Thanks for the music and showing those of us who didn’t always fit in, that it was okay.
You showed us reinvention and being unapologetically ourselves were good things.
Godspeed,
Ground control out.
Just learned something interesting
I have two blogging programs that I use regularly.
The one I’m using right now is reliable and a workhorse but sometimes it’s a bit more than I really need and its interface is dated and perhaps a little “busy” when I’m interested in just typing.
The Other Blogging program is simple and features the newer “Open” design that many programs are moving to. The newer programs seem to be leaning toward minimalist icons in the menu, and a generally Spartan appearance. I like the look and feel of the newer interfaces, as a result I gravitate toward programs that are using the Spartan look.
Which leads me to some of the problems that new software can exhibit…
Software that’s a bit buggy, or in this case a lot buggy. The newer program has some issues with its spellcheck. “Issues” is me being polite.
Their implementation of spell check is almost completely wrong. A couple of weeks ago I went to great lengths to document how wrong they were.
Oh I was nice. I’d noticed the problems and when to their website to see if there was an estimated date when they’d have it fixed. On their site I saw many people leaving messages about things not working right but no-one was really specific.
The impression I got from the replies the company was writing, was that they didn’t understand what the users were complaining about.
I’m an OLD ASS SQA guy.
So I figured I’d define the problem in a way that the programmers would understand.
I opened my copy of their program and started checking and unchecking options in the spellcheck system. Then I was doing screen capture and boiling down my procedure to recreate the problems into five or six steps. I put it all together and sent it off to the person at their company who takes care of these sorts of things.
I got a very nice email back saying, “Thank you, we get it now, and we’re working to fix the problem.”
“Cool,” I think.
Then I set all the settings back to my preferred conditions in their program and went on with my life.
Then, over the past couple of days I’ve been firing up the program to write quick little blogs. The program is highlighting some spelling errors but not others. I didn’t notice the inconsistency until this morning. The other thing the program is doing is this. It’s autocorrecting things as I type and doing that wrong!
I go back re-check the settings and confirm that indeed, the little check marks are having absolutely no effect. Which means another bug report to the company and that when they update the program they may have to have the customers do a complete uninstallation and then reinstall the program. That’s seriously ugly! Somewhere along the line, either using the program or changing the settings, the program has lost control of it’s preferences file.
Uh OH! This means that Blogs I’ve written over the past few days are probably horribly screwed up!
Sure enough, I go out to the blog site and find that not only did the program not schedule things right, it also did some really bad things to spelling in the blogs posted over the last couple of days.
So I’m falling back to the reliable old workhorse until the programmers get a handle on the defects in the new program.
Maybe I’ll hit the manufacturer of the new blogging program, up for a job. They could use my assistance!
The dish is clear
I just realized that I’d blogged every day of December. That’s a first!
I don’t think the content of all 31 days was particularly stellar but then again; have ya read the New York Times lately?
I suppose I could try and shame them, as is our custom now. But somehow I think it would be a waste of time to try to shame the shameless.
Moving on…
Snow clearing was work, but not painful. The sun and warmer temps helped a lot. The snow is mostly powder.
We’ve already had snow players driving to the end of our street to play in the “no play” flood control zone.
The most disconcerting of the players, was the group of Asians driving by taking pictures of us and our homes waving and smiling like they were on a ride a Disneyland.
I thought about charging them admission, I could use the money!
At least they’re respectful even if they seem unclear that this is a neighborhood, and we haven’t cleared driveways and the street so that they could come up and play. On the plus side, they don’t leave trash and they’re generally very pleasant.
There are other groups who are, shall we say, ASSHOLES!
The neighborhood is bracing for the inevitable onslaught this weekend. Some of the neighbors are putting up chains across their driveways and others have parked their 2nd vehicle sideways in their driveway to prevent snow players from parking.
As a note, it’s not the parking so much that we mind. It’s folks getting stuck in our driveways then spinning their tires until they’ve torn up the pavement or in some cases had their cars slide uncontrolled into our cars.
The best one I’ve heard; ( I don’t know if this is rumor or cautionary tale, I can’t confirm it or when it was supposed to have happened, ) was the car that slid down a guys driveway and took out his garage door and 4 Harleys sitting in the garage.
The folks in the car abandoned it, and ran down the road. It’s 20° F, they’ve got small kids, and must be at least 20 miles from home. (Assumed because if they lived here the wouldn’t be parking in someone else’s driveway to play in the snow.) So running down the road abandoning the car, they’re planning to… what? Cops rounded ‘em up and made them own-up to their crime.
Even if the story is a cautionary tale, the sad part is that I could see it happening. After all I’ve had multiple confrontations in my own driveway.
There is NOTHING more irritating than having your car warming up in the driveway, clearing the last bits of snow and ice from the end of your driveway, then getting into your car to go to work and having someone come screaming in behind you thinking they can park and you’ll drive your car around them.
Uhh NO, that’s not how this works!
We’ve heard as of this afternoon that the police are already ticketing and moving folks along to the designated play areas. So it looks like they’ve taken the complaints we made last year seriously.
The sad thing is that generally if people are polite and don’t trash the place we really don’t mind folks playing around our homes or in the open spaces or lots around town. Usually, you’d think of those places as “locals only” you know, kids from the neighborhood, but there’s always room for a few more in a snow fort or snowball fight.
The problem is the local kids are often displaced when the traffic snarls and 1000 people try to occupy a 60 x 60 foot lot. The folks from off the hill just don’t seem to get that nobody has any fun then.
Locals snowboard in the early dawn hours. Local kids play in the snow before 9am, then go home. It reminds me of when I lived in Huntington Beach. The locals surfed before 8 every day. Then the crowds came and no-one had fun.
I mean how can you surf when the surfboards are so thick in the water that you could walk on them from Huntington Beach to Laguna Beach and never get your feet wet.
We’ll know on Friday afternoon just how much police presence we’re going to have for the weekend.
It will be a good winter as long as I don’t have anybody wave a gun at me.
There Be Snow in the hills
Enough snow in fact that my satellite TV and internet are down. Ahhh well.
How am I posting this?
Phone HotSpot! I love it when technology works as it’s supposed to. Although I would like to know why my computer refuses to disconnect from my phone when I command it to.
I suppose that’s better than the other way around.
I have no idea how long the satellite dishes will be covered. I know, I could go uncover them… I would except they’re on the roof and right now I can’t get to them.
On the plus side I kinda like being forced to be quiet. The TV isn’t telling me about traffic accidents or car chases and since I have to think about getting on the internet, I’m more mindful about what I do when I fire up the hotspot.
I don’t think I’d want to be this way all the time, but it’s nice to have a break.
I’m off to shovel snow! I’ve got someone waiting on me to throw snowballs.
Diversity? Oh Really!
Sorry, just read another article about the lack of “Diversity” in technology and realized I am totally screwed! Apparently, I’ve also been way ahead of the curve because for years. To me, my coworkers have been nothing more that their intellect. I think the ultimate diversity, is for all of us to be considered nothing more than a brain.
Here is the inevitable rant!
The lack of diversity in Tech means more DIVERSITY is being demanded even though some of the “Diverse” workers may have been given their degrees as a quota filling move. Like the Dr. from MIT (yes… a real PHD from MIT) who was my boss. That idiot couldn’t read simple sentences, much less run a department.
All of us used to write memos that read like Dick & Jane books.
“See the network plug”
“The network plug is different from the phone plug”
“Forcing the network plug into the phone jack is bad, it makes the network sad”
“See Sparky run…”
Of course writing like that takes time and thought so we’d get dinged on productivity.
If we didn’t write memos then we had to talk in person and that meant what should have been a 2 minute conversation ended up being an hour long conversation as we explained repeatedly the fundamental concepts of digital communications in an “adverse” environment. The idiot really had trouble understanding why you didn’t want to run ethernet cables between moving vehicles. Truly this person was the poster child for “The Peter Principal”.
BTW the issues weren’t because of being black, they were because of stupidity, and an artificial quota system which presented a pass based on skin color instead of having the student learn things and work for the degree(s).
The lady who taught me UNIX was also a graduate from MIT and she was freakin brilliant. She spoke all kinds of languages, had an undergraduate degree in physics, and graduate degrees in Computer Science and AI.
She was tough to deal with but we got along. I think it’s because when we were at work it was only about the truth of the data, the validity of the software, and personalities or feelings didn’t matter. She’s what I thought all MIT folks were like, until I met my former boss and the fantasy was shattered.
I know if I was hiring now, I’d be suspicious of folks and their degrees. That’s what happens when you devalue an entire educational system to bring “Equality” based on anything other that intellect.
My suspicion is evidenced by the number of pre-interview “Tests” that hiring companies want you to take.
Yeah, they want to test you on your knowledge before you ever speak to anyone outside of the HR department. It’s annoying, but I get it. Degrees are like toilet paper now. Very expensive toilet paper, but toilet paper nonetheless. Everyone has one and all the degree means anymore is that you’re in debt and sat through X years in an institute of “Higher Learning,” and have a mountain of debt.
There are some very good professors who do really care about facts, and whether the student has retained the facts or not. These professors are also interested in teaching and verifying that the students can use the “facts” in new ways.
But sadly these professors are retiring at an alarming pace and many of them are glad to be doing so. The helicopter parents haven’t gone away, they’re simply plaguing a new set of educators, except now they’re holding college professors accountable for little Johnny not doing the work.
Turns out the critics & educators of 50 years ago were right, things do slip to the lowest common denominator, not the other way around.