It might not be widely know, but I really don’t like cheap Champagne. Nor cheap perfume. Not that I drink it, well, drink it in perhaps, but please, there is no need for it. Now, why would I mention this? I was sitting quite happily this morning (not surrounded by chairs I might add) when a waft of perfume wafted over me. In a wafty sort-of way. It certainly wasn’t a cheap brand. It was quite acceptable, as it happens. First up, I asked drunk girl, who sits beside me, if she had changed her brand. No, says she. I leans forward, in order to investigate the desk wasteland over my partition, but there were no chicks to be seen. No on else could smell it. Hmmm.
I´m patient of this plan
as humble as I can
I´ll wait another day
before I turn away
but know this much is true
no matter what I do
offend in every way
I don´t know what to say
Considering it is what I get paid for, I had to do a tap in NewNewWork. I knew it was coming, it was more tying together disparate pieces of a few different systems to behave transparently to a third party. None of this matters. What matters was that I set myself down to do it. I thought about it, scribbled in my pad, cobbled together a few tests, wrote the code. All works on test, enough that I need some input from outside, and all will be well. Lastly, I go to commit the last of the code into our repository. Now, I was developing this elsewhere, (oh, symlink Hell, but let me not tell you (other of) my woes), so I go to my branch, copy over the file and do an svn diff. Hmm. One change. (A SOAP dispatch name was all. Nothing more than a textual change.) Odd, thinks me, I haven’t been on that box, how did that happen? Then it dawns. I knew I was going to have to do this, so I already had coded for it. Evidently I had used a prior revision of that file. The new code was commented out. So that might sound like I had done the work twice. But the main point is that there was only one word of difference in the code. Indenting, variable names, loop constructs, length. Everything was exactly the same. Serial-killer-ly consistent. Hmmm.
You tell me to relax
and listen to these facts
that everyone´s my friend
and will be till the end
but know this much is true
no matter what I do
no matter what I say
offend in every way
I never used to be (that) good at Scrabble, and certainly not Boggle. But recently, I can feel the words fall out into place. And fall out with some speed, too. Of course, Scrabulous isn’t really Scrabble, what with me having downloaded SOWPODS, rearranging it to make it a bit more grep-friendly, and typing all sorts of words into the dictionary app (before you say anything, it isn’t just haphazard letters, the stem will already be on the board/on my rack), but it is still a fine game, even if it lacks the immediacy of Boggle/Scramble. I dread to think what my Real Life Scrabble would be like these days, what with not having these tools to hand. I can, internally, sense the acceleration when running my optical regex engine over the board. Hmmm.
I´m walking through the door
but they´re expecting more
of an interesting man
and sometimes I think I can
but how much can I fake
I´ll speak until I break
with every word I say
offend in every way
There was, the other night, a theological/environmental/political discussion, and you know what? I was restrained, coherent and perhaps a little persuasive. Not shouting down, accusing them of being wrong, misguided or indeed maladjusted misanthropes. Mostly as they weren’t, and I like them. Not quite mellow, as I was still quite wound up (on the inside, and not particularly to do with them, more the usual trite Leftist nonsense and lies, misinformation and bleeding heart po-faced rubbish) but something was different. Hmmm.
