The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar

You Know You're a Real Geek When...

Your cousin shows you their new copy of Chrome and you say, "Oh, that old thing."

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...

News from inside the Reality Distortion Field.

What Could Any of This Possibly Mean?

My boss just sent me the flyer for a job fair at Apple. I wonder if he's trying to tell me something. I mean, I appreciated it, I didn't know this was coming up, but why would Lucky tell me about a job fair?

Funny thing was when I contacted Apple about it, they insisted this wasn't a job fair. It was an "invitation-only" event. Oh, sorry, I was thrown off by the title of the email that Apple sent out that said, "Job Fair". Maybe they really meant that Steve is actually a nice guy. Probably not.

WTHAIS continues to be a crazy quilt of dysfunction. The CTO is trying to hire a person who quit (because he decided the company was too screwed up) to go over to Bangalore to figure out why Engineering can't get a product out. That's an interesting idea. Hire someone you wouldn't listen to while he worked for the company. Could it mean, the CTO has decided the criticism was valid? Or is this executive ass-covering?

I ran into Mein Furher in the restroom while wearing my "Your Proctologist Called, They Found Your Head" T-Shirt. I'm still employed. We were face to face talking about nothing in particular. He saw the shirt, and didn't break his poker face. I often wonder why no one in management or HR has ever told me to stop wearing the rude shirts.

Then I got a lunch invitation from an ex-co-worker. She's up for a job, and needed me to remind her what WTHAIS's products actually do. Jeez, she was just the manager of the QA department for five years! She's been gone only eight months and has managed to blank all of this out of her mind. I want her drugs.

We had lunch at The Pantry, Belmont's unknown greasy spoon. If you're in town, eat here. It's family owned and run, and not a chain. The prices are very reasonable and the portions are huge. Be hungry when you show up.

I called my boss's boss a horse's ass today, and he thanked me for it.

A product manager just came over from London for a visit. He gave me three 390 gram Galaxy bars! The best chocolate bars in the world. He wants to ask favors. At least he knows the proper way to bribe me, and he even paid up front. Smart guy. Too bad he'll probably quit within six months. He, like so many at WTHAIS, is already half-way checked out. Unfortunately, he's the only product manager who can find his head with both hands. Still, Galaxy and Diet Coke, you can't beat them.

What does any of this mean? Beats the crap out of me.

Trouble in Happyland?

By now you may have heard of the incredibly bad launch of Apple's cloud computing platform, Mobile Me. I've been following this, because I signed up the day before they launched. I've had a few issues with the service but nothing like the horror stories you hear.

I ran into a friend who, by chance, is doing support for Mobile Me. What I learned blew me away. I've always known Apple is a marketing department driven company, but I never knew just how much.

Turns out, he can't say anything to the public unless the Apple ~~Ministry of Propaganda~~ Marketing Department clears it. Specifically, there have been times when the Mobile Me mail servers have been down, and the Tech Support organization has wanted to post a message that the servers were unavailable and that engineers were working on the problem. The Marketing Gestapo would not allow such a "negative" message to be posted.

WTF? So Apple is now Happyland where no one can have a bad day, and the cars are made of candy? Do they really think we customers can't tell the mail servers are unavailable? I just have to look at my mail client to see the sad face next to the server name. Is the real error that Apple forgot to send all the Mobile Me customers their Kool-Aid ration?

Common guys! It's ok to fess up. Even Dear Leader said Mobile Me isn't right, and gave us all 3 months of free service. Didn't you get the memo? Let the support guys report correct factual statuses about the servers. We'll still love you.

Are You Kidding?

Dr. Niece, her husband, and the rug rats were in town for a couple weeks. During one of the more quieter moments Nephew in-law asked me about Apple products. They were considering the purchase of a new computer, and he was tired of playing "find the driver".

I've recently taken over SysAdmin duties at LowComDom. Dexter is losing his faith, and we decided he needed a break. One of the servers has given up the ghost after eight years of solid duty. So I decided to replace it with a Mac Mini. I was replacing a UNIX box with a UNIX box, just a different flavor. And although the Mini is a puny little machine physically, it has three times the power of the machine it was replacing.

So I took Nephew in-law along for his first Apple Store visit. Oh, the thrill of entering the Reality Distortion Field for the first time! We got there, and you had to wait in line to go into the Apple store! WTF, is this Disneyland? In retail you never want a line outside your store. It discourages people.

The explanation was simple. The iPhone 3G had just come out, and no one at Apple had a clue about how to manage the crowd. So, although I was not there to buy a phone, Nephew in-law and I had to wait in line for 20 minutes. Only Apple could get away with this.

The Apple High Priest came to the door and asked what we wanted. Wow, no browsing the showroom today! Imagine if you went to Fry's and had to know what you wanted. I told him I needed a Mini and Nephew in-law needed full indoctrination. I wonder who is better at this, Apple or the Scientologists.

After Nephew in-law was all tingly from the Reality Distortion Field, the High Priest asked me which model of the Mini I needed. I told him, to give me the cheapest in the store. After all, all those features he just told Nephew in-law about are on all of the models.

LowComDom is a big site with a lot of background software. Loads of Perl modules need to be added. A database needs to be ported. And the permissions on over 15,000 files needs to be set correctly. But first, I had to think up yet another silly hostname. It's a Mini, so this one is Billy_Barty.

This Issue's Headline submission to the National Daily World Enquiring Globe.

Thailand Pulls Grand Theft Auto From Shelves After Teenager Commits Murder

Sociologists Say, "Video Games Are Educational!"

Let's play, "Who said this?"

Heard in the halls of various software companies.

"Some people are diamond mines. Some people are DeBeers."

"I'd like to have a fluffer!"

"Button-pushing monkey bastards!"

"That gives us about 5 weeks until QA."
"Yeah and in five weeks you should be able to rewrite XP."
"Are you on the ROCK?"

"Well it looks to me like there are too many Indians in the pot. Well, whatever. And we need a manager to put the stakes in the ground and make a decision!"

Excuse Me

I'm out of Kool-Aid

Fek'Lar
They pay me to think. These are my thoughts. Do you think they are getting their money's worth?

Remember: The Crapolla contains my personal opinions. That's right they're mine, so get your own! And you kids get off my lawn!

Although written with the software professional in mind, my mind tends to wander all over the place, and I sometimes write about politics, mass stoopidity, dumb things I saw, and whatever else comes to mind.

From time to time, I use salty language, thus The Crapolla is not intended for children, or certain people in the Bush Administration.

feed available from http://www.lowcomdom.com/crapolla/index.rss

EOJ

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