journal for 2002-08-07
work
I’m not sure what the hell is going on at work. I’m currently being asked (and encouraged) to work on projects to replace (or at least enhance) our current (awful) manufacturing and sales order software. Meanwhile, I keep hearing murmurs that make me thing that our UK branch is going through some kind of Ragnarok.
I will endeavor to be a good soldier and redouble my efforts to Get Stuff Done. Still, it’d be great if we could finally hire another code monkey and stop playing around. I can’t help but feel that with another (good, geeky) coder, I could be far more productive. I’m afraid, though, that if we do hire someone, it will be someone brought in by my boss; I have visions of a Corporate Coder, who values expedience over Technical Excellence.
I finished a relatively extensive reorganization of the MASH code, today. The (somewhat) sad part is that, despite the fact that I spent at least 10 hours on the change (preparing, updating, reorganizing, documenting), it really only scratched the surface of the kind of reworking that the code needs. There’s so much creeping featurism that I hardly have time to maintain sanity. If the other two big projects launch, I’ll be hard pressed to maintain any sort of breadcrumb trail in my code.
On a pleasant side note, doing all that rearranging gave me a good reason to finally sit down and figure out folding in Vim. Man, it was a piece of cake once I forced myself to slowly read “:help folding” a few times. It made the job much easier, and I am again impressed with the awesomeness of Vim.
online retail
the simpsons
Amazon is such a bunch of bunglers. I received my copy of the second seasons of The Simpsons, today; I still haven’t received a shipment notification. I guess it’s better to get the package and not the notification than the reverse, but it still bugs me.
Fortunately, the DVDs are good. The commentary is really rambling and somewhat random, but it’s interesting. Having more episode available on demand is even better. I’m really looking forward to the third season, which I think is one of the best, but the second has some great lines. “If you wanted to make Serak the Preparer cry, mission accomplished!”
black adder and ebay
I really, really like Black Adder. Technically, I was introduced to him by my college friend Jon, but Drew really got me into it. I ordered the compelete collection from eBay, foolishly patronizing a Power Seller. I think Power Seller is secret eBay code for Soulless Moron. I’d rather wait too long to get things from Gramma Smith who needs to go to the general store to get more brown paper, and emails me to tell me, than from North American DVD, who sells me something from their website at a 20% markup and forces me to use their awful web storefront to pay for my purchase. It’s a rip.
The quick arrival of Black Adder will alleviate this pain, though.