What is Halleyscomet Doing?
What follows is a handy guide for telling how hard the task at hand is and what I'm up to, based upon what you can hear from just outside my office door.
Silence:
I'm at lunch or making coffee.
"What the f**k?" followed by a string of quiet profanities:
I'm reading documentation or reviewing old code (sometimes mine) that is comical in how flawed I find it.
Furious typing that lasts for several minutes:
I'm either updating a blog post while waiting for something to compile / download /etc or working on user documentation.
"You worthless, scum sucking Santorum slurping son of a b**ch!"
I have encountered an unexpected error, and have been encountering unexpected errors for a while.
"What??? This cat again! I'm ****** skinning you!"
An error I'd thought resolved has resurfaced and I am determined to eradicate it once and for all. The "cat" is a reference to the song "The cat came back" and not intended to be hostile towards felines.
A quiet string of murderous mutterings punctuated by commentary about molasses or snails on Valium, interjected with variations on "son of a":
Something is taking much longer than I expected.
The preceding followed by a guttural battle cry:
The sluggish process mentioned above terminated in an error.
Snoring:
I did not procure a fresh cup of coffee in time to make my saving throw against nap.
Thunking sounds, like plastic hitting sheet metal:
I am resolving a hardware problem using percussive maintenance.
A resounding crash followed by the phrase "Out! Out! blue smoke!" in what sounds a bit like a bad Hamlet impression:
The percussive maintenance was unsuccessful.
A stream of Eldridge oaths and horrors, followed by vivid descriptions of the vivisection of noted figures in the computer world and vitriol soaked questions regarding their intelligence, humanoid status and the marital status of their parents:
The documentation does not match the implementation, or a feature I need is not implemented in the control used by the previous programmer. As a result a task I had thought would take minutes will now take hours or days.
"In your FACE Gates!"
I have learned of a bug in a Microsoft product that explains a problem I've been having and the writeup I found included a fix or workaround.
"I'll get you yet Balmer"
Similar to "In your FACE Gates!" but I do not yet have a workaround.
"Son of a snapper."
An unexpected error has occurred.
"What the hey nonny-na and a ha-cha-cha?"
An unexpected error has occurred and I have NO frigging clue what it means.
"I'll need Alexander's Debugger for this one."
The Gordian knot was a knot with no visible ends that was so complex it was deemed impossible to unravel. Alexander the Great undid the knot by cutting it with his sword. "Alexander's Debugger" is therefore a mythical debugger capable of unraveling spaghetti code of complexity such that deification would be a prerequisite for resolution.
Weeping:
The last few hours have been proven futile.
"Eureka!" followed by the sounds of a war dance:
I found the missing semicolon after several hours of futile debugging.
I hate computers:
I've had a particularly annoying day and am contemplating career changes such as moving to Mongolia and setting up a Yurt.
Silence:
I'm at lunch or making coffee.
"What the f**k?" followed by a string of quiet profanities:
I'm reading documentation or reviewing old code (sometimes mine) that is comical in how flawed I find it.
Furious typing that lasts for several minutes:
I'm either updating a blog post while waiting for something to compile / download /etc or working on user documentation.
"You worthless, scum sucking Santorum slurping son of a b**ch!"
I have encountered an unexpected error, and have been encountering unexpected errors for a while.
"What??? This cat again! I'm ****** skinning you!"
An error I'd thought resolved has resurfaced and I am determined to eradicate it once and for all. The "cat" is a reference to the song "The cat came back" and not intended to be hostile towards felines.
A quiet string of murderous mutterings punctuated by commentary about molasses or snails on Valium, interjected with variations on "son of a":
Something is taking much longer than I expected.
The preceding followed by a guttural battle cry:
The sluggish process mentioned above terminated in an error.
Snoring:
I did not procure a fresh cup of coffee in time to make my saving throw against nap.
Thunking sounds, like plastic hitting sheet metal:
I am resolving a hardware problem using percussive maintenance.
A resounding crash followed by the phrase "Out! Out! blue smoke!" in what sounds a bit like a bad Hamlet impression:
The percussive maintenance was unsuccessful.
A stream of Eldridge oaths and horrors, followed by vivid descriptions of the vivisection of noted figures in the computer world and vitriol soaked questions regarding their intelligence, humanoid status and the marital status of their parents:
The documentation does not match the implementation, or a feature I need is not implemented in the control used by the previous programmer. As a result a task I had thought would take minutes will now take hours or days.
"In your FACE Gates!"
I have learned of a bug in a Microsoft product that explains a problem I've been having and the writeup I found included a fix or workaround.
"I'll get you yet Balmer"
Similar to "In your FACE Gates!" but I do not yet have a workaround.
"Son of a snapper."
An unexpected error has occurred.
"What the hey nonny-na and a ha-cha-cha?"
An unexpected error has occurred and I have NO frigging clue what it means.
"I'll need Alexander's Debugger for this one."
The Gordian knot was a knot with no visible ends that was so complex it was deemed impossible to unravel. Alexander the Great undid the knot by cutting it with his sword. "Alexander's Debugger" is therefore a mythical debugger capable of unraveling spaghetti code of complexity such that deification would be a prerequisite for resolution.
Weeping:
The last few hours have been proven futile.
"Eureka!" followed by the sounds of a war dance:
I found the missing semicolon after several hours of futile debugging.
I hate computers:
I've had a particularly annoying day and am contemplating career changes such as moving to Mongolia and setting up a Yurt.