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“Well, don’t want to sound like a dick or nothin’, but, ah… it says on your chart that you’re fucked up. Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit’s all retarded. What I’d do, is just like… like… you know, like, you know what I mean, like…” — Dr. Lexus

“Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.” — Abraham Lincoln (as credited on the Intertubes, so it must be true.)

I worked in broadcast for years.  There’s a difference between revising something so it’s understandable for your audience, and completely changing the meaning of it.

If you view your audience as idiotic, you might not understand that difference.  You might also find yourself worried more about graphics, and whether your document is littered with enough catch phrases.

You might also spend a lot of time in soliloquy, interrupted only by rhetorical queries to the audience about your correctness.

“Right?”

“No, I’m not sure that’s right.  Directly cite something.”

Last fall, I was working on a paper for Shmoocon.  I’d gotten about four pages in, and started rebutting some of the arguments I knew I’d get.  I didn’t have an answer for one, not even a glib one, so I gave up.  (And now my scarred-up brain is thinking of the derogatory political term, “Glibertarian.”)

Too much of what I’ve sen lately in IT is building bigger in the name of sekurity.  “Well, you have to do x.  Y says you have to, right?”

But when you query on where y says whatever it is it’s supposed to say, “Well, you know.”  No, I don’t.  I couldn’t find it.  If I could have, I wouldn’t have asked the question.

Am I dissatisfied with my current work situation?  Yes.  Is there anything I can do about it?  Not right now, at least.

Followup to the last entry.  This (PDF, pops) is what I’m getting at.  But if you already have the solution, why waste time asking pointless questions, amirite?

*sigh*

Sometimes what you actually need to do isn’t exactly what you’d envisioned.  Accepting that can be difficult.  It’s more difficult for people who’ve got a vested interest seeing the solution implemented.

That’s made me the bad guy at work for trying to do the right thing.  There’s not much reputation left to protect, so, I’ll take on the role of pincushion if necessary.  (And that I’m not regularly injecting myself with chaff to confuse my immune system, that’ll be a little easier.)

On a somewhat related note, I got a nibble on my car.  I’ll put it out to my scant few readers before I sell it to a stranger one last time.  E-Mail me if you’re interested in a 2003 Mustang GT.

Is that the conclusion I wanted?  Nope.  I used to really enjoy driving, that car, especially.  But I can’t do it anymore, and probably will never be able to do it again.  It happens.

The loss of vision is the main impediment, but working a clutch was getting difficult/tricky last few times I drove, too.

Does anyone know how to go about surrendering your driver’s license to DMV?  Discounts on bus/train fares?

Followup to the last entry.  This (PDF, pops) is what I’m getting at.  But if you already have the solution, why waste time asking pointless questions, amirite?
*sigh*
Sometimes what you actually need to do isn’t exactly what you’d envisioned.  Accepting that can be difficult.  It’s more difficult for people who’ve got a vested interest seeing the solution implemented.
That’s made me the bad guy at work for trying to do the right thing.  There’s not much reputation left to protect, so, I’ll take on the role of pincushion if necessary.  (And that I’m not regularly injecting myself with chaff to confuse my immune system, that’ll be a little easier.)
On a somewhat related note, I got a nibble on my car.  I’ll put it out to my scant few readers before I sell it to a stranger one last time.  E-Mail me if you’re interested in a 2003 Mustang GT.
Is that the conclusion I wanted?  Nope.  I used to really enjoy driving, that car, especially.  But I can’t do it anymore, and probably will never be able to do it again.  It happens.
The loss of vision is the main impediment, but working a clutch was getting difficult/tricky last few times I drove, too.
Does anyone know how to go about surrendering your driver’s license to DMV?  Discounts on bus/train fares?

At work, lately, I’ve been trying to do that.

I spent some time talking about the MVC Model, but I’m not entirely certain that’s entirely the issue I’m working through.

Certainly, a lot of the emphasis the past few years has been working only on the Controller portion.  Where’s that gotten people?  Bloated monstrosities that still don’t let users do what they need to do.  (Inspires flashbacks to funroll-loops.  Sadly, in a professional setting, they aren’t fucking with compiler flags, they’re just cobbling on more and more hardware, using someone else’s checkbook.)

I want to ask the questions that let me know what it is people actually need to do.  I couldn’t care less about the actual mechanics in the early stages.

The people who want the gargantuan solutions don’t want to ask those questions;  might keep them from building that wicked setup.  But that wicked setup might not fill the users’ needs.  How would you know that?  Besides, it’s got this nifty failover…….

Unfortunately, I woke up rather early this morning, and am seeing the reactions to the Zimmerman trial.

One aspect of the response is possibly more disturbing than the complete acquittal, itself.

The NAACP wants the DOJ to pursue charges against Zimmerman for violating Martin’s civil rights.

(Leftie Blog, Rightie Blog, but they say pretty much the same things.)

The LAPD thugs were agents of the state.  Zimmerman wasn’t.  There is a civil remedy available if justice wasn’t served.  LA and the State of California (actually, probably their insurance companies’ policies) paid Rodney King those civil remedies.  Since Zimmerman is a private citizen, all that’d be there to collect would be whatever that wannabe Cartman fat fuck has, personally.

Since the LAPD thugs were acting as agents of the state, the civil claim would have been against the state.

So, what’s the point?  It’s disturbing to think of nationally-institutionalized double jeopardy if criminal proceedings in state courts don’t achieve “justice.”

Where would it stop?  Very disturbed, NAACP.

Now time to sort.  *sigh*  Followup to this from about a month ago.

Long story short, I found a bunch more music hanging around on my wheezing PC.

Positives?  

• Found stuff I knew I had, but hadn’t seen in awhile.
• Have freed up probably 30GB more of disk space

Negatives?

• More duplicates in the library I have to tidy up.
• Still way more music than free space on my iPhone
• ID3 information on many of the things I found is wrong

At some point, probably around 2008, I was using WMP for whatever reason, having switched up from whatever I was using on Linux, and very old iTunes on the Mac.

I had backups of other people’s PCs around, too, so there were lots of things from their libraries just sitting on my disks after I’d finished the jobs.  I know some of it was my dad’s from various things I’d cleaned up for him.  Obviously, he won’t be needing that stuff anymore.  (He’s here…)

Others, I have only sketchy memories.

Regardless, at some point, I wrote a totes awesome skript that copied all those music files into a single directory..

Half a decade later, here I am, shuffling through all the refuse.  *sigh*  I really am probably not going to listen to a lot of that old school hip hop I had, or the smooth jazz that somehow crept its way in.  Or would smooth jazz do something other than creep?  Saunter, maybe?

Sarah and I went to her parents’ place yesterday for her sister’s birthday/delayed Fathers’ Day celebration.
After lunch, my FIL was watching something on HGTV.  Essentially, other rich & famous would hire this soap actress and her musician boyfuck/husband (they got married while they were shooting the episode) re-do a room.  Budgeting is sketchy.  Even more sketchy is scope.
This guy hired them to do the kitchen.  Perhaps the kitchen needed work.  I don’t know.  I didn’t notice anything wrong with it, myself, but I wasn’t there.
Regardless, they spent zero time doing needs analysis with the owner to find out what he actually needed or wanted to be doing in his kitchen.  Boyfuck/hubby, in between clips of him playing guitar, made some changes.
Meanwhile, Ms./Mrs. Actress went about “fixing” the living/dining room adjacent to the kitchen.
That fireplace is a hole of darkness.  It has to have a mantle.
Oh, let’s put up a chandelier, because this room is too dark when it’s not sunny outside.
Naturally, hanging the chandelier was a pain with a seriously vaulted ceiling, and no place to mount it.
Then the one she spent considerable cash buying wouldn’t fit — too big.
My question remains;  how did this help Joe Homeowner make a grilled cheese sandwich?
Maybe he liked the living/dining room fine the way it was?
I talked to my my engineering grad student brother a bit about this this morning.  IT is full of people like these folks who’ll change things up just on their own whims, not because something actually needs to change.
Sometimes the users’ whims come into play, but proper requirements development keeps you from buying a chandelier that’s too big.  Or buying one in the first place if one isn’t absolutely needed.
All that said, I’m a bad person for thinking that way.  That’s been communicated to me enough.  Yes, I got the memo, Lumbergh.
Still, it’s important to remember that my own personal whim isn’t what matters, ultimately.  Maybe I was hired to build a cooking space that is easier to clean up after butter spatters all over it.  Maybe that left rear burner on the range isn’t working anymore.
I wouldn’t know if I didn’t actually spend the time to find out, and just attacked redoing everything just because I thought the old stuff was ugly.
*headdesk*
 

Sarah and I went to her parents’ place yesterday for her sister’s birthday/delayed Fathers’ Day celebration.

After lunch, my FIL was watching something on HGTV.  Essentially, other rich & famous would hire this soap actress and her musician boyfuck/husband (they got married while they were shooting the episode) re-do a room.  Budgeting is sketchy.  Even more sketchy is scope.

This guy hired them to do the kitchen.  Perhaps the kitchen needed work.  I don’t know.  I didn’t notice anything wrong with it, myself, but I wasn’t there.

Regardless, they spent zero time doing needs analysis with the owner to find out what he actually needed or wanted to be doing in his kitchen.  Boyfuck/hubby, in between clips of him playing guitar, made some changes.

Meanwhile, Ms./Mrs. Actress went about “fixing” the living/dining room adjacent to the kitchen.

That fireplace is a hole of darkness.  It has to have a mantle.

Oh, let’s put up a chandelier, because this room is too dark when it’s not sunny outside.

Naturally, hanging the chandelier was a pain with a seriously vaulted ceiling, and no place to mount it.

Then the one she spent considerable cash buying wouldn’t fit — too big.

My question remains;  how did this help Joe Homeowner make a grilled cheese sandwich?

Maybe he liked the living/dining room fine the way it was?

I talked to my my engineering grad student brother a bit about this this morning.  IT is full of people like these folks who’ll change things up just on their own whims, not because something actually needs to change.

Sometimes the users’ whims come into play, but proper requirements development keeps you from buying a chandelier that’s too big.  Or buying one in the first place if one isn’t absolutely needed.

All that said, I’m a bad person for thinking that way.  That’s been communicated to me enough.  Yes, I got the memo, Lumbergh.

Still, it’s important to remember that my own personal whim isn’t what matters, ultimately.  Maybe I was hired to build a cooking space that is easier to clean up after butter spatters all over it.  Maybe that left rear burner on the range isn’t working anymore.

I wouldn’t know if I didn’t actually spend the time to find out, and just attacked redoing everything just because I thought the old stuff was ugly.

*headdesk*