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folks, this is what happens when you decide “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in regards to keeping your damn software up-to-date.  when it does finally break, nearly a decade and a half later, no one can fix it.  why?  because you have a vendor app that was written with Borland C++ 4.5, and i can’t get my hands on that to create a debug version of the exe, that’s why.  and XP doesn’t want to let a 16-bit windows debugger run (there is probably a workaround for that, but dear fucking god!  you’re still using a 16-bit system!). 

honestly, we even keep the damn cobol on the back end at the current version, and that language used to use punch cards.  not to mention that it pre-dates, well, me.  but no.  i’m stuck supporting your shitty little system and learning all about obsolete versions of languages, since you never saw fit to upgrade from FoxPro 2.6a and your app apparently uses Clipper to read dBase III tables.  it’s not even comprable to learning latin; i’m learning etruscian instead.

i’d smack whomever is responsible for this system never being upgraded or having the business moved to a different system.  but i don’t know who they are and i suspect they are in iowa.

why does your current advertising campaign hate the english language?  “Let’s Holiday the Season”?!?!?!  does your ad company not actually know the difference between nouns and verbs?  what dim fuckwit signed off on this crap?

unless you are specifically targeting the semi-literate to unliterate demographic, i’m going to assume this will be corrected.  once you realize what a horrible, horrible crime against language you’ve committed.

shit, that’s never going to happen, is it?  fuck you, i’m going to the home depot then.

with apologies to those pennsylvannians that i know, like and respect; you are, as a whole, the worst fucking drivers i have ever encountered.  yeah, yeah, stereotyping is bad, whatever.  the point is that, since i witnessed about 25 of you handle traffic on an exit ramp into philly by putting you cars in reverse and then backing up on to the interstate, nothing anyone with a PA plate has done has restored my faith in your ability, as a group, to be remotely compentent behind the wheel.  in fact, i cringe whenever i see a car with PA plates.

the woman who was behind me on the way into work yesterday did nothing to improve my opinion of you.  in fact, she made it worse.

now, i know there are regional differences between the states.  however, here in connecticut, we do not believe we, or others, have the ability to pass our vehicles through solid matter.  such as the large, wide, slow truck that was in front of me.  i’m going to guess that you cannot drive through trucks in PA either, but that is, of course, an assumption.  regardless, i cannot.  honking, repeatedly, at me will not change the laws of physics, nor the fabric of universe.

also, when you pull up beside me by driving in the shoulder and find yourself still unable to pass the very large, wide and slow truck in front of me, please do not hold up two fingers to indicate there are two lanes.  when there clearly are not.  you see over on the other side of the road, heading into the city?  yes, those dashed white lines in the middle of the road?  that direction has two lanes.  notice the lack of them over here, on the outbound side.  yes, i know there is room enough for two cars to drive next to each other.  see those parked cars, up ahead, that you will hit if you don’t brake and get the fuck back behind me?  yes, that’s why the road is as wide as it is.  to allow parking.  not driving.  fuckwit.

now, i’m sure not everyone from your state drives like a lobotimized lamprey eel.  but you hide them well.  please, for the love of god, learn how to fucking drive.  thanks.Â

it’s not condo fees.  it’s not having no yard.  it’s not even the petty jackasses who pettition management to have your car towed cause they think your back seat is too dirty.

no, it’s that it’s 72°F outside right now.  at 1 in the fucking am.  and i’m in shorts, sweating.  why?  because the dimwits have never heard of weather forecasts, and switched the AC to heat last week.  seriously, i know that highs in the 80s is not normal for october.  but that’s what the past week has been.  right now it’s humid, hot and sticky.  i feel like i’m in florida.   with no AC.

granted, roasting a chicken tonight probably didn’t help matters, heatwise.  but that’s beside the point.  it’s still bloody hot.

fuck you.  seriously.  i haven’t decided if you’re assholes or just idiots.  likely both.

so, i’m perusing your page on the ALDS match-up between the sox and angels.  there, under “Angels’ Local Headlines”, is this gem, that begs to followed: “No coming-out parties for Lackey“.  who can resist that?  naturally, i clicked the link…and got directed to the “sign up for espn insider” page.  are you fucking kidding me?  you dimwits are routing outside content links thru your subscription site?  there is a reason i don’t subscribe to espn insider.  namely, i don’t want to.  it’s a damn good reason too.  stupid crap like only allowing your paying readers to follow links to other sites, even if it’s a mistake, only reinforce my opinion that give you jackasses money would be a waste.  even though i’d get to read gammon’s column.

so, despite being on FMLA leave, i find myself, once more, working. apparently, one of the projects i’m on decided to start having issues right after i started leave. and, it seems my boss got chewed out by our VP because i’m out of the office. what was i thinking? obvivously, i should have scheduled my son’s birth after the production release date (i’m sure perse would have been happy to carry the little guy for another month and a half). didn’t i know the project was in danger of going red?

the end result though, is the shit hit the fan and i get to clean it up. since much of my time is currently allocated to shit cleaning anyway, i suppose i’m best qualified for the task. i mean, i still have to test, but it took me (sleep-deprived and all) a whole, maybe, 3 hours to analyze the problems and fix them. obviously, my expertise was needed.

so, what happened? well, i got two defect tickets to tackle. one was an oversight: a derived field in the host extract module that was left alone because calcs would, well, calc the correct value. alas, there is a particular output that is pre-calcs and thus needs the correct value straight from the host. took a whole ten minutes to analyze and fix.

the second defect resulted from the fact that a drunken monkey designed the structure of the test environments. basically, the host has one more test environment than the server world. not only do they not match, but while the server progression is linear, the host code promotion is, well, a zig-zag. basically, i did’t realize they were moving code to the next level, and that lower levels don’t pick up all the higher levels. apparently, this is supposed support parallel development, but i’ll be damned if i can see how it does. it’s supposed to allow them to run QA and INT cycles concurrently, with out INT being affected by the changes in QA. but, QA is going to hit PROD first, so why the fuck would you not want those changes picked up? seriously? what the fuck? so, basically, by moving my code to QA, INT stopped working, because it was defaulting to running the production code. i cannot emphasis how fucking stupid this is.

assholes. i might have been able to do this a bit faster, but seriously, anyone else on the host team could have figured it out. but, they weren’t specifically assigned to it, so why should they look? better to interrupt my leave time, obviously. i’m particularly pissed off about the last problem because the people running the test job should have known what was happening.

other news from this week:

• wow, how can something so small shit so much?
• who ever invented the pacifier damn well better have been sainted
• damn he’s cute
• really, he’s damn cute, even if he’s still got night and day reversed