I’ve learned a few things in my time in IT.

One of those things I’ve just noticed though, is the process undertaken to evaluate software. (helpdesk/ documentation tools / project management).

The more people you involve in the process, the greater the requirements list becomes as everybody adds their little chunk of ‘value’ to the process.

So you wind up with two things

1. Procrastination, whilst the adoption of ANYTHING is put off until the perfect tool is found
2. The purchase of Jack of all trades, master of none packages, often twisted until they break to fulfil a particular ‘perceived’ need.

At my current employer, we’ve been fairly successful in picking ‘good enough’ tools and knowing when we’ve reached their limitations, but we have the luxury of being a small team who can be flexible.

Whats the point of this blog entry…. I’m unsure…. I think I just needed to vent after getting an email which gave me a glipse of how the other half live (endless rounds of evaluation - on the theory that nothing is better than something)

Lowlights:

“Police were told the baby had spilt liquid on herself and the man put her in the clothes dryer and turned it on.”

“the toddler should make a full recovery “

“Samuel Marc Barnes Siddall, 21, of suburban Beldon, appeared in Perth Magistrates’ Court today charged with causing bodily harm or danger.”

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/05/30/1148754978203.html?from=top5

Is this man

1. An idiot?
2. A thug?
3. An idiot and a thug?

Either way, Samual Marc Barnes Siddall, I hope the internet remembers you for a long, long time….

Well, the plumbing is in, some of walls are up and the bath is installed.

But we have one small issue: We have a leak in the roof of the house.

This explains the strange dampness which used to appear in the bathroom sometimes (it was never clear if there was a leak in the roof or condensation, but now we know).

The can’t put the rest of the ceiling up, or the final wall sections until the hole is patched, so I’ll be up on the roof tomorrow before work trying to squirt goo into whatever hole I can find.

Hopefully it will be obvious, all the other roof leaks we have had were explained by one highly technical indicator: There was a hole where the water could get in. Funny that.

Day two photo’s now up: Yes, partial construction, amazing isn’t it?

Day one is complete, day two is in progress

You can track the progress via photos here:

http://photos.herod.net/v/the-house/bathroom-renovation/

I sent this:

From tomorrow, according to the new train timetable issued by

CityRail,  I will add a further 26 minutes to my existing

4 hour and 40 minute  daily commute to Sydney

I would just like to make it clear, in no uncertain terms, that I hold

the State Government responsible for this impact on my life and will

make my feelings clear at the next state election.

I do not require a reply.

And got back this:

Dear Mr Herold,

Thank you for your email. We appreciate the time you took to send us
your comments.

The matters you have raised will be investigated as quickly as possible.
In order for the Minister to reply to you, please forward us a postal
address where you can be reached.

Please allow up to six weeks for a response to your comments.

Yours sincerely,
Reception
Office of John Watkins MP
NSW Deputy Premier
Minister for Transport
Ph: 9228 4866
Fx: 9228 4855
Em:dp.office@watkins.minister.nsw.gov.au

They got my name wrong, asked me for an address for a response I didn’t want and then promised they’d get back to me in SIX WEEKS

That about sums it up really….

Hmmm… lateral thinking at work, 10socks.com

Still not certain, if I have 10 identical pairs of socks… why would I need to have them numbered to pair them? They’ll all go together just fine.

For those watching BB06 on Australian TV you’ll be seeing the housemates put through a voice based lie detector….

Apparently, its 90% accurate according to Gretal.

But the American Polygraph Association begs to differ

The common theme: Chance-level detection of stress. Chance-level detection of lies.

Okay, after taking a week off from checking my gmail I was surprised to find about 7 messages waiting for me about dypm. 4 of them were ‘when are you going to fix the mis-counting thing?!?’ and the other 3 were translations.

Additionally, I had a slightly rude/grumpy comment left on the same subject, so, last night, rather than spend it talking to my wife, I tinkered away and issued a beta of verison 3.0 to the people who had contacted me on the problem.

Which no leaves me with some annoying work - the integration of my new changes back across the existing translations - or - to come up with a better way of doing multiple languages.

The key thing I was trying to acheive was ease of installation, users should not have to think or edit or configure - just copying a single file. But the overhead for me is becoming a pain, hence the delay in uploading translations!

So, I think its going to become two files, one for the code, the other for the language file, and you’ll need to upload both if you want to use a non english version.

Might work on that today. Or maybe I should really be raking leaves in the backyard, finishing that work project or going shopping for a new light/fan for the toilet (we are getting the bathroom renovated tomorrow)

Enough! Stop! Halt! Desist! No More!

I can’t take it!

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHH

No more posters, ads, news stories, reviews, book shop displays, history channel specials, protests, anaylsis or discussion.

I had the misfortune of watching ‘Stealth’ the movie on the train this morning - I think I was lucky the DVD was so scratched it stopped working.

This review sums it up:

“ There’s no denying it, Stealth is ridiculous. It’s a big, sloppy, fur ball of stupid, wild action sequences punctuated by lame military pomposity. Twenty years ago this film would have been huge. Today it’s hilarious. It’s a big, lumbering, idiotic brute of an action film; giddy with high-octane schmaltz and so full of unjustified hubris it’ll give you an incurable case of the giggles. Even the effects are good for a chuckle, with rollickingly dumb crash sequences and unnecessarily CGI’d warplanes packed into every frame of the film. A lot of people are going to hate it, but if you’re a little lonely for the good old days of manic computers, personality free pilots, and terrible soundtracks, then you won’t want to miss this one. Stealth is a movie so bad, it’s almost good. “