Phasebook #3 - Earworm

Today I bring you a special Phasebook (where two adjacent posts on my Facebook wall, from friends who don't know each other, are related in an eerily coincidental way.)

The theme of today's Phasebook is 'Earworm'

Not only is this a Phasebook, it is also an example of the 'Baader-Meinhof phenomenon'. To whit; one of my colleagues was today saying that a certain piece of music was stuck in his head, and I explained that the Germans call that an Ohrwurm, from where we get the English derivation 'earworm'. Within an hour these two posts appeared on my Facebook wall. Spooky!

Marmite

God, I love Marmite! I have a whole unopened jar of it in the cupboard. But Marmite in our house is like a weapon of mass destruction. My wife hates it, and I hate Pringles Sour Cream and Chive flavour - which she has an unopened tube of. So we're here with our respective foodstuffs staring each other down in a Mexican standoff like a couple of superpowers in a Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear stalemate. Damn commie wife.

Shitty code I encounter every fucking day of my life #1

I found this in the codebase today.


bool threeDSAuth = false;
if (acquirerReference != null
     && acquirerReference.TransactionType == TransactionType.ThreeDSEnrollCheck)
{
   threeDSAuth = true;
}


I fucking despair.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #17

Scurlogue (n.)

A haggard and desiccated person of indeterminate age who is enduring a meritorious bout of Stoops (q.v.).

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #16

Stoops (n.)

A dialectical term describing the condition of being beset by Lackareagh (q.v.), the severity of which is in proportion to how Roddenagh (q.v.) said condition is.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #15

Roddenagh (adj.)

Of the corrosivity of a Lackareagh (q.v.) 

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #14

Lackareagh (n.)

A profoundly anti-social bowel movement.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #13

Doody's Bottoms (n.pl)

The breed of potato used to make the starchy and irresolute chips served in plastic punnets from mobile vans at sporting events and outside night clubs.

... a big bag of guns ...

Am I the only one that feels an increasing disconnection with society as I advance through middle age? I really feel we are handing the world over to the scum, and there's no diplomatic way back.

In fact, an increasing number of my coffee-break conversations are beginning with "If I ever find out I only have a few weeks to live, the first thing I'm going to do is buy a big fucking bag of guns ..."

Foolproof Internet Business Idea

I have a new startup business idea: I'm going to start an Internet swear-jar. I expect to be able to retire to a private island in about six weeks.

Improbable Google Searches

Things that have almost certainly never been typed into Google:

• adele nude
• tallafornia season 2
• brian kennedy girlfriend
• second hand Renault Mégane wanted

Brain Teaser

Here's a brain teaser I came up with:

Mike works for the marketing department of a software company.
His job is to come up with names for new products, and he has devised a formula for doing so.

For example, when the company developed a new Payroll System, Mike named it 'Ps'. When they announced their Customer Relationship Management and Bug Tracking Management System products, Mike named them 'Chromi' and 'Bratanmiksie' respectively.

The company is about to announce their new Online Payment Processing Gateway. What will Mike name it?

You get what you pay for.

My wife and I hired a child photographer the other week and, to be honest, I wish we hadn't bothered. He couldn't hold the camera steady, hardly knew how to use it and when I berated him for his lack of professionalism he started crying and kicked me in the shin. Little bastard.

Going Postal

One of the funniest stories I heard in years was related by a colleague in Pocket Kings (Full Tilt Poker).  I can't remember the exact details, so I'm paraphrasing here somewhat.

My colleague, Mike, used to work with an edgy and stressed character who was always threatening to go postal and shoot everyone in the office. One day, when they were all at lunch, they got round to asking the guy who he would shoot in the office, and in what order.

He replied, "Well, the first person I'm going to drill is that fucking Peter guy."

"What?! But Peter is your best friend in the office. You two are practically inseparable. Why would you shoot him first - or at all?"

"Well, for two reasons: One, I wouldn't want him to witness the carnage, and go through the fear of knowing he was next; and two, I think it'd send a clear message that I'm deadly fucking serious!"

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #12

Knockadoo (n.)

A willful act of violence disguised as a group dance, wherein the instigators put their arms around each other's shoulders and dance in a circle in the full knowledge that other innocent dancers will join the melee and knock the living daylights out of everyone else on the floor. Quite often perpetrated at birthday parties and wedding receptions where the intended victims are trapped inside the circle. Similar to a Coolafunshoge (q.v.), but with malice aforethought.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #11

Coolafunshoge (n.)

A Coolafancy (q.v.) that catches on and causes the floor to be filled with drunken clodhoppers. Most popular amongst hen parties and victorious football players or supporters.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #9

Seskin (n.)

An ill-fitting, tonsure-effect, novelty wig worn by inebriated revelers at Halloween parties and, inexplicably, occasional county GAA games.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #8

Knockeen (n.)

A parochial begrudger who sneers at other diners who choose to use chopsticks in a Chinese restaurant.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #7

Tomacork (n.)

A particularly blunt and useless hatchet.

Don't just refactor your code; refactor your learned behaviours too.

I have been contracting at a Dublin software firm for a few weeks now, and I've noticed that some database names have a mysterious number 102 in them. The core set of databases is deployed for each customer, and differentiated by customer name. The entire set of databases for each customer would be something like:

• AcmeCorporationBlah
• AcmeCorporationBlahBlah
• AcmeCorporationBlahBlahBlah
• AcmeCorporationBlahBlahBlahBlah
• Qaz102AcmeCorporationBlah
• Qaz102AcmeCorporationBlahBlah
• Qaz102AcmeCorporationBlahBlahBlah.

I asked my colleagues the significance of this number and was told it was version 1.02 of the Qaz databases.

The thing is, there exist no version 101s, 103s or even 100s, neither in production nor in any other environment. In fact, every time one of these 'Qaz' databases occurs, the 102 is blindly included in the name.

I asked if the '102' was strictly necessary and the entire team looked at each other and shrugged. I then asked if we would ever deploy different versions of the QAZ databases for the same customer and was told, no, that would never happen. I then asked how long the 102 had been in the names and none of them knew. It predated them all, and the dev manager.

Since my current task involves deploying the databases for a new customer, I asked if I could omit the 102 from the QAZ database names. Now they all looked at each other and looked reproachful.

"No, that's the standard," one of them said. "Why do you want to take it out; just because you don't like it?"

"No," I replied. "I want to take it out because it's adding a small amount of unnecessary complexity to the domain."

He raised his eyebrows, said "Wow!" and turned back to his workstation shaking his head.

And that was the end of the conversation.

So now I'm propagating this fallacious learned behaviour and I'm irked; irked enough to write this blog post.

In the same way that code smells accumulate to clutter our code base, bad learned behaviours accumulate to clutter our working practices. 

We should refactor the bad smells out of both.

Often.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #6

Curravanish (adj.)

Being self-conscious about the smell in your hotel room when room service arrives with your breakfast.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #5

Macreddin (n.)

A self-conscious and economical crossing of oneself undertaken in public; often in conjunction with a Tomnahealy (q.v.)

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #4

Tomnahealy (n.)

An unintelligible burst of prayer muttered by devout Catholics on public transport as they pass a church, graveyard, ambulance, or anything at all that looks like it might have something to do with religion or death. Often accompanied by a Macreddin (q.v.)

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #3

Coolafancy (n.)

A hideously embarrassing dance invented spontaneously by a mildly drunk couple which they imagine is tremendously impressive to onlookers in the disco.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #2

Tinahely (n.)

The sudden urge that overtakes perfectly honest people to steal a nice, weighty piece of cutlery. Can also be applied to the penchant for misappropriation of novelty branded glasses and ashtrays from public houses and other hostelries.

Wicklow-centric Meaning of Liff definitions #1

Newtownmountkennedy (n.)

A particularly randy and fecund ram which is responsible for siring most of the lambs in a given flock of sheep.

Let's erode the language even further!

When did actresses become 'actors?' I'm not being sexist, by any means, but we have a huge number of French-originated words in English which still retain the gender-specific endings, and they add a touch of élan to our boring old argot. Why try and get rid of them?

And where will it end?

Are waitresses now to be called waiters?
Princesses to be called princes?
Queens to be kings?
Ugly fat nagging trolls to be called 'my best mate?'

Paradigm Shifts

There have been two great paradigm shifts in my (depressingly long) software development career:

Structured programming to OO and RPC-style services to Enterprise Service Bus (NServiceBus specifically).

The former happened about 20 years ago, the latter, 20 days ago.

My interest in enterprise systems design has finally been rekindled.