A (newer) coworker asked if he could pick my brain about a certain part of our product. Sure, I said -- and I asked some questions to figure out what he already knows (or doesn't). We chatted a bit, and then I said "Ok, I have some homework for you -- please read X and Y before we talk".
He responded with "pop quiz next Wednesday at 3".
So I scheduled the meeting. I mean, wouldn't you? :-)
Working from home seems to be mostly going ok for my company. We have several standing "coffee break" video chats each week for the human connection and are using video more for other meetings. We have learned how to add custom background images to Microsoft Teams and this is a source of amusement. (I would like to find some from Babylon 5, particularly images from (a) Minbar and (b) inside the station, but have had no luck so far.) My team has a new person who started a few weeks ago, so he started in quarantine and hasn't yet been to the office. I'm his mentor, so I'm trying to make sure he's getting all the support and human connection he needs. The situation seems roughest on the people who live alone, though the ones with small children at home have challenges too. I'm fortunate to have Dani and the cat.
I have read a little more fiction than usual, some of it made available for free by authors because of the quarantine. Thank you! One that I just finished is Dragon of Glass by Zoe Chant, a delightful, lightweight novel about a transplant from another world and the woman who released him; watching him try to fit into our world is a lot of fun. Tor is making the Murderbot novellas available this week for free (leading up to a novel release next month); I'd read the first a while back but hadn't read the others yet, so this is good timing. I also have a gift waiting from a Kickstarter for a different book (while you're waiting and stuck at home, here...). I also just read (not free) The Body in the Building, a novella by a friend and fellow SE refugee. The point-of-view character is an architect who discovers problems with a major project, and then discovers that those problems were only the tip of an iceberg of bigger problems... I figured out the mystery before the reveal but also fell for some misdirection, so neither too easy nor too hard.
I have been spending more time in the kitchen. Yes I'm cooking all our meals at home aside from very occasional takeout from local restaurants, but also: with the food supply being sometimes erratic, I've upped the produce deliveries and am doing some low-key preserving. I've never canned and don't have the equipment, but I'm pickling things (to refrigerate, not shelf-stable). So far I've pickled eggs, beets, cauliflower, and jalapenos, and will do some carrots next. I also plan to dry some fruit, dried fruit not requiring refrigeration. (I'm trying to keep the fridge full.) I haven't been able to get bread flour since Pesach ended, so I guess I'll try making bread with all-purpose flour. (Also haven't been able to get rye flour.) I would like to get some more seedlings for container gardening, but I don't know if I want to go to Home Depot for them and nobody delivers. (Insert rant about how Home Depot gets to sell plants because they sell stuff for home repair, but local nurseries had to close.)
Someone I know indirectly from Mi Yodeya suggested a book and a series of videos on Reb Nachman that look very personally relevant. (I've read one chapter of the book and seen one of the videos so far; more soon.) I joined an online talmud class (by R' Ethan Tucker of Hadar). A friend pointed out to me that since we're all stuck at home anyway, synagogues in other cities are just as available to me as my local ones. There's one in DC that seems like a good fit for me. Closer to home, my synagogue's two rabbis and cantor each hold a weekly open chat on Zoom, so I'll get to see my rabbi that way tomorrow.
Our choir director sends out daily music selections with accompanying (short) history essays. I'm enjoying these.
I have barely watched any TV.
Last week the director of engineering sent email announcing prizes for an "improve our tests" hackathon. He labelled one prize (about finding and fixing the most bugs) as "write yourself a minivan".
Later, in response to questions, he sent a copy of the 24-year-old Dilbert strip.
Over the weekend our CTO, in response to questions, sent email explaining what a minivan was.
I'll be over here, weeping into my prune juice and yelling at kids to get off my lawn.
Yesterday, a delivery person came to our office door asking if so-and-so worked here -- he had a package that omitted the company name, so he wasn't sure where to deliver it. The package did have the suite number on it, which got him to the right floor, but he helpfully pointed out that none of the doors in our building actually have numbers posted on them. Huh! He's right!
After he left, I took a post-it note and a marker, wrote "suite #" on it (with our number), and stuck it to the wall next to the door at eye height. (The door itself has a company name at eye height.) That was a patch.
Today someone else printed a sign with a nice, large font and taped it to the door under the name, taping on all four edges to increase its durability. That was a fix.
If somebody else decides to make it pretty, with a splash of color and art, that will be marketing excess. :-)
Last week I was at corporate HQ, where the rest of my group is, for a few days. Everything about the trip in on Monday was a model of efficiency -- the plane got in early, getting off the plane was faster than usual, Uber came right away, traffic was light -- so I got to the office about half an hour earlier than any of us expected me to.
Given that, I was a little surprised to be greeted with "oh thank heavens you're here!".
The previous weekend there'd been a catastrophic power failure and many of our servers came tumbling down. (I didn't hear the gory details. We have what I understand to be the usual precautions, and yet...) The small team responsible for that infrastructure was understandably frazzled. My teammates were happy to see me because the (internal) documentation servers are not managed by that team but by us. But their main custodian, G, was on vacation, and another person who knows relevant stuff, J, was on vacation, and that left me. I know some of the systems well but not others -- which put me ahead of anybody not on vacation. Okay.
Our doc infrastructure team has two newer members, an experienced writer who joined the company last fall and a recent grad who joined the company last month and the infrastructure team a couple weeks ago. The former has been focusing on git as my backup, and the latter is solidly in learning mode.
So first we did the usual dance of "this is not the right dock for my laptop / these are not the right monitor cables / why TF can't Windows see both of these monitors? / network, we have network right?". Once I could actually use my laptop, I settled down to investigate -- with the two newer team members watching everything I did and taking notes. It was kind of like pair programming, I think.
I think one of the most important technical skills one should have is debugging or diagnostic skills, so this is what I set out to teach my coworkers -- not explicitly, but by narrating the whys of what I was doing, I realized that this is what I was doing. There was plenty of backtracking, but they learned why I did the things I did even if they didn't turn out to be the right things. Like when I used ssh to connect to the server, got wonky display stuff, and realized I was talking to a Windows machine -- oops! And, err, our Windows server has sshd running on it? Today I learned. (Switched to remote desktop after that.)
The web server isn't responding -- well, is it running? The process list shows httpd; ok, where on this machine is the web server running? On Linux you can easily get the path for a process; on Windows I saw no way to do it, so off to Google and the right search terms, which took me to an answer on Stack Overflow (naturally), so that got me to the right directory and thus the server logs. At one point somebody said I must know a lot about web servers, but actually I don't -- not modern ones, anyway. But I know how to look for stuff, including response codes in the server logs. (Which told us that the server thought it was serving content just fine, even though the browser was getting errors -- even a local browser.)
There was a lot of this sort of digging. The web server was particularly mysterious because, it turned out, it was serving some content just fine but not most of it, and a chunk of our investigation revolved around unsuccessfully trying to find differences among those cases. We noted and otherwise ignored, for now, that builds were running slowly -- running is better than not running and, well, priorities. Eventually we split up and my teammates did some exploration and experiments on their own, coming to me with questions when needed. They had good instincts, yay.
We were not able to solve the problem with the web server that day. We were able to characterize some of it, but we bumped into the wall of specific missing knowledge. I wrote up what we knew and where we were blocked for the infrastructure list, and we decided that we could live with internal builds being down for a few days, we were not going to bother G on vacation, and we've identified some areas where we need to improve our internal documentation. (We do have internal documentation and we were consulting it. But there are some gaps, we learned. That happens.)
We had a team outing planned for Wednesday that G was going to be able to join us for, and everybody agreed not to say anything about this to him because we didn't want to ruin his vacation. But Tuesday night he checked email to confirm plans for the outing, saw the email thread on the infrastructure list, and fixed it.
He'll be back tomorrow and then I can ask him WTF is nginx. (I mean ok, I googled, but I have no real idea how it fits into anything on this server.)
I visited our main office for a few days this past week. (Sorry to folks I didn't connect with.) I met our two new team members, one of whom is our new manager, and our intern for this coming summer, and I had lots of productive conversations. I also played one game of Caverna with coworkers.
I wondered what airport security was going to be like given the government shutdown. Monday morning in Pittsburgh the line was probably about 15-20 minutes long, but somebody came by to tell us the alternate checkpoint was open and had no line, so some of us went there. All of the agents I saw were polite, professional, and not acting disgruntled. I and several other passengers thanked them for being there despite the situation. Everybody there understood that the mess was not the fault of anybody there and taking out frustrations on the wrong people would be bad. Yay for people acting like adults!
Thursday night at Logan, the first checkpoint I found was closed but the second was staffed. It took me five minutes to get through. Again, people behaved themselves.
Wednesday afternoon our new writer and I took a walk through a park/wetlands area near the office. We saw lots of ducks and one heron. We later saw the heron catch a small mouse; I hadn't previously known that they ate mammals.
( photos )
Can you help? Somebody asked a question recently on Writers about guidelines and heuristics for when to use screen shots in technical documentation. The question isn't looking for opinions or what you, personally, do but, rather, formal guidelines along the lines of what GNOME does for its documentation. So far it's only attracting opinion answers. I, too, have opinions and practices that I follow, but I can't source them either and I'd like to see the question get a good answer.
Speaking of Writers, I wrote a little something about writing good API reference documentation (like Javadoc), based on advice I've given informally over and over again -- finally wrote some of it down in a public place. Feedback welcome.
I recently saw an article with interesting-seeming observations and analysis of Modern Orthodox Judaism. I'm not all that tuned into the MO community and can't evaluate its credibility from inside, but I found it an interesting read. If any of y'all would care to tell me where on the spectrum from "yup" to "WTF?!" this is from your perspective, I'd be interested.
Finally, a little something for those who use the text editor vim (which I gather is related to vi?):
.
On the job front there have been ups and downs but the year ended on an up. After thrashing about earlier in the year, being moved from one short-term or ill-defined task to another while people juggled charge codes and contracts, I finally got to settle into something (a) interesting and (b) that takes advantage of my particular specialty, and I rocked. I got a new manager mid-year (my first remote one, too; he's in AZ), which always carries some uncertainty, but he and I really click. He specifically appreciates what I do and wants to help me find more opportunities to do it. Excellent!
The cats have settled in well. I was only without cats for about 4.5 months, but they felt really empty. I mean, Dani's and my relationship is strong (no worries there!), but there was still something missing. That Erik, Embla, and Baldur all died within a span of 10 months (and the last on the day I returned from a frustrating trip to Israel) may have had something to do with that.
I continue to really enjoy my job as a moderator on Mi Yodeya, and last winter I was also appointed as a moderator on Writers (both Stack Exchange sites). On both sites I get to work with great teams on interesting content. I'm still trying to figure out how to increase the tech-writing content on Writers. I need to ask and perhaps self-answer some questions to nudge things along, I suspect.
2013 was a terrible year on another Stack Exchange site. What was supposed to be an academic-style biblical-studies site turned into a cesspool of Christian dogma. I know it's possible for people of different religions to have civilized, respectful discussions about the bible (and other religious matters); I've seen it. (I have thoughts on what makes it work when it works, but I'll save that for another time.) This site was supposed to be non-religious (though obviously most of its members are religious), like a secular university. But it didn't work out that way, and the evangelical moderators (there's no diversity on that team) either can't see or don't care about the damage being done. Everything I did to try to help get things back on course was thrown in my face -- with personal attacks, offensive (usually anti-Jewish) posts, and assorted misrepresentation. So I'm done with that; I have better things to do with my energy. There are a few good people there who are trying to turn some things around; I wish them much luck, but personally, I'm done.
I've had ups and downs religiously and congregationally. My rabbi is fantastic and I like my congregation, but there have been changes in how we approach services, and too many weeks I just don't go on Friday night because they're doing something kid-oriented or entitled (sisterhood service, Reform-style bar mitzvah, etc), and that's frustrating. The Shabbat morning minyan continues to be excellent and the spiritual high point of my week, so that's all good. I'm just trying to figure out Friday nights, and some of it is bound up in questions about whether the Reform movement is right for me at all (except I have this fantastic rabbi and he's worth staying for). It's just that sometimes, being rather more observant than those around me and caring about the halachic and other details that most shrug off, I feel like a mutant.
This year was the last Darkover Con, so On the Mark re-assembled to do a concert. That was fun, and it was nice to see friends I haven't seen in a while at the con.
I'm sure there's more, but this is what I've got right now. Happy 2014 all!
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Collection", I said I worried that that would be too Java-specific for a WSDL, and he pointed out that I was using a Java-specific tool and it would probably do something reasonable. And so it did.( Read more... )
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tangerinpenguin:
List thirteen things that are going well for you this Friday the 13th:
1. The customer who sounded like he wanted Big Complicated Things (In A Hurry) thought my first draft was about 80% while I was assuming 25%.
2. Two significant projects (and some lesser ones) at work want me and my manager will support whatever I want to do. Cool!
3. I read a letter on the eye chart this week that I don't usually get.
4. Some more e-books that I want to read are available as free downloads.
5. Good conversation with my rabbi last night.
6. Bought gas for $3.09/gallon (loyalty card) and it should hold me for a month.
7. Cirque du Soleil is coming to Pittsburgh and this time their web site allowed us to buy tickets. (Totem -- not interested in the Michael Jackson thingy.)
8. Waking up to a cat on my feet every morning still, even though the weather has gotten warm.
9. Baldur is eating better.
10. Mesura et Arte del Danzare -- lovely recording!
11. Neighbors taking care of things along the property line that they might have been able to get away with not doing.
12. The rain seems to have ended before I have to leave for Shabbat.
13. Dani makes me happy. (Why yes, that is redacted. :-) )
Dear Netflix: I appreciate the convenience of your recent change to treat an entire TV series as one unit in the streaming queue, instead of one season at a time like before. However, in doing so you have taken away the ability to rate individual seasons of shows, which is valuable data. It also makes me wonder, when you recommend things to me based on my ratings, if you are giving all ratings the same weight -- 200 hours of a long-running TV show should maybe count differently than a two-hour movie. Just sayin'.
These
photos by Doug Welch are stunning. Link from thnidu.
How Pixar fosters collective
creativity was an interesting read on fostering a good workplace.
Link from nancylebov.
Speaking of the workplace, I enjoyed reading
how to run your career like a gentlewoman and several
other articles I found there by following links. Link from
_subdivisions_.
Rube Goldberg meets J.S. Bach, from several people. Probably fake, but it amused me anyway. (This is a three-minute Japanese commercial. Do commercials that long run on TV, or would this have been theatrical, or what?)
Speaking of ads, in advance of our SCA group's election for a new baron and baroness today, the current baron sent around a pointer to this video about an upcoming British referendum on voting systems. Well-done! (Of course, I agree with both the system and the species they advocate. :-) ) I wish we had preference ballots in the US.
A while back a coworker pointed me to how to make a hamentashen Sierpinski triangle. Ok ok, some of my browser tabs have established roots; Purim was a while ago. But it's still funny, and I may have to make that next year.
Speaking of geeky Jewish food, a fellow congregant pointed me to The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals. which looks like fun. I've certainly found myself in that kind of conversation at times (e.g. is unicorn kosher? well, is it a goat (medieval) or a horse (Disney)?). Some of you have too, I know. :-)
dr_zrfq passed on this article about
a dispute between a church and a bar. Nothing special about that, you
say? In this case the church members prayed to block it, the bar was
struck by lightning, the bar owner sued, and the church denied responsibility.
I love the judge's comment on the case: “I don't know how I’m going to decide
this, but as it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner who believes
in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that does not.”
47 seconds of cuteness:
elk calf playing in water, from shalmestere.
I don't remember where I found the link to these t-shirts, but there are some cute ones there.
Coworker 2 asked "what's that?". I replied: "the transport layer". (Yes, really. Customer has no network availability and multiple locations.) He was enlightened about the problem of potential data stale-ness, and did not ask me what protocol is used. :-) (BCP - bicycle communication protocol?)
filkerdave.
Ooh, pretty: when Planet Earth
looks like art. Link from browngirl.
Overheard at work: "Every time a developer cries, a tester gets his horns".
Neat visualization #2, from a coworker: 200 counteries, 200 years, 4 minutes.
I had sometimes wondered what the point of bots was -- what does somebody
get out of creating bogus LJ accounts just to add and remove friends?
(At least when they post nonsense comments they might be testing security
for when the spam comes later.) Bots on Livejournal explored
helps answer that question. Link from alienor.
Graph paper on
demand (other types too). Thanks, loosecanon; I can
never find the right size graph paper lying around when I need it.
A handy tool: bandwidth meter, because the router reports theoretical, not actual, connection speed.
And a request for links (or other input): does anybody have midrash or torah commentary on the light of creation (meaning the light of that first day)? I have the couple passasges from B'reishit Rabbah quoted in Sefer Ha-Aggadah and I have the Rashi; any other biggies? I was asked to teach a segment of a class in a few days.
_subdivisions_:
1. What’s one thing that made you happy today?
After spending hours on porting item #1 to our new software version, item #2 took about 15 minutes. Yay for learning curves! (Ok, also bug fixes -- it's a pre-release version. :-) )
2. What’s one thing that drove you crazy today?
Having my Mac seize an audio CD and refuse to eject. 45 minutes and half a dozen reboots later it finally coughed up. Sheesh! For future reference, the trick is to hold down the left mouse button while booting, but it has to be a wired mouse. Um, what?
(Number 3 was redacted for complete irrelevance.)
4. Is there a TV show you never miss? What is it?
Historically, Babylon 5 and, later, LOST (the last 10 minutes of which does not exist in my world, thankyouverymuch). Of shows currently on the air, The Big Bang Theory. Though an important distinction: B5 always got watched on broadcast night; the others get/got watched within the week.
5. How do you get to work?
I drive via local roads (no parkway, yay).
6. Rake in the fall, or leave ‘em ‘til after the thaw?
Rake in the fall. I left them till spring once, thinking they would just turn into mulch and cease to be a problem. That didn't work so well.
7. What’s your favorite cheese?
I like rich, soft cheeses of the Brie/Camembert/etc family. I've had some excellent specimens that I can never find again (nor remember the names of) after the encounter. Oh well.
8. Who’s your favorite muppet?
I haven't watched any muppets since I was a kid, but I remember thinking that Oscar the Grouch got a bum rap and was clearly misunderstood. :-)
