Bubbles

Forgot my watch

Complaining while waiting

Contacts

My right contact is doing that thing again this morning. Just as I got on the bus I noticed the ilash was rubbing against my contact lens again. It just causes the contact to move around. It is maddening. There really is nothing I can do about it except wait for it to not do it any longer. I put in some dops when I got to work, but no relief yet.

I just ended up taking them out and wearing my glasses. I don’t have time for the distraction this morning. I got things. ... After doing the things and getting back in to a state of balance, I put the contacts back in. The issue righted itself. Will keep this space posted.

by the end of the day, more or less, the contacts have done it like 3 more times, but I wasn’t under the gun. Thus, I was able to just ignore it and get on with my day. That seems to be the best thing to do. If I’m already under stress, thought, forget it. I’m losing my shit over the contacts. Sounds about right.

Redheaded Stepchild

Someone used the term Red Headed Stepchild in a meeting today. One of his adopted kids is red headed. Cute as a button too. He didn’t realize it is a derogatory term. There are all kinds of definitions on the internet. The way I heard it is in the next paragraph.

When the Nomen invaded England, there was a lot of rape involved. A disproportionate number of the offspring were blond and redhead. Every time the parents looked at that child it reminded them of the mother getting raped and thus the prejudice against redheads was born.

No idea if this is accurate. Makes sense in a sick sort of way. I don’t remember where I heard it.

More sunset.

Wedbesday sunset

That is a lot of #eggnog

Management

One of the engineers came in my office today and wanted me to blog/vlog about managers wanting everything. What he meant was managers saying all the bugs had to be fixed and the ship day met. The engineers say it ain’t going to happen. The managers want to throw more managers at the problem.

It is the manager’s job to to talk about what is going on, make charts, make plans and make a mess. They are doing their job by dragging in engineers and technicians in to meetings.

Manager: “Where are we on project xyz?”

Engineer: “We have 37 bugs, 5 critical.”

Manager: “We need them all fixed.”

Engineer: “If we focus on the 5 critical, we can just make it to release day.”

Manager” “We need all the bugs fixed.”

Engineer: “Many of the non critical bugs will take longer to diagnose and fix than most of the critical ones.”

Manager: “But we need all the bugs fixed.”

Engineer: “You know how it goes. One gets fixed three more pop up. There will always be something else to do on a complex project like this. It will never be perfect.”

Manager: “We don’t want perfection, we need 0 bugs in the end product.”

At this point, the engineer begins to wonder if the manager is asking to be lied to. That cannot be right. That would not be right and it is clearly against policy. I do not claim to understand what the manager is thinking.

Remember just being in the meeting is fulfilling the manager’s job requirements. The engineer is being pulled off their job by being in this meeting. That is how they feel about it anyway.

Engineer: “If we know about a bug, you need to know about it.”

Manager: “Absolutely.”

Engineer: “When I say there are going to be bugs we cannot fix by this release deadline, I do not mean the system won’t work. The non critical bugs can be dealt with by support and workarounds.”

Manager: “I understand, but we are supposed to do releases with zero bugs.”

Engineer: “Just so long as there are no delays on our deadlines.”

Manager: “Right. Now you get it. ... Do you need more people, more systems, more pizza for the people staying late? What resource would make this happen?””

Engineer: “The only resource that would make this happen is time.”

They stare at one another for a moment and an outside observer can read both minds involved. “Why don’t they get it?”

Need in front yard

Under cover

Rockin' her tablet

Bit aggressive there bud.

Yesterday's sunrise. Too pretty to just delete

How to deal with me

This should be an ongoing series. My wife thinks I have lesser Asperger's. I wonder if I have five people in my head and we enjoy each other's company more than the mundanes outside.

I walk down Westheimer to get from my house to the bus stop and back most mornings.  More often than not it is in the dark just due to the time of day required. I walk right along side the road. It is a dark area. I now use a bright flashlight more to be seen than to see with. I used to walk down the beltway for the same reason when working at my last job. I did not use a flashlight for most of that commute and most incidences happened then.

Please do not honk at legally blind people on the side of the road. It makes them nervous.

I have had multiple incidences of people pulling over and yelling at me, one of whom pulled a gun on me.  One drove up on the sidewalk. It is a mess. All of these incidence started with someone honking their horn. If at any moment I hear a horn, my brain does two things. It calculates the location of the horn in 3D space as best it can and kicks in to threat mode. If the horn is nearby, I get a shot of adrenalin regardless of real threat.

Nothing like this has happened since I started using a nice bright flashlight while walking at night. None have happened in the daylight. Not yet anyway.

Still, please do not honk at me or any person who cannot see properly on the side of the road. The idea behind the honk is to get someone's attention so you can wave at them. I cannot see you. I have no idea who is honking at me. I have no idea if you are friend or foe.

Send me a text if you saw me on the side of the road and want to say hi. I will not get it until I stop to check my messages, but it is a nice gesture.

Do not stop and haller “wanna ride?” I will not recognize your voice with all the surrounding noise and you yelling, which is probably not your normal voice for me. I’ve gotten in the wrong car before so i am very nervous about taking people up on the ride anyway. Shawn did it right. He stopped and hallered “Hey Kelly! This is Shawn from work. Want a ride?” I took him up on it. He also pulled into a parking lot. Don’t stop on the street because you will get in an accident and I will feel like a jerk.

I have a hard time recognizing people by face, voice or name if I’m honest. I had a girlfriend for 6 weeks once before I could remember her name without stopping to think about it. You know when you pretend to remember someone you haven’t seen in 15 years? I do that with people I work with every day. If I seem standoffish, I may be in a bad mood or I may not recognize you.

I remember people by interaction “The person who helped me with xyz.” “The person who told the story xyz.” “Pepe.” (inside joke)

Don’t honk.

Clear as mud?

I can't remember the last time I had cash in my wallet.

Sunrise selfie

Backukp

This is a long running problem in the industry as a whole.

I removed the draft copies of all my blog entries that I kept for no good reason in Google Docs  today.  I had not kept much in that long list of documents that was not on the blog. Most of those links are broken by now. Too many of the entries are just boring. I really need to figure out how to do long term storage.

Any media you use beyond a print out will not be viable in 10 years. CDs and DVDs will be phased out soon. Hard drives fail just sitting on a shelf. Thumb drives will not work in a couple years because the USB standard is changing. Someone needs to do a better job of making it work. Someone please come up with a standard that will at least stick around for a long time. I’m looking at 100 years. It has got to be doable.

A new story comes out every couple months about a company or government that lost a bunch of data due only to the fact that the media and devices that read that media are out of date. They can’t move it anywhere because the data is stuck on some media or data format that cannot be read. It is an ongoing problem. There has got to be a solution.

In my case, I’m planning on making a print out and sticking it in some kind of large Tupperware container. Sticking it in my attic and hoping for the best. That is about all I can do.

My stuff is not even worth anything except my own sentiment. My grandkids might stumble across it and give half a shit for three minutes. Most likely, it will get tossed without even being glanced at by whomever buys the house for the price of the land so they can put up a parking lot.

Even if I get the print out working, a daunting task, it will not include any links or video media. That kind of stuff will simply be lost. Really, the text is all I’m getting if I go after this method. I’ve been blogging for 10 years. That is 10 years of complaining on the internet just sitting there not getting read by anyone of interest to me. Maybe someone learned something worthwhile out there. Maybe I helped someone with something. What else can you hope for?

Christmases tree