I encrypt 100% of my on-line communications using the fiendishly difficult to crack ROT26 cypher.

Cheers,
Dave

Programmer: "It's not a bug. It works as designed."

Me: "So did the Titanic."

Cheers,
Dave

Brooks - "The Mythical Man-month"
Yourdon - "Death March"
DeMarco & Lister - "Peopleware"

Of course he may change majors after reading them.

Cheers,
Dave

I prefer to think of retirement as when I don't need to work in order to be able to afford a comfortable lifestyle. Approaching that point now. A couple more good years from the stock market and work becomes optional; not necessary. On the other hand, I actually enjoy doing software development and may keep working for quite some time after I "retire." The only obstacle I see is that a lot of managers can't deal with having someone working for them who doesn't desperately need the job and is therefore not willing to be treated like s**t.

Cheers,
Dave

If you think the sysadmin who can program or the programmer who can admin a system is bad, you should have seen what happened when they gave Visual Basic to a subject matter expert (SME) and said, "You can program!" Agggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Cheers,
Dave

They're talking unless their playing the game using their left facial cheek instead of their fingers. Not sure how many butt dial the games with their left butt cheek.

Cheers,
Dave

I take it that you don't drive very much. Still lots of people yakking away on their cell phone and oblivious to traffic around them. I especially like the ones who are so wrapped up in their conversation that they don't notice the light has changed and glare at you if you honk your horn at them with a look of "Can't you see I'm busy with my conversation!" There's a reason why a lot people have a bumper sticker that says, "Shut up, hang up and drive."

911 Operator: "911. What's your emergency?"

Sobbing voice: "I just can't take it anymore. I need someone to talk to."

911 Operator: "That's OK ma'am. I'm here to talk to you. What's your location?"

Simpering voice: "I'm stuck in traffic on the intersate. It seems like hours since I talked to anyone and my phone won't let me call anyone but you."

911 Operator: "You'll be fine ma'am. We're trained to deal with cell phone withdrawl victims. A nice highway patrol officer is on his way to talk to you in person. How long have it been since you made a phone call ma'am?"

Anguished response: "I don't know. I left the office at 5:00 and talked to BFF until I got in my car but the phone dropped the call as soon as I started the engine. What time is it now?"

911 Operator: "It's now 5:15 you poor dear. You've been without cell phone contact for at least 10 minutes. I'll send the paramedics as well as the highway patrol."

Thanks for the chemistry lesson. I've always been pretty successful with beer (not wine). Wasn't sure whether it was the lower acidity or lack of carbonation. Folks who pass on alcoholic drinks say that sodas work for them. Thoughts?

Sounds like a good reason to switch to gin and tonnic the next time I'm out for Indian food.

Cheers,
Dave

I don't know. A sufficient quantity of beer seems to either clear the hot or dull the pain. Either result works for me.

Cheers,
Dave

Water is one of the WORST things you can have if you find food to be too hot. Capsaician is an oily substance (long carbon chain). By drinking water you spread the oil and that makes it seem even hotten. Best slternatives are things that absorb the capsaician such as starcy foods like bread, rice or potatoes or acidic beverages like fruit juices, beer, etc. that disolve the oil. I've heard milk also works but somehow milk and spicy food doesn't sound good to me.

One of the things that makes hot "buffalo wings" so hot is chicken wings are fatty so the fat from the chicken wings coats your mouth and holds the capsaician there. I like hot spicy food but found that out the hard way when I tried the hottest wings on the menu at a Buffalo Wild Wings. Tasted good initially but then the heat just stayed in my mouth. Only time I haven't been able to finish something because it was too hot.

Cheers,
Dave

I still remember the days of "DLL hell" when everyone shipping Windows products included their own version of various, supposedly shared DLLs. The problem was the first one loaded was expected to work with the others which didn't happen since it didn't have the right customizations. Yeah, that approach worked really well.

The problem with avoiding shared libraries is that the onus for keeping up with updates to the shared libraries transfers to the application developer. You still run into the same problem as my example; just the immediate consequences are hidden. If "B" builds in or statically links to an old version of the library, there is still the possibility that there will be a critical update to the library and it's now up to the application developer to re-build it in, test the new build and release the update. It's possible that the critical bug is in a part of a library their application doesn't use but we're now relying on the application developer to make that determination.

Cheers,
Dave

OK. As long as you don't say, "I can't do that, Dave," when I ask you to open the door.

Cheers,
Dave

Shared dependencies:

Packages A and B both depend on shared library C. A critical bug is discovered in package A that requires a change to library C. Package B releases an update to stay compatible with library C. It turns out that the update to B doesn't work. There is no way to revert B to the previous version since this also requires reverting library C and package A to the version with the critical bug.

Testing:

Each old reversion point for any sort of shared library means that every package that is dependent on that library has to be fully tested with each version of the shared library. Add in multiple shared libraries and the test case tree becomes very bushy since all permutations and combinations of the shared libraries must be tested.

Cheers,
Dave

Who else on /. (besides me) remembers the Church Committee hearings? Tricky Dicky? The Saturday Night Massacre?

Cheers,
Dave