>> I can be brief when cursing.
> also is not particularly constructive 

"Profanity is my primary debugging tool."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> I can be brief when cursing.
> > also is not particularly constructive
>
> "Profanity is my primary debugging tool."

funny.  Dilbert?

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>> I can be brief when cursing.
>>> also is not particularly constructive
>> "Profanity is my primary debugging tool."
> 
> funny.  Dilbert?

No, one of the blogs I follow.  (I don't remember which.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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On Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:08:57 -0800, DungBeatle wrote:

> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
> news:4b67b77a@news.povray.org...
>> Yep, it's so difficult to get your train of thought back
> (and some
>> studies show it can take a half hour to get back to the
> frame of mind you
>> were in when you were interrupted).
> 
> Having several source files open, making global changes is the worst
> time. There have been times where someone walks in, blabbing about this
> or that, and I'd just close all the files and start over. And it's not
> like I have all these buddies coming in to talk, no, it's always some
> idiot who can't configure a browser to allow popup windows to open...
> It's always best to ask a programmer those questions, you know... Don't
> call the help desk... :)

Yeah, I have that problem as well in the office.  I don't mind helping 
coworkers with things that are a little more involved (like walking them 
through data manipulation, which I do a lot of anyways), but often it's 
just someone stopping by to chat.  Or me getting up to stretch and 
stopping by to chat with coworkers in a way that I know is distracting to 
them.

So it works better for everyone if I'm home most of the time. :-)

>> I love working at home for this reason - far fewer
> distractions.
>> Jim
> 
> After 20 years, I finally got an unlisted work phone number. The phone I
> have doesn't ring and goes immediatley to message. But I'd much rather
> work at home and could do that, but I drive the wife to work (same
> employer) every day. When I retire...

That's cool.  I have an extension from the office that rings here, but 
very often it's set to forward to voicemail.  I figure if it's important, 
they'll leave a message, and if they don't leave a message, then they 
probably should've called someone else first.

Occasionally my wife or stepson will interrupt, but they're learning that 
when I'm working, I'm working.  The fridge is less than 10 feet from my 
desk, though (my "office" is just outside the kitchen and isn't 
enclosed), so I do occasionally have people wandering through.  Or cats.

Jim

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On Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:57:16 -0500, nemesis wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:21:57 -0500, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>
>> > On Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:53:02 -0500, nemesis wrote:
>> >
>> >> Doesn't matter if you
>> >> have a clear text with everything needed covered and explained in
>> >> minute detail:
>> >
>> > That's often the problem, though - people don't *want* the minute
>> > detail.  They want the overall high-level picture.
> 
> yes, but I was not talking about money-saving exec bastards in
> particular, but about people in general.  In any case, I agree with your
> points.  But still think they'd save a lot of time by actually reading
> it... :P

Only if they understand it, that was my point. :P

Jim

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On Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:22:41 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> The net result of this is that the IT Director receives roughly 900
> emails *per day*, most of them nothing to do with anything. And the
> result of *that* is that if you send the IT Director an email of more
> than about six syllables, he'll read the first sentence and send a reply
> to that - which usually result in him asking a question which is
> answered two lines further down the email you originally sent.
> 
> This is severely exasperating.

Yep, I see that myself on occasion.  That's one of the reasons that I've 
started shortening my communications (over the past several *years*).  No 
point in answering a question at the outset when you're going to be asked 
it later and make the person asking feel stupid by saying "if you read 
the first message on this topic, that question is answered".

My director has started having me do more staff presentations lately, and 
generally asks me to do 3-4 slides to summarize the point.  The end 
result (which is what she was really going for) was that I get much more 
concise in my explanations and don't drag the discussion out.  That's 
been a very useful tool.

Jim

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On Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:29:14 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> I like to delude myself that this is one of the things I'm good at.

It wouldn't surprise me to find out that is the case.  What you wrote 
after this quoted sentence confirms it, actually.  You understand your 
audience, and that's the most important thing to any writing one does.

People who write and don't know their audience frequently miss the mark, 
and it shows in the reactions to what they've written.

Jim

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>> I like to delude myself that this is one of the things I'm good at.
> 
> It wouldn't surprise me to find out that is the case.  What you wrote 
> after this quoted sentence confirms it, actually.  You understand your 
> audience, and that's the most important thing to any writing one does.
> 
> People who write and don't know their audience frequently miss the mark, 
> and it shows in the reactions to what they've written.

Sometimes the hardest thing is figuring out why you're actually writing 
something. Like, I mean, I *know* I have to write this policy. But *who* 
is actually going to read it, and why?

But, IMHO, *the* hardest thing is figuring out all the stuff your 
audience doesn't know that happens to be trivially obvious to you. Like, 
I've read *so many* projects on SourceForge that tell you about all the 
fantastic features this software has but doesn't actually say... what... 
it... does! >_<

It's like describing The Gimp by saying "This program is 100% free and 
has powerful features such as Gaussian blur, edge detection and supports 
multiple colourspaces". Yes, but... WHAT IS IT FOR??

The person writing this is so busy trying to tell you all the cool stuff 
that they're completely missed the fact that an outsider might not have 
even the vaguest clue what the software is for. This is so trivially 
obvious to them that they've completely forgotten about it.

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

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scott wrote:

>> Hate dumb people.
> 
> Only if they are trying to a job which they are not skilled enough for, 
> and then I really don't hate them, just the manager that put them there.

Even if they got there by pretending to know stuff they don't?

Actually, wait - any half-decent manager should still be able to spot 
this one. OK, you win the point.

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

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>> The main problem I see with email exchanges is this:  people don't like to read.
> 
>> Nerds like you and me, yes, general population, no.  Doesn't matter if you have
>> a clear text with everything needed covered and explained in minute detail:
>> people just won't read and will eventually phone you to talk "about the email".
> 
>   With regular people that might be understandable, but with people whose
> *job* is to read emails and respond to them (eg. technical support) I think
> it's inexcusable.

My favourit is when you email (say) the technical support for your ISP, 
saying "I know you offer features X, but I'm looking for something 
similar but slightly different" and they reply with "hey, have you heard 
about feature X?" And you're like "um, did you even ****ing READ what I 
wrote?"

Then again, these poor people are usually being paid peanuts to handle 
thousands of emails per hour. So I guess we shouldn't be too harsh on 
them. It's not their fault that ISPs and similar companies don't invest 
in hiring the propper number of staff and training them adequatly...

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

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