Are you going to eat that...like a cow?

Have you noticed that height is often inversely proportional volume?

This little woman that sits behind me can't be more than 5 feet tall and is by far the loudest woman on the floor when she is taking personal calls at work. I know all about her husband and how funny it is that he is over 6 feet tall while she is barely 5 feet tall, yet I have never talked to her about her husband nor have I seen him. I also know that if she doesn't leave at 4:30, traffic is way too bad, and she wants to stay much later.

Just today she insisted that her husband should work out first tonight before installing new software on their computer and that her "tummy" hurts and she is thinking of going home. I also know all about a wide variety of issues concerning this woman's personal life which I don't feel like going into any more detail.

To make matters worse (for me and my over-sensitive ears) she types with very heavy fingers and chews very loudly with an open mouth when she eats at her desk.

I often seem to have problems with co-workers and various annoying noises, so it just MIGHT be that am a bit too picky. But do you really have to chew with your mouth open? and if you are going to take personal calls at work, can't you use your cell phone and take a walk outside the office? or at least call from an unoccupied conference room? or at the very least talk softly enough so that your co-workers aren't bombarded by the intimate details of your life?

If I could just get everyone chewing with their mouths closed I might just be satisfied.

Nice Ash

Let me ask you a question: Have you ever been upset with someone in front of you on the freeway flicking their ashes out the window?

This is a true story...it happened on my drive to work a couple weeks ago...

I was driving on the 405 to work and noticed the woman in front of me was flicking her ashes out the window. This has always bothered me. First of all it is illegal. From numerous visits to traffic school (which is another topic) I know that there are only 2 things that are legal to throw out of a moving car, one is water and the other is chicken feathers (but only if there are live chickens with you.) If you insist on smoking then you should use your own damn ashtray. Don't litter on top of giving yourself cancer, and especially don't litter at my expense. Do you really think that I want to smell your smoke? Roll up your windows and enjoy your smoke to the fullest. Don't share it with everyone else.

Anyway, I wasn't really trying to, but I think scared the crap out of this woman. I was just really upset to see her continually flicking ashes in front of me. My response was to honk whenever she flicked. I am not sure if she put the two together, or if she was just thinking I was some sort of maniac. She eventually changed lanes, but as my exit was also approaching I changed lanes right behind her. I ended up getting off the same exit with her about a mile later and then actually felt slightly bad about scaring her, because she seemed concerned that I was still behind her.

I thought about following her to apologize for scaring her, but figured that would probably be even worse. Bottom Line: Use your own ashtray! And honking at strangers gives you something to talk about, but may not always end up going well.

You don't have to worry about that

Why is it that everytime I hear the phrase "You don't have to worry about that" I pause and try to count to 10 before responding? The answer is simply that the thing others think I do not have to worry about is almost always PRECISLY the thing that I need to be worried about. That phrase has got to be one of my biggest pet peeves lately.

I am considering just giving in, and simply writing down the time and person who said not to worry, so that when it comes back that there is problem with exactly what I was worried about I can show them my note and continue to not worry about it. Of course that is not what would happen. I would still be responsible for fixing the problem, which is now a much bigger project because it was ignored in the design phase.

As long as I am at it. Please stop using these phrases as well:

Irregardless - This is NOT a word. The word you are looking for is "Regardless". Adding "Ir" in front makes a negative word a double-negative. And everyone knows from the movie "Stand By Me" that "A negative times a negative equals a positive, (again!)" Bottom line: Irregardless makes no sense. Stop using it.

All Intensive Purposes - The correct phrase is "For all intents and purposes." Stop saying it wrong.

I could care less - What does this mean? Isn't the proper usage "I COULDN'T CARE LESS?" If you can care less, then you are really saying that you care some. So again you are not really saying anything at all. Why not just tell us that you like to breathe while you are at it?

For all intensive purposes and irregardless of what you think, I could care less if you agree with me.

I need a vacation.

Calling in sick

So I tried to clean my ears out (I frequently get wax buildup), and irritated my right ear so badly trying to dig out the wax with Q-tips that I probably punctured something or at least it felt like it. I spent one of the worst nights of my life waiting until 9am to call the doctor. I woke up about 20 times and tried sleeping on the floor, the couch, bed, chair, back, side, front, ice on head, warm towel, even tried a candle in the ear to dry it out (that was HOT). Just could not find a comfortable place to put my head with the throbbing ear attached.

Anyway, doctor cleaned it out and prescribed some Vicodin to help with the pain. It is amazing how difficult it is to work with intense ear pain. It is equally difficult to work while on Vicodin, but much more fun than working with ear pain. I decided to take Friday off rather than fight the above 2 choices again.

One thing I realized that a great game to play is to take a dopey drug and then try to remember what it was you just took. I was lying in bed thinking, "Davodin? No, hmmm. Danovid!" That killed about a half hour.

Unbelievably I have so far avoided the "What?" joke in response to "How is your ear doing?" Although I have been tested far too many times. My current feeling is that I hate my ear and sleeping more than 15 hours a day really should be reserved for cats only. Oh well, back to bed. I can only hope I will wake up tomorrow fully recovered.

Password Hell

So I arrive at work today and for the 3rd day in a row I get a message popup when I sign in that I need to change my password in the next 12....11....10 days.
First of all, I should say that this password is the most cryptic one I have ever used before because it requires ALL of the following:
1 upper case letter
1 lower case letter
1 number
1 special character
OK, so I had to come up with a crazy looking password and commit it to memory, and type it dozens of times per day. But now I am told I need to change it? Why? I don't understand. Really, please explain it to me. I can think of no good reason. And on top of that I learn of a new restriction:
You cannot re-use the same password you have used the past 2 times.
That prevents me from changing my password and then quickly changing it back.
Is this really necessary? I asked the Tech guys to explain to me why we had this high-level security in place and they responded, "I don't know, no good reason"
Just an exercise in frustration?
I ask around and get the actual answer and it is a recurring theme as to the root of all the problems with this place. It is aimed at fulfilling our SOX compliance (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002)

So, my solution? Change my password twice, THEN change it back.
(Sigh)

Dilbert knows

This Dilbert cartoon was sent to me by a co-worker today:



It hits very close to home as we are big on Sarbanes-Oxley here.

In fact, I recently had to create a change request form for a project that required no change at all (it was already fixed by another project). So, I created a 7-page document that required 8 signatures and the instructions I wrote were: "Do nothing"

Database column suffixes

Why do you need suffixes describing the database type on the column name?
For instance: "amount_int" ? Why not just "amount" ?

We have a DB set up here with this archeticture, but the funniest (saddest?) thing is that the suffix is not always correct. So it doesn't really save any time because you have to look at the database to confirm anyway.

This brings me to my current project, which has me adding a new column to an existing table. The new column exists in another table, but is incorrectly suffixed as "_si" for small integer, but has been since changed to a full integer and should have been updated to "_int" but obviously wasn't. I guess it was too much of a hassle to update all of the coding that references it already.

This is EXACTLY why I think it is a bad idea to include this in the column name. So...in the new table I got the answer that we want it to be correct (use "_int".) Therefore the two columns which are storing identical information for the same purpose are named 2 different ways.

Bottom Line regarding using suffixes in this way:
Cons:
More to type when coding
Makes datatype changes either a huge project or makes the column name suffix incorrect which defeats the purpose

Pros:
Gives me something to type about here.