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Morning! It's the start of a new month, and today (more-or-less) marks the point at which I've been working for a month! Good grief! Time has flown by so quickly.
(It's a sign of age I tells ya!)
Alright, back to work.
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Argh! Why can't we have one person here who knows everything? Well, in particular, why can't *I* know everything? I ended up going around in circles to install IIS on my system. Had I only followed the original suggestion to get the original installation CD, things would've been hunky dory. Instead, I talked to someone, who asked me a couple of questions, so I waffled and got a CD for an earlier version. It didn't install. Then I got sent over to get another version, and then told I can do it from the installation CD, and then told that I had to install a different OS, and then told that I didn't need to change OSs, and then told to get the original OS, and finally got the original installation CD.
At least in all of this running around I learned something. I don't know squat. (But I can install IIS on my home system! Hee hee.) I suddenly have this idea of setting up two sites on my system at home. One on Linux/Apache, and the other on Win2k/IIS. That should make for an interesting combination.
Anyhoo, I've got some support issues to address. I found a typo in my code (which was commented out already) which was later fixed and improved upon a couple of things. We'll see how it all pans out.
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Remember when I mentioned VMWare last week? Well, it seems like they're teaming up with the NSA to put together an unhackable computer. While they're trying to do that, the Bugtraq guys ended up sending a trojan horse to the list's users. Oops. Both of these articles were found on ZDNet.
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This afternoon, I went to the local Burger King to pick up some lunch. I very rarely ate at this fast food franchise, but ever since I grabbed some food here last month (when I first started working), I was surprised at how good the burgers and fries were! When I was a kid, the only place I would eat for a hamburger and fries was McDonalds. The hamburgers (and later cheeseburgers) were the perfect size for me, and I just loved those french fries. As I grew up, my taste for McD's waned, and by the time University rolled around, I didn't particularly like eating their pancake thin, cardboard tasting paddies. The only thing that was remotely appetizing were the chicken McNuggets and the fries. Too bad the fries were gross once they cooled down to room temperature. My burger eating habits naturally shifted to Harvey's since it was the closest chain to the school, and the burgers there were quite good. The fries on the other hand, I didn't like all too much, but at least they had poutine (pronounced put-tin).. *drools*
So, as the years passed, I ate burgers less and less. I usually don't go out to eat at a burger joint if I don't have to. I've tried out Wendy's wares, particularly during those molecular spectroscopy symposii down in Columbus, but they didn't have the taste sensation I was looking for. I'm actually surprised that I hadn't tried out Burger King much during that time. Well, things have changed.
I still won't go out to eat burgers if I don't have to, although now I know where I would rather eat. It's too bad none of them sell any real milk shakes..
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Over the years, I've learned that coding was not to difficult. I've had few major problems with writing code and building programs. I would say that coding would take up 20% of the work needed to build a program.
Debugging on the other hand, is a pain in the royal arse because they're not supposed to be there except that they are. Sometimes you get a few scattered here and there, but if you code like I do, you end up with plagues of biblical proportions. I'd guess that 30% of the work into a program is sucked up by this chore.
The final 50% gets thrown into the endless pit of work and time known as program support. Explaining how the program works, getting it to work on other systems, and figuring out why the program runs here but not there. Too bad there is a thousand miles away. Although some of you may throw some of this support business into catching bugs, I don't think so. It's difficult for programmers to account for every possible situation, so they get it to work on whatever system they have, try to make it as versitile as possible, and then ship it out before (but usually after) the deadline. The program is now complete. The ball is now out of their court, and into support's hands. If there are any problems with it, support people will have to handle it. At least until the next patch arrives (which is still "supporting" the original program).
I've been put into the inenviable position of development and support. I must say, I prefer development. It's irritating for me to hear when one of my programs/scripts don't work when I've tried my darndest to plug up every nook and cranny in the code so that a friggin blind monkey could get it to run. But it happens. I'm not perfect (although I believe that my code is).
So you hear about a bug. Now you have to figure out why it broke. You try it on your system. Hmm, seems to work fine here. You suggest an alternative. Nope, doesn't work. How about this? Nuh uh. You send a different build. Same problem.
I think support personel are in a high risk catagory for male pattern baldness. (Even the girl.)
Now the thing you learn when you program (but usually from experience) is that you have to trap errors. All of them. If any of those wily little errors escape from your grasp, then you've got a little problem. If more escape.. well, just hope they don't procreate. Trapping errors actually isn't that hard to do. Most programs will let you catch any errors and work around the problem on the fly. What you need to do however, is to catagorize and label each error. That would be like catagorizing every species of flea on your neighbor's dog armed with only a pair of chopsticks. It can be done, but boy is it a beeotch.
Ahh, I think that's enough ranting for now. I've got some code to fix..
Hmm, never got around to updating that entry or checking out my scripts. Oh well, there's always next time. I'm more-or-less packed for this weekend's excursion. Things should be going.. smoothly. *flip*
Laz has some stuff up, including comments about killer snow. *blink* "No more drugs for him." Sparky's feeling a little depressed right now, so I think people should send her flowers or something. Hmm.. it's that time of the year to isn't it? The time of the year where single people are singled out, and steady people are steadly going mad? (Okay, so I don't know about the steadly going mad part, I just made that up.) Well, it's two weeks away, I'll talk about it more when it comes.
Oh yeah, don't get me wrong. After hearing my rant abouve, you might think my job's the worst in the world. It isn't. Actually, it's pretty cool to be learning all of this stuff. The people I work with are nice and friendly (considering I did take down the server twice). Things are going to get busy soon, so I won't have all too much free time on my hands..
This weekend's going to be busy. I should get some rest while I can.
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