FortKnox's Journal: Embarrassment

(I have about 3 things to write about today, so expect a few journals from me today)

I was sick last thursday. Really really badly... was an IBS 'episode' (worst one I've ever had) so I won't go into details. Anywho, I did the usual thing. Dragged my ass outta bed and sent an email to my 'client' boss informing him I wasn't going to be in that day. Friday rolled around and I was better, but not good enough to go back to work. I send another email.

I wake up around noon to find out my wife hasn't called me, which was unusual (when I'm sick she calls to make sure I don't sleep the day away and to check on how I'm doing). I find the phone. Joey must have clicked the 'on' button before he left. I hang it up. 3 messages waiting. 3 messages... from my consulting firm. That can't be good.

Its a secretary... they are looking for me and are worried... haven't showed up to the client in 2 days without informing anyone. WTF? I run downstairs... two sent emails to my boss were sent and no bounces.
I call up the secretary, inform her I have been sick. Get the number for my 'cleint' boss (never had the number... when I started I was swamped with work and just started working). Called the client boss... he was cool with it (Lotus Notes has done this before). Just wanted to make sure I wasn't on the ground slowly dying or somethign like that.
Well, I was a bit relieved and went back to bed. Phone rang... a coworker that's a good friend wanted to know if I was ok. Apparently, since the secretary couldn't get ahold of me, she started calling all kinda people at my consulting firm to find out what happened to me. My java boss was called... from a conference in Las Vegas... my 'business-side' boss was called... from a vacation in Columbus. I was fielding calls all day friday. How freaking embarassing... they are interrupted from non-work stuff cause Lotus Notes sucks ass.
Worst part? My 'business side' boss (you know, the one that was on vacation?) was finishing up my yearly review... GACK!

Today, of course, I get a call from my saleslady to see if I'm better. She was talking to my 'client' boss's boss who had all kinda email problems late last week, so everything is cool on the client side of things, which is somewhat good.

Still, all these calls from my consulting firm gave me enough stress to feel like crap all weekend (IBS feeds off of stress).

So, what's the most embarassing work related thing you have done?

Fix that subject dolt!

[jawtheshark]

It's Embarrassing to write "Enbarrassing". ;-P

Me at work? Oh, I have a reputation at work. I can't do anything embarrasing anymore. They are just used to me acting just a tad bit odd. Oh, I have stories... many stories... ;-)

Hmm, relates to work itself

[buffer-overflowed]

Took two integer counters used to traverse(find the count of a list) seperate lists(with a while loop) within a single function and confused them(working ahead in my mind).

So, whenever list B got bigger than list A, it would segfault. :-P

Found it pretty easily, slapped myself upside the head.

I got called Michael Bolton for half a day, then my boss locked himself out of his office.

So, it was alll good.

Re:Hmm, relates to work itself

[Cyberdyne]

Took two integer counters used to traverse(find the count of a list) seperate lists(with a while loop) within a single function and confused them(working ahead in my mind). So, whenever list B got bigger than list A, it would segfault. :-P

I'm pretty sure I did that at some point, too. I did something similar with an IRC services daemon I was patching for a friend (P9-P10 translation, for IRCop types), where it had a table's size hardwired as well as null-terminated. Took a while to find, too: it worked fi

Re:Hmm, relates to work itself

[mekkab]

, but since the code was written by the company which designed the processor itself, surely there must be a reason they did it that way?!


Are you sure about that?

I can't for the life of me, figure out why our C compiler on the POWER architecture prefers to use rlinm (rotate left immediate and mask), rotating 0 bits, and using an AND mask of xFFFFFFFF; basically a glorified STORE instruction! But that's the code that gets generated...

Re:Hmm, relates to work itself

[Cyberdyne]

Are you sure about that?

Nope :) In fact, there's a simple explanation. The single instruction I'd use has an eight-bit value (plus a shift), allowing you to load only arbitrary eight bit values (and larger values depending on alignment). To get around this, the assembler contains a pseudo-mnemonic which generates a pair of instructions; the first loads the least significant byte using this instruction, then the second loads a second byte, allowing a 64kb range of offsets. (The sign is specified elsewhere.

During the interview...

[dmorin]

My interviewer told me that I would be meeting with some engineers, and with Steve, the president of the company. And watch out for the puzzles.

So I go in, I meet a few engineers, and then they say Steve will be in shortly. In comes a guy who looks almost 10 years younger than me and says "Hi, I'm Steve."

He then grills me on a reasonably nasty coding problem (mmmm...image processing.....) that I'm sure I'm absolutely tanking and thinking dear god just let me out of here. But finally we're done and he s

Sounds like a good thing, nothing to stress about.

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

It just sounds like people care about you. That should be a good thing, in my book.