Anachostic

So, Are You A Collector?

Posted by anachostic on March 25, 2018 No comments

Yesterday, I had one of those days. The GF texted me and asked how it was going. I replied that I was out and about looking for treasure and I hadn’t found any yet. I didn’t know at the time, I was going to strike gold.

When I say looking for treasure, I’m just being really dramatic about my hobby: searching for CDs. I mean, if I can buy a CD from a thrift shop and it’s worth $5 online, I’m pleased. You’d be surprised how many CDs I buy that have a value of nothing. But sometimes that’s just because the CD is everywhere and it’s not valuable because it was made in such large quantities. Or maybe, no one likes it. My tastes are all over the place.

If you’re going to really get into CD collecting, you need to be knowledgeable. Duh, right? Well, not really. You can just collect stuff you like to listen to, or you can collect stuff that’s rare, or you can do both. But you need to know what’s rare and how to identify it to take advantage of it.

I hit a few thrift shops and picked up some CDs that were common and a couple that I’d never seen before but were identifiable as early CDs, which are valuable to the right person. And it doesn’t hurt that the music is all 80’s. I’d probably like it even if it was worthless.

Moving on, I made my last stop, at a flea market. I found one CD seller and he had SO many CDs. Well over a thousand, for sure. But they were fucking busted. Broken cases, dirty, some discs were damaged. But he made up for it in quantity and breadth. I did manage to snag some uncommon finds, including a target CD of ELP’s Pictures at an Exhibition. It’s reported to be a common target, but it has a printing error on it, so to a serious collector, well, they might get excited. The printing error makes it immediately rare. Like a double-struck coin.

As I was finishing up, I asked the guy if he bought these CDs in bulk or was it a personal collection. He said these were bought from all over the place, but he had his own collection, too. I thought it was a little odd to sell a target CD for so cheap instead of finding another collector who was willing to pay more. But there was little else he had that was remarkable, so maybe he really did know value.

Anyway, after looking at every CD there, I found another large CD seller, who had much better quality of product. As I worked my way closer to her and her register, she said, “lots of good stuff, especially in these stacks here.” I took my time and when I got to those stacks, I discovered she was right. As I was pulling first pressing CDs and stacking them up to buy, I asked, “Are you a collector?” She said she was and that she had a whole bunch of CDs of her own. And that’s when I realized I was a collector unlike other collectors.

This is the album I bought for $3 from her. This screenshot is from Discogs, a collector website.

One thing to note is the entry doesn’t show the album cover. It shows the disc face. The importance of this is so that other people do not log that they have this particular release in their collection based solely on the album cover. This disc is rare. How rare? 14 people have logged it and 60 want to buy it. But, those aren’t the interesting numbers.

The disc is also quite valuable. And I have one now that I bought for $3. It instantly became the most valuable disc in my collection, by a long shot. It’s kind of like an Antiques Roadshow moment. When I first saw the CD, I knew it was an early pressing because of the case. When I opened it, I thought, “Oh, it’s a Polar. Cool.” I’d heard about Polar pressings and they seemed a little mythological the way some talked about them, but I didn’t figure it would be that valuable.

So anyway, go me! My collection as ranked by Discogs is worth between $4,200 and $12,500, with a median value of $7,100. Feels odd when you’re buying CDs for $1-$5 each.

Simple, Unhealthy Pleasures, Made More Expensive

Posted by anachostic on March 22, 2018 No comments

I read a recent announcement that a new burger place was going to be opening in my town. You would think I would be excited about something like that because I like burgers. But unfortunately, the burgers of my era don’t really exist anymore. They have been improved, upcycled, and gentrified. They are now Gourmet Burgers. And I fucking hate them.

Remember a time when you would go and have a beer? Well, I don’t personally, because I don’t drink. But I remember the reputation of people who would go and have a beer and it was, well, hmmm…. blue-collar. But then, craft beers came along and drinking beer was hip and trendy and super cool. And they also got super expensive, and there were so many variants it seemed impossible to keep track of what you might like, if anything. And drinking craft beers gave you a way to serious discuss the various ways you get yourself drunk, with organic hops and brew cycles and fermentation in only the highest quality drums and ABV or drunkerness-value.

Remember when cupcakes were a simple treat? You’d buy a half-dozen from the grocery store and eat them at a party or over a week or something? Then came along a concept of gourmet cupcakes, where you buy one super-expensive cupcake and savor the fuck out of it to get your money’s worth. But no one just eats one cupcake, so in the end, you’re just spending a hell of a lot more money. But you justify it because the cupcake is of a much higher quality. And the cupcakes aren’t just something simple, it’s a mishmash of crazy ingredients and flavors just to prove to yourself and everyone else that you have such a refined palate.

Remember burgers? A chunk of mashed beef on a bun? Well, that’s just too simple for the hip, modern person. A burger can be anything according to these assholes. Sure, you can put ground beef on a sesame seed bun, but where’s the challenge in that? What if you want chicken? Or fish? Or vegetables? Or… What if you want a wheat bun? What if you want lettuce as your bun? Those are all burgers! A bunch of vegetables wrapped in lettuce – look at my fucking BURGER! Bullshit! Sacrilege!

Oh, and toppings? Well, let’s just go right off the rails on this. I haven’t seen it yet, but I suppose you could potentially get a ground beef patty as a topping for your chicken burger. Why not? There’s no damn rules anymore!

You know the people that don’t go to Starbucks because they feel they’d be laughed out of the shop for ordering a coffee? “Get out of here, peasant! Go to Dunkin Donuts for your… coffee!” Well, that’s pretty much how I feel going to these places and asking for a plain cheeseburger. I’m offending them. And in a way, they’re offending me, too. I don’t see it as a place that has to elevate something simple to the point of eliminating the basics, I see it more like, we can’t do the basics well, so we’ll hide behind fancy buns and toppings and other ingredients to make up for that shortcoming. And people eat that shit up, literally.

This problem is everywhere. Remember when you could buy a candy bar? Now you can’t buy one. You have to buy two. They call it King Size, or Sharing Size, or whatever. Pretty soon, they’re going to start mixing different candy bars and saying it’s the new hip thing to do to when you get say, a Mounds and a Peppermint Patty together and eat them together like a fucking BURGER.

Remember when you just went and bought ice cream? Cold Stone Creamery took care of that. Remember when you bought a fountain drink? Coca Cola Freestyle machines to the rescue. Remember when you smoked cigarettes? Vaping gives you 50,000 different flavors and buzz levels. Remember casino slot machines with three reels? They got SO complex they couldn’t even be mechanical anymore. They had to be virtual reels on a touch screen.

I’m old. There, I said it.

Black Knight Of The Highway

Posted by anachostic on March 8, 2018 No comments

I had an incident a couple of years ago where I was involved in a collision on the highway. I was going full highway speed and got rear-ended by someone going much faster. This morning, I had another collision, with slightly different circumstances.

I’m doing my usual morning commute to work and just about ready to turn off at my exit. Something catches my eye and I look in the rear view mirror and a semi truck is right on my ass. The truck had moved into my lane to pass another semi that was to my left. I look in the mirror and say, “You motherfucker. Why don’t you get a little closer.” So he did.

Now, I’m saying, “Whatever, fucker. You can wait until I get off in a few seconds.” But he didn’t seem to care. He got even closer. Even more pissed off, I put on my turn signal to let him know I’d be out of the way soon. What I did not consider is that I am a tiny, tiny car. He is a massive semi truck. Not that it’s any absolution, but he probably never even saw me. His huge hood probably blocked me from his view entirely. And so, it’s probably no surprise what happened next.

I got bumped. My car swerved to the right, into the exit lane and he pulled up alongside me. I’m still not sure if he even noticed me at this point. I sped up alongside him and blared my tiny, tiny horn at him, but I doubt he even heard it. The median guardrail was coming up quickly, so I had to abort and stay in the exit lane, leaving him to go on his (probably) oblivious way.

At the stop light at the end of the exit lane, I immediately jumped out and checked the damage to my car. It’s just some very minor scuffing on the bumper that can probably be polished out. I went the rest of the way to work and it was at that time, I realized I left my phone at the house. This will be a great day.

But you know what? I have a dash cam. Granted, it doesn’t have a rear-facing camera, but I still have evidence I was hit. Just as an aside, a rear dash cam would be outrageous. Everything scary and crazy always happens behind me. So, in the parking lot at work, I saved the segment of the incident and later, I reviewed the video. The quality is pretty good. I am able to make out the trucking company name and their DOT license. Hopefully that’s enough of a lead to make this guy’s life miserable.

In the time I’ve had to think about this, my thoughts on the event have changed. My initial thought was that I got bumped because I was going too slow for this truck driver and he was impatient to pass this other truck. As I’ve thought more about it, it’s probably just that I was invisible to him. Again, that doesn’t make him any less at fault here. But, it does make me extremely lucky that when the truck moved into my lane, I was in the position I was. If I was in his blind spot when he changed lanes and he was that close to my rear when he came in, it’s not unfathomable that I could have been a foot or two farther back and he would have clipped my rear bumper, sending me into a spin. Things could have been far worse.

But, in spite of the fortune granted on me, FUCK ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! YOU SONS OF BITCHES ARE FUCKING MENACES ON THE ROAD AND YOU ALL NEED TO DIE!! LEARN TO FUCKING DRIVE, LEARN TO HAVE SOME PATIENCE, LEARN THAT IT’S NOT JUST YOU ON THE ROAD! IT’S NOT YOUR FUCKING ROAD, WE ALL HAVE TO USE IT. WE ALL HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER TO MAKE THIS EVENT SAFE AND EFFICIENT. SAFE AND EFFICIENT! GOD DAMN IT, YOU BASTARDS! I FUCKING HATE ALL OF YOU!!!!

Let me be clear. I don’t hate you as people, I hate you as drivers and the people you become when you start driving. Seriously, you do not think of what the consequences could be. Every time you change a lane, that is an opportunity to sideswipe someone. Each time you are checking the lane you want to get into, you are not checking the lane you are in and the cars in front of you. Every time you speed up into a passing lane (especially to the right), you have the chance of finding traffic stopped in front of you in that new lane. If you’re a large truck, you need to look beside you and not just behind you when changing lanes.

And you, Mr. Red Truck, working for Trimac Transportation Inc., you’re going to hear from me very shortly.

Cosmetic Surgery

Posted by anachostic on March 7, 2018 No comments

What seems like forever ago, BMW added halos to their car’s headlights and the world went apeshit. They had a poignant ad campaign focused on the headlights with a deep message like, “The eyes are the window to the soul.” Oooooo.

I recently changed out the headlight lenses on my car because they were completely fogged over; they were almost useless. And let me stop you here, the fogging was on the inside of the lenses, so buying one of those polishing kits would not have fixed it.

The lenses were not cheap – at all. A little over $800, if you’re wondering. They took a significant amount of time to even get shipped to me, then they sat in my garage for weeks until I had a free weekend to do the work. And the work has now been done and I couldn’t be any more pleased.

I never noticed that I am constantly looking at other cars’ “eyes” to gauge how old they are. After I changed out my headlight lenses, it was like the car was brand new again. And I say that with a lot of sincerity – it is really that big of a difference.

Back in October, this is what the car looked like (photo courtesy of AK):

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She was dressed up for Halloween as a vampire. See how the lights are a dull, matte finish? It gives the car a lifeless look, which may be fine for a vampire, but when someone is checking out your car and they see those dull headlights, it really shows the age.

Over the weekend I got to work., this is what my car looked like, mid-procedure.
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A couple of close-ups of the lenses before they came out.

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And even more surgery,

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Now, after the change, the difference is amazing.

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And just look how happy she is! Young and pretty again. Sometime in the future, she deserves a fresh coat of paint, since the fiberglass surfaces of the roof and retractable hardtop deck have faded and lost all their shine. But for now, the light is bright and clear, and the eyes reveal a well-travelled soul.

Back To The 90’s

Posted by anachostic on February 26, 2018 No comments

In the 90’s, the meteoric rise of the Internet and mobile technology ushered in the age of communication. This caused a massive increase in the ways we were able to communicate. We had mobile phone calls and texting for offline communications, then online, we had email, IRC, IM, Usenet, message boards, and some others. Every single one of these had their best use cases. Some endured, and some faded out.

20-some odd years later, what does the landscape look like? Texting has endured offline, and online, it seems like things have coalesced around FB Messenger, Snapchat, and WhatsApp. The individual messenger apps of old, like AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger had faded away. The new breed of messenger is part of a larger social platform, where your friends and other contacts gather.

It’s no big revelation that there are some privacy concerns with joining a social media platform, which is one reason I ditched them en masse many years ago. And each time I hear something come up about Facebook, I am just grateful I left when I did. But that also means that I am cut off from any social communication – well, cut off from any on that particular platform. Snapchat is a little closer to a peer-to-peer communication client, but still has this concept of a “wall”, where you blast out your life to the world. That’s not what I’m looking for.

In a parallel world, there has been a growing concern over our IM client at work. We all understood that all our chats were logged and could be reviewed at any time, but as time went on, it felt like it was a growing liability. A transition to a new chat client sort of increased that paranoia.

In my personal, parallel word, the GF and I were growing weary of Skype. The application was unreliable and felt like it was constantly doing updates. One time, I answered an incoming call, and Skype decided to do an update right then, hanging up the call and shutting down to update itself. That’s some bullshit, there.

So, with a desire to have simple person-to-person chats, a IM client external to work, and something more stable, led me to revisit an old, old, old IM client: ICQ. I found my original login information from an old backup and correctly guessed my password from 20 years ago.

It’s hard to believe how the chat landscape has changed. Windows/Live/MSN Messenger is completely gone. AIM is gone as well. Yahoo messenger is still around, but… Yahoo. ugh. Staying away from FB, because it’s just a big ad server. There’s not much left. It seems the big chat client independent of a social media site is Jabber, which isn’t really a chat platform, it’s a chat client for the XMPP chat protocol. I did enough research into it to determine it’s just a step too far into geekdom. I was looking for a plug and play solution, and ICQ fit the bill.

For my work needs, that is, to chat without the company logging our conversations, ICQ was as simple as it could get and although the interface is a little bulky, it accomplishes its goals. Its simplicity meant it was quickly adopted and used.

For my personal needs – getting rid of Skype – it is actually superior. The one thing that the GF and I do regularly is video call on Skype. And I just want to say that a single great feature on one client can completely eliminate the other option. In this case, during a brief video chat test, I found ICQ’s split screen view. Skype always keeps your video in a tiny window tucked in the corner of your caller’s video screen. And if the Skype client isn’t focused, your caller’s video is shrunk down to a tiny window and stuck in the corner of your monitor.

Maybe that works for most people, but when I experienced the split screen view, it was a game changer. That is the view that I always thought should be used, but I’d never experienced it before.

Minty Fresh

Posted by anachostic on February 25, 2018 No comments

It’s been four years since my last attempt at creating a bare minimum Linux Internet machine. I figured I would give it another try. All my previous attempts were either failures, or they left me with a laptop that I didn’t know what to do with.

This time, I am creating a travel laptop that is just for Internet. And for anything else, I’ll connect to my home machine with TeamViewer. So that limits the installs I have to make down to:

Web browser – Now that I use Vivaldi for everything, I don’t have to worry about the differences between IE and whatever else I have available on Linux.
KeePass – I need to log in to websites, of course. And the KeePass database is held in the cloud, which means I need…
DropBox – I had the foresight to use DropBox instead of OneDrive when I first set up KeePass. Although there are OneDrive clients for Linux, none are official MS products.
IM – A chat client for keeping in touch when I am on the road.
VLC – For playing music and videos. Fortunately, it is cross-platform.
Some image viewer – Still evaluating which one to use…

And that’s all. I’m pretty much in Netbook territory here, but this is a spare laptop and I should make some use out of it. It won’t be my bedside laptop, since I need some other software there that isn’t Linux friendly. But anyway, this post is about Linux Mint.

In my prior adventures with Linux, both Ubuntu and Mint, the install process and compatibility issues were an absolute clusterfuck. This time around, I blindly installed the latest Mint version on a USB stick and ran with it. The Mint OS loaded up without a single hiccup and I had sound and network in the Live CD desktop. That is a very positive sign. So without any other testing, I chose to install the OS, completely erasing the hard drive. That’s usually when things go south, but to my amazement, within 15 minutes of starting this whole process, I was on a functional Mint desktop with no strange errors, warnings, or bugs.

I started right away downloading and installing the software I needed, which wasn’t much. I learned quickly what worked well and what I should not bother investigating further. Some tings I will eventually need to learn more about – the things that Windows makes so easy, like setting a program to launch at startup. Some things involving permissions were a pain, but I also have an appreciation for security, so it’s ok.

And now, I’m writing this post on my Mint laptop, connected to my Windows desktop via TeamViewer. It’s been almost pleasant. And while I still can’t recommend Ubuntu or Mint to a neophyte, because I wouldn’t be able to assist them if they had issues, I applaud the Linux teams for the progress they have made in the four years since I last attempted this experiment.

Misunderstood

Posted by anachostic on February 16, 2018 No comments

I don’t know why I have this little hangup about posts where I feel if I don’t have at least a certain wordcount, it’s not really worth posting at all. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about how different social platforms are optimized for different message lengths, but blogging is supposed to be for the longest form of writing. Well, not today. Story time!

I’m out at lunch at Hungry Howies, enjoying my usual small pizza with light sauce and pepperoni, when I notice a wasp out of the corner of my eye in the window. I can immediately tell the wasp is agitated, but that is sort of a moot observation because wasps have no chill and are always agitated.

Without trying to cause too much alarm and make myself a target, I visually confirm which side of the glass the wasp is on. It’s my side, the worse of the two available sides. I watch the wasp carefully, without making direct eye contact. I want to know what his plans are, maybe to continue pushing against the glass or maybe to go elsewhere, like my face.

After a while of watching, less than a minute for sure, I decided the wasp must be killed so I may eat in peace. So I get up from my booth and go up to the counter to get a killing implement. A woman meets me at the counter and I ask, “Do you have a fly swatter?” She says sure and disappears. The woman took longer than I would expect, but eventually comes back with a paper cup and a lid. I’m thinking to myself, “What the fuck. You want me to trap this thing in a cup?”

She holds the cup and lid out to me and says, “That’s the best I could do.” I make no move to take the items from her and I must’ve had the strangest expression on my face, because she pulled back and asked, “You said you wanted an ice water?”

No. That isn’t what I wanted.

Keep It Going

Posted by anachostic on February 15, 2018 No comments

Happy After-V-Day. So, how did it go? Did you brave the crowds or stay home? Did you feel yourself up or were there others involved? Doesn’t matter. The day for that is past, now it’s just normal life again. Well, except for the bros out there just tapping their feet waiting for Feb 21 – Steak and Blowjob Day.

Me, I spent a lot of it in airports and in the sky and on the road. My V-Day dinner was alone at Wendy’s. Not really alone, there was a family there. I’m not sure if there were celebrating V-Day by fighting or arguing or disagreeing or just having an intense conversation. Everyone has their relationship rituals.

But, there a secret that the marketing firms don’t tell you about V-Day, and it’s not that there is such a thing as Steak and Blowjob Day. It’s that you don’t have to wait until February 14 (or 21) for you to get your candy, flowers, attention, steak, blowjob, or arguments. You can do it as often as you wish, every day even. Buy a bag of gummy bears. Every day, eat one, give a blowjob and have a fight about it.

Or you can be normal humans and just care about each other every day. Or whenever you feel like it or whenever it is required or appropriate. Do it in your own way. Some people show love with food, some with fighting, I guess? Here’s a few random ideas for you and your partner. Stupid kids who have no relationship experience like to call bullshit like this #RelationshipGoals. Don’t make it a goal, just do it as something.

First off, have a movie night. But give it an edge. Make it slightly dangerous. Go to a pawn shop. Wait, hear me out. If you haven’t been to a pawn shop before, you would be floored at the number of DVDs they have. And they want to get rid of them, badly. They are cheap as hell. It’s cheaper to buy than to rent.

And when the price is so low, there’s no emotional investment in choosing a good movie. The emotional investment should be with each other, anyway. So here’s the deal. You each choose one or two movies each and you must watch them to the end, together. You’re going to find some weird stuff at the pawn shop, for sure. If the movie sucks, have sex while it’s playing, it still counts as watching.

Maybe movie night is an all-day thing, maybe not. But here’s an idea for daytime. Do you think you’re well-grounded in reality? Do you think you’re pretty run-of-the-mill normal? Do you want to challenge those impressions of yourself? Maybe have a fierce battle with inadequacy? Well, this date idea will do it.

Go on a model home megatour at some housing developments. Maybe you’re not living in a place that has a lot of real estate booming going on. That makes it even better, drive to one and you’ll be able to resist the siren call easier. But if you haven’t been home shopping, it’s like going shopping for Maserati’s. See, because no one makes cheap homes anymore. Cheap homes are used homes, older homes. Builders can’t make money on starter homes. Even if they could, and maybe they would try, they are not going to make a model house show you what you can get for bottom dollar. That’s not how things are sold.

So tour a bunch of model homes. You’re see excess and grandiosity and features and fixtures that will leave you shaking your head. When you get to the 4,000+ sqft house with multiple game rooms and a bathroom that could be a studio apartment in itself, you will have a new appreciation for the simple life and a fresh disdain for the metaphorical Joneses you’re supposed to keep up with. And hopefully, if your partner is of the same mindset as you, which I would hope so, you will walk away collectively stunned and grateful to have each other and that you share the same values.

Finally, and this idea is simple, generic, and simply honest. Do something together that exposes a vulnerability. You always want to show your best side to your partner. You always want to be perfect. But, it’s healthy to let your guard down occasionally. Let your partner know you really are human and can do embarrassing things, or can fail to do something correctly or well. Couples painting? Wall climbing? Ice skating? Karaoke? These are things that don’t have to wait for V-Day or Steak/BJ-Day. You can do them whenever and as often as you want. And it’s perfectly fine to suck at them, because those things are not your relationship.

The Business Life

Posted by anachostic on February 13, 2018 No comments

Recently, I was given the opportunity to go on a business trip for my employer. The event required a technical person for the upcoming work and this was supposed to be training and exposure. I had done business trips in the past, but this gave me a whole different perspective on “the life”.

Another aspect of this meeting was that the host of the event wanted to show off their brand new building. I didn’t really give it much thought. An office building is like any other, right? Nope. And that all played into the discomfort I felt. So let’s start at the beginning.

When I was told about the trip, I was also told that the company travel coordinator would handle everything. So, right off the bat, I’m a little out of my comfort zone. You know, if I was tasked to go somewhere, I would be looking for the cheapest flight anywhere. Well, that’s not how business travel works. I end up on a top-tier airline in what I assume is a decent seat. As you know, you don’t get decent seats for cheap. They cost extra. I don’t know, my airfare was around $500. That’s more than I would be willing to spend. And also, there’s six of us going. Yeah, six.

So we all get to the destination and we Uber to the hotel. I’m not really a fan of Uber, but that’s for another post, and it’s not my decision to make anyway. And the hotel is a Staybridge Suites hotel. Everyone gets a suite! Now, I don’t expect us to bunk together, but I don’t need lodgings this fancy. No way. It’s our first night and we all go out to dinner. Company expense, of course. Steakhouse? Sure. Longhorn? Outback? Fuck, no. It’s not our money, let’s go to Perry’s. You can’t eat there for less than $60/plate. And of course, everyone drinks. It was easily a $600 bill, I’m certain of it.

Day one at our host’s new office building. This is not an office building, it is a goddamn resort. It has a cafeteria, an exercise room, a balcony garden, another café with barista on the upper floor, a game room, and technology that would make most humans gawk in amazement. Maybe it’s the new modern standard for a national company, but like Perry’s, it’s way out of my league.

The conference goes all day. We get catered lunch and we get a tour of the building. They’re quite proud of it. At the conclusion of the tour, there is a social gathering with beer and wine and snacks too fancy and weird for me to even eat. I’m watching all these people chatting and mingling, and the cute girls in the short skirts sitting on the bar counter with their wine, and I’m wondering, this is business? In what world is this business? This one, apparently.

Our group got dinner reservations for Del Friscos, another $60/plate steakhouse. I man up and say, fuck all y’all, I’m staying in my room (no, my fucking SUITE) and ordering pizza. It was a great pizza and only put the company out $25. I was ordered to save the receipt for reimbursement. It would have been fine, guys. You know, you pay me pretty well already.

My point of this rant, which I’ve done before, is that there is this executive life that is not available to normal folk. I’m kind of in it, right on the cusp, but I don’t agree with it. I don’t like it. It’s living in a fantasy, where you get to feel like you’re super rich, but you’re not. And you only get to act and feel that way because of your employer. The employer that is putting out gobs of money disproportionately for a select few, when it could be spent on others in the company who are nowhere near that sort of lifestyle. And who would appreciate it more?

The Worst Developer

Posted by anachostic on February 12, 2018 No comments

I think it’s a universal truth that no matter where you work, you hate the software that you have to use. And it’s even more true when that software is written internally, meaning not store-bought or otherwise 3rd party. As someone who writes this type of software that everyone hates, I can understand the frustrations. But this story is about the software that I didn’t write, but was written by and for the company I was working for.

The particular software was primarily written by one person, who had been with the company since the start, which was decades. I was supposed to create the software that would replace it, but the company went under before that came to fruition. However, I did have enough of an opportunity to shed a ray of hope that better things were coming, at least software-wise.

The purpose of this maligned software was order entry and contact management. It was used by the sales force to create quotes, sales, credit memos, and also to track membership for the company’s special program. For as long as I could discern, there was friction between the sales team and management. Aside from mutual distrust, there was also resentment in that the company wanted to micromanage how things were done on the floor.

The company came up with a very precise, very specific way of selling from which no one was to deviate. And the software was written entirely to enforce that specific methodology. The people on the sales floor obviously didn’t subscribe to this methodology and simply felt that they were being treated as human robots, without any free will to conduct the sales transaction in the way they felt comfortable doing. The software developer constantly complained that the users were not using the software correctly and were always figuring out loopholes, which became bugs.

I have a lasting impression from my first few days working there when I was in training for that software. That impression was validated by another user near the end of my time at the company. After sitting through the training session, I felt like a complete idiot. I didn’t understand anything. Nothing made sense. And it was all because the software was written so terribly. And that feeling made me question my capabilities for working at that company. I tried to reassure myself that it was just because I was unfamiliar with the industry, but the user that confirmed my feelings was an industry pro and couldn’t understand the software either.

There were many issues that I took with the software. The first was the ridiculous color scheme and color choices throughout. It screamed “amateur”, and when I’ve been formally trained to write professional business software, this was not acceptable. Required fields were highlighted – in yellow. And not pastel yellow, the eye-bleeding danger yellow.

Taking that issue further, there were many dialogs that used “folksy” language. There was no “Cancel” button. Instead, you had a “Forget It” button. Unless it was a “Never Mind” button (which has a keyboard shortcut of Alt-V, because Alt-N to suggest “No” would be too much for a user to understand).

You had an option to “Undo Previous Whoops” on a dialog that asked specifically, “What Do You Want To Do?”

Here’s some messages the application could pop up:

Programmer Goof – Trying to use Add code for something else!
This Credit Memo will result in a net credit to the member of $x.xx. Is this what you intended?
Does Member desire a refund check from Corporate?
Is this Credit Memo being created to "Undo" this Sales Order as though it never existed?
Whoops — too many windows are open. Close some windows and try again.
You have tried to pick up more than was ordered. Please RTFS and re-enter valid amount in correct box. (The application’s name started with “F”, which was a convenient out if he was ever accused of telling the user to “read the fucking screen”.)

I mentioned that the software was written to enforce the sales procedure as defined by the company. This actually caused a big headache at one point because they changed policy one time which required a lot of code changes to support it. But anyway, when you would start a new sale or quote, you would be prompted with question after question about how the sales was to take place. These questions were supposed to be asked to the customer, which would prep the sales form with certain data. As you would suspect, the questions were all worded folksy and unprofessionally, and most were pointless, only nagging at the sales person to upsell this or that and don’t forget to ask about this. Some examples:

Don’t forget SUNDRIES!!!
We’re Pushin’ Cushion!!!
How ya gonna Cut it, Glue it and Dress it Up???
Whatcha gonna put it on? How you gonna seal it?
What’s gonna keep it down?
How you gonna keep it quiet?
How you gonna cut it, glue it and finish it off?
What’s gonna keep it from slidin’ around?

Because the entire process was so drawn out and pointless, the sales staff started memorizing the keystrokes that would let them fly through the popups and just get to a blank sales form. The developer, when he learned of this practice, was furious. They were skipping over all the hard work he put in to make them do their job correctly – the only way to do it correctly. So he took action. To keep them from skipping through the screens, he randomized the buttons on the popups.

Yes, it may sound absolutely incredible, but this developer literally made the application more difficult to use on purpose by changing the interface to require the user to read the screen. What was lost on him was that the user wasn’t reading the questions on the screen, they were only reading the buttons to find out what they had to click next. And if they misread anything, they got a sales form that wasn’t what they needed and had to start over.

And this developer was very proud of his work. He had defeated the users. And that really was his only goal. Not to make things better; only to win. And when he wins, everyone else loses.

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