Funny I still don’t see it.
bloodninja: I spend my mana reserves to cast Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness.
BritneySpears14: You are the worst cyber partner ever. This is ridiculous.
bloodninja: Don’t f*ck with me bitch, I’m the mightiest sorcerer of the lands.
bloodninja: I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you are only a Lvl. 2 Druid.
BritneySpears14: Don’t ever message me again you piece of ****.
bloodninja: Robots are trying to drill my brain but my lightning shield inflicts DOA attack, leaving the robots as flaming piles of metal.
bloodninja: King Arthur congratulates me for destroying Dr. Robotnik’s evil army of Robot Socialist Republics. The cold war ends. Reagan steals my accomplishments and makes like it was cause of him.
bloodninja: You still there baby? I think it’s getting hard now.
bloodninja: Baby?
————–
BritneySpears14: Ok, are you ready?
eminemBNJA: Aight, yeah I’m ready.
BritneySpears14: I like your music Em… Tee hee.
eminemBNJA: huh huh, yeah, I make it for the ladies.
BritneySpears14: Mmm, we like it a lot. Let me show you.
BritneySpears14: I take off your pants, slowly, and massage your muscular physique.
eminemBNJA: Oh I like that Baby. I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: What the f*ck, I told you not to message me again.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
BritneySpears14: I swear if you do it one more time I’m gonna report your ISP and say you were sending me kiddie porn you f*ck up.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
eminemBNJA: damn I gotta write down your names or something

So as I’ve mentioned, I’m trying to hammer on my writing skills to bring them into at least a marginally acceptable place to my eye. (Yes yes, you’re all very nice. Wrong, but nice.)

As we’re just about to cross out of the 4th week of August, the 2nd week of September starts darkening my vision. So I’ve decided that I’m going to get a red pen and print out about 25 pages of commemorative blather and give it a good overhaul.

Too much of it has already slipped out the back door of my mind over the last 8 years and I have to do this before all that’s left of those “insert stuff about soandso here” markers is the markers themselves.

It’s gonna be a slow tough slog I think.

And I’m questioning the wisdom of re-posting the result here. I want people to enjoy them, but frankly… I don’t want to fucking hear about it.. Maybe I’ll just shut comments off from those posts.

We’ll see.

UPDATE:Well, if I ever have a bout with insomnia I know now how to deal with it. Print out a bunch of my writing and bring it, along with a red pen, over to the couch and start hacking away at it. Holy crap does that take some energy. I got about 1/3 of the way through the initial account before I sorta magically stopped editing (aside from some glaring problems) and just read the rest of it. Tomorrow night I’ll apply those edits and keep going.

Monday evening I put Ubuntu on this box.  This afternoon I put Vista Ultimate back on it.

What’s funny about that is that the biggest sigh of relief (in putting Vista back) was from emacs working the way I wanted it to again.

I…

Yeah.

That’s so goddamn twisted I don’t even know where to start.

Political Correctness

Well, I didn’t ragequit, but I did cancel my station access subscription.

The $/time of playing MMOs is VERY low for the entertainment dollar. But I’m getting a little saturated lately.

Anyway, I outlined this all over on TVS. But it was worth a cross post.

Started farting around with another mix CD today. This one won’t be publicly available either. But there will be more than one copy.

I’ve been meaning to make a solid workout mix for a while. But what happens happened and I ended up putting a collection of songs together that didn’t make a real solid workout mix, but had some really great transitions.

So it’s gonna be a high octane old school techno and hip hop mix instead. I might fit some of Satriani’s more caffeinated licks in there as well.

One thing that’s really different this time is that I’m considering slicing up tracks.

At this rate I’m gonna need a mic and an effects unit by like… Thursday.

I see you.

Fellow New Yorker.  Poking around.

;)

If you’re getting that error, drop to bash and “env | grep -i ruby”. You’ll no doubt see “RUBYOPT=rubygems”.

Just do an “export RUBYOPT=” and it’ll clear that up.

Yes, this is largely for my own reference. It’s one of those solutions SO obvious that I’ll forget it in about 19 seconds.

You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages you or comments and asks.

I break rules — Yes
Been arrested? — Yes
Kissed someone you didn’t like? — Yes
Slept in until 5 PM? — Yes
Ran a red light? — Yes
Been suspended from school? — Yes
Experienced love at first sight? — Yes
Totaled your car in an accident? — Yes
Been fired from a job? — Yes
Fired somebody? — No
Sang karaoke? –- No
Pointed a gun at someone? — No
Done something you told yourself you wouldn’t? — Yes
Caught a snowflake on your tongue? — Yes
Kissed in the rain? — Yes
Had a close brush with death (your own)? — Yes
Seen someone die? — Yes
Played spin-the-bottle? — Yes
Smoked a cigar? — Yes
Sat on a rooftop? — Yes
Smuggled something into another country? — Yes
Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes? — Yes
Broken a bone? — No
Skipped school? — Yes
Eaten a bug? — No
Sleepwalked? — Yes
Walked a moonlit beach? — Yes
Rode a motorcycle? –Yes
Dumped someone? –Yes
Lied to avoid a ticket? –No
Ridden in a helicopter? — No
Shaved your head? — Yes
Made your girlfriend/boyfriend cry? – Yes
Eaten snake? — No
Marched/Protested? — Yes
Had Mexican jumping beans for pets? — No
Puked on amusement ride? — No
Seriously & intentionally boycotted something? — Yes
Been in a band? — Yes
Been on TV? — No
Shot a gun? — Yes
Skinny-dipped? — Yes
Gave someone stitches? — Yes
Ridden a surfboard? — Yes
Drank straight from a liquor bottle? — Yes
Had surgery? — NO
Streaked? — No
Taken by ambulance to hospital? — Yes
Passed out when not drinking? — Yes
Peed on a bush? –Yes
Donated Blood? — No
Grabbed electric fence? — No
Eaten alligator meat? — No
Killed an animal when not hunting? — No
Peed your pants in public? — No
Snuck into a movie without paying? — Yes
Written graffiti? — Yes
Still love someone you shouldn’t? — Yes
Been involved in/witnessed a natural disaster? — No
Met a celebrity? — Yes
Been in handcuffs? — No
Believe in love? — Yes
Answered the above honestly? — Yes

It would take 26 shots of Tequila to kill me

Created by Bar Stools

Watch this:

Then say “I just don’t want it bad enough.” instead.

(h/t Joan)

So I’m noodling around with learning ruby and I’m trying to find a simple example of unit testing.

But no.

“simple ruby tdd example” yields a metric shitload of screen casts (sorry, no.)

Look people, I’ve been writing software for an awfully long time. I’m not going to sit through 15 minutes of screen casting.

NOR do I give a flying shit about Cucumber, rspec, BDD or, God fucking help me, rails.

Yet.

Just Ruby

Just unit testing.

Just 20 or so lines of code with 2 hello world tests (testing code external to the test code itself) in a complete “./rubytesthelloworld.rb” to make it go script. Let ME figure out what the code does. Trust me on this one. It’ll be quicker and I’ll understand it FAR better than trying to follow some code hippy’s insipid “narrative.”

Can ya point me to that? ’cause I haven’t been able to find it.

UPDATE: Solution found! I hoofed it over to the Barnes & Noble on Court Street and, after a little thumbing around, found on page 7 of ‘Ruby Best Practices’ (which, thank GOD, started with testing) the exact snippet I was looking for:


class MyThingieTest <Test::Unit::TestCase

def test_muse_be_awesome
# ...
end
end

(Yeah, yeah, indent it properly and all. Could probably use a WP plugin for proper code formatting.)

“Naw man I’ve known you for about three minutes and I already know you’re crazy.”
“Oh, come on… I don’t look the part THAT much.”
“Naw, it ain’t your look. It’s that… laugh.” *shiver*

If it had been a girl, that would’ve gotten me in to bed.

I’m just sayin’ y’all.

(h/t LeeAnn. of course)

It’s gotten to the point where I just can’t really think in a linear fashion at all. I’m forever making bizarre tangents and twisted associations that, while interesting (and inadvertently creative) in a sideways fashion, are rarely productive either personally or in communication.

Take this post for example.

I started up this little word processor with a head full of steam and have absolutely no idea what I was going to write, but I spent the blank space between paragraphs thinking about how big an elephant’s wings would have to be for them to be viable fliers.

Cute, but not useful.

Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t just be a cartoonist.

The search is reaching a pretty frantic pace. But that’s absolutely no excuse to let principles slide. Too many people (nearly everybody I know, it seems) lack the basic courage of their convictions.

Yesterday I was back and forth over email and the phone with a particularly gung ho recruiter. It was in response to a job rec on dice I’d responded to late Wednesday afternoon and ended up being a particularly fruitful exchange. He was energetic, sufficiently fluent in technologies that I didn’t have to hand hold him through the acronyms on my resume.

Within about 20 minutes of talking with him, he’d set me up with a couple/few online tests (which I mentioned yesterday.) Now normally I hate those things for reasons that ended up being borne out perfectly. (What? I was right? No shit. Get used to it sparky. It happens an AWFUL lot.)

I went back and forth with him a couple/few more times afterwards.

As the day wound down I didn’t think much of it. I went and made a set of T2 chain and mastercrafted weapons for Legrand (whups, wrong blog) fucked around online when the phone rang. It was the recruiter… It was pushing 8:00 at night. Sorry sparky. I let it go.

Then the email came “<company name> wants to interview you, and I just called you with a msg. Please call me back 201-654-3210 ASAP.” Now, company name, salutation and phone number aside, that’s exactly what the email said.

I went back to leveling my provisioner more noodling around and the phone rang again…

at 9:30.

at night.

like… PM.

In my home.

And it was him again.

I weighed the relative merits of explaining to him the basic protocols of polite professional behavior in THIS culture against my need and decided to table it for later.

So this morning I emailed him back saying I was available and what’s up?

He sent me the following email: “Michael, do you have PL/SQL knowledge/experience?”

We spoke and I said “Not really. I know it’s Oracle’s sql extensions and programming language. Probably defines a lot of the syntax for stored procs and extended functionality. But I wouldn’t know it if I saw it.”

“Could you do me a favor? Could you research PL/SQL online for a bit? That’s your homework ok? Because, uhm… day want lots of Oracle. Den later I call you and ask some simple simple PL/SQL questions and I can tell them that you know Oracle and PL/SQL okay? Can you do that?”

I figure… I just must not have heard him right.

“I can certainly spend a couple hours researching PL/SQL and then maybe I’ll be able to answer your questions. But if I sit in front of this guy I’m not going to say I’ve used it professionally. I’ll say I’ve noodled around with it a bit on my own for a few hours. No. I’m not going to ever lie about what I have and haven’t done. That’s not acceptable.”

“Well ok. Uhm, hmm… ok. Let me go back to my people and tell them what you told me, and uhm… I really like you and want to push you for this job. You did great on the perl test and good on the C++ test, but they need oracle. So let me go back to my people and see what they say.”

I hung up the phone, *twitch*ed a bit, vented on twitter, then went about my business.

But just before I hit “post new” here I realized something…

He told me they wanted me to come in. He said in no uncertain terms that I HAD the interview.

Lying fuck.

I’m getting really fucking sick of the “staffing” industry.

What burns my ass the most is that when push comes to shove, there’s no external reward for having any integrity. It’s ok because I really do get enough from it. I can hold my head up and look straight at a mirror without wincing.

As I mentioned to Bink on the phone today: Integrity is like Health. You really don’t notice it until you start losing it.

UPDATE: I really do give people the benefit of the doubt and God willing I always will. It drives me absolutely batty that I can almost presume dishonesty of a group of people, and I don’t like what it’s doing to my head.

Sure, I know of a couple/few exceptions. But DAMMIT! Why are they exceptions?