This Moment

"How long would it take to fix this problem," innocent coworker asks.

"A few hours," I reply thinking that it will be pretty simple to fix and will just require a buttload of testing.

"Oh great!" Innocent coworker exclaims. "Let's do it then."

"OK!" I say back with a smile, figuratively already rolling up my sleeves.

I sit down and start looking into the issue. "No problem," I mutter to myself. "I bet if I do this, it will work perfectly."

*Test runs*

Issue still happens.

"Hmm...oh ok, it must be this!" I decide and press a few more keys before running the next test.

Issue still happens.

Rinse and repeat this for about an hour until I decide that this issue is a stupid f-ing issue anyway and people should just learn to deal with it instead of having me waste my time trying to fix it.

Then I take a 15 minute break and read blogs on the Internet because somehow, that always calms me down. Or, I update my blog. Hello world!

Once I'm adequately calmer, I'll go back to fixing the issue on hand. I'll fix it at some point - but it might take longer than that initial few hour estimate. And at the end, I'll feel really good. But up until then, I'll bitch and whine and moan and say that it's impossible and that there's no way to fix it.

Welcome to a day in my life. And this very moment.

Yours,

(Programming) World Conspires Against Me

I've been working on this coding issue since yesterday afternoon. Basically, I have a list of items out of order, we'll say:

B, D, A, C, E

I need to put them in a specific order based on some of their attributes (for simplicity, let's say I need them in alphabetical order). Unfortunately, I need to do this with two passes because there are a couple attributes I need to look at.

First pass executes and I get:

C, D, A, B, E

That's ok. It's not perfect but it's fine. I can adjust pass two to make this end up magically in the right order. Pass two, go!

A, B, D, E, C

What...the...That's not what I wanted at all. Well ok, it starts off ok but what the hell happened? I've been looking into this problem and I've come up with one solution.

The world hates me. That must be it. It's decided that I am not destined to figure out the solution to this and therefore will always give me the wrong result no matter what I do. Even if the process is correct, the world will still hand me out of order items.

Unfortunately, I get paid for this and I have to fight the world. Boss, do you see how hard I work? I'm fighting the whole damn world here. See. I am useful.

Yours,