Patrick Stewart is against manned space travel, at least for the present. I have to admit being bothered by that. It just doesn't seem right that the actor who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise should have that opinion. One of my favorite all time favorite characters. Personally, I agree with the sentiment of this cartoon I stole from Captain Carl Stark:
Rory Byth gave his point of view of the Wired article. He'd be a P.O.P. Thinking again about it on the way home, this one sentence stuck in my mind:
As I meet [Indian] programmers and executives, I hear lots of talk about quality and focus and ISO and CMM certifications and getting the details right.
I wonder if there is the Indian equivalent of Dilbert. Do they have endless meeting on Total Quality Management, Peer Programming, and all the other fads that swoop in and out. I did recommend a project be given to them since they did bid on it. The details are not yet ironed out, but they want it done by March 1st. The kicker for me is that the output needs to be certified by an outside company. So there is a short development cycle, and a dependency on someone who doesn't have the same priority on it you do. This one has a "Cloud o' Doom" hanging over it. Another amusing thing about these guys. They constantly ask for documentation on coding standards. My retort would be, which of twenty or so do you want? Some were developed in-house, others were fostered on us from consultants, and still others were inherited from companies we assimilated. About a year or so before they stopped doing Christmas parties, they gave a big presentation on how we were like the Borg. Mindless, soulless, and out to give the same poor quality of life to all. Yup. Anyway, I keep thinking it's a pity we don't have the source for a program a consultant wrote about ten years ago. It was well commented, just in Espanol. The one I work on was heavily commented using just three words, Yes, No, and Oops. I myself have a temptation from time to time to write my comments in thlingon Hol.
I had questions today from the people writing the hot new replacement for what I am doing. Do you need all this information? (No, but the states and provinces do.) What is it used for? (Whatever the state workcomp and auto commission say.) Why don't you get rid of the older rules? (A client complained last year we did not have information to pay a injury claim from 1979. The speculation was that the case was in litigation for twenty years.) This is given to me when I have 11 outstanding issues that need to be done last Tuesday.
I skipped out on basketball practice Wednesday. The organizers handed out letters Monday stating that teams were picked at random, and there was no 'stacked' teams. I guess there have been complaints. I can see why. Rachel's team has won every game by at least 10, and more like 25 points. The coach does get caught up in it, and pushes them to keep going.
February is here. Time for disease to hit.
End of Entry
No comments:
Post a Comment