Saturday, April 26, 2014

I'm back.

I started reading a book entitled "Choosing Yourself" by James Altucher. The author is pretty eccentric. But I'm starting to implement what the author calls "Daily Practice." Why? Because I have to get out of my current blood sucking employment situation where I've been for twenty plus years. Yes, I'm a software developer working for a major corporation. James Altucher contends that the days of cradle-to-grave corporations are toast. That corporations really, really want to get rid of their cubicle employees (and remote employees, for that matter). And I see this on a daily basis, the desperation is thick.

I really need to stop blogging about politics and the stupid stuff I hear in the news. In fact, I have to stop watching the news because there is nothing I can do about it. It makes my head explode. Instead I'm going to blog about what I know about - me. HA! I choose me to blog about. AND GUESS WHAT - I'M MORE INTERESTING than the crap on the news. Just ask my friends. Accept for Chris, he's really an interesting tormented soul - maybe more about him later.

OK, let me talk about one of the many things that happened at work this last week. It's so funny and typical.

A colleague and friend of mine, who is the smartest guy I know, had to integrate a software change (get it in the finished product). However, the software change had to be matched in two software repositories. (For those not in the industry, a repository is where to place your supposedly finished, tested, and approved software changes so the changes can be bundled into the customer installable software product). If the software change was not matched in the two separate repositories, the change is rejected. So my brilliant friend submits the same change to repository A and then to repository B, because there is no way to submit to both A and B at the same time. The change is rejected with a grammatically and semantically incorrect error message that I wish I could share with you but I can't. So my brilliant friend submits the change to repository B and followed by repository A. Same rejection and error message. And as you could of guessed, there was only one person in the entire corporation that knew how to get around the problem. And yes, he wasn't available. I think my friend and I going to have tee shirts made with the text of the error message - IT WAS THAT FUNNY!

The tee shirt will go something like this:
"I work at a place where I get this error message:
[Error Message]
Can you help me?"

Going on sale soon. Please submit your orders.

A new business idea: a tee shirt company which makes tee shirts with real world examples of implemented gibberish. (Coming up with new business ideas is part of my "Daily Practice" - thank you Mr. Altucher)