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Down With The Sickness

As a kid, sick days were pretty cool, you get to miss school and lie around in bed all day. If you were lucky, your mom would dote over you making sure you were comfortable, bringing you soup, making sure you took your medicine and all of that good stuff.

As an adult, sick days suck. Its fun to sit around and play games, or goof around on the computer all day, but when you have to drag your rear out of bed to go to the doctor or to buy groceries or get prescriptions filled it freakin’ SUCKS.

Reading the side effects on the prescriptions is always fun, though; drowsiness, dizzyness, lightheadedness, blurred vision, possible ADDICTION?! Fark, I think I would have been better off with a bottle of Jack Daniels…it would have been cheaper, too.

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Taking Exception to Idiots

I want to start out by apologizing to all the non-programmers reading this. I try to avoid talking shop in a public place, but fark it…at least this gives me something else to say today besides “Valentine’s Day Sucks.”

A client has been busting my balls for the last week talking about “I have a random error” and he keeps sending me the same damn error message “Invalid data found in column XYZ” over and over again. At first I’m like, “Dude, you have invalid data!” which he denies, instead he blames it on the latest version of our software. He has no way to reliably recreate the error, but without that, I really have nothing to work with. “It’s random” he parrots to me.

Sorry, buster, but unless you’re having a hardware problem or failure: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A RANDOM ERROR!!

This eventually escalates to The Boss, who will no longer be my The Boss after tomorrow; he is transferring to another department. Mr. Random Error sends his code and some example data to The Boss who bounces it back to me because, hey, he’s moving out of our department, and he’s got other things to do. Okay, fine, I’m cool with that, but he didn’t have to be a dick about it, hopefully new The Boss will be cooler.

Randomizer’s dumb luck means I get passed the buck 90 minutes before my scheduled time to leave, and I have tomorrow off, too. Fark.

Those minutes quickly melt away setting up the test environment and getting the crappy code to freaking compile because the Brainiacs who wrote it are using a bunch of old crap that I don’t have referenced because I don’t use old crap. By the time I get all that sorted out, its way past time for me to go and I’m barely getting to the “let’s find out what happened” part, but I decide to stay despite a sweet, sweet, 3-day weekend staring me in the face.

I stay partially because its my job, partially because soon-to-be-former The Boss insisted this be done ASAP, partially out of curiosity as to what is causing the problem, and partially to prove to that jerk Mr. Random Error that he’s full of crap.

It doesn’t take long.

The program starts up as he said it would, data is loaded and everything looks okay…but I notice there are four exceptions in the Output window, and the program is still running?? For the 99% of you that aren’t code monkeys it means the program should have crashed…HARD

I fart around for a bit and get the “Invalid data found” error that started it all. Before the program dies, though, exceptions keep stacking up in the Output window like pancakes at Denny’s on a Sunday morning. It’s not quite Miller Time yet, though, something screwy is going on here. I look for Try-Catch statements in the code (these are used to catch errors) and find the following:

Try
blah
blah
suck
blah
Catch ex Exception

End Try

There is NOTHING in the Catch block!? Those of you who are programmers are probably laughing by now, for those that aren’t, that means when something Really Really Bad happens, the program just goes along its merry way as if nothing had happened. Normally, you would DO something about the error and keep the program from crashing.

In this case, something bad DID happen, but nothing is done about it. The errors just keep stacking up and stacking up until the whole thing blows up, which explains why it is (exaggerated finger quotes in mid-air) “RAN-DOM.” I breathe a sigh of relief because this is something we can work with, and I can tell Mr. Random Error that his code sucks and he needs to add some error handling to it. I enjoyed typing every single letter of that fucking email.

I was done at 830; I didn’t send out the email to Mr. Random Error, though, I sent it to The Boss and The Boss’s The Boss to let them know what was going on and to verify my theory is correct. Considering my state of mind when I typed it, some proofreading is probably a good idea, too.

So now I can begin my 3-day weekend, and I think I’ll start it by going out for some buffalo wings…mmm, wing-y!

By the way; Valentine’s Day sucks!

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You can’t fix stupid…but you have to support it

I do tech support for a living right now, and have worked in call centers in the past. There is an unfortunate truth that never occurred to me until last Saturday.

When I took this job, I had assumed that it would be easier then my previous crappy customer service experience. I based this assumption on the fact that I would be working with a ‘smarter’ group of people consisting of fellow programmers and assorted geeks. This would be easier than dealing the general public because those programmers and assorted geeks would be better at computers.

Of course, it didn’t take long to discover how wrong I was, but it took until last Saturday to figure out why:

The majority of those programmers and assorted geeks who call for help aren’t the Brainiacs that know what they’re doing. They’re the C and D students sitting near the bottom of the bell curve that need their hands held while they deal with Visual Studio, and in extreme cases, Windows.

I believe this holds true for ANY kind of support, regardless of whom the group of people you support are. Whether they’re programmers, teachers, lawyers or scientists, most of the ones who come calling for help are going to be the dumbest of the lot, no matter how smart they appear on paper.

While coming to that conclusion certainly doesn’t make my job any easier, it definitely explains a lot.

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At The Car Wash

Identifying people by something they do (or don’t do) is just one of those things that people tend to do, and I’m no different. Instead of their names, I could identify close friends as Wrestling Fan, Mini Driver, World of Warcraft Player, Quiet Guy, and Dude That Enjoys Killing People In Videogames Just A Little Too Much. You know who you are.

One unfortunate habit that I have acquired is that I do not wash my car on a regular basis. When your friends constantly see the layers of dust covering your vehicle, you soon become known as “Guy Who Never Washes His Car.” This has been my moniker for years back home, however I didn’t realize that it had followed me up to my new home until last Saturday.

A friend of mine was coming over to visit for the first time, and I provided directions. The last instruction being: “Look for my red Dodge Neon.” I figured this was simple enough, at least in the first month of living there, I had never seen another red Dodge Neon. The apartment was stuffy, so I decided to open the balcony door to let some air in while I did some vacuuming.

As I am doing this, I look outside and see my friend parking his truck just outside of the building. Great, I think, he’ll be knocking on the door pretty soon. I continue cleaning but hear no knock on the door. “Why hasn’t he knocked yet?” I wonder. I check outside and see the truck is no longer there. As I am pondering this turn of events, my cell phone rings, its my friend: “Hey, did you wash your car?” he asks, to which I reply yes.

I then asked if he had parked a few minutes earlier. He said yes, but he had decided that apparently the Neon was SO clean he assumed it was not mine and kept on looking for a red “covered in dirt” Neon which he did not find. Jerk.

It is now official, I am now “Guy Who Never Washes His Car.” Again.

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Miss-Organized

One of my (many) quirks is that I try to leave things in the same location so that I can easily find them. My keys are always in the same place on top of the small bookshelf in my room, the remote controls are always on top of the coffee table, and the diet soda is always on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred this works very well. However, there is that one time every so often where I put something in a DIFFERENT place and it completely blows my mind. I once misplaced my cell phone and spent a good half-hour searching for it before I noticed it sitting on top of the television…in the living room…its also a larger phone so I definitely should have noticed it earlier.

I decide to bake some oatmeal-raisin cookies out of the misguided notion that they are somehow not AS bad for me as store-bought (but hey, who knows, maybe they are, right? RIGHT??). After washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen, I check my ingredients; flour, sugar, oatmeal, yadda, yadda, yadda. I appear to have enough of everything but a quick peek in the refrigerator reveals there is no butter! Crap. So off to the store I go for a box of butter.

Much to my disappointment, the HEB is completely OUT of unsalted butter. I am left scratching my head searching for some logical reason everyone should be baking today. I suppose everyone else who had today off in observance of Martin Luther King Day got the urge to do some baking. I’ve never used salted butter before, and for fear of tampering with my recipe, I decide to punt and use margarine. I guess its not really ‘punting’ though; Blue Bonnet did the job just as well before I started making fat cash and started using the Good Stuff.

I pick up a few other things I need and go home to fire up the oven and get to work. All goes well until I notice that burnt-cookie smell. It turns out the oven was set too high: 400 degrees instead of 350. Well, nuts. Fortunately, the cookies aren’t set-the-smoke-alarm-off burnt, the raisins on the bottom just got a little crispy. They are certainly edible, but as I do not wish to sully my reputation as a baker, those will not be leaving the apartment.

I turn down the oven and the second batch comes out perfect. I clean up the kitchen and go to the refrigerator to grab a soda. I had placed the now half-empty box of margarine on the bottom shelf and think to myself: “That should really be on the top shelf.” I move the margarine to its proper place and find a FULL box of margarine sitting on the top shelf.

Cookie, anyone?

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100% Complete

The cable man came by today and hooked me back up to the tubes so I’m 100% moved in. Now I have to go get a HD box (the one thing I didn’t check until AFTER the guy left) and figure out where to put the modem and the cables and the phone…but that can wait until after lunch!

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Did and Done

-whew- I finally got everything moved in and where I want it. The biggest adjustment I had to make was the new desk. It doesn’t have any drawers so I bought one of those plastic cabinet thingies to chuck all of my junk into. It’s clear plastic, so you can see all the cables, old cards, manuals and other crap that’s inside, I can’t wait for guests to ask “WTF is all that junk?” I had to buy a new microwave…well, make that A microwave, my last place had one built-in, and I haven’t owned one in years, but that’s a story for another time.

Of course, the place isn’t quite 100% yet, but that’ll be taken care of on Saturday when the cable guy comes to hook me up to the tubes and I can jump back on Live. I also need to purchase a second barstool, and then I’ll be ready to throw a party! Don’t forget to bring the beer, RavynX! 😀

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Home Sweet Home

With a little help from my friends, I was able to get everything moved into my new apartment over the weekend. Aside from the usual pain-in-the-ass moving of the 32-inch tube TV set, everything went off without a hitch.

The new place is nice, it has a lot of extras; garden bathtub, ice maker, ceiling fan in the bedroom, washer-dryer connections…the place just rocks. On top of all that its only 5 minutes away from work, which means no more crappy Loop 410 traffic and I can eat lunch at home!

Of course, with any more comes the oh-so-fun transferring of addresses. I’ve already arranged for my mail to be forwarded, but need to give it to various and sundry other people, as well as my new phone number. I recently got a new cell phone, and a new number which I have not memorized yet. People give me odd looks over that, but really, how often do you call yourself?

I’m “off the grid” until Saturday, when my internet gets hooked up at the new place. Sadly, there is no one to l33ch off of, but at least I can check email with my T-Mobile Dash.

So that’s all over with, and now the fun part begins…saving up money for a HOUSE! Woo!

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