Three Guys in an Office

It only gets worse

2006-01-29T18:41:00.000+01:00

As if my last brush with public intelligence was not bad enough, today I my attention was directed to a monument, recently erected (literally) in the environs of the Malta International Airport.

It looks, to put it very bluntly, like a big dick. And before anyone accuses me of having a puerile imagination or of being a pervert, it should be noted that the very same observation was made in the articles and posts that brought the piece to my attention. (Gamesroom link, posts in Maltese, as well as a letter in the Times of Malta this morning)

I refuse to contemplate the meaning of this monument. While I have no problem with genitalia of either sex being depicted in art (and no, I'm not gay) I do have a problem with the freakier exhibits, especially when, like the case in point, they appear to be

1.) Designed to shock, possibly because the sculptor is unable to create something which can move the audience in any other way.

2.) look like they haven't been washed in a long time.

Come to think of it, this scene will become even more graphic as the native pigeons will coat the top of the structure with their whitish droppings. I wonder what ol' Mrs. Liz would have made of it had she seen it during her visit in the CHOGM.

If this is the shape of things to come, I think I'll retire to a more sensible universe asap.

Of culture and other wonky stuff.

2006-01-27T12:23:00.000+01:00

Pfft. Leave it up the the others and this blog would be totally devoid of any content at all.

Time to dust off my blogger hat and put a few words down, this time drawing inspiration from a conversation I overheard yesterday in the bus. Yes, I still refuse to pay through my nose for the priviledge of using the few narrow ribbons of asphalt in between the various craters which the natives insist on calling roads.

Now, this conversation between three young gentlemen started when one of them asked what had happened to a certain DJ who had apparently disappeared off the face of the planet. According to one of them, said DJ had stopped practicing because he had developed some ear problems, which event caused him some inconvenience in his musical efforts.

In chipped the third lad, who said something along the lines of "So what? Beethoven was stone deaf and still wrote."

The response to this was "What the hell has that got to do with anything? Beethoven just had to sit in front of his piano and bash away, this guy needs to hear properly to play!" and "Yeah, I mean, Betthoven didn't have the sound this guy has, there's no comparison!"

[Cue sound of strangled disbelief from my seat]

Although one has to thank [insert preferred divinity here] that these people had even heard of Beethoven, I must honestly state that, if I had any faith in Maltese culture (And that doesn't mean I had any to begin with) I well and truly lost it there and then.

I was reminded of a Doris Lessing quote which one of my friends (Hi Ralph) was rather fond of:

You can take a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.

...

Life today is sort of ok-ish. I'm working in Java again, and having constant metaphysical debates with the occupant of a neigbouring desk who believes, for some unfathomable reason, that C# is better. Takes all sorts I guess.

2005-07-30T15:23:00.000+02:00

Greetings from the UK, where informal meetings are fun.

A Trilogy In Two Parts

2005-07-17T19:19:00.000+02:00

Well all, the road calls again and I'm wandering off to new pastures once more. Posting this by way of thanks to Office workers #2 and #3 and all my other colleagues for the last few months, who have made work an enjoyable experience again.

This blog will remain and I still expect to post on it. For historical purposes, and because we're too bone lazy to come up with another name, it will still be called "Three guys in an office". #2 and #3 are expecting their new colleague now, who will be known by the monicker of Office Worker #4 should s/he choose to be inducted into the inner circle of the blog. Best of luck to all of them.

Greets also go to our other colleague who has also left the company to travel to far off Oz. Cheers mate.

C ya all as soon as possible.

Marketing for the Mob

2005-07-13T20:15:00.000+02:00

It happens only, like, three or four times in every major project, if you're lucky. You've planned out some spiffy new feature, convinced your client liaison that it will revolutionize their website/workflow/inner balance, executed it with a skill that a samurai would envy and even, if you found the time in between deadlines, documented it.

Then you meet the proverbial boss client, and hear the fateful words: I don't like it. Scrap it.

Then you hear that tinkling sound. That's your elation at a job done and done well, shattered into several million infinitesimal pieces and scattered all across the boardroom floor.

Another, slightly more gentle scenario is when you realize, three months down the line after deployment, that while everyone was thrilled about the project, something seems to be subtly wrong, mainly because no one is using the bloody thing. Then it dawns on you that that everyone really meant everyone except the people who were meant to do the donkey work of actually operating it.

It boils down to targeting, both of marketing and design. Sometimes we lose track of the focus of the audience, wasting resources pursuing the attention of the wrong people. The exact social dynamics of a client organization are inevitably varied and complex, but it's worth sorting out at an early stage who the decision maker is - generally through the subtle interactions that happen between parties present at meetings etc. In some cases you'll even find that the bugger pulling the strings never actually shows up until it's too late.

You'll learn to appreciate that there's a good reason that police employ criminal psychologists to draw up profiles. You have very limited input by which to determine what the top guy wants, unless you're lucky enough to get a really solid brief. In my experience so far, a really solid brief ranks up there with the myths of the holy grail, the bleeding lance, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. So get stuck in.

The other group you'll need to target are the people who will operate the system. As Gil Grissom of CSI fame is so fond of saying, "before you're a forensics expert, you need to become an expert in everything". Same for systems design. Learn what these people do. Learn what they want. Learn how they think. Then you will be in a position to design something they like. If they like, they use. No other way about that, I'm afraid.

Then maybe we'll all hear that tinkling sound a lot less often.

-------------

I started this post at 8:15pm and am still typing at 8:57pm, mainly because I've stopped a bit to discuss the vagarities of life with a friend of mine who has come up with a noble plan to cheer up another friend of his. Just dropping this note in here to wish him luck and to say that hell, anyone who has friends who care enough to worry about them and try to make them feel better shouldn't feel like a god-damned failure.

Zen and The Art of Lazy Software Development

2005-07-11T22:19:00.000+02:00

Today, very few people appreciate the value of true laziness. Instead, everywhere we are surrounded by it's bastard offspring, sloppiness.

When I was learning Java in an isolated monastery in the mountains of far off Tibet (actually Balzan) my wizened mentor (hi Styx) shared with me the wisdom of the ancients: that while the common hacker is content producing line after line of code, the Zen Masters of coding instead perfect the art of being lazy. Unlike the results of sloppy coders, which produce dysfunctional behemoths, the practitioners of the way of the sloth produce elegant, if unorthodox, applications which work pretty damn well and tend to be nicely reusable.

The mantra: Do only as much as is needed to get the job done in the simplest way possible.

Less than that, and you get inevitable reworks.
More than that, and you will need more maintenance.

How does one walk the path? OOP helps, but the journey must start in the mind. Learn to think carefully before you start to hack away. Most of the greatest software projects start when one's pantaloons are firmly around the ankles, with nary a PC in sight.

They're here!!

2005-07-06T14:02:00.000+02:00

Finally our M$ thongs are available!

check out the pics below... or else...

(online ordering available soon :P)

2005-07-06T13:38:00.001+02:00

Tight fit.

2005-07-06T13:38:00.000+02:00

And yes, he put it on the wrong way round.

2005-07-06T13:37:00.001+02:00

Yes, it's Office Worker #3!

2005-07-06T13:37:00.000+02:00

Feel The POWER!!!

2005-07-06T13:36:00.001+02:00

No, he's not scratching himself

2005-07-06T13:36:00.000+02:00

Yes, we're trying to imitate our childhood superheroes.

2005-07-06T13:35:00.001+02:00

Flexible and Sexay!

2005-07-06T13:35:00.000+02:00

Available in a variety of sizes!

2005-07-06T13:34:00.000+02:00

The ultimate apparel for the developer of the 2nd Millenium.

Back by popular demand

2005-07-05T15:04:00.000+02:00

First of all, thanks to all the folks who have been harassing office worker #3 because the blog hasn't been updated in ages.

Nowt much to report really. Gotten back on the local wargaming scene (no, that still doesn't mean I'm gay) and even went shopping (idem) for the first time in years. Since the only articles of clothing I'd bought myself to date were a shirt and a tie(back in 2001 I think) this is largely terra incognita for me. I'm still fairly traumatized with what I saw. Man. Pink shirts. Flowery shirts. And I was reliably assured that I was in a shop for guys. Other than that, I've been listening to a lot of Loreena McKennitt, courtesy of All of MP3. (NO, I'm still straight. Gerroff) Occasionally disturbed, I must add, by #2 and #3 signing along to "The Bonny Swans" off key, off tune and with a complete and blissful ignorance of the lyrics.

Meanwhile, Office worker #2 has been perving about trying to get around the local legislation against soliciting. He's fairly sure he's found a loophole, which is to walk up to people and say "Would you like a piece of..." while holding a sign with his name. Further news of his budding career in gigoloing as we have them.

Office worker #2 hasd also consented to model the M$ thong for the blog tomorrow. Yay! Stay tuned for more thongy action.

OW#1 Buys OW#2's Camera

2005-06-22T20:53:00.000+02:00

Ok, ok, so, it's nowhere near as industry shattering as "Adobe buys Macromedia", but hey, this is our blog. If you want to read interesting, useful or even remotely sensible stuff, take yourself elsewhere.

Anyway, with EC#2 being safely in custody, we can now resume posting. Occasionally. Like, um, every blue moon. Or two.

Hopefully (but don't quote me on it) I'll be uploading images on a semi-irregular basis. OW#2 still won't model the Micro$oft thong for the blog, but I'm sure we'll get around to convincing him. A big chilli coated pointy stick usually gets his attention.

On the serious (at least, as serious as you cat get in ICT) side of things, we hope to post something about AJAX soon. Javascript is making a miracle comeback Rocky Balboa would be proud of, and as usual, we're not above trying to cash in (or at least grabbing an easy article for the blog.)

Also need to take note of a few web comics, a seriously addictive resource shortly to be taxed at nicotinous levels. First on my recommended list is John & John, a.k.a. Sick Comic. The artist, d!o, is a master in understatement. This comic is sick in the same way that the bubonic plague is sick. On the other hand, it's almost as funny as a roomful of standup comedians on whiskey and nitrogen oxide.

Second up is The Order of The Stick, kindly suggested by EC#1 who against all expectations decided to do something useful for a change. This comic is unlikely to be understood by anyone outside the D&D fraternity, but if you're in, chances are you'll piss yourself here. Chances are that you'll also recognize someone you know from your real life parties in there. Cliche at it's best.

Three Office Workers - Bringing you news from the dark underside of ICT. And take my word for it folks, it's both dark and under.

2005-06-22T20:51:00.000+02:00

Our latest office decoration, currently inshrined in a niche in the wall right next to Office worker #2's desk. Maaaan, I remember a time when the software industry revolved around these artefacts.

Number naming

2005-05-30T13:17:00.001+02:00

Having seen an excel sheet with all sorts of numbers for the last week i just remembered on a web site i (or someone else, anyway a site i came to know about) that tackles the naming of numbers for example... 3 zeros - thousand.. why the hell thousand i ask ?

anyway here's what resulted in a well invested 15 mins by Alistair Cockburn

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Kids like to hurl really big numbers at each other. It starts with the five- and eight-year-olds.

- "My space commander rules the whole world!"
- "Yeah, well my space commander rules the whole star and all the planets."
- "Yeah, well my commander rules two stars."
- "Mine rules ten stars."

Now is the big moment for the five-year-old. Five-year-olds have to learn to count to 100 in kindergarten, so One Hundred is a really big number. It is so big and frightening to five-year-olds that they never name 101. Always 100.

- "My space commander rules 100 stars!"

At this point the five-year-old will lose, because the eight-year-old can say,

- "Well mine rules 1,000 stars, so there."

And the five-year-old can't say anything. But the ten-year-old can, and jumps in with,

- "But my commander rules a million stars."

And now the five-year-old is back in the game,

- "Well my space commander rules a million million million million million million..."

and keeps going until the other two walk away or mom or dad show up and say, "Quiet down in here and just play."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What kids need are some really big numbers. A jillion is good for a while, but it is not a real number, it's a fake. Quintillion is great if you can say it. My kids were seriously impressed with googol, and even more impressed that it was named by a ten-year-old in search of a really big number. I can almost hear the conversation at the dinner table. The ten-year-old has recently learned about powers of ten:

- "Dad, what's 10 to 5th power?"
- "Ten thousand."
- "Dad, what's 10 to the 10th power?"
- "Ten billion."

Silence for a bit.

- "Dad, what's 10 to the 100th power?"
- "It doesn't have a name."

Silence again.

- "I want to call it 'googol'."
- "OK, that's fine."
- "Dad, what's 10 to the googol?"
- "Well, googol didn't have a name until a few seconds ago, so 10 to the googol doesn't have a name."

Power surges through the ten-year-old at the thought of having found a specific, real number that is so big it doesn't even have a name. The two decided on the name "googolplex," and they made the names public and popular. So that now, in our household, the conversation between the three kids runs on its course:

- "Well, my space commander rules a googol stars!"
- "Well, mine rules a googolplex stars!"

...And they are stuck again. What we need are names for some seriously, really big numbers, bigger even than googolplex.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Let's first get straight that googolplex is a really big number. Googol is 10 to the 100th power, which is

10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

Googolplex isn't just that number but has that many zeros in it. It simply has no other nameable name. But it's no good having a top number. Kids need numbers beyond numbers, ways to name number larger than whatever numbers the other kids name. And they have to be actual numbers, not phonies like "jillion," or vague not-quite-numbers like "infinity." Part of the game is to keep using up more number names.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

My by-now six-year-old, Kieran, caught the other two off guard one day:

- "Mine rules gargoogolplex stars. Gargoogolplex is googolplex googolplexes."

He was heading off the

- "Mine rule two googolplex stars" argument before it even got started. Winner for the day.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I have been obliged to find ways to make numbers grow faster and faster. We liked the cleverness of Kieran's "gar-" prefix. It implies that there are as many of the number as the number itself. For example, "gar-four" is four fours. "Gar-million" is a million millions. And "gar-googolplex" is a googolplex googolplexes. A good number.
Well, pretty good, but kids in junior high get around to noticing that four fours is really just four squared (4 x 4 = 4^2), and a million millions is a million squared (1,000,000 x 1,000,000 = (1,000,000^2).
Much more interesting would be to get 1,000,000^1,000,000, which doesn't have a name, as far as I know. But then, some of us have lived long enough to see what's coming. We won't just need a name for 1,000,000^1,000,000, but a name for: NN, any number to the power of itself. Let's call it fz-whatever. Fz-four is 4^4, and fz-million is the 1,000,000^1,000,000 we were looking for. We can already see where this is going. Fzgoogolplex is going to outdo gargoogolplex in just a moment, because gargoogolplex is only googolplex^2, and fzgoogolplex is googolplex^googolplex, and nobody is going to top that.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Not so. We made our own new math function, Fuga, to take us one step farther in this gamec. We noticed that fzgoogolplex only has googolplex raised to the googolplex once. What about the ultimate five-year-old's answer? "Googolplex raised to the googolplex raised to the googolplex raised to the... (until the voice wears out)." We came up with fuga (pronounced 'few-ga'). Fuga is a mixture of the musical word "fugue," and Kieran's "gar-" prefix. Fuga-number means "that number raised to that number that number of times." Fuga-2 is (2^2). Fuga-3 is ((3^3)^3). (Very soon, here, this is going to get hard to write.) Fuga-four is (((4^4)^4)^4). Fuga-one-hundred is (...((100^100)^100) ... ^100) with a hundred hundreds listed in there. Now we can name Fuga-gar-googolplex! (We could say fuga-googolplex, but why bother when we know that Kieran is just going to say Fuga-gar-googolplex right afterwards?)
There we have it. A number so big that it boggles the ears just in the speaking. Gar-googolplex raised to the gar-googolplex a gar-googolplex times! Bigger than the number of all the atoms in the universe!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Whew. Done for the day. They'll play with that for quite some time before one of them notices that we only said fuga- once ("Well my space commander rules fuga-fuga-fuga-fuga-fuga-fuga-fuga-fuga- ..."

Half of a half

2005-05-30T11:06:00.000+02:00

mmmm, is this cheese i'm smelling ??

hey i'm currently the external correspondent with the biggest number after the # sign

since this is my first post in here i would like to post a quote from my favourite cartoon character... Peter Griffin, to a man who lives on a wheel chair.

"And Joe, I've had new neighbors before, but none of them were half the man you are. Since you're half a man already, that splits them into some kind of fraction I can't even measure."

Of Sheep and the Philosophy of Numbers

2005-05-25T14:02:00.000+02:00

Good grief, it's a month since anyone bothered to update the blog. We've got a good excuse... mainly due to work, heat (of the climatic variety, not the other sort. Dirty, dirty people.), the total and abject sense of apathy brought on by excessive doses of both of the above, and good old fashioned bone laziness. Oh, and the fact that we totally forgot it existed. Oops.

Anyway, here's a quick filler until we find something mildly interesting to post about (provided we remember to do so.)

While #2 and I were having a cigarette and discussing the vicissitudes of the Visual Basic concepts of null, empty and nothing (heartfelt thanks to Big Bill for C#. All hail C#.) I wondered how the hell one explains the concept of null.

I vaguely remember something about apples and pears, way back in my childhood years, but for some bizarre reason which #2 attributed to the sun, we started discussing them in terms of sheep. Now one, two or even 6, 000, 639 sheep can be explained fairly easily. Fractions can be explained with equal ease, although it's a bit messy if we start cutting sheep up. (Also, #3 sustains that if we slice up a sheep it no longer counts as a sheep since it's dead.)

We're a bit on shaky ground with zero. Basically, there are zero sheep running loose on my desk as I type this. There are zero sheep running about the room, and #3 is currently doing things I wouldn't care to repeat in polite company to zero sheep at the moment. There are zero sheep wherever there are no sheep.

The zero sheep is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window. Or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work. When you go to Church. When you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

(paraphrase from The Matrix)

We couldn't bring our heads around the idea of a negative sheep.

Things got even freakier as we discussed null. In decent programming languages null values just don't exist. It's different from a zero value - a zero implies that there are zero units of a given type, while a null implies that there isn't anything, not even a zero.

In the end we concluded that there can be null sheep. You can have a sign pointing to zero or more sheep. That is a value. Then you can have a sign that is not pointing, which is the null value.

I think it's time for coffee and red pills now.

'Tis Monday evening...

2005-04-25T23:55:00.000+02:00

Weekend's over again. Been busy playing with shopping carts of the electronic variety the last few days (apart from the few hours I spent pasted since last Friday), so let's put on a quick recap of the events of the last few days.

On Friday, we got into a discussion about the multitudinous features of online shopping carts. Inspired by a note in a site somewhere, which said roughly that an online shopping cart should emulate the wheely, physical sort as closely as possible, #2 (a man occasionally described as a short version of Keanu Reeves with a goat taped to his chin) launched in some seriously deep reverse philosophy. It's like reverse engineering, only more abstract and slightly more legal.

The reasoning was sound. Starting from the premise that an online cart is created in the likeness of the real thing, it stands to reason that the real thing is therefore like unto the online one. So far so good, except that the online carts aren't much use when you try to do Ben-Hur re-enactments in a crowded supermarket.

Now, reasoned our #2, some online shopping carts only allow you to remove stuff from your cart by placing 0 items in it - if I recall correctly, amazon was the cited example. According to our philosophical friend, this means that you can actually put 0 items in a cart. While he elucidated the idea by miming it, in my opinion the argument is rather shaky. At the very least, shop staff might mistake you for a rapper or a mime and shoot you on the spot.

The conversation eventually led to a deeply philosophical question by an unusually pensive #3. If a shopping cart falls in the woods, and there are 0 items in it, do you get charged?

Had a passably pleasant weekend. Friday night playing munchkin with some old friends and trying to get drunk, Saturday getting intimately acquainted with SQL Server's more obscure functions and still trying to get drunk, and Sunday watching cartoons and Jay Leno and wondering why they don't make alcohol like they used to. When I was a kid we could get two decent bottles of something potentially toxic for under a fiver and still have enough change left over for the smokes. No wonder kids these days spend all their time in front of their PCs and never get out.

Today was a pretty relaxing affair. Although we've been working down to the metal, I'm pretty happy at the clip we're moving at. Even managed to find time for an impromtu snowball fight. There's nothing quite like the squeals of panic you get when you make VERY loud blowing-your-nose kind of noises and lobbing a rolled up ball of paper across the room at random. It's more fun if you really do blow your nose in the paper beforehand, but unfortunately that usually means having to wipe puke off the floor when the guys realize what's hit them.

Also started being nasty to Rennie the happy kangaroo. Further details will be brought to you tomorrow on the same channel.

The gift that keeps on giving

2005-04-21T22:53:00.000+02:00

Late posting today. My sustained efforts to play World of Warcraft have so far been fruitless. What's up with software these days? In my days, software used to fit on an 80kb floppy, and pretty decent software it was too. These days, you have to buy yourself a product spanning four CDs AND download a 112Mb patch.

Anyway, on to today's inane rant. #2 and I were discussing the zen of people buying 5 burgers plus a diet coke to go with them. The discussion rapidly spiralled downwards to gater (google branded water) and then to spam, which inevitably resulted in a discussion about the possible merits of, shall we say, google branded gentlemanly attribute enchancers.

I used to work for a company providing payment gateway services. One of our prospective clients was the purveyor of such equipment (they never became actual clients, mainly due to the fact that the bank we were working with turned down their application because they had the word "Penis" in their company name). Such was the hilarilty engendered by the idea of transacting such equipment over my pet project (the payment gateway) that we took the liberty of nosing over to this client's site to see WTF this product was.

We were horrified.

Basically it involves strapping this device to your waist, in belt-like fashion, and slipping a noose-like appendage over the head of man's best friend. The pull generated by the device is supposed to stretch out said body part, and lengthen it.

Now, I'm sort of not ok with this. The various parts of my body and I grew up together like, and we're really attached to each other in an emotional kind of way. The whole idea feels like, I don't know, your leg suddenly deciding to strangle your ear to make it look sexier.

Back to the point in question. We were discussing the merits of a google made enlarger - I'm sure it would be a hit with the more self concious members of the male species (no pun intended), especially if they do it like gmail... the gift that keeps on giving. Personal opinion has it that the people who designed that system should have incense burnt to them every day - mailbox size has now peaked 2.2 Gb and growing.

Just imagine, every morning this little guy would gt up and see a counter ticking up on his little friend. Wahey.

Most of the day was pretty sucky. I'm still trying to figure out a way to break the language barrier and communicate with consultants. Maybe I'm using the wrong signals. I mean, it might be possible that "DO NOT COPY AND PASTE STUFF FROM WORD INTO THE APPLICATION!!!" might be interpreted as "Yes, please do copy and paste stuff from word". By a drunk. With a concussion. And ear problems. In swalhili. Underwater.

It's possible that I'm just using the wrong body language to express myself. I'll try to fix that, preferably with a big hammer.

Sigh. They never thaught us these things in University.

Choking Hazard

2005-04-21T02:40:00.000+02:00

And here we are at the end of another productive day at the office. #2 and #3 are swearing at the latest batch of fixes - you know, the kind that roll in at 16.59. We're also discussing whether we should get hold of some t-shirts to advertise our products, preferably at a wet t-shirt contest. On a chick preferably, not on us. None of us have the kind of physique that makes prospective clients drool.

It's irrelevant philosophy o'clock now (To hear #2 yawning, you'd think it's sleep o'clock, but it isn't). Since yesterday's habemus papam, we've been hearing a lot about the new pope, most of which sucks royal wind. Take yesterday for instance. I was buying my daily stock of cigarettes, I overheard these two old slags chatting in the background. So here's my fairly liberal translation from Maltese...

"S'a good thing they elected a German pope"
"Why's that, Mary"
"Cuz them Germans still got a lot to pay for due to WW2, s'about time they start"

I was sort of like... hey, what the hell does producing a pope have to do with that? Let the old man get his backside on the seat at least.

Plus, Ok, I heard he was in the Hitlerjungen when he was a kid, but... er... look, he's sort of 78 bloody years old now, I suppose he got over it in the meantime. Besides, if we're going to nitpick on this sort of thing, we're going to have a VERY long evening. My take on the subject is this: there was a war. It was pretty fucked up, but it's over now. By now, most of the people responsible have been either brought to justice, have croaked, or are about to. It's important not to let it happen again, but hey, repression won't work. They tried that out after WW1 and all they got out of it was WW2.

Back to the new pope thingy... I guess if old John Paul 2 saw fit not to bludgeon him about the head with a big stick, we shouldn't really, either. Time to call it a day and head for home.

Extreme Measures!!

2005-04-21T01:43:00.000+02:00

Ever though about society today?....all the fuss over courteous approach and etiquette….well it seems to me (and today I had proof) that all these hinder from attaining the wanted results and in short it is a load of bollocks!!!

True, to be polite and pleasant can have its benefits, though sometimes a good whack in the head, or mild though very firm and clear verbal contradiction, is seen to have better effects on certain people, especially on superiors. In my opinion to be compliant and accept every remark (no matter how stupid and arrogant) is just not the way. Apart from creating mental frustration upon one’s self, this allows ignorant, egocentric and arrogant beings to trample over your whole being.

While, on the other hand, a good vent to what you really think can open new horizons in the office. That is what I did, and believe me, not only it felt good, but the bugger seemed to have taken the message!!

WARNING: This advice must only be taken if used in small, non-frequent doses. Otherwise make sure you are indispensable to the company you work for, as sometimes such measures can have collateral effects!

2005-04-20T19:31:00.001+02:00

Rennie the happy Kangaroo

2005-04-20T19:31:00.000+02:00

#1' s voodoo programming shrine (chickens not included)

2005-04-20T19:30:00.000+02:00

Our rendition of "The 10 Commandments"

Quote of the Day

2005-04-20T15:41:00.000+02:00

It's just past halftime over here in the office and all is well. Sort of. For some unfathomable reason #2 is reading his junkmail aloud - winkie enlargement time again - and #3 just came up with this quote which will surely go into the anals (sic.) of history as the most obscure remark made in here by a intelligent organism (no, consultants don't count as intelligent organisms)

"I'm a white nigger"

I'm still trying to figure out what that means. Answers on a postcard please.

Meanwhile, #3 has made himself useful and has taken some pics of the office, notably of Rennie the Happy kangaroo, the pic of Moses from yesterday (see below), our desks, my Voodoo Programming Shrine^tm and #2 and me. You at the back, pull your pants back up - we're all decently dressed.

Finally, we've got some reinforcements on the board in the form of External Correspondent #1. She's probably a loony on occupational therapy, but we have to fill in our equal opportunity slots if we're to qualify as a good, humanitarian blog. On the other hand, her sense of humour is rather nasty so we can all look forward to some jovial character trashing. Hooray.

More stress balling

2005-04-19T22:02:00.000+02:00

Well... the most interesting part about these stress balls is the motto printed on them...

'Microsoft: Your potential. Our passion'

Well it sounds kind of strange printed on a stress ball... does this mean my potential is squeezing round, soft objects? and m$'s passion is getting squeezed?

hmmm...!

Habbemus Stressball

2005-04-19T19:12:00.000+02:00

This morning our manager kindly supplied us with 3 microsoft branded stressballs, one for each office worker. One question? Arent stressballs supposed to relieve stress?! Well think again, constantly dodging stress balls can be quite stress inducing! Not to mention the effort needed to squeeze the stress ball. Geez thats one hard stress ball.

Goodies

2005-04-19T16:27:00.000+02:00

Things got pretty good today. Apart from the fact that #2 managed to throw up a roughly complete database schema overnight, today we received some much appreciated goodies in the form of three stress balls kindly provided by Microsoft. Time to make a public apology to Bill for every time I uttered his name in vain every time Windows crashed on me. Sorry Bill.

Now the thing about stress balls is that they evoke some sort of primal response in humans... In our case we started a highly stress relieving stressball fight, which was particularly vicious due to the fact that these ones were obviously hot off the mould and hard enough to crunch through plate glass (some artistic license here. #3 did complain a bit when I cracked him one on the ribs though.)

It all quietened down when #2 commented that the balls smelled funny. Cue several minutes of us smelling each others' balls.

It's pretty quiet now, and #2 and #3 are philosophising as developers tend to do. Someone drew an amusing picture of Moses carrying the database schema on the whiteboard (just a bit to the left of Rennie the Happy Kangaroo, who should shortly feature on this blog.) and they're arguing that God created the business logic, not the data structure. Poor heathen fools. Every developer knows God created the Kernel, and all came from that.

Life, the universe and the balance of nature.

2005-04-18T16:54:00.000+02:00

It sucks being an office worker sometimes, but I guess things can be worse. This afternoon #2, #3 and I wandered off to the park for a design meeting, and witnessed two cats doing some... natural acts in public. Apart from the disturbance caused by #3 when he started lobbing stuff at them to quieten them down, the scene was quite amusing as we speculated on why it was called "doggy" style.

The odd bit was when the cat-lady moved off and turned her back on the cat-gentleman, and he ended up staring at her for the rest of the 30-odd minutes we were there. Now I don't want to sound racist or anything, but it sure looks like women are the same everywhere.

A new dawn

2005-04-18T10:48:00.000+02:00

Hi, and welcome to our new blog. Before you get any funny ideas or anything, we're straight. Ok, now that the formalities are out of the way, here's a quick rundown of what we are. We're three (no, really. look at the title) web developers. Now I'm sure that many of you are asking (yeah, like you really give a shit) why three web developers are using google blogs rather than writing their own blog software. Well, my developmentally challenged friends, we decided that, since this rather spiffy software is available already, our time would be better spent sleeping or watching pr0n, so here we are, ready to blog without doing much work beyond setting this up. Enjoy.