Work goal of the week

To not put my feet up on coworkers' desks.  After 2 days, so far so good.

Work pranks

So, I was working with somebody in his officemate, and his officemate (we, on average, have 2 to each office) had left his shoes on the floor.  So, I decide it would be funny to just hide them for a minute, and put them in a box in the office.

The next morning, I run into him in the break room, and he says, "Thanks for hiding my shoes; it took me 15 minutes to find them and I missed my kid's soccer game."

I was like "oops".

Then he was like "just kidding".

Whew!

Hooray for mouse pointers!

So, I run Fedora 15 Linux with Gnome 3 at work.  I'd rather run windows, because I think its desktop environment actually works (I respect your differing opinion in this regard - I think Linux is a better server environment), but the environments we develop server apps that run on Linux, so we develop on Linux.

Anyway, about 1/3 of the time, after unlocking my screen, the mouse pointer disappears.  The mouse still works; you just can't see the pointer.

The funny part is that sometimes it takes me about 20 minutes to notice - I can run my command line and editor without it, but Email with Lotus Notes is difficult without a mouse.  At least it implements mouseovers in decent places, so I can get close to my desired click and go trial and error from there.

Surfing the web is also hard - it took me about 3 minutes to click the 30 pixel "sign your timecard" button.

But then, on the next lock and unlock, it comes back, and there is much rejoicing.

Commenting computer programs rant

So, I think we can all agree that useful comments in programming are good.  Like describing something non-obvious or commenting something that is obvious that doesn't make sense WHY you're doing it.

But seriously, why would you do this:

// Desribes what a Player is
class Player
{
    // the Player's position
    public Vector3 position;

    // the Player's age
    public int age;
}

or even worse


/*
 * Desribes what a Player is
 */
class Player
{
    /*
     * the Player's position
     */
    public Vector3 position;

    /*
     * the Player's age
     */
    public int age;
}


Hello! The comment is completely useless.  And even worse, in the second case, all the work to make the comment look "pretty" is detracting from me being able to actually see what a Player is.

Now if your comment were useful, that would be different:

class Player
{
    // how many times a player has visited each location*
    public map<Location, int> locationCounter;
}

* - still only somewhat useful, but the best I could come up with at the moment

Passwords

So, my work has a password policy that makes your password expire after 3 or 6 months (don't remember).  It also makes you not use the same password for the most recent 4 passwords.  For a time, everybody just spent 2 minutes to cycle through 4 new passwords and back to the original.

Now, to circumvent that, they made it so you could only change your password once a day.  But that's not enough for me!!! One more day and I'll be back on my original password.

PS - you must read http://xkcd.com/936/

Monkey of shame

A few years ago, a new coworker brought with him a tradition from his previous employ: The Monkey of Shame.

This is something you would post in somebody's office or on somebody's door if they broke the build or the like.  Normally it is given in jest or voluntarily taken, and I've had it a few times, as just about has everybody else.

Well, a while ago, I decide we need to have a happy monkey - like the Monkey of Triumph.  But I couldn't find one happy enough, so I settled on the Monkey of Adequate, which was later changed to Super.

Since then, we've gotten the Monkey of not the worst (person who just became second place for the most bugs, Monkey of Dentistry (to celebrate en employee's 8 dental procedures in a month's time), Monkey of Audit Failure, and a number of others.

Choices at work

So a little while ago, they mentioned they might need a guy like me on another project, which is apparently a hard project that has burned out a few other people.  I was fine with that, as I'd been on the same two projects for 4 years now.  But then we find out 2 days that the guy who is leading one of these 2 projects is leaving the company.  They approach me and mention that they're trying to decide who to replace him with, and there are a few names, and mine was on the list, but they're thinking they need me more on this other project.

barely made the train

So the other day, I thought I should be just on time to catch the train.  I walk up with this other guy to the ticket machine, and we could see it about a minute away.  But then some lady tells us the machine is out of order and we have to use the one at the other end of the station.  So we run over there.  We have about 30 seconds now.  He starts using the machine and pays with cash - a wrinkled dollar bill and quarters.  Then the train is about 5 seconds away, and get to the machine and print my ticket, and walk onto the train while the doors were open.  Barely made it.

PEBKAC

I was reminded of an acronym today.  A coworker and I were testing our software, and he found a potential problem.  After a few minutes he declared it to be "PEBKAC": Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Cold!

I started taking public transportation to work last month, and since I bring my work laptop with me, it saves about half an hour of net time (it's about 25 minutes each way, and I count a few minutes for the walking, etc.)

BUT HOLY COW IT'S COLD!!! It dropped below 20 this weekend.  It was in the high 30s most of last month.  Hoping it doesn't go below 0, but you know how February is.

Work intro

I am a computer programmer.  I've been doing that for about ten years for two different companies, 4 years at my current company.  I am also a team lead and a low-level manager.

It's currently review time at the company, and as I have 10 people who work "for" me, it will have taken up a bit of my time by the time it's done.  This part is kind of fun, but it's also challenging - I only like being the judge when I get to judge positively.  Unfortunately, we do have to do occasional critiquing, and this time of year, we are limited by a raise budget....