Sogger’s Blog

Remember that crappy week I keep referring to? And the Saturday night that we all stayed in the office until 11PM? It turns out that the reason we stayed was because of a bug in an SQL request written by a French software developer which went along the lines of: <<Horribly Complicated Request To Get Data>> WHERE Type = “Chanel” When what he should have written was <<Horribly Complicated Request To Get Data>> WHERE Type = “Channel”. What is this French obsession with perfume? At least it took him until 11PM on the Sunday night until he realised his mistake. The annoying thing is that I had jokingly pointed out the spelling mistake while looking over his shoulder during the week… (0)

After the guilt I felt last week at not coming into work at the weekend with the rest of the team trying to get a project out of the door, I didn’t feel I could leave them alone this weekend as they struggled to meet a Monday deadline. So now it’s 9PM and we’ve been here since 9AM. It was 31° outside today, and the aircon isn’t working. I’ve been acting as a tester, and it makes me feel even worse as I find another bug…do I classify it as high, or push it under the rug for a while? But the worst thing is that the deadline is artificial…big-boss confided in me two days ago that the go-live date has been pushed back to next Friday, but that I wasn’t to divulge this information in order to keep the momentum going. Given the state of affairs, I think he may be right, but I think we’ll throw in the towel anyway for the night and I’ll face the music on Monday. Feel free to flame me. (0)

We met up with my sister-in-law’s ex-boyfriend at the weekend. We were good friends at the time, so it was nice to see him again. However, when I asked him how things were going since the breakup, he replied, “I feel like she ripped open my heart, spat in it, and closed it up again”. The only response I could think of was, “So apart from that, how are things going?”. I get the impression that he’s not completely over it yet. (0)

It’s late evening, the sun has disappeared and the new moon is peeping over the horizon. I’m sitting on the terrace in a deckchair looking at the sky where the peach-tinged clouds match the colour of the (almost empty) bottle of rosé wine at my side. The swallows are back and are ducking and diving around me, swooping dangerously close to the barbecue at the other end of the garden. On my lap is Al Gore’s book, “An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It”. I know the scientific evidence is overwhelming: I see the suffering caused by global warming every day on TV. But right now the truth is inconvenient: I know I should be angry, but it’s hard to do so when you are so comfortable. Maybe tomorrow I’ll see what I can do about it. Don’t make me feel guilty right now Al, I’m having too nice an evening. (3)

I have a habit of embarrassing people via inappropriate comments . The comments are not necessarily amusing and more than often can be hurtful. As the years have gone by, I have managed to curb it, but sometimes the need for a smart-arse comment can be overwhelming. With an immense show of self-control, I unfortunately managed to control myself last week. I was at a 2-day meeting with a group of customers. On the first day, we were all at lunch and conversation was going well as the food arrived. We were all sat at the same table, and the bread was being passed round, arriving from my right. I took a piece and made to pass the basket to the guy to my left. As I twisted in my seat to pass it to him, I realised that he was deep in prayer, eyes closed. Not quite sure what to do, and realising that everyone else was watching, I decided to wait until he came out of his trance. As he opened his eyes, and came back to his local surroundings, What I actually said was, “Would you like some bread?”. What I wanted to say was, “The body of Christ?”. It would have been totally inappropriate, there probably would have been stifled giggles from around the table and he would have felt deep embarrasment and probably a touch of resentment. Growing old can be so boring. (2)