Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> AAAAAAAARGH!!!
>
> --
Pretty much everything I have to say here is pretty obvious stuff that you've
very likely thought of yourself at one point or another.  I do believe,
however, that it can be helpful at times like this to have an objective third
party assist in directing one's focus.

1. Even though we often have very little choice with regard to what kinds of
demands and complications life is going to throw at us, we ALWAYS have a choice
as to how far we are going to internalize the chaos of the outside world and
allow it to disturb our peace of mind.  The company may own a big chunk of your
time, but they own zero percent of your heart and mind unless you choose to deed
it to them. Choose not to.

2. This may sound simplistic, but it works. Take several slow deep breaths, do
some basic muscle stretching and make sure you drink enough water to be fully
hydrated.  Attending to the basics of relieving the physical aspects of stress
can do wonders to help your mental focus so that you can deal more effectively
with the more complicated cognitive and emotional aspects.

3. This bit probably won't be of much help today, but it can be of great benefit
in the future.  Nearly every technically and academically oriented person I am
acquainted with can tell you all of the scientific principles that explain why
one needs keep a regular sleep schedule and eat food made from real food
instead of junk food. Virtually none of them do it.  Making up your mind to
actually *DO* all of those basic things that you already know about in terms of
physically relieving stress and fatigue will have ENORMOUS benefits.


Best Regards,
Mike C.


P.S.  If you take a mental step back and really have a good look at all the
people scurrying around you, it will probably provide you with a good
stress-relieving laugh at them on the inside.


..... and as they say on Vulcan, "Ingest an endothermic lozenge"  ;-)

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Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> You know, you two make a cute couple, what with these lovers spats and all.

  That could be interpreted as rather offensive.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> AAAAAAAARGH!!!

Don't worry, I know exactly how you feel, I am at the end of a 3-day 
"supplier evaluation workshop" from our largest customer - and I have a ton 
of action items that need to be completed by lunchtime Monday...

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Gilles Tran wrote:

> Keep 'em coming, I need material for your web comic :P

OK, that's just *mean*! :-P

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp wrote:

>   Well, if you don't want to listen to friendly advise, suit yourself.
> Whatever floats your boat.

As I say, I was having a rather bad day. I didn't mean to be quite that 
snappy at you...

I realise that you're actually trying to help, but when you're having a 
really bad day and somebody points out something *else* you just did 
wrong... it doesn't feel terribly helpful. If that makes sense.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Tim Cook wrote:

> You know, you two make a cute couple, what with these lovers spats and all.

I've been wondering to myself... if me and Warp ever met IRL, would we 
end up having a long intelligent conversation, or would one of us be 
hospitalised? ;-)



[Actually, I gather that Warp's spoken English isn't as good as his 
written English, so maybe nothing much at all would happen. But who knows?]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> I really hope I manage to sort out this giant mess sometime soon - 
>> because I do *not* enjoy being this worked up.
> 
> What /did/ they do, or are you still trying to trace their steps? Hate 
> that when someone comes in, changes a ton of things, and neglects to 
> inform you of those changes. I've had that happen numerous times, with 
> varying degrees of failure because I was not made aware of the changes.

It's just a case of these two guys brought a bunch of equipment along 
with them and went into the new server room and started *doing* things, 
and they're just in there little room *doing* stuff and *doing* other 
stuff, and *somebody* is supposed to be documenting every step of this 
process. Not to mention, half of this stuff was supposed to be formally 
authorised by management *before* anything was done!

Now, our manager knows nothing about computers. He'll sign any bit of 
paper you push in front of him. But that's not the point. The point is 
that auditors will expect to see a bit of paper with a specific set of 
signatures on it, dated before the time of the change. And that doesn't 
exist. The fact that it's an entirely redundant paper excercise is 
irrelevant. We didn't do what we should have done. This makes 
auditors... unhappy.

So I basically just spent my afternoon following these guys around with 
a set of logbooks frantically trying to write down everything they did.

A number of people seem to think that these guys are doing this to me 
"on purpose". They aren't. They're far too stupid to be devious. It 
simply doesn't enter their tiny little minds that we might even need to 
record or authorise this stuff.

Over at HQ, they have systems marked as "validated". These have an 
angelic halo around them, and you can't so much as *touch* them without 
getting authorisation and doing regression testing and so on and so 
forth. And then there's... EVERYTHING ELSE. And equipment beloning to 
the "everything else" set... you can do what the hell you like with. You 
don't have to record a bean.

So these guys seem to think that anything that doesn't have this magical 
"validated" halo, it's OK to just pull it apart and screw around with it 
with impunity. Over here, that's not how it works. Over here, *all* 
computer systems must be controlled. Even the ones that have nothing to 
do with our actual regulated work. EVERYTHING MUST BE RECORDED.

Repeatedly this seems to geniunely shock them. Like just this afternoon, 
one guy shut down one of the servers ready to remove it. So I recorded 
the time he shut it down. And he was like "wow, gee, you *record* server 
reboots? Damn, we only bother recording it if we actually add or remove 
validated software..." [The UK, however, records absolutely every time 
the server is touched. Every minor configuration change. Major config 
changes require formal authorisation...]

Aaaaaaanyway, it's the weekend! Bitches! So I DON'T HAVE TO CARE ANY 
MORE!!! :-D

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Mike Raiford wrote:

> Why does that all of the sudden make me feel as if I'm one of the 
> mole-people.
> 
> "Thriving community down here, in the deep recesses of the underground."
> 
> :)

I always liked to thing of POV-Ray, and especially off-topic, as an 
elite underground sect of engineers, mathematicians, physicists and 
programmers...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I've been wondering to myself... if me and Warp ever met IRL, would we 
> end up having a long intelligent conversation, or would one of us be 
> hospitalised? ;-)

  Given that we are rather antisocial I bet our "conversation" would just
be full of awkward periods of silence.

> [Actually, I gather that Warp's spoken English isn't as good as his 
> written English, so maybe nothing much at all would happen. But who knows?]

  It could be a good way to pratice, though.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I always liked to thing of POV-Ray, and especially off-topic, as an
> elite underground sect of engineers, mathematicians, physicists and
> programmers...

How about linguists, artists, and theologians?  Do you have room for those down
here?  :)

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