Safe from the Losing Fight

Charity has informed me, via Elaine, that I need to post. Since I haven’t fully formed any of the technical articles that have been banging around in my head, I guess this will be a personal post.

As you can tell from the sidebar to your right, I have arrived in the Bay Area, and have begun to hate the driving situation already. Elaine’s sister commented that I drive somewhat aggressively for someone from Tennessee/Texas. It’s true, but it’s because when I first arrived in the Bay Area about four years ago, I couldn’t even getting on the freakin’ freeway until I started driving like I robbed the local 7-Eleven. And yes, I mean that you have to openly brandish firearms before anyone will let you merge, if only begrudgingly.

On the home front, I have an alarm system that seems pissed at me personally. It waits until I feel safe and comfortable, then emits a high pitched screech, designed to scare the bejezus out of me. Before you think the screech is benevolent, let me assure it is not. It is not the beep of “there might someone trying to break in,” it is the beep of “This home’s alarm system is not working! Free furniture!” The landlord has apparently not paid the monthly upkeep on it, so it feels the need to berate me about it, despite the fact it won’t even tell me where to send the check. Fortunately I think I have finally located its lifeline, and me and my friend, Phillips Screwdriver, have already set plans into motion to end its miserable life.

I’ve also attempted to get some sort “programming” for my television set. My first choice was to try Comcast, because I was feeling particularly masochistic that day. I meticulously entered in all my information at their website, selected a package, and made an appointment. This data is carefully translated into Kannada, printed out, and handed to a Comcast associate who promptly shreds it. Meanwhile, I was waiting in line to chat with a janitor — or maybe the groundskeeper, I had forgotten who by now — in a Java applet specially designed for people who wish to go blind by staring at impossibly small fonts for hours at a time. “Willy” (I forget what English name he gave me) helpfully asked me all the questions the form already had, but with much longer pauses and more grammatical errors. I was then informed I could only have the package I selected if I paid twice what they advertised. Apparently they have make up for not buying an ordering system that actually connects with their backend somehow.

It was about this time I remembered that my TV had a built in HD tuner, and I lived in the Bay Area, which has lots of off-air HD content, all from PBS. All I needed was an antennae, and loss of will to live. I ordered both off Amazon, which went smoothly. Unfortunately, it was shipped on Friday via DHL (motto: “You’ll never have to ask ‘where’s my package?’ again, because damn if we know.”) using “next business day.” It arrived on Wednesday, which clearly is the next business day, if you willingly block out Monday and Tuesday with liberal amounts of alcohol, wishful thinking, and pixie dust.

I’ve stayed pretty busy working on my current contract. It never ceases to amaze me how much money they pay people to code, who so obviously have no skill to do so. If you can’t design a class without making most, if not all, data members public nor can you handle errors or exceptions without a lot of goto statements, maybe you should seek other employment opportunities. Seriously, there’s one coder in particular that I wonder why he hasn’t been fired, or at least barred from ever touching the code. Code wilts when he gets near it.

There Charity. You are now officially up to date. Bring back sweet tea and Chik-fil-a.