Writer’s Block: Perks of the Job

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In this economic climate, not all employers are able to give raises. What perks would make you happy in lieu of a raise?

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Live Journals Writer’s Block

Hmm, I suppose it would depend on the situation.

I’m not a greedy person. As far as money goes in life, all I want is enough not to have to worry. So to me the idea of a pay raise has more to do with the cost of living then anything else. As far as a raise in the sense of a reward or something like that, I think a nice(r) discount on company products/services or if available, or a bonus paid in shares of stock in the company or offering the shares at much lower cost would be quite nice. Well, assuming the companies stock was worth something >_>

The ability to spend some of my paid time either working on things that interest me specifically (example: learning a new skill) or some of my vacation time counting as paid time, would be nice.

Even more so actually, because I almost never get to have a vacation, even as a kid I rarely had vacation time lmao.

Pay me enough to get through life without fighting to pay essential bills
Treat me with respect, not like a dog (I’m a human!!!)
Family comes first, job second: period
Let me grow — I love to learn

With all of that from a job, I probably would sleep at my work station every now and then if necessary lol, let along care about perks offered :.

Now if someone would just pay me for using my head……

Reflecting on recent virtual events

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Hmm, I am sorry to say it but in a lot of ways, I think the new Team Mercury / Hg4 is probably a good thing for [SAS].

With Rasa gone, it seems as if the last resistance to change is also gone. The [SAS] SOPs (from scratch) are now in the hands of a seasoned professional, and I am tasked with the technical aspects of getting them on the website. In Rasa’s new home, he doesn’t have to get things past 2 soldiers, an ex swat instructor, an 8 year veteran of [SAS] gaming, a former Sabre Squad 2IC, or the strict and realism first Spidey01. I miss my friend very much, but I think I’d rather see [SAS] move forward into the future.

It’s amazing how much work is actually getting done now! I wonder, just what mischief he might’ve been up to since I left the RSMs post…. Recent events have left our SWAT 4 wing with less man power in the lower ranks, but progress these past few days has been like watching a bull charge

They (Hg4) have already grown through a few of the people on our “list” of prospective candidates, all of which know the Hg4 founders from there time as [SAS] Members, and each Hg4 founder knows much about our server regulars and what we think of them. Filterhappy, new Trial Member of Hg4’s comment today; actually made me quite happy. Those who actually care about [SAS], are those who belong in the the selection course. I expect all of the people who are of interest to us, will be in Hg4 tags before long, as long as Hg4 does so with honor and those people find what they seek, I’m fine with this. I’d much rather see Hg4 grow, then see dead weight return to [SAS]. I want to see [SAS]’s kind of people make it into the selection course, first and foremost

Me, maybe I am a jerk, but I don’t like people who waste my time. Time is life, life is time, and you don’t get a refund if you fail to spend it wisely!

It is not our job to train the public in our ways of doing things, parts of Hg4 may have felt differently before leaving [SAS], but I don’t. One of the reasons why I take part of my time, to teach recruits things when I can. Is because I hope they will benefit from it, and learn to be a stronger member out of it, and to help the NCOs with their tasks. If Joe Blow wants to learn our ways of doing things, they need to survive the selection course just like the rest of us did. A lot of people think we’re too strict, me? I think it’s about as close to the real life 22nd Special Air Service as you are going to find, without joining an army. And I call that a _good_ thing. I guess there is a difference between those that just look for the best they can reach, and those who want to be the best that they can be themselves, and then there are those who also want to help others to grow.

I know the things that I look for in a prospective member, and I’ve come to believe that [SAS]_CO_Random is right, after so many years… He ought to be lol. Jonsi, Nick, Caern, I know that I see the potential in them, the right attitude to move on. That’s one of the reasons why I put extra effort into seeing that their training in the SC is/was successful. It’s also why Timbo was a great loss in my opinion, both in man power and time invested in, should we say, “Let him shine through” hehe. But I guess it wasn’t the path he was destined for. One needs great skill to pass one of our trooper tryouts, but there’s more to it then that,

I made it into the [SAS] Selection Course, and I didn’t even know how to use the Voice Commands system in RvS until about a week or two before becoming a Recruit! Back then, I guess it was a lot stricter. The tryout is hard by most peoples standards, but it really is easy in my opinion… If you’re serious.

One of the reasons I joined [SAS], was because I like to play tactically and realistically. I found the things I was looking for there, Skill, Teamwork, Dedication, Friendship, and FUN, FUN, FUN!!! Most people who are in the team, are there because they enjoy it this way. We like the structure, the teamwork, and we live to improve our abilities while having fun with a few good m8s.

Getting through the SC was quite an exercise, I had to grow quite a lot in my skill set just to make the cut. All of the way, I had teachers helping me to grow, helping me learn the little things that makes this elite team as skillful as it is at what we do. I never really noticed most of it, just how much attention to detail there was here, until I started paying attention during training. My time with [SAS]_Trp_Rand, [SAS]_Cpl_WIZ, and [SAS]_Cpl_Relish most important of my teachers.

I don’t totally agree with some of our SOPs, but they work and work well for the most part. If I wanted to play my way, I wouldn’t have joined the [SAS], I would have made it a goal to prepare myself for BUD/S and pursue the real thing. Because it doesn’t get much better then that outside of the [SAS],and groups like it. Hg4, is not a group like [SAS], and I say that because I know the founders of Hg4 ;-). I play the way I was trained, here are a few differences in how I would personally do things, but this is [SAS], not my back yard

Hmm, I still remember the time I got dumped into a team leaders boots else wheres, and I had to direct us against the other teams defenses. When issuing the insructions for our assault, someone in my attack group asked me if I was in the army :, my reply? No, I’m in the next best thing — the 22nd SAS Elite Virtual Regiment !

I don’t think they got the joke, but they still enjoyed the win lol.


[SAS]_Spidey01
Warrant Officer Class One
22nd Special Air Service,
The Elite Virtual Regiment

Watchin’ the fireworks

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The last couple of hours have been quite productive, probably because everyone else is sleeping for a change hehe.

I’ve been working on a simple class that provides the database usage schematics that I desire, namely… If I shoot myself in the foot, when in doubt — explode. And simple iterator support for rows. There are numerous interfaces I’m sure, but I’ve yet to see one that provided *what* I wanted, and it seems faster to write my own rather then keep researching.

The basic frame of thought I have, is if debugging a fuck-up is to costly in time, make sure it is easier to debug. In fact, in implementing the class… I accidentally shot myself in the foot, and the class exploded on me. I tried to implement something without thinking about the state of the supporting code clearly. I had forgotten to support 1 of 2 possible successful outcomes of a lower level method, which assumed any non successful outcome from this method was a critical problem (and it is 99% of times I’ve seen it fail). Since the method is intended for a situation where paranoia is preferred over ignoring problems, and needs to *only* allow correct actions to pass by it’s safe guards. The end result of my lack of thinking being, that I improved the iterator that started the chain reaction to report a problem that never occured to me as possible, and fixed the lower level support method in question to behave correctly, then tested it to ensure it works properly (along with methods depending upon it). If I hadn’t had that failed test initially, I probably wouldn’t have thought about fixing that until the next phase of testing (pre deployment), and would not have made that adjustment to the iterator, until I really got smacked upside the head using it lol.

Not exactly why I designed it the way I have, but it’s starting to pay for itself I guess :

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Between a parakeet that has been screaming almost since dawn, a mother in the kitchen, and a dog underfoot, they’ve managed to give me a monster headache code wise :

At least there was something decent on TV tonight, but I slept through half of it lol. When I woe up though, I was pleasantly surprised to find The Mating Season on. it’s an old movie (1951), but it’s a wonderful movie. If memory serves, a man basically ends up tapped on the rescue when his bosses socialite girlfriends had an accident, which ends up with them getting hitched a very little while later.

The young Mr McNulty breaks the bank and goes into hock six ways from Sunday, to give his new wife Maggie a decent apartment. Nothing extravagant but quite high for his modest sallery, all for the love of a rich girl. His mother that flipped burgers for years to get him through college, finally gives the bank collector the big slip one more time and sells the hamburger joint. Goes out and buys a new dress, expansive hat (even by todays standards for common folk, so in 1951 it would’ve been insane!), and she goes down to drop in on her son and his new bride.

When the mother gets there, the new Mrs McNulty is trying to throw a dinner party, except for one thing. She never learned how to cook or keep house! So she’s expecting the maid her husband was sending over from the agency… When her mother in law shows up at the door, Maggie thinks that she is the maid, right off the bat, fair mistake. When the mother sees just how badly things are screwed up, she takes off the hat and puts on an apron. Just couldn’t bare to embarrass her daughter in law I guess, lmao. When Mr McNulty returns, he’s like WTF is going on here! but ends up cooking up a deal with his mom. To let her continue on as the ‘maid’, before she skips town and finds a worse job. And Maggie and the ‘maid’ become best of friends, and saves them a fortune on the shopping bill.

That’s when all hell breaks loose. The other mother in law comes down to visit, being a stuck up, rich bitch of a snob: treats the ‘maid’ like a dog, and even goes so far as to having the poor asshole sleeping on the couch in his own home :. Combine with his boss, his ex girlfriend, and his mother-in-law all trying to destroy their marriage, they drive the poor guy nuts. His boss, stealing a grand idea as his own and making him do the leg work, but doesn’t invite him to the party. But luckily, his wife loaned out the new ‘maid’ to his bosses father (the head of the company), to take care of the old man while he was sick in bed.

She tells him the truth about whose idea it really is and gets her son invited. At the party, Maggies snobbish partner in a game makes a snide comment resulting in an argument. Without even knowing or asking what went on, the husband immediately takes the other womans side, because he wants “in” with the folk their at the club and the business deal to go through. So he forces his wife to apologize to the old bat, and she does. Making a big play up about possibly having an affair with his boss (who was her former boyfriend). Which starts a good quarrel between them. When Maggie’s mother sees something odd in the middle of the night, she accuses her son in law of fooling around with the maid! When Maggie finds out that the maid is really her mother in law, and hat he has kept this secret the whole time, that’s the last blow — and she puts an end to the whole thing.

That’s when his mother saves the day, lol. Getting together with the head of the company, they hatch a bigin’ with setting up a meeting between the two parted but newly wedded morons, before Maggie can leave town. Later on the son presents his mother to the snob from the club, and throughly puts and end to his own snobbish ways by rejecting the club as not good enough for his family. Now that the “cat is out of the bag’, his mothers able to speak freely with the other mother in law. When his mother in law decides that she’s moving in for the long term to be with her daughter, his mom fixes it good :-). That this time, it would be no more slave labour, the two mothers would help out, and the rich bitch would be put to work ! Hahahahahahaha, it’s priceless >_>

As that is all taken care of and the young couple is back together again, another twist of fate. The head of the company, having taken a liking to the ‘maid’ when she took care of him earlier. Hears his son (the boss from before) say that he would rather have his throat cut, then have a mother like Mr McNulty’s, the old man comes to his decision. And finally asks her out in his limo <_<
It’s a crazy movie, but it’s hilarious some of the jokes that go through the scenes. You’d have to watch it to get it. If you ever had an in-law of an out-law move in, it probably would be even more funny then it is to me lol.

Some classics, are just classically funny if you sit and watch them.

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What the fuck is it with this hell hole?

It’s like the second it turns 5pm, it’s impossible to do shit… because it’s the time people get off their fat asses.

But never gives a flying shit, if I’ma ctualyl working on something !!!

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In my increasingly, ehh… ‘insane’ ? form of web surfing. I found this essay by Eric S. Raymond.

For one reason or another, I’ve been using TWO web browsers at one time lately. Flock for websites poorly styled, Google Chrome for as much else as possible ^_^. Multiple windows, several tabs on each, in both browsers hahaha !!! This has yet to slow down the rate at which I surf the web, instead I think I’m getting faster :

I found the article rather interesting. For me, I generally prefer editing configuration files. Because if they are actually well documented, I can usually find my way along faster. Most programs that I have used, usually do a poor job of documenting what various options do… The idea of using a GUI Wizard for setting up and configuring stuff is old as dirt, but so often done half-assed. I’ve seen many programs present Wizards, some do it very well, some do it to a point–that I’d rather do it the ‘hard way’, because it is easier!

The style of user interface I enjoy, is basically that offered by programs in /usr/bin. It’s often simple to use (if you actually document it) and it’s fairly easy to code. When I try to do a GUI, I usually try to create something that is simple to figure out, but still something that I *will* use. I typically will use what ever input method is closet at hand, if my hands are on the keyboard, I use it—one reason that I love vi! While if my hands on the mouse, I’ll probably click my way about: unless it takes more then a moment.

GUI’s all to often make simple tasks easy and complex tasks impossible.

A command line interface, you generally need to know how to use. It pays to at least ask for -h,–help, /? help, depending on what system your using. Most programs are fairly obvious in their behavior without arguments. And good programs that I’ve seen, try to make them intruitive to figure out. A GUI program by comparison, if you need to go much further then a tooltip for something that is almost obvious, but explicit. Then I think there is a problem. I generally pick up and use graphical programs without needing to read documentation, because using a spreadsheet is easy but the meanings of whats fed into them are not always so simple.

If I had to go through the same thing to setup a printer, I would probably say fuck it, and go do it in a way that actually deserves my attention, LPD lol. Although, I do admit: Windows does do printing well in my opinion, as long as you do not have to deal with print “jobs”, then it sucks.

If the designers were half-smart about UI issues (like, say, Windows programmers) they’d probe the local network neighborhood and omit the impossible entries[1]. If they were really smart (like, say, Mac programmers) they’d leave the impossible choices in but gray them out[2], signifying that if your system were configured a bit differently you really could print on a Windows machine, assuming you were unfortunate enough to own one.

The difference between doing the job, doing the job well enough[1], and going that extra mile to make it better![2]. Designing a good UI is much harder then a lot of other things, but when it does happen in a good way—it’s worth it.

I remember not to long ago, I replace my *nix based PDF/PS reader. I dropped KPDF along with most other KDE apps in my change over to blackbox. Gnomes Evince was one that had been on my list for awhile and the new Okular from KDE4 was not ready yet, so I tried Evince. The program turned out to be incredibly simple, so simple that there are no (real) settings to change. The only real configuration option is how you want to layout / size a page, namely fit to page, blah blah.

At first I found this quite disconcerting, but Evince has since become my idea of the worlds best PDF/PS reader. Evince is light, it’s fast (unlike Adobe or KDE’s offers), all of the important stuff is in quick reach, and all of the unimportant stuff is no where to be found. Like at long last, a PDF reader that just cuts the bullcrap and lets me read files gracefully…. without arguing with the PDF reader !

Random thoughts

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In the course of my web-surfing about, I found this interesting post by Joel Spolsky.

“The Perils of JavaSchools”

I’ve never been formally educated on a computing thing in my life :. Having seen code by someone that was, whom I’d like to strangle… Some times I wonder if I should keep it that way >_>. I would still very much like to one day pursue a masters, an excuse to (hopefully) learn more then I can solo. But honestly, the odds of ever being free to do so are quite slim.

I still remember starting out in C++ for the first time, and having a problem handling the syntax for simple statements:

if (foo < bar)
    do_bar();

if (bar < foo) {
    do_foo();
    do_bar();
}

At the time, it was actually the most complex thing I’d ever had to learn. After figuring out that the curly brace was only required if there was more then one line, the rest was easy as pie. Once the simple logic was sorted out, I never had a problem like that learning another language.

But, that’s why I’ve come to look on learning a language differently then learning to write programs. A language has a syntax, how do you express something in written form? Through the languages syntax. One of the things that I love about C, is that for better or worse. You can cram the entire language syntax into your head. It’s really that small and light, that leaves a lot more room for working on a problem and not feeling: “Oh, I didn’t know I could write it like that” later on.

Actually creating a workable program is a bit different, it’s not a question of how you may write it (e.g. if (expr) { do; } or if expr: do), but how do you write it? One of the big joys of programming for me, is to sit back and try to figure out how to solve the problem. That’s the fun thing (y).

Writer’s Block: Lunch Break

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Do you bring or buy your lunch during the work week? How much money do you spend on food consumed during working hours?

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Live Journals Writer’s Block

Used to bring lunch, but it was a waste of time lol.

Get up, get dressed, get ready, go to work, work straight through, come home and either eat lunch or wait for supper time, depending on the time of day.

I’m generally used to eating twice a day plus an occasional snack. My living habits have conditioned me against eating a breakfast, to the point that if I do, I won’t be hungry for lunch until hours later then normal. Some times when work is heavy, I skip eating until dinner, just to much bother: especially if work is early the next day, and eating dinner late wouldn’t be that much good. Then again, until recently I almost broke my inhale dinner, take nap routine :.

Lunch however, is generally my favorite meal of the day hehe.

Plan of Attack — tongiht through the weekend+monday

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In no specific order:

0/ Train Ez, Spawn, possibly Ghost/Medic as well — operation marshal

1/ Write new interface for the ‘custom’ library on sas <---- implemented, remaining code is 'features', need to test it and place under revision control, along with other changes to the lib. 2/ Build mock-ups for GCHQ of the new docs

3/ Implement the install code for ‘that project’ I’m doing with a few guys from forums.pcbsd.org

4/ Test pythonic bindings to libxml2 (I may need this __soon__) <---- lxml interface to libxml2 accepted 5/ Evaluate gtkmm and py-gtk (I don’t think I like the wxWidgets api after spending so much time with Qt3/Qt4) — run tests under Winsucks, because linking against gtkmm and friends will be the big pain.

6/ look up the api docs for interfacing C/C++ code with Python 🙂

7/ eventually get around to placing my .vimrc, .exrc, .Terry_shrc, and various .site_shrc files under CVS (or other scm) on Vectra. <---- vimrc and Terry_shrc imported, other files being less portable, some name convention needs to be worked out. 9/ try to complete social studies homework before [SAS] SOP Prototype Due Date.

10/ eventually catch up with posting more on my LJ then todo snippets

11/ download Wiz’s latest mix and let’er blast <--- it rocks 12/ Implement my admin scripts 13/ Update cougars settings

14/ Implement my ‘lister’ PHP script <--- done, just need to write the password locker. You know, life would really be sweet…. If I could get paid to use my brain, instead of saving it all for my off-work hours lol. No if I new any companies in this burg that hire and train self-educating-geeks :