Throwing a Shoe

If I recall correctly, the word "sabotage" originally referred to throwing shoes into factory machinery to prevent it from working. (Wikipedia disagrees. But why let that get in the way of my story?) A metaphorical sabot arrived in my code today, as one of my co-workers decided to ork my cow and toss a shoe by moving some code of mine that offended him from a class that he was responsible for to a class that I am primarily responsible for.

Had he done so without error, I might not have noticed this for some time as I am now sitting at the wrong end of a bad ClearCase connection that means I don't run the differencer on changes as frequently as I used to. Fortunately (?), there were several errors that stopped the code from working altogether.

Memorandum: if my function is carefully generating a new DataSet (which I've carefully "new"ed), you might want to consider returning it rather than letting it fall on the ground completely unused and passing the original, malformed for this purpose DataSet into your function where it will do, well, nothing at all useful.

Animated discussion ensued.

Throwing a Shoe

If I recall correctly, the word "sabotage" originally referred to throwing shoes into factory machinery to prevent it from working. (Wikipedia disagrees. But why let that get in the way of my story?) A metaphorical sabot arrived in my code today, as one of my co-workers decided to ork my cow and toss a shoe by moving some code of mine that offended him from a class that he was responsible for to a class that I am primarily responsible for.

Had he done so without error, I might not have noticed this for some time as I am now sitting at the wrong end of a bad ClearCase connection that means I don't run the differencer on changes as frequently as I used to. Fortunately (?), there were several errors that stopped the code from working altogether.

Memorandum: if my function is carefully generating a new DataSet (which I've carefully "new"ed), you might want to consider returning it rather than letting it fall on the ground completely unused and passing the original, malformed for this purpose DataSet into your function where it will do, well, nothing at all useful.

Animated discussion ensued.

Boom!

A friend pointed me to this footage of a failed Delta launch. It's very impressive.

And luckily, no one was injured.

Boom!

A friend pointed me to this footage of a failed Delta launch. It's very impressive.

And luckily, no one was injured.

Ten Things

Having been tagged for this twice now (once by my wife), I really ought to respond, I suppose.

Rules: Each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things/habits/little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 10 weird habits/things/little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you need to choose 10 people to be tagged and list their names.

1. I spent two years on Guam twice.
2. I'm an Air Force brat.
3. My mother was a Baptist. My father was a Methodist. I spent two years in an Episcopal school. And all the ministers in the Air Force seem to be Lutherans. As a result, I have little patience for fine doctrinal differences. :)
4. I was kicked out of the choir in junior high school, because I couldn't sing.
5. I think that chocolate-covered potato chips taste just fine. (Stop flinching! They're pretty much like chocolate-covered peanuts.)
6. I've been working for 25 years at a temporary job.
7. I voted for Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Presidential primary.
8. I skipped first grade.
9. I was on the U of I PLATO system starting in 1974 and was on the junior system staff there by 1979.
10. I have a B.S. and an M.S. in Chemistry and an M.M. (Master of Management, which is what Kellogg called their MBA). I have taken one computer course in my life. Naturally, I program computers for a living.

I'm skipping the tagging thing, because I don't send compulsions around, but if you feel like posting for your own (and your friends') amusement, please do!

Ten Things

Having been tagged for this twice now (once by my wife), I really ought to respond, I suppose.

Rules: Each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things/habits/little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 10 weird habits/things/little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you need to choose 10 people to be tagged and list their names.

1. I spent two years on Guam twice.
2. I'm an Air Force brat.
3. My mother was a Baptist. My father was a Methodist. I spent two years in an Episcopal school. And all the ministers in the Air Force seem to be Lutherans. As a result, I have little patience for fine doctrinal differences. :)
4. I was kicked out of the choir in junior high school, because I couldn't sing.
5. I think that chocolate-covered potato chips taste just fine. (Stop flinching! They're pretty much like chocolate-covered peanuts.)
6. I've been working for 25 years at a temporary job.
7. I voted for Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Presidential primary.
8. I skipped first grade.
9. I was on the U of I PLATO system starting in 1974 and was on the junior system staff there by 1979.
10. I have a B.S. and an M.S. in Chemistry and an M.M. (Master of Management, which is what Kellogg called their MBA). I have taken one computer course in my life. Naturally, I program computers for a living.

I'm skipping the tagging thing, because I don't send compulsions around, but if you feel like posting for your own (and your friends') amusement, please do!