A sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton
Wednesday, July the 16th at 1:24 PM
in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eight (1 month ago)
I
don't have a terribly taxing job. I have a job that requires typing and moving a mouse in very specifc ways, occasionally clicking and scrolling when things get really exciting. My work ethic is heavily inspired by laziness - the better I do my job, the less of my job I have to do. Then I have time to sit around writing drivel like this. So when I'm writing a post in the middle of the day, you can tap your noggin and say "hey, he must have done something right." Or possibly I'm just a bad employee. Tap your noggin on that one, Bucky.
Last night I rebuilt the shopping cart system in a very old (7 years!) application that was one of the first I ever built. The original system is a magnificently bad piece of programming, and were it a physical device you would see it lumbering away in the dank corners of a factory basement, belching oily smoke and sloughing off its rusty, scaly detritus like some sort of metallic excema. No one knows what it does, how it stays running (it feeds on unicorn souls!), or what to do about the people that go down there and never return. That's what I built 7 years ago, and I feel a bit of apprehension when the client calls to send me into the bowels of it to tweak something.
This particular app has become like the old man in Poe's Tell-Tale Heart. It's just software, it's not hurting anyone. How can you hate something inanimate? Even as I work on its code, I think about choking the life out of it. I plot and scheme about its demise.
“It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture -- a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever. ”
5 Comments
1
1 month ago
SallyPants
http://hometown.aol.com/__121b_d...
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Unicorns don't have souls. That's a myth.
4
1 month ago
Hi Andrew! Very glad to see you back. I missed you. I used to come here and wander around and wonder where everyone went. The site looks great. I know you've worked hard on it. Congrats on a fine job!
Need to pass on what The Voices are saying?
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Last words
4 hours, 58 minutes ago
1 week, 5 days ago
Glad you stuck around Marty - though I can't figure out if I *actually* know you, or if you're a robot sent from the future. I'm pro-robot, BTW.
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1 week, 5 days ago
So happy to see you back.
I have always been a fan of your site. I watched the dust collect on the old one and always wondered... "what happened".
Just glad to have you back ... view
I have always been a fan of your site. I watched the dust collect on the old one and always wondered... "what happened".
Just glad to have you back ... view
2 weeks ago
I LOVE THAT PUFFIN!
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2 weeks, 2 days ago
Is this thing on? :-)
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