Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 18:30:42 -0400 From: Matthew Graybosch <matthew@starbreaker.net> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Fun with UNIX. >^..^< Message-ID: <20010920183042.4e8f7871.matthew@starbreaker.net> In-Reply-To: <15273.59043.419743.938164@guru.mired.org> References: <126529085@toto.iv> <15273.59043.419743.938164@guru.mired.org>
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On Thu, 20 Sep 2001 07:52:51 -0500
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote:
> > Wow. Anyone tried to tell me what I _had_ to run on my
> > personal home PC and I think I'd laugh myself silly! If
> > I paid the $$ for the machine, it's running FreeBSD.
I snuck in at about 5AM this morning (PHB trusts me with a key
and the code to disable the alarm system, fired up my workstation
(a dual Athlon-MP with 512MB rig running Win2K), and installed
Slackware on it ('cos I don't yet grok FreeBSD in fullness).
<tangent>
The boss insists on using Visual Basic .NET for development. I
know it's evil, and I know that using that sh*t is slowly
tainting me. However, I'm not willing to wrestle with C++ under
Win32, nor do I have the experience to get a better job ATM. Not
when I dropped out of college and have about 1.5 years worth of
experience. Besides, I think it's fitting to develop for a toy
operating system using a toy programming language.
</tangent>
So everything's peachy-keen. I'm banging away at some spaghetti
that resembles a set of ODBC routines -- rewriting them,
documenting them, and sticking them in a DLL once I finished
debugging them. My PHB comes by, and says, "You've been pretty
quiet today."
<tangent>
Now, normally my fellow cubicle dwellers: six women wearing hats
marked "secretary", "trainer", "QA tester", "marketer", "bill
collector", and "tech support", have to listen to me snarling in
frustration. The other programmer is a very sweet and demure
young lady from Thailand. I don't think she knows any profanities
harsher than 'hell' or 'damn'. Most of the time they too are
snarling for the same reasons. Instead, I'm merrily banging away,
I've got some Blue Oyster Cult in my discman and the volume's at
11. They think I'm not even there.
</tangent>
My PHB looks puzzled for a moment as he looks at my screen. This
is nothing shocking; I run my display at 1600x1200 resolution,
and none of my coworkers can see what the hell I have on screen.
He squints for a moment, sees that the topmost window is labelled
XEmacs, and says, "This doesn't look like Windows 2000".
I just smiled and drank my coffee. I haven't heard a word from
him since about me using XP at home.
> Yup. I had a client ask when I was going to join the 20th
> century so he could send me MS proprietary cruft. I told him to
> send me a PC with what he wanted me to have installed on it,
> and expect to pay for my time moving things back and forth.
>
> He started sending stuff in HTML.
LOL. This sounds like my little brother, who insists on using
Windows ME because "It's too hard to type commands." Here's a
typical conversation:
BRO: Can I send you HTML mail?
ME: No. Microsoft's idea of HTML looks like shit in my browsers.
I have to use a browser because the mail client I prefer only
accepts plain text.
BRO: Can I attach a Word document?
ME: I have to waste time converting it to plain text before I can
read it. Save the file as text.
BRO: But I use lots of different fonts and colors. It looks
really cool.
ME: {wishing that I had a LART that works over the phone.}
ME: I don't care how many fonts you use. All I want is the text.
Send plain text.
BRO: Oh... OK...
And what do I find in my email? An HTML-formatted email with a
Word doc attached. Reading the message, I can hear my brother
whining that he doesn't know how to send ASCII email or save
documents as plain text.
Excuse me while I go get drunk.
******
Matthew Graybosch [matthew@starbreaker.net]
http://www.starbreaker.net :: where dreams and reality collide
"Screw Sartre. Hell isn't other people. Hell is debugging other
people's code."
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