Doing support work while slightly buzzed is entertaining. I’ve recently used words like ‘abomination’ and ‘extreme rigidity’. Certainly the folks on the other end of these missives are deriving the same enjoyment…

A new tattoo

My next tattoo (which would be my first tattoo I guess) will be an embellished “A lack of planning on your part does not equate to an emergency on my part.” I’d like it on the palm of my right hand so that I can slap people with it when they get all twitterpated and…

Ephemery

The universe is a fickle place. It reveals things in its own way and in its own time. We need only be patient and receptive to the clues she drops. This is today’s software support lesson.

Victory

After several iterations of arguing the denials of my request for lxml to be installed as a Python egg, my web host finally acquiesced. I think I’m going to print this out and get it framed: Hello, I apologize for the delay. We were able to install this for you: xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.net [~/lxml-3.3.5]# CFLAGS=”-O0″ easy_install –install-dir=/xxxxx/xxxxxxx/xxxxx/xxxxxxx/python2.6/site-packages…

Forehead Meets Desk

So I am joined into an IM session by my scrum master with one of our special needs developers. He [the special needs guy] cannot check out code from the repository. Ostensibly something I’d be in a position to help with as I run the access rules this iteration. So we go through troubleshooting away.…

Word Bites, #483 in a series

How to control the page numbering in a Word document This could also be titled “how to finally put to rest a stupid, recurring problem that plagued you all morning because a patron was trying to conform to some byzantine thesis submission guidelines someone else in your work place drafted.” Not mentioned in this article…

Zen Master Greg

Sometimes I mourn the waxing of Usenet. So much of it has been overtaken by web-enabled GUI slickness. There is a whole generation (at least) that hasn’t experienced the joy of text-based cynicism. Before the web there was only usenet. And it rocked, cf Zen Master Greg.