Trade secrets - I woke up a bit sleepless early this morning. After a couple of hours of trying to relax and fall back asleep, I succumbed to opening up the laptop and doing a little surfing. Following a few links from my usual sources, I tripped across "Tricks of the Trade" where the author mentions a bunch of secrets of various occupations. Two caught my eye. First there was "desktop support", a role not unlike my own of helping customers with using and integrating TDI's intellectual property.
When desktop support technicians resolve a ticket, they are usually required to document the cause and solution to the problem. Supervisors see these records, so you have to be professional, but can usually get away with using the acronym “PEBKAC” in situations where the user caused the initial problem. PEBKAC stands for “Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair.”
I've often joked about this, but have yet to put it on the issue/incident ticket.
Another one that resonated was "software tester".
Because developers don’t expect testers to read through their code, doing so is a quick and easy way to find possible bugs. Look for comments like “//HACK” or “//fix this crap later.”
While the hardware guys got very used to writing "clean" code because they knew every line of source code would be scrutinized and questioned, some of our software guys tended to be of the opinion of "we only ship the binary executable" or "no one looks at this (the source code)". We had customers look over software source and get rather concerned when they saw things like "scotchguard the fan" or "I have know idea why this works" or "kludge!".
Timothy - As I mentioned in recent comments, today Claire and I will drive up to Manchester to take Timothy to see a pediatric orthopedist at Children's Hospital at Darthmouth (in Manchester). Last night I looked over the x-ray and it's a bit unclear. There's definitely sections of the spine where you can see each individual element, but then there's a region where it's less defined. With my untrained eye I can't tell whether it's a pair of unsegmented vertebrae or just a lack of clarity in the x-ray.
Abigail - This past year Abby has lost two front teeth, but they were both bottom teeth so you couldn't tell. Tuesday afternoon Abby lost a front top tooth. I'd forgotten how cute little girls look with a "holy" smile. I think it would be even more so if she lost the other top front one soon.
Bunks - While the boys have really settled into their new bunk beds, it does have one aspect that annoys the heck out of us. The headboard sides of the bed have solid wood along the floor. It's not just four posts resting against the floor. A close look at the picture shows what I mean. While that's nice for stability, strength, and weight distribution, the boys are forever dropping matchbox cars in the small gap between those boards and the adjacent wall. They cry. We dig out a yardstick and finagle the cars out. We tell them not to drop more cars back there. Inevitably they do. "Oohhhh noooo! My caaarrr! My caaarrr!"
Sunshine - We've been really blessed this week with nice weather. It's the kids' last full week of summer vacation. Considering some of the recent rain spells, I'm glad they have this time. Sunny, dry, 80 degrees. I get to watch most of it from my third floor window facing cubicle. On the plus side the unusual weather this summer has kept the lawns green, avoided watering bans and brownouts, kept the electric bills down, and prevented the New York Times from doing their traditional grandstanding about the imminent threat of global warming. Of course that did not stop the NYTimes from complaining about how the cool summer hurts business. Only one day above 90?! The poor air conditioning salesmen! Beach visits are down! (Here's my favorite sarcastic followup comment to the article...)
Humor - Need a good laugh at gender differences? Take a look at Baby Blues and dial up the August 12th comic. (Sorry, King Features Syndicate is anal about direct web linking.) The father is so me. "How long does it take for paint to dry on the carpet? Well, that depends..."
As always, Claire was a good aid in the trip to Manchester with Timothy. Once I saw the doctor, he showed me more clearly what drew the initial concern. I then took Timothy to get two fresh x-rays to see if there had been any changes since last spring. The new x-rays more clearly showed the problem. There are a pair of vertebrae, lumbar L1 and the one just above it, that are fused together and look somewhat like a horizontal 'V'. They didn't fully separate and develop independently.
The conclusion is that nothing is worrisome for now. Every six months until he finishes growing (16 to 18 years old) he'll have another spinal x-ray to verify that nothing has taken a turn for the worse.
If you have any questions, drop a comment.
Posted by: Scott at August 26, 2004 02:00 PMHi Scott!
I have an idea....on your 'how many days till....' list, can we start a countdown until my last day of school? That way I don't have to try and keep track in my head. I am pretty sure this will be the first and last year I will count down the days starting in August.
Thanks
Hi Suzy,
It's possible to change the program. Currently it never displays anything more than 60 days out. Don't know if you'd noticed that. But I was thinking of having an override switch where certain entries in the calendar would be counted down and displayed regardless of that threshold.
The particular case I had in mind was counting down the election. I'm fascinated by the struggle between the two candidates and their parties, and yet, like the New Hampshire 'First in the Nation' Presidential Primary, I also can't wait until it's over and behind us. I could go on about the things that are driving me crazy about the campaigns, but I'll hold my tongue for another time.
So if you want to send me the date of your last day, I'll do some tweaks to the program that runs early every morning to update that countdown.
Did I mention that I once wrote a silly program to compute the average age of a household? Years, months, days. It was shortly after mighty Timbo was born. In a house with five kids under the age of 8, the *average* age in the house was pretty darn low! Silly little program, but it helped me dust of some rusty programming skills in an esoteric computer language that I hadn't touched in about 4 years.
Have you bookmarked phdcomics.com yet?
Posted by: Scott at August 26, 2004 09:47 PMHi Scott-
I graduate on May 15, 2005! Ahhhh....it's so beautiful.
I check out phdcomics all the time, and have forwarded it on to my whole class and a few teachers.
I'll post soon to talk about how the new semsester is going!
Suzy