1 February, 2005
Fajita madness
In the absence of anything else to blog, and a desire to kick into February so we can finally get rid of the 10 megs of photos down the page that have been slowing everyone down, a brief rundown of my day today. Warning: this will be dull, unless it turns out that I had some kind of amazing insight today that I forgot about.
- Woke up, to the sound of waves breaking on shingle from expensive CD alarm clock bought because I hated harsh electronic alarms. Now hate sound of waves breaking on shingle; total waste of money.
- Hit tube platform with breakfast: a bottle of lucozade. Northern line has delays. Trains pull up full of crude oil, formerly people who metamorphosed under heat and pressure.
- Arrive at work to discover new guy forgot to return my entrycard, so cannot get into building.
- Get into building to discover new guy has made coffee in My Special Mug. New guy does not take hint to immediately relinquish mug.
- Go hunting for bug in code. Find portion of code which seems to indicate that we have failed to bill several thousand customers to the tune of £50,000.
- Have heart attack. Consider catching next flight to Tahiti. Vein in temple begins to throb painfully.
- Discover that I am misreading line of code. £50,000 pounds not lost. Everything fine. Annoyed that I have used up my entire day's supply of adrenaline in one go. Vein refuses to stop throbbing.
- Am reading one page of code on left screen, a database query on a second screen, am listening to a conversation on the right of me while trying to remember the set-up lines of a joke the guy to the left of me was telling before he got interrupted, and following an internal IRC chat. Email arrives. Total mental collapse ensues. Vein throb continues.
- Go to lunch. Buy toasted bagel for roughly twice the cost of a similar sandwich without the hole in the centre, but am served by a friendly Barbadian woman who remembers me even though I only come into the shop once every three months due to aforementioned ludicrous cost of food with holes.
- Speculate on why polos are not more expensive than softmints. Buy 18-pack of Creme eggs with obligatory recollection of Izzard routine questioning what part chocolate egg-laying bunnies played in the crucifixion.
- Return from lunch to discover tester has been at work on my beautiful code from yesterday. Beautiful code from yesterday mysteriously metamorphosed into steaming dung-heap overnight; code has big chunks missing and syntax errors. Will not compile, let alone run.
- Spend several hours repairing code across site and listening to endless stream of jokes haphazardly translated from the original Polish (co-worker is extremely good comedian, somewhat hit-or-miss translator). Discover Polish people know all about Polish jokes; Polish people make jokes about policemen.
- No-one can tell me who Polish policemen make jokes about.
- Review development time estimate for upcoming project to discover estimate has omitted a major portion of the project entirely. Vein in temple increases tempo of throb.
- Attempt to leave office at 7pm. Get caught up in half-hour long conversation at entrance to building with estimator and boss about the utility of development estimates in general.
- Arrive at home of future housemates, 8pm.
- Eat several metric tonnes of fajita. Forget all about code, estimates and polish policeman jokes. Vein in forehead finally stops throbbing.
- Pretty good day.