Category Archives: Work

Rising from the Primordial C

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Broken Computer

Broken Computer

“Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy”, once wrote Joseph Campbell. I was reminded of this saying, earlier this week at work. I’d been struggling with one of our homebrewed codes. Part of my problem was that I was trying to use the code for something that it had not been designed for, but through persistence and trickery, I was able to bend it to my will, almost. On the final step, when I asked it to output my files, it would invariably and immediately crash. I struggled with this for the better part of two days. Finally, I called in the cavalry and within a few minutes the problem was fixed. Allow me to geek-out here for a moment. This software had originally been developed to run on UNIX, where file names are case-sensitive. It had been ported to and I was running it on Windows, where file names are not case-sensitive. My file name was lower case, except for the suffix, which was upper case. Making the file name all lower case fixed the problem. Some vestigial scrap of code had not kept up with the changing times, gotten confused and brought the whole house down upon it. It was all so perfectly clear, in hindsight, but debugging always is.

I have been debugging software for 45 years now or most of my life. I started in high school, studied it in college and have worked in software ever since. In high school we would record our programs on one-inch wide green perforated paper tape. When not in use, we would roll up our paper tapes and store them in repurposed 35mm film canisters. The more geeky members of my cadre fashioned Batman like utility belts and wore their software around their waist and then paraded around the school, without the benefit of any secret identity. From paper tape, I graduated to punch cards and from there to magnetic tape, CDs and now the Cloud. I used to code software all day long, but now not so much. I have learned that when you work for a company that uses software to make its products, you are more handsomely rewarded for using software to make that stuff than for writing the software in the first place. It happens that some of the files that I was able to extract was some source code that I’ll now be able to use to make more stuff.

Steve Jobs once said, “Computers are like a bicycle for the mind.” This was an apt analogy when he said it in 1990. An athlete can travel further and faster on a bike than on foot, like a person with a computer can multiply their productivity. Still, this is all hard work, requires skill and is not for everyone. In 1990, the Internet was little more than a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. Home computers were still rare and expensive. I didn’t own one then and in 1990 my relationship with computing hadn’t even half begun. Fast-forward to today, where everybody has a hand-brain in their pocket that is way more capable and powerful than the rooms full of mainframes that I had begun using many years ago. In my life, computers have enjoyed a transformative revolution. I can only wonder where in the future, we and our creature will go next.

The Office Gnome

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Gnome Rule

Gnome Rule

I hope that the rest of this year is not going to be like this week was. It started off bad and just kept getting worse. It started off with that meme with the baby who couldn’t decide whether to sleep, cry or eat her oatmeal. As memes go it so perfectly captured my feelings about having to go back to work after a long two weeks off. Then once I made it to work, I couldn’t remember any of my passwords there, all on National Password Reset day, great timing.

Then there were the markets this week, one bad trading day followed by an even worse one and nothing to do about it all except watch my money disappear. I may have to work longer than I hoped, just to cover my losses from this week, but that may not be entirely my decision. I learned that there had been more layoffs, just before Christmas break. News of one of them in particular really hurt. He is a close friend. After next week, when the people who were given their notices in November leave, I will then be the second oldest person left in what was our old department. We don’t have departments anymore, just skill codes now, but I like many others still hold on to the idea of them, if only for nostalgic purposes, besides claiming to be the second oldest person in your skill code just doesn’t have anywhere near the same amount of cache. I’ve been warned about this, but I have become the office gnome. Anyway, it’s a job.

This week’s final insult was self-inflicted. Earlier this week, I had scheduled a meeting with my boss for today. I wanted him to review the work that I have been doing for the last month and hopefully approve of it too. Anyway, he would see that I hadn’t been just goofing off. Then last night, I discovered an error in my work. Last night I obsessed about it and this morning I marched into his office, told him about the problem that I had found and rescheduled our meeting for next week. Upon further reflections, through the course of the day, I discovered that my mistake was not as big as I had originally thought. I could have gone ahead with the planned meeting anyway, but this way everything will be better next week. At least, I hope so.

Wahoo

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Wahoo

Wahoo

Euonymus atropurpureus (eastern wahoo, burning bush, bitter-ash), a deciduous shrub native to the Midwest, has it’s blossom pictured here. It was photographed last month, at the Shaw Nature Reserve. It is a pretty little flower, but I just like its name, Wahoo, it rhymes with Yahoo and sounds to me a lot like yodeling.

Yesterday, I literally was that crying little baby that had I linked to then. I spent the first two hours getting not one, not two, lets just skip to the chase, five separate account’s passwords reset. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what any of my at work passwords were. All of which I had used two-weeks ago. It must have been a better vacation than I realized. Pat, my friendly neighborhood IT person, told me that this was National Password Reset (NPR) day.

Anne snagged a long-term substitute position, three months. It’s second grade. The regular teacher is on maternity leave. This happens a lot in the elementary school. So much so, that some think that there must be something in the water.

Hiking the Appalachian Trail

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Dave and Anne on the Abrams Falls Trail

Dave and Anne on the Abrams Falls Trail

This week has been all about switching gears. Last week was all about family, the holidays and travel. I prefer last week’s itinerary over this week’s, it was certainly more fun, but it was also rather tiring and its frenetic pace reminded me of my own mortality. The biological clock always keeps ticking. This week is about work and wrapping up things for this year. I started a new assignment at work, which is a good thing. New is always a good thing there. I also had my annual performance review today. It was rather a non-event. I got my usual C, which in these dark times at Spacely Sprockets, is just fine with me. I almost always got a C, except when I was being groomed for a promotion. Now, my former success seems to be catching up with me. In the last couple of layoffs, management seems to be targeting us more senior engineers. In the past, they tended to cut from the bottom, maintaining the more experienced employees, but twenty-five years of that practice really screwed up the demographic. They are now unwilling to repeat that mistake. So, I had my performance review today. Will it be my last? We’ll see. I wouldn’t mind the time off to hike the Appalachian Trail, with my wife of course. Maybe we could do Rio too?

Mirror, Mirror on the Ball

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Kemper Silver Ball

Kemper Silver Ball

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? I know that we would have been OK, but launching off into retirement feels like walking the plank. It is like taking that last step while blindfolded into the unknown, even with the best advice, no one can predict the future, but that is what you are expected to do. I know that many a mariner has proceeded me, often with a sword point in their back, but it feels better to choose your own moment to leap, instead of being pushed. I still have a job, but I don’t know what it is, except that I do. It is someone else’s job that I’ll be taking. That is the way it works at Spacely Sprockets. We are all relatively interchangeable cogs and the newer (not me), lighter (not me), better (?) cogs are swapped in for the newly excessed ones. I’ll have to learn their job and it will be an individual and because of my higher grade level it will have to be someone who I have known for years. They will be expected to bring me up to speed on what they have been doing. This sucks. Continue reading →

Friday the 13th

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Are You My Biffy?

Are You My Biffy?

It has been a cup half-full / half-empty kind of day, which accounts for the somewhat melancholy tone of this post. I’ve been telling all of my coworkers that I would be unhappy, no matter what was the decision and I was right. I was convinced that I would get my layoff notice from Spacely Sprockets today, but no that didn’t happen. We lost that big contract last month and this was the expected fallout. I had it planned out, sixty days of employment, with my last day in mid-January. Anyway, if you deducted weekends, holidays and sick leave, I calculated that I would have had just ten more days of actual labor left. Afterwards, I would have gotten a severance package that would have paid me through my birthday next summer and then, retirement, but none of that happened today, so I’ll just keep working, “Against my will, Papa, against my will.”