So it’s big and diverse ecosystem with multiple standards to choose between

The problem isn’t that it’s missing something like cpan, it’s that there are ten incompatible ones to choose between

Remind me not to learn python. If I get into microcontrollers I shall use their C++ like language not micropython ;)

I really like the ability to dig up code from twenty years ago and just run it

The worst is when the password manager (KeePass in this case) is in quick unlock mode in its default configuration “enter the last four characters of your password”

Me: like I can remember how my password ends. Just let me type the whole thing

How do you then activate cruise control for cool?

Working from home, connecting to a VM, you can use a password manager on your machine to log into the VM

And your home machine can be always logged on, or fingerprint unlock, or USB stick unlock or whatever

I had a boring job years ago. We didn’t have web access in the office, we did have a typing tutor program

I could already type

So I decided to learn to type again

So now I type on a dvorak layout except for the first login where I must use qwerty. About the time the password expires and must be changed I get to the point where it’s muscle memory in both layouts

Does python not require you to include your libraries? How can the runtime environment not tell you “you used whatever library but whatever library isn’t installed” is it then hard to find the library? Does python not have anything like perl’s cpan to consolidate all libraries? Can’t you just grep for the libraries a project calls and loop over the results adding that library to the build environment?

People complain about perl, but no one uses perl.

I like that the article points out that the only reason police are acting against the suppliers of the ketamine that killed Perry is because Perry is famous

I guess people notice that nothing’s done when regular people die of an overdose

I moved from one project in my scaled agile using organisation to another and a week later got a phonecall “why are you billing half an hour a day to admin”

“Um” says I “working out where to put how much time against each of the five rows we’re tracking our work under takes at least that long”

Then management shot themselves in the foot

Step 1. Instruct people that all their time must be allocated to a project task, no more admin time, no more corporate role time.

Step 2. Assign a “tiny” piece of work to a team of 10, so the tiny work costs (10 x number of days to deliver) pdays, but was costed at a reasonable level of 20 pdays.

Step 3. Don’t assign any other work to the team

Step 4. Dissolve the team and scatter the staff 2 weeks later

So by the time the team was dissolved, the work was done but for QA, which was delayed and idle because of a bug found in unit test. At that point it had cost 10 people * 10 full days — a hundred pdays.

Management has been calling former team members asking for them to assign their time to a previous project to get the cost of the work down to its planned amount

I don’t think it’s fraud since it’s billing this part of the organisation for work done for that part of the same, but it really makes a mockery of the idea of tracking time per project being meaningful. Anyway, I’m glad they asked me to lie on MS project in writing

I lost the only job I have ever left involuntarily on a helpdesk for a small system partly because of the tracking tools they used

I was top in the team by tickets closed. The person they kept was top by time per call (spent the longest time on each call/worst at efficiently fixing callers’ issues)

Tech tools are not a solution for incompetent management

I feel like he has a machine that someone set up for him, and he can’t escalate permissions, because he’s on a basic user account.

The normal way this works on a single user machine is:

1. You try to do something that is restricted to admin
2. Windows puts up a modal dialogue box asking if you want to do it as admin
3. You click yes
4. You do it as admin

But in that case he can’t have locked himself out of a file, he can only be locked out of things Microsoft think you shouldn’t muck with unless you know what you’re doing