Jump to content

Quote of the Week From My Life.


Lucius

Recommended Posts

"Since the plate tectonics revolution, researchers have recognized surface geology for what it is: a cold, rocky scum of continent-carrying, ocean-crust-covered tectonic plates."

 

"I'm sure we all know people like that."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Newly seen in the forums under vBulletin v5.0.1, as a major heading at the top of a thread:

 

This is a sticky topic.

 

The forum's meaning of the phrase "sticky topic" is different from the one I think of when I see the phrase.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

... And what it's telling us is that the more pitchers you use, the longer games take. The more pitchers get replaced, the more commercial breaks necessary while the relievers warm up. The more commercial breaks you listen to, the more you have to listen to advertisements that use baseball clichés. And the more baseball clichés you listen to, the sooner you die.

 

See? Being a Seattle Mariners fan really is life-threatening.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"It's like apples and chickens ..."

 

Reminds me of the time....

 

My former wife: That's fruit bowl thinking.

 

Me: Fruit bowl thinking?

 

My former wife: Yes, you're not just comparing apples to oranges, you're throwing in watermelons and bananas and grapes and kiwi fruit

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary thinks that sounds delicious but that I ought to include what I said that prompted the fruit bowl remark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Conversation at coffee counter this morning with former student in my Fluids/Waves/Electromagnetism for Pre-Meds course:

 

"I didn't hate your class, Dr _____ [me]. I only cried twice in your class."

 

"That's because we only had two mid-terms in that class."

 

-----------

 

"Well, I didn't make the curriculum."

 

"Yeah, a bunch of dead white guys made it."

 

"I am NOT dead yet. Keep your subconscious inaudible, please."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[h=5]So there I was, eating my breakfast, while the love-of-my-life was on her laptop...

 

Her: ::watching the Google-doodle:: Oh, look! It must be Henry Ford's birthday.

Me: ::blinking in disbelief, trying to figure out if she's trolling me or something:: Huh?

Her: I mean, they've got an assembly line going, and he pioneered that.

Me: Well, I'm gonna go out on a limb, here, and assume that the doodle might have something to do with it being Mother's Day today!

Her: Oooohhh![/h]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

To my wife this morning. "If Tony Stark liked to tell bad jokes, would he be Irony Man?"

w: Frank, that's bad. Really bad.

Me: You're right. It should be "If Tony Stark liked to tell bad jokes about improbable situations, would he be Irony Man?"

W: Just stop. Please.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is from the land where gaming and reality meet.

 

A client asked for a meeting today to discuss some changes to his program. As he was showing me the pages and saying "This won't be too big, I don't think," I realized I had blown a SAN roll. That was not the thing to say. I tried to explain, no it is rather big. This program is up and working and these are BIG changes. It's not just a layout change. He kinda understood that, but kept insisting that it was simpler than I was making it out to be. Excuse me? Have you spent hundreds of hours in this mess of code that you inherited from your predecessor? Have you cleaned it up to the best of your ability so that you at least know what is going on? I didn't think so. So don't tell me how big this change is going to be. Of course, I didn't say that. I did think through some of the changes as he kept talking.

 

That's when I had to make the second roll. You know, the one where you see how much you understand of the horror you saw? Yep, made that one big.

 

So I'm down on SAN already. I was down when the meeting started from some other emergency tasks that came in today, but I'm much further down. The client says, "And I think that doing this now will make it easier to add more crops in the future."

 

SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA! Oh! Bad! SAN rolls! Lost the first, made the second without even thinking about it. Remember, I've spent hundreds of hours in this code.

 

"No, it won't. This code was written with two crops in mind. To add a third is going to be a huge undertaking." Remember, I inherited this mess. There were up front design decisions that I never would have made. Such as making two of every calculation field on the farm rows and they differ by the prepended "s" for soybean or "c" for corn. Yep, I didn't do that, but I have to live with it. The first time I looked at this code, I realized the horrible design and how next to impossible it would be to add a third crop. Let me rephrase. Adding it is a small but surmountable problem. Adding it in a way that the code will work right easily is not small.

 

When we're done, I return to my desk and the client runs into the boss on the way out the door. They start talking. I continue on. The boss comes to me. "What do you mean it's going to be a big deal to add another crop?"

 

"X, this thing was built with two crops in mind. That is hardcoded in. Let me show you the tables."

 

He doesn't get it. "So you just add some more. Add wheatfutures and wheatoptions and whatever else."

 

"Yes, but that's going to be a mess inside the code. These should have been made in the first place as futures, options, cash, futuresprices, etc, with the crop added as a field." Then I gently tried to remind him that I didn't write this thing first. "I knew the first time I looked at this code that it adding another crop was going to be difficult. Look at this table." I showed him the farms table where each row has TotCornAcres, TotSoyAcres, cPAH, sAPH, cShare, sShare, etc." More than 20 fields for each crop.

 

"Well, if this should have been designed differently from the beginning, that's our mistake and we can't charge him for fixing that. You'll just have to make it work. What if you do this? Each farmer has two crops and he can specify what they are. For A it might be corn and soybeans, for B it's wheat and corn. Then those price tables could be tied to their choice."

 

SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA. "No good. Client takes care of the market pricing tables which are part of those. To really fix it, it needs almost a complete rewrite."

 

"Well, it was our design flaw, so you'll have to fix it."

 

SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA.

 

I ran into the sales man who handles that account today before leaving. He asked me about the meeting. I explained everything and how the design flaw was "our" fault.

 

"No! He specified from the beginning of the definition that there were two crops: corn and soybeans. He has never mentioned adding another. If he had, it would have been built differently from the start." [it still shouldn't have been built this way, but I didn't say that.] "Who's paying for this?"

 

"X said our fault, we fix it."

 

"No it is not our fault. I'm going to talk to X."

 

And he went to see the boss. And now I find out tomorrow what happened.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is from the land where gaming and reality meet.

 

A client asked for a meeting today to discuss some changes to his program. As he was showing me the pages and saying "This won't be too big, I don't think," I realized I had blown a SAN roll. That was not the thing to say. I tried to explain, no it is rather big. This program is up and working and these are BIG changes. It's not just a layout change. He kinda understood that, but kept insisting that it was simpler than I was making it out to be. Excuse me? Have you spent hundreds of hours in this mess of code that you inherited from your predecessor? Have you cleaned it up to the best of your ability so that you at least know what is going on? I didn't think so. So don't tell me how big this change is going to be. Of course, I didn't say that. I did think through some of the changes as he kept talking.

 

That's when I had to make the second roll. You know, the one where you see how much you understand of the horror you saw? Yep, made that one big.

 

So I'm down on SAN already. I was down when the meeting started from some other emergency tasks that came in today, but I'm much further down. The client says, "And I think that doing this now will make it easier to add more crops in the future."

 

SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA! Oh! Bad! SAN rolls! Lost the first, made the second without even thinking about it. Remember, I've spent hundreds of hours in this code.

 

"No, it won't. This code was written with two crops in mind. To add a third is going to be a huge undertaking." Remember, I inherited this mess. There were up front design decisions that I never would have made. Such as making two of every calculation field on the farm rows and they differ by the prepended "s" for soybean or "c" for corn. Yep, I didn't do that, but I have to live with it. The first time I looked at this code, I realized the horrible design and how next to impossible it would be to add a third crop. Let me rephrase. Adding it is a small but surmountable problem. Adding it in a way that the code will work right easily is not small.

 

When we're done, I return to my desk and the client runs into the boss on the way out the door. They start talking. I continue on. The boss comes to me. "What do you mean it's going to be a big deal to add another crop?"

 

"X, this thing was built with two crops in mind. That is hardcoded in. Let me show you the tables."

 

He doesn't get it. "So you just add some more. Add wheatfutures and wheatoptions and whatever else."

 

"Yes, but that's going to be a mess inside the code. These should have been made in the first place as futures, options, cash, futuresprices, etc, with the crop added as a field." Then I gently tried to remind him that I didn't write this thing first. "I knew the first time I looked at this code that it adding another crop was going to be difficult. Look at this table." I showed him the farms table where each row has TotCornAcres, TotSoyAcres, cPAH, sAPH, cShare, sShare, etc." More than 20 fields for each crop.

 

"Well, if this should have been designed differently from the beginning, that's our mistake and we can't charge him for fixing that. You'll just have to make it work. What if you do this? Each farmer has two crops and he can specify what they are. For A it might be corn and soybeans, for B it's wheat and corn. Then those price tables could be tied to their choice."

 

SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA. "No good. Client takes care of the market pricing tables which are part of those. To really fix it, it needs almost a complete rewrite."

 

"Well, it was our design flaw, so you'll have to fix it."

 

SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA.

 

I ran into the sales man who handles that account today before leaving. He asked me about the meeting. I explained everything and how the design flaw was "our" fault.

 

"No! He specified from the beginning of the definition that there were two crops: corn and soybeans. He has never mentioned adding another. If he had, it would have been built differently from the start." [it still shouldn't have been built this way, but I didn't say that.] "Who's paying for this?"

 

"X said our fault, we fix it."

 

"No it is not our fault. I'm going to talk to X."

 

And he went to see the boss. And now I find out tomorrow what happened.

Tomorrow, you will begin a stretch of 72-hour workweeks during which you will redesign the entire database and rewrite the entire application from scratch, for free. Because no one bothered to document the application requirements up front, so the requirements are whatever the client says they are. Oh, and you'll also have to migrate the data out of the old dbase. We'll miss you. See you again in, what, four months?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is from the land where gaming and reality meet.

 

A client asked for a meeting today to discuss some changes to his program. As he was showing me the pages and saying "This won't be too big, I don't think," I realized I had blown a SAN roll. That was not the thing to say. I tried to explain, no it is rather big. This program is up and working and these are BIG changes. It's not just a layout change. He kinda understood that, but kept insisting that it was simpler than I was making it out to be. Excuse me? Have you spent hundreds of hours in this mess of code that you inherited from your predecessor? Have you cleaned it up to the best of your ability so that you at least know what is going on? I didn't think so. So don't tell me how big this change is going to be. Of course, I didn't say that. I did think through some of the changes as he kept talking.

 

That's when I had to make the second roll. You know, the one where you see how much you understand of the horror you saw? Yep, made that one big.

 

So I'm down on SAN already. I was down when the meeting started from some other emergency tasks that came in today, but I'm much further down. The client says, "And I think that doing this now will make it easier to add more crops in the future."

 

SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA! Oh! Bad! SAN rolls! Lost the first, made the second without even thinking about it. Remember, I've spent hundreds of hours in this code.

 

"No, it won't. This code was written with two crops in mind. To add a third is going to be a huge undertaking." Remember, I inherited this mess. There were up front design decisions that I never would have made. Such as making two of every calculation field on the farm rows and they differ by the prepended "s" for soybean or "c" for corn. Yep, I didn't do that, but I have to live with it. The first time I looked at this code, I realized the horrible design and how next to impossible it would be to add a third crop. Let me rephrase. Adding it is a small but surmountable problem. Adding it in a way that the code will work right easily is not small.

 

When we're done, I return to my desk and the client runs into the boss on the way out the door. They start talking. I continue on. The boss comes to me. "What do you mean it's going to be a big deal to add another crop?"

 

"X, this thing was built with two crops in mind. That is hardcoded in. Let me show you the tables."

 

He doesn't get it. "So you just add some more. Add wheatfutures and wheatoptions and whatever else."

 

"Yes, but that's going to be a mess inside the code. These should have been made in the first place as futures, options, cash, futuresprices, etc, with the crop added as a field." Then I gently tried to remind him that I didn't write this thing first. "I knew the first time I looked at this code that it adding another crop was going to be difficult. Look at this table." I showed him the farms table where each row has TotCornAcres, TotSoyAcres, cPAH, sAPH, cShare, sShare, etc." More than 20 fields for each crop.

 

"Well, if this should have been designed differently from the beginning, that's our mistake and we can't charge him for fixing that. You'll just have to make it work. What if you do this? Each farmer has two crops and he can specify what they are. For A it might be corn and soybeans, for B it's wheat and corn. Then those price tables could be tied to their choice."

 

SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA. "No good. Client takes care of the market pricing tables which are part of those. To really fix it, it needs almost a complete rewrite."

 

"Well, it was our design flaw, so you'll have to fix it."

 

SHOOKA, SHOOKA, SHOOKA.

 

I ran into the sales man who handles that account today before leaving. He asked me about the meeting. I explained everything and how the design flaw was "our" fault.

 

"No! He specified from the beginning of the definition that there were two crops: corn and soybeans. He has never mentioned adding another. If he had, it would have been built differently from the start." [it still shouldn't have been built this way, but I didn't say that.] "Who's paying for this?"

 

"X said our fault, we fix it."

 

"No it is not our fault. I'm going to talk to X."

 

And he went to see the boss. And now I find out tomorrow what happened.

Where I used to work, that would be true. Our salesmen (project managers) keep good definitions because some of them have been burned by this kinda thing in the past. None as large as this one though.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
"Okay, thanks everyone for coming to this meeting. I don't really know what we're going to talk about, I don't have an agenda or anything, I just wanted to get this group meeting on a regular basis again."
"Can we have a necktie party in your honor for that?"
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...