Stuff, Things, and Shit (Sorry, no Junk)

1. I got hung out to dry. I've gotten screwed at work before, but never this overtly. Angry Taco is Angry.
2. Piece of shit I used to be good friends with hurt awesome person I really fucking love's feelings. Angry Taco is Seeing Red.
   
3. I had to work late today because of the fuck up that I wasn't responsible for, and that the one responsible won't acknowledge. Angry Taco is Pissed.
4. This jackass in California decided to dick me over and make all kinds of noise about how important it was for him to get my fix as soon as humanly possible without actually answering my question about whether he had to have it tonight (accepting the fact that I'd be harder to reach outside business hours) or if he could wait until tomorrow. I didn't let him have it, but once I asked him point blank and couldn't get a straight fucking answer, I went home and let him stew for the hour and a half it takes for me to drive home, have dinner, etc. He's much more cooperative now. But he's still a fucknut. Angry Taco is Ready to Snap.
5. Wifezilla takes kidzookie out to the mall for Mommy & Son's Night Out (TM). I asked her to pick me up a technical book I really need, since there's a Barnes & Noble in the mall. She comes home and hands me the bag, which contains the book I needed... plus the only Christopher Moore book I don't yet own. I look up and she smiles and says I seemed to be having a bad day, so she and my son got me a present. Angry Taco is... Less Angry.
   

Hello... we're Taco and Coyote.

Coyote: What does it say about today that it’s only 9:20 and I’m already halfway through my third Johnny Cash CD of the day?

Taco: Have you tried taking them to Reno and shooting them just to watch them die?

Coyote: I was gonna save that for the weekend. I don’t wanna go to Folsom in the middle of the week.

Taco: Yeah, Folsom's pretty rough. When you're there, time just keeps draggin' on.

Coyote: Luckily I’m not named Sue. God knows what they’d do to me.

Taco: Can you cry? I heard that there once was a man and he couldn't cry. Hadn't cried for years and for years. In the end... well... it didn't end well for him.

Coyote: Not just cry, I can cry cry cry but I do that alone.

Taco: Sounds like the blues. Have you tried getting rhythm? I find that a jumpy rhythm makes you feel so fine it'll drive all your troubles from your worried mind.

Coyote: I tried that but it turns out that I walk the line. You can imagine my disappointment.

Taco: Better keep a close watch on that heart of yours. Last thing you want to do is fall into another ring of fire.

Coyote: I never should have given my love to Rose…

Taco: Shoulda just told her to give your other suit to the Salvation Army. And everything else you left behind.

Coyote: Yep, when the man came around he could have just taken it all.

Taco: Which man? The one on the left?

Coyote: Him there, next to Delia. Hey, I thought she was gone!

Taco: Yeah, they told she was going to Jackson.

Coyote: She’s been everywhere, y’know.

Taco: I'll bet she's in the jailhouse, now.

Coyote: And we’ve come full circle back to Folsom. Yay! Time to leave the glass cage. This was the funningest game ever.

Undone by my own jackassery

Taco: Now I'm giggling at the ongoing gag of the heroine's impotent petulance. I'm totally using that bit in one of the things I make up but don't write one day.

Coyote: Dude, you need to, if you haven't already, start a doc for all your ideas and notes so that when you open googledocs it's always right there, staring at you. Stop having awesome ideas and not doing stuff with them! I command it! Write more, damn it!!

Taco: Dude, you rock. I forgot that I had one of those, so I went off to add that nugget to it and found this one, which I'd forgotten: [removed because of that fucker who keeps stealing my half-finished stuff]

Coyote: Clearly I'm not doing enough begging on the make Taco write more battle front. I'll have to increase my efforts.

Taco: Taco is full of what we in scientific circles call "The Suck."

Coyote: The findings of the council are quite different. You wouldn't want to anger the council would you? They control all the mansex. And cheese. Truly they are powerful and wise.

Taco: *hypothesizes that Taco is full of The Suck*
Taco: *develops an experiment to test this hypothesis*
Taco: *performs said experiment*
Taco: *records findings*
Taco: *checks findings against his hypothesis*
Taco: *finds that, indeed, Taco is Sucktastic*
Taco: Yay for science!

Coyote: I can't help but notice that your findings and the details by which you came to those findings have not been put up for peer review. Also yay for science!

Taco: If I had any peers, I would put it up for their review ^_^

Coyote: Thank you for making my point for me. BOOYA!

Taco: Curse you, Richards!

I renounce my humanity.

I don't want to be associated with you fuckers any more.

I'm flipping through the channels tonight, and I see some lady missing and presumed dead, body parts found on the side of some highway, and a 3 month old infant found dead and probably tossed out of a car.

What the fuck, people?

I'm one of the most disagreeable sons of bitches you're likely to find anywhere. I don't like people at all. And I still can't imagine doing any of this shit.

What the fuck is wrong with people?

I don't want you fuckers messing up my rep anymore. I quit.

Mental Masturbation

That's my favorite thing to call it.

I write software. No big surprise there. Both of you that actually read this know that.

I really just want to be left alone to write good software. Again, no big surprise.

Management isn't so into that, because management isn't really into good software. They're more into preening for the guys above them in the pecking order.

Anyone surprised yet? I didn't think so.

So we have this system set up where people testing and using our software can report bugs in it. It goes through this whole process and eventually get assigned to the programmer best suited to fixing the problem. In theory, anyway.

Frequently, as we're working, we'll find bugs in our own code... and if we're busy with something else and don't have time to work on it right then (which is, of course, usually the case), we'll log a bug against it just to make sure it doesn't get lost. Sue us. We actually like developing software and give a flying fuck. Call us young and idealistic. I'm pretty sure the correct term is "dumbass." So I'll take it as flattery.

Corporate mandate says that the person who files the bug has to fix it... but what do you do when you file a bug that you have to fix? We have a whole QA group for this shit, right?

Wrong. The filer verifies it.

To hell with the fact that the person who fixes the bug is inherently unqualified to verify that the functionality is correct. I mean, I wrote the fix, so obviously, I'm going to bitchslap the fix and say it's insufficient, right? And forget the fact that I'm not really capable of getting outside my own head and using it in ways I didn't anticipate.

That's not important, right?

Nah.

So today I spent the whole fucking day... the whole fucking day... verifying several dozen... DOZEN... bugs I had filed against myself and fixed.

And I actually went through them and tested them, because despite the fact that it's stupid, I give a greasy rat's ass. And I even reopened two of them because of that whole rat's ass thing.

But come on... I'm an aberration. Is it really smart to count on all your devs being as fucking stupid as me?

Dear managementards: Laziness rules. I hate to inform you.

God.

The Wisdom of Kidzookie

On the drive back home tonight, kidzookie pipes up and asks his mom:

"Hey mom... why don't you have a brother? Is it because grandma and grandpa don't have sex any more?"

The Wang Whisperer

I recently switched over to a Mac laptop as my main computer at home, and I'm still experimenting with all the software options available to me on the new platform. I found a pretty serviceable chat program in Adium almost immediately and have been most pleased with it.

Last night, while digging through the applications folder for Shit I Haven't Tried Out Yet (TM), I found that the computer came with chat software already installed. Huh. Reasoning that anything so blessed by Apple must be very nicely integrated with the system, I decided to try it out.

It works well, but I wasn't able to get it to connect to everything I wanted all at the same time. I generally stay logged into AIM, ICQ, and GoogleTalk because there's people I chat with frequently on all three. It looks like I can do that with iChat, but I haven't figured out how yet. Still getting used to the way Mac does things.

Like most of the software I've fiddled with on OSX, it's very pretty, and adds nice little touches that make using it more intuitive and pleasant.

It decorates the chats so that what you and your chat partner type come up in word balloons (a la comic strips) in the chat window, making it look for all the world like your icons are talking to each other. You can turn this off, but I got a kick out of it and left it on.

Then Coyote logged on and I pounced on the not-nearly-often-enough opportunity to talk to him. And all hell broke loose.

You see, Coyote's icon is always a golden wang.

And last night, the golden wang talked to me, man.

It was... surreal.