Fek'Lar
(Destroyer of Laptops - Morale Officer - The Last Honest Geek)
The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar
You Know You're DOOMED When...
you ask the person you're interviewing for a networking job to tell you what TCP is and they answer, "Oh! They're the cable people!"
You've stumbled onto another issue of The Crapolla, a journal written for software professionals. No not the managers; I mean the people who do the work.
This Crapolla is sponsored by...
In This Issue...
Code or get off the pot, and defending your right to hate.
Take a Letter
Jim Boyo writes ...
Your continuing tales of MIS-management remind me of the old chestnut:
Ronald Reagan (maybe George Schultz or someone else) was visiting Gorbachev in Russia for the May Day parade. First, there passed by row after row of soldiers, marching precisely, with stiff legs and arms swinging high. Then heavy tanks rumbled by, three abreast, for twenty minutes. Then trucks bearing all sizes and types of missiles rolled past. Finally, a disorderly mob of men and women in rumpled suits wandered by.
Of this last group, the US visitor asked, "Who are they?"
Gorby answered, "Ah, that's MIDDLE MANAGEMENT. You have no idea of the damage and destruction they can cause."
Right you are Jimbo. In fact we can thank the "Un-checked Middle Manager Gap" for the fall of the USSR! That's right, we had fewer middle managers who didn't have people like you and me pointing out their bonehead ways. Now over in Commieland everyone just did what their middle manager said, and look where they are now! So if you want to keep America strong make sure the Bald White Monkey in your work group has been properly spanked!
Most people who know me are aware that I don't have a degree in computer science, or in any science for that matter. What I know about computers and computer languages is mostly learning I did while working a hot dog stand after getting my BA. I did take one computing class in college. It was in FORTRAN. This was still the era of paper punch cards. I set the university record for getting paper cuts while writing a "Hello World" program. FORTRAN sucked! I hated computers.
It wasn't until much later when I found that not only could you play video games on the Apple ][, but you could also modify the programs that had been written in BASIC, that my journey to the Dark Side had begun.
Along the way I have learned Pascal, HTML, Java, JavaScript, Perl, and SQL. I've worked on almost every Operating System out there. (I'm lumping all of UNIX as one OS. No letters from the Linux zealot's please.) What I have discovered while working in technology is that you have to keep learning. Today's language, or OS, or Killer APP is worthless tomorrow. Not only is there planned obsolescence in the products we make, but planned obsolescence in the technology used to make the products. If you're still trying to make a living as a Novell expert, well, I suppose that is an effective diet.
I had a decision to make. Should I sign up for another class at UC Santa Cruz Extension which would teach me what the instructor wanted to teach, or should I just screw around on my own? I had learned Perl at UC from a genius. He didn't look at the book (I don't even know if he owned a copy of the book). You could ask him a question and he could just belt out the answer in the form of code. He thought in Perl.
Since the class I had been coding in Perl, and later was hired at the Klingon High Command to work on their web site and write some Perl middleware. The job had shown me which parts of the language I needed to learn more about. So the question was, take the Perl II class or design a really hairy program that required weeks of individual research to complete? I chose the latter. I knew which areas I needed to learn, and this project could tackle a few of them.
At the Klingon High Command like many other places I had to slam stuff out that did what was required, but might not have been the most efficient. It was good enough, and that's all that mattered. The program I was going to write needed to teach me as much as I would learn in the typical 6 week class. It needed to be complicated, and efficient. It needed to have requirements that I did not know how to solve in the beginning of the project, and it needed to be written in as few executable bytes as possible. Future maintenance was a concern with such a complicated program.
For a couple of months I labored on my program. About half way through I decided I was coding inefficiently. I needed to make more subroutines. I cropped my code in half. For weeks I would stare into space looking for the correct answers to questions like, "How do you sort an anonymous two dimensional array by column that is contained inside a associative array?"
Coding is cheap fun for me. It's a big game with few continuing costs. My program has no known bugs, is 50K in executable bytes, and has a run time of ten minutes. What a luxury it has been to code without a deadline, to just wallow in the problems. I'm not saying that I'm a coding god. I'm certainly not. I bring this up to encourage people to find the time to struggle with new skills. If you can find some time to work on what appears to be impossible, you'll soon learn that the problem is made up of small and easy tasks.
Now I didn't get away with not spending the 800 bucks that the class cost. I ended up spending it on the Diet Coke and donuts I ate while coding.
They're at it again! In an Inter@ctive Week article dated March 17, Doug Brown writes that the Department of Housing and Urban Development along with civil rights leaders are going to lead an effort to fight hate on the Internet. God, I hate these people! HUD is going to spend $200,000.00 to create a task force to work on this. They want to reduce hate, but protect freedom of speech. Well make up your mind! These are mutually exclusive goals.
What these idiots don't seem to understand is that popular opinions do not need the protection of the First Amendment. It's the unpopular opinion that must be defended. If we all think puppies are really cute, then we don't have to worry about being jailed for saying so. Not a jury in the land is going to convict you for saying "Puppies are cute!" But you just voice an unpopular opinion about almost anything in this country, and you'll be declared, a heretic, racist, or a hater. Uh, boys and girls, I think we're going to have to fight for our right to hate.
Political Correctness. This should actually be listed as a hate crime in itself. PCers are the most intolerant people I know. They actually foster racism by creating more and more labels for people. Let's face it kiddies, the idea of races was created by a racist to promote racism. There is no scientific evidence to support the idea of races. There are no colors, just different amounts of saturation of the same color in all of our skin. Even the theologians and the scientists agree we all came from a common origin. The theologians from various creation ideas, the scientists think we all came from the same group of about 6000 people in Africa. There are no races, only one species, human.
PCers want to tell you not just what to say, but what to think! Didn't we have enough of Stalin, Hitler and Joe McCarthy in this century? Why the hell is HUD wasting money and giving power to these creeps? And what I don't get are organizations that would defend a Nazi's right to march in Skokie, Illinois, but would protest the Nazi's web site. What the hell is the difference?
Don't get me wrong, I have no love for the Klan, Skin Heads, or the Pat Buchanan Zig Heil Fan Club. I hate both extremes of the political spectrum, because in my eye, there is no difference between them. They are all a bunch of hypocrites. They would employ the very techniques they are protesting against, just to win. These are not people of high ideals. These people want the right to hate you for your un-PC ideas, but don't want you to have the right to hate whatever it is you hate. They want diversity so long as everyone is just like them. You want diversity? Then you must accept that there are people like the Pat Buchanans, and the Nazis, and the Skin Heads. When was the last time you saw a PCer embrace that diversity?
The best way to piss off the PCers is to point out the holes in their ideas. Don't scream, just start your sentence with, "But what about ..." Come to think about it, this works with managers as well.
This Issue's Headline submission to the National Daily World Enquiring Globe.
Donuts! Food of The Space Aliens!
Police World Wide Attempting to Hide Evidence.
Let's play, "Who said this?"
Heard in the halls of various software companies.
"He's walking around with his mail in his hand."
"Is that mail or male?"
"Don't get your hopes up, Sister."
"Doesn't this remind you of when you were a kid. You know ... last week!"
"You may pet the rat."
"This is so embarrassing. I just found out that in Spanish my last name means 'asshole'!"
"I'd cancel my vacation to Cabo if I were you."
"I'm not a Catholic. I'm Methodist."
"Really? What's your method?"
"Are you a mean person?"
"I can be."
"And how much would that cost?"
Excuse Me
I must get ready for the big Cinco de Mayo issue.
Fek'Lar
(Destroyer of Laptops - Morale Officer - The Last Honest Geek)
Remember: The Crapolla contains my personal opinions. That's right they're mine, so get your own! And you kids get off my lawn! This whole mess is copyright © 2000 by LowComDom Performances, all rights reserved. Wanna send this to your friends? Go ahead and pass out the URL.
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EOJ
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