Frivolous Friday, 04.30.2010: The pancake workflow

Kindly bear with me, as my copy of Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends went missing some years ago, and I'm quoting from memory:

Who wants a pancake,
Sweet and piping hot?
Good little Grace looks up and says,
"I'll take the one on the top."
Who else wants a pancake
Fresh from the griddle?
Terrible Theresa smiles and says,
"I'll take the one in the middle."

Granted, I often wonder whether my neural wiring isn't, in fact, the love child of OCD and ADD. But I doubt I'm alone in my Grace-like predilection for taking the topmost pancake whenever it's thrown on my stack. Even when I was already in the process of shifting the previous pancake onto someone else's plate. Hopefully improved with a pat of butter and/or pure Wisconsin Grade A maple syrup, of course. (Just don't expect bacon on the side: I might just be the only non-kosher, non-vegetarian person on the planet who doesn't believe that "Bacon makes everything better.")

So if your workdays too often seem like an exercise in working your way down to the bottom pancake, at least you have company. Maybe not the kind of company you'd want your family to meet on holidays (because she'll say odd things at the dinner table). But company nevertheless.

Management FAIL, clear as glass

The "landlord" at work sent two contractors up to replace the cracked window above my podmate's desk. As Dennis and I are currently window- and siding-shopping, I asked one of the gentlemen whether they also did residential work, and when he replied that they did, requested a business card. "Do you have any business cards?" he asked his workmate. I didn't catch the entire reply, but it was definitely negative--both in fact and in attitude. Something along the lines of "D'ya actually think they'd give cards to me?"

And that was the last of it. The pair carted the original window and their tool-sets out of the pod, and I still have no idea which company's name is on their paychecks. Unless the quote we've seen so far is at the tip-top of the price range, we're not talking chump change, even for our little house. Yet two employees didn't think it important enough to scribble contact information on a piece of paper.

True, an anecdote is merely an anecdote, a single data point. But given the number of contractors in the area, the statistical likelihood remains that a local business lost a potential sale. All because someone doesn't understand that, regardless of job title, all employees are salespeople. (It's an idea I'm borrowing from Harvey Mackay, by the bye, but just as true now as it was when we first dipped our flippers into the shark tank.)

A 1980s flashback from a 21st century language

I know a couple of folks who've programmed in the Ruby on Rails language/framework, and they both seemed pleased enough with the tradeoffs between functionality and personality quirks. That being said, I couldn't squelch an evil chuckle at RoR creator Hansson's reaction to a survey that basically called his baby "ugly."

Hansson tells InfoWorld that the kind of developers that are Ruby on Rails' core constituency wouldn't even partipate in such a survey, being far more likely to trash e-mails from organizations like Evans as spam. Moreover, the kind of people who use Rails certainly wouldn't stump up $595 to read a report on which framework to use.

All I could think of was Spinal Tap's manager rationalizing his band's threadbare popularity and D-List venues: "...I'd say that their appeal is becoming more selective."

Now, it's entirely possible that Hansson knows his posse that well. All the same, that's not what I'd consider the most politic response, nor the most likely to garner wider corporate patronage. If that's the ethos of the community, that's their choice. But the idea of a framework inventor who seems to think of his end-users as created in his own image? That just doesn't endear me to him...or his handiwork.

Leftovers from dinner

Kudos to Dennis for finding Die Falscher. Just when you think World War II's potential for drama (and morbid irony) has been mined to exhaustion, there comes this. Just trust me and put it in your Netflix queue or borrow it, or what-have-you. I can't guarantee that you will (or won't) look at money in the same way. I merely know that I'll be carrying the "leftovers" to work with me for awhile to come.

Debugging made easier by giving up

Not giving up on debugging itself--oh, no, no, no... (Don't rule out strolling away from the problem for five minutes, though--that can often do wonders.)

I mean giving up your pet nail-problem-hammer-solution theory. And giving up the reflexive instinct to blame your code...or their code--whichever suits your mentality. And giving up--whenever you have the luxury--the notion that you have to fight alone. And giving up the habit of reflexively trying everything "solution" The Google sends your way.

(File permissions, on the other hand, are fair game for blame, as was demonstrated for me yet again tonight.)

The so-called "definition" of madness is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. In debugging terms, it's also the short road to madness itself. Don't get on that bus.

The irony is that, in code, there can often be one, maybe two, "optimal" ways of doing something; in debugging, it's all out on the table--maybe even some crazy stuff. That's one of the harder lessons to learn as a software developer, toggling between those two modes. But unless you prefer gremlin-chasing to doing useful stuff with code, it's the only way to roll.

An unwelcome way of "finding myself"

Yesterday I decided to activate a credit card online rather than waste time dodging attempts to be "up-sold" via phone. Meep! I haven't been this creeped out since plugging my name into ZabaSearch five years ago.

The first two screens had me input the card number, security code, expiration date and standardized information for verification. In other words, the usual--no big deal there. But then I hit two rounds of multiple-choice questions that asked me to select the correct answer for items such as "What county did you reside in in 1994?" or "Which of these phone numbers did you previously have?" or "Which of these schools did you attend?" In all but two cases, at least one of the answers was bang-on...and the jury's out on one of those simply because I don't recall phone numbers from a decade ago.

On one hand, my parents picked a name weird enough to bring my odds of triggering a false positive on some post-9/11 watch list to statistical zero. But on the other, I can't help but feeling a little too much transparency in my personal history just now. If Big Brother is a real person and actually watching, I'm betting he's a corporate suit, not a G-Man.

"Consultation" consolation prize

Even after a solid night's sleep, I'm still not thrilled about The Sales Call That Ate Friday Night. (Memo to La Crosse area contractors: You have an hour to measure the house and crank out a quote or I send you an invoice for my time.) Despite the fact three and a half hours was too high a price to pay, it would be a more grievous waste if I hoarded the reminder that I did glean from it.

That reminder is that two basic components apply to the work of the contractor, regardless of whether the work is tangible (e.g. siding on a house) or digital (e.g. a website). The first component is competence in craftsmanship; the second is competence in process.

In the case of siding, the contractor is the one who's supposed to remember to check for any permits needed before the work begins, and to not not kill the grass by forgetting to have the rollout dumpster hauled out of the front yard at the end of the job. The website developer is the one who's supposed to save you from your instinct to use the bargain-basement domain registrar and/or hosting company. Ditto making sure that your accountant has a way to drop more quarters into the internet machine so your online shopping cart (or what-have-you) doesn't stop working a year after registration.

Never forget that you have the right to expect both compentencies, regardless of whether the deliverable is something you can touch, or something you see on a monitor.