is a blog by Brendan
Last of three posts about work, I promise. I just got conferenced into a call with our old buddy Grumpy Man.
Grumpy Man: Right, I’m putting you in on this to talk to their systems guy. Just follow my lead.
Me: Sure.
(click as he adds them into the conversation)
Grumpy Man: Okay, I’ve got Brendan Adkins from development here. Brndan, we’re talking to Ruth and… what was your name, sir?
(cold pause)
Grumpy Woman: Deb.
We got new evacuation instructions for our building today. Before, we had to alternate in the east and west stairwells by floor, which was a pain to remember. Now, the instructions are to go to the east stairwell if you’re on the east side, and the west stairwell if you’re on the west side. You got to whichever stairwell is closest. It’s that simple!
In the last ten minutes, I’ve heard two people come up and ask the Lady in the Next Cube whether we’re on the east or west side.
At work, we have this client we pay for data. The client likes to know that only humans are seeing this data, presumably because they are stupid and bill by the hour rather than the byte (and maybe because of HIPAA, whatever). My employer likes to have computers get the data for the humans, so we can stop paying the humans to do extremely tedious copying work. This is why I have spent a significant amount of my time over the last year creating and maintaining a kludgy application that gets the data by pretending to be human. It can trick another computer, but you would probably not be fooled.
As of this weekend, the client in question deployed a whole new method of connectivity: a tiny embedded custom applet that works okay for humans, but doesn’t have the features necessary for our kludgy impersonator. They disabled the old connection, of course.
This is why my boss and I spent two hours, this morning, trying to hack in to a system we are paying to access.
I need a new job.
Will trashes Lyle’s assumptions with another sequel from the LJ comment feed:
“Elaine groans as the dripping ceiling becomes a trickle onto her math homework: melting clouds are not conducive to learning. She hasn’t actually gone to classes in two weeks, though; hasn’t gone outside. She’s afraid of what’s up there. Or what might be up there.
When the wall between her burrow and the next collapses Elaine builds a fort out of borrowed furniture, reads by the weird light of a shard of broken sky. This lasts two days, until Dave asks for his sofa cushions back–and by that time she needs to use the bathroom anyway.
She looks up, gasps:”
Link rot alert, but the LJ-feed comments on my senses post are pretty great.
I made brownie pie and we ate Spinelli’s. DC and Beth got me a book and a bunch of great Actors Theatre stuff, and Yale got me some stuff he found in his car, and he, Ken, Kyle, Scott, Lisa, Monica, Mom, Ian, Maria’s family and especially Maria got me a present I would never have let myself buy: a real camera.
Thanks, ballers.
Third monochrome image post in a row! This one actually serves a purpose: it’s a very rough (and lazily photoshopped) mockup of what I have in mind for the cover of the Anacrusis book.
Image credits: the human eye came from a really nice BY-SA macro shot called fóvea, and the bug eye from a BY-ND shot called drosoph. The latter makes me unhappy, because I’m clearly deriving from a NoDerivs work, but I can’t find the photographer’s contact info to ask permission. If you are the photographer, please write me! Oh, and also write if you have a strong opinion about the cover.
Saved from the LJ comment feed, here’s William’s follow-up to Winter:
Spring falls hard, sprawls awkwardly on the ground. “Goddamn it,” he mutters. Then louder, to the air in general, “this better not set a theme!”
Caleb helps him up, his face full of apology. Spring swats him away, muttering about ‘respect’ and ‘kids these days’. He brushes the dew from his trousers and winces.
“Are you okay?” asks Chyler.
Spring doesn’t respond: he’s just noticed the stains on his suit. He looks like he’s about to have kittens.
After about a second, they realise he’s forgotten they’re there. They hurry off, feeling slightly uneasy.
“Aw, man,” Spring mourns. “These were new.”
Sometimes, awesome things happen! One such thing is Mr. Andy H.’s timeline of the Holly stories, which is really more complete than it should be. I consider it totally canon (your personal canon may vary), with one minor exception: Holly and Rose aren’t trying on bras, exactly. More the opposite.
Thanks, Andy!