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18 May 2006
This thread is for giving advice.→[More:]So please give some!
1) EVERYONE is lying. The customer is lying about what they did to cause the problem and about what they saw. The customer contact is lying about what the customer said. And the program's logs and output, while maybe not outright lying, are shitfy characters at best and not to be trusted. Source code comments, including your own, are to be assigned the weight and trustworthyness of a psychotic paranoid sociopath with Munchausen syndrome.
2) If you can't reproduce the problem, you can't fix the problem. First make sure you can consistently reproduce the problem with the release build. THEN, before you start messing with it, make sure you can still reproduce the problem with the build you make. THEN do your fixing. Then if you fix problem goes away, make sure it's STILL there in the release build, and you didn't just change something in the setup or environment.
3) If you don't know what the problem is, you can't fix the problem. You probably have a general idea what area the problem is. So you futz around with something and the problem goes away. Did you fix it or just hide it? You don't know.
4) Use SCIENCE! Or specifically, bits of the scientific method. You're going to have an idea what the problem is, instead of trying to prove that, come up with tests to disprove it. 90% of the time, your initial hypothesis is going to be "this isn't my problem, it's [Joey Otherprogrammer's code | third party library | the customers 5 rock a day crack habit]", so first disprove that.
If you're going to fall, fall forward, and keep your mouth shut.
(This was my Grandmother's advice to avoid brain damage and dental work. She was my only living grandparent, and died when I was quite young. This is the only piece of advice I remember.)
2) If this is a double-wide escalator, stand right, walk left(*). Seriously. Even if you're traveling with someone, you can still talk when you're on different steps, you don't need to block the way.
3) Get off the escalator. THIS SEEMS TO BE THE HARD PART FOR SOME PEOPLE. Once you dismount, do not stop and look around like a slack-jawed yokel or look behind you to see if your friend is coming. THE SCIENCE OF MECHANICS DICTATES THAT THEY MOST ASSUREDLY ARE! If you do not move away from the escalator at least as fast as the escalator runs, you are going to cause woe and grief to everyone behind you!
(*)Your local custom may differ, what ever it is, do it
Refrain from giving advice. Give examples instead. If you can make an example of yourself, positive or negative, do it. Look for the examples in other people's advice, but be aware that they aren't necessarily giving you an example of what they're talking about. Sometimes they're just demonstrating why you should refrain from giving advice.
Don't always take your own advice (or anyone else's, for that matter).
Actions speak louder than words. Inaction sometimes speaks louder than action.
- Embrace Duality.
- Make your own Christmas Cards.
- Listen To Baz
- Everyone believes they are a good person. This includes you.
- Smile when you answer the phone. Even fake smiles sound like real smiles to the person on the other end.
- Question everything.
- Trust is not earned, it is lost.
Finally:
To make perfect white rice. Easily.
Add two cups cold water to each cup of rice.
Add Pinch of salt.
Boil and then simmer until all water is gone. (Us a fork to test this)
Do NOT stir. Even if you want to.
If you want moonshine, get me to get Charlene to ask Dwayne to ask Wunntoo if he can get some. Who is Wunntoo? Bo-bo's boy. I don't know if his name or nickname is:
Want To
One Two
One Tooth
But that's how you might get some moonshine around here.
Why no stir? I usually give it a little stir or two.
Because the simmering water percolates up through the rice, creating little passageways that cook it evenly. If you stir, you wreck 'em and the rice doesn't cook evenly.
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you. - Oscar Wilde
and also....
'Truth' never set anyone free. It is only doubt which will bring emancipation. - Anton LaVey
George Hayduke's Ten Commandments of Revenge --- Never: trust or confide in anyone/use your own phone/touch a document/threaten your victim. Always: be a garbage collector/bide your time/use mail drops in other citites/learn all about your victim/use merchants who don't know you/use cash.
Or, breathe through your feet. (Pretend that you have to pull air from your feet up through your body to get into your lungs. That's from my high school English teacher.)
Thanks Taz! It's true, every word, too, except for the names Charlene and Dwayne. They are younger, and have younger names. I work with "Charlene."
Also, don't try moonshine.
Everybody has their lists of controlled substances they would try and not try, and I would never, ever, even if it was presented to me in a silver chalice, ever try moonshine.
But yes, through the channels described above, I possibly could.
... escalator, stand right, walk left(*). ...(*)Your local custom may differ, what ever it is, do it
This also applies to busy footpaths, particularly when people are rushing to catch their train home on Friday afternoons.
It seems to be that the convention is the same as the roads wherever your are - in Australia, you should stand to the left of the excalator and walk on the left side of busy footpaths.
On a related note, I don't care how fast or slow you walk on a busy footpath but, if you are going to walk slowly, walk in a fucking straight line or I will fucking well walk right over the top of you.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
