Friday, January 11, 2008

Flood?

Shoe This morning the path we normally use to walk to work was flooded. It wasn’t flooded enough to turn back, there was a six-foot stretch that was under about half-an-inch of water.
I was creeping through the water in my all-stars (which have maybe a bit more than a half-an-inch sole and canvass tops) and some idiot decided to cycle through the water quite fast. Not fast enough to splash me, but fast enough to cause some serious ripples. Idiot. But the canvass held up okay and my feet are not wet. I still shouted at him. Tsk. Anyway, we got to the other end of the puddle and I thanked the nicer cyclist who had waited until I had crossed (how thoughtful!)
I think we’ll not use the riverside path to go home this evening!

It’s also pattern day on my page-a-day calendar. Last week I got a shawl pattern, this week it’s a hat and scarf. It’s a pretty pattern but I’m feeling very Meh about scarves at the moment. (Even the nice angora yarn I was using for my scarf isn’t tempting me back to it. I might frog that one.)
Mum Hat I intend to spend some time this weekend working on Mum’s Matching Hat. It’s a hat inspired by the Irish Hiking Scarf, but not quite like either of the patterns I’ve found on Ravelry I’m using the colour from the scarf as a coloured stripe around the center of a band which is running around the bottom of the hat. This is bordered on both sides by some creamy-white yarn. This gives a pretty wide band, about 2-3 inches. Once that’s long enough to go around a head, I’ll join the ends to make a circle. Then I’ll pick up some stitches (the exact number I don’t know yet) and knit in the round to make the hat. I’m thinking about doing it in a rib which is similar to the cable rib, but without the cable. Either that or I’ll do it in 2x2 or 3x3 rib, which is good for decreasing. I might even do 3x2 rib. Who knows, eh?

The gym is going to continue pilates for one more term. Then they plan to put it on timetable but without out current instructor. The benefit of that is that it will be included in the price of the gym membership. The drawback is that it will not be with our current instructor who we get on with very well. We do have the option of attending classes privately with the same instructor, but you can imagine the difference in price to the subsidised rate we currently get!

Oh well.
Work still sucks, I’m afraid. We’re off out for drinks later on today, which will be welcome. I think it might be a tidiness problem.
As I like shoes, I am going to use shoes and a common shoe-based issue as an example. Please bare with me. (is that the right kind of bare/bear?)

We have a procedure which goes as follows: You unlock the front door, open the door, pick up any post, walk down the corridor and turn right into the living room (or dash up the stairs to the loo). Here’s some pseudocode:
Unlock(front_door);
Open(front_door);
If Exists(post) then Pick_Up(post);
Traverse(corridor);
If NeedLoo = True then DashUp(stairs) else Enter(lounge);
Now, the function Traverse(corridor) can fail if InTheWay(shoes) = true. Because you’d fall over them.
This problem is a bug which needs fixing, (so the shoes are dodgy data or something, causing the program (you) to fall over). So, while we should just say “I keep falling over these shoes, therefore I will move the shoes” we can’t do it because there’s also a project trying to lay a new rug down in the hall. Sadly, project NewRug don’t know anything about the shoe error and so they’re doing nothing to combat it. They take a copy of the hallway (shoes and all) and work on that to produce the same entry pattern as present, including cursing at the shoes. We move the shoes here in my bit of the team, but then when the project launches we find that the shoes have crept back – only now they are under a rug.
I think my example has gone crackers. What I’m saying is that we don’t make life easier for ourselves ever. Moving the shoes should be part of the rug laying anyway because otherwise the rug can’t be successful. You know?

Clearly, I need a strong drink. Or certifying. Or maybe both, but let me have the drink before the men in white coats come.

3 comments:

Gayle said...

If your job was that bad you would find a new one,

The shouting at the cyclist probebly put the other one off wanting to cross.

Just move the GD shoes.

Hall carpets are £10 in Ikea and come in nice colours! hee hee

your mad!

Tsuki said...

Fair comment, my job's not that bad. Bad enough to be annoying, but not to make me quit. Yet.

Anonymous said...

Sadly I can relate to and understand your analogy. And even more sadly I enjoyed it.

And if work is as bad as I remember, they're probably hiring someone who gets a £10 Ikea rug and lays it for you at the low cost of, oh I don't know, £500,000?