|
|
|
the strength of being unafraid to die
Thursday, April 22 1999
Usually at my workplace, when an error occurs, it's the fault of me or one of my colleagues. Lately, however, I've become increasingly aware of the incompetence of the companies with which we work. One of these, among the largest sites for children on the web, sent us HTML ads to post that had all kinds of problems: images in the wrong places and, more insidiously, improperly-encoded URLs. For some browsers, though, the improperly-encoded URLs worked fine. I was unaware of the crisis until a panic started brewing in Sales. This panic culminated with the Director of Sales sending those of us in front-end development a stern email ordering us to fix these errors immediately. As a measure of its sternness, this email had a cc to our newly-hired Chief Operating Officer, a well-pedigreed technocrat with all the sincerity of a late 20th Century American President. (By the way, our firm has been proliferating middle and upper management at a phenomenal rate of late, seeing as to how they can't find any engineers to fill the investor-inflated payroll.)
I had to learn a little extra Javascript, but I managed to fix the problem. Then,
in the interests of a purported company-policy of "open communication," my response to the email I'd received went to all its recipients, saying that I'd fixed the problem and that I wished [name of company] would "learn to encode their fucking urls." One of the guys in sales was appreciative, but came running over with an amusedly worried look on his face, asking if I knew I'd sent it to the Grand Pooh Bah II as well. In my experience, the more one shows one doesn't give a shit about the opinions of those around one, the more those around one think one's service to them is valuable. On some level, you see, I think being fired would present me with wonderful opportunities. There have been whole movie plots that revolved around the strength of a protagonist whose motives were suicidal.
In the evening, Kim was in an oddly cranky mood, which was odd because her crankiness was not just focused on me, but on our houseguest Terra as well. At one point she accused us both of having "the personalities of children." Such mumbo-jumbo 80s-era psychiatric talk has more of a resonance with Terra than it does with me. To me, it's simply amusing.
I attempted to revive the computer belonging to our next-door neighbor, Lisa. But the only sound the thing would make was a repetitive clicking sound as it tried to boot up. It was in such desperate shape it wouldn't even go into setup mode. I suspect her hard drive finally bit the dust. That sucks for Lisa, because she depends on AOL to communicate with her navy boyfriend out on the high seas. When he's not around, she spends lots of time watching rented movies.
Lisa loaned me a flick to watch called Sliding Doors, a movie whose unique plot tracks two alternate futures in a woman's life with her unfaithful boyfriend. Unfortunately, I was so sleepy from a hard day at work that I nodded off well before the end. I'd like to see it again some time.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?990422 feedback
previous | next |
