This recent Medium post irked me. It’s by one of the creators / operators / owners of Hours, a “new” time-tracking and -reporting company. The intro had such promise, because it is so true: There is a reason why almost every time tracking service out there says it takes the pain out of time tracking. …
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Category:rant
please reply at top
There is a constant war over top-repliers, bottom-repliers, and inline-repliers. If you’re replying to an email, reply at the top. Unless there is some overarching need to reply inline (hint – it is very very rare). Bottom-replying makes me have to reread all the crap that has been left from previous messages before I get to what you …
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alphabet soup
Don’t ever work with the government – they change the names of agencies every few days. It’s kinda like African countries changing names: have all the letterhead printed and business cards issued? Change the name!
don’t implement your scheduler in a pure queue design
Recently came across a seriously funky issue with one of HP’s products (don’t laugh – I know there’s loads of funkiness in HP tools). HP Cloud Service Automation (3.1) allows you to schedule requests in the future. It also allows you schedule end dates for subscriptions. That’s neat. Here’s the problem: if you delete a …
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a modest proposal
Today is Valentine’s Day in the US (and, I presume, elsewhere). This is the first such day I have had with my wife (last year we were only engaged, so she was my fiancee, not my wife). And two years ago we had only just been matched on eHarmony. Yesterday in our Sunday School group, …
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chips
I like [some] Pringles potato crisps. For years I wondered why it is that when you remove the lining inside the cover it often likes to rip the inner lining of the cardboard case off with it, but it was a minor inconvenience (especially in the era [many moons ago] when I’d eat a whole …
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am i the only one outraged?
Starting Friday, gas stations around the Triangle started spiking their prices. They raised them because hurricane Ike might disrupt future gasoline production. The cost of the gas they have in the ground is totally unaffected by whatever may or may not happen with this hurricane. But folks made runs on gas stations fearing prices would …
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gum must die
What is wrong with people? Why is it that activities considered totally uncouth with “normal” chewing is thrown out the window when people chew gum? When you chew food, you chew with your mouth shut. When you chew food, you don’t crack it. You don’t blow bubbles. But when people chew gum, they feel the …
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toll revenues are down, and they do what?
USA Today reports that toll revenues are down because (drum roll please): fewer people are driving, they’re driving shorter distances, or they’re taking mass transit. What is the response from the organizations that run toll roads? Why, raise tolls of course. That’s right: like any other time the government gets involved in something, instead of …
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why alcohol and cars don’t mix
I found out today when I logged into my email that one of my former coworkers was involved in a crash yesterday. 19 year old Justin Crouse was drunk and rammed my friend Philip’s car when he ran a red light in Raleigh yesterday. Right now, Philip’s in ICU in Raleigh. His girlfriend, who was …
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am i the only person who *didn’t* skip that day…
I seem to recall – and not too horribly long ago, either – that people used to at least approximate being polite. I’m pretty sure we as a nation used to encourage being polite, sharing, and thoughtfulness. We used to try to make our kids be those things starting before kindergarten (Sesame Street pops to …
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my first act as president…
…will be to eliminate the TSA. I was in Chicago this week for work, and on my way back the TSA gerbil found a knife in my briefcase. The same briefcase that made it through RDU without anyone noticing a knife. When I am elected president in 2016 the first thing to go will be …
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the inanity of ‘special’ lanes
Carpool lanes do not alleviate traffic. They encourage folks to either a) ignore the ‘carpool-only’ signs, or b) get pissed-off at other drivers ignoring the signs. I’ve been in California for a few days on a working vacation, and the carpool-only lanes are stupid. Because I’ve been driving by myself to work, I do not …
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other drivers suck
I went to upstate NY for my fall break this past weekend. The trip up was great – until I got about 5 minutes from my parents’ house when a dumptruck driver decided he didn’t like Mazda Proteges and just changed lanes whilst I was next to him. Fortunately I-787 has fairly decent shoulders there, …
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