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Coworker: I need to get data out of this system built on top of an Access database, what’s the best way to do it?
Me: Open the Access database and do a dump.
Coworker: We can’t do that.  It’s a regulated system and is locked down beyond what anyone but the creators would be able to undo.

I was skeptical, so I asked her to ask Joe, a seasoned Access warrior and see what he could do if it.

Me:  Were you able to get it?
Joe:  Yes.
Me:  Was it hard?
Joe: Two mouse clicks.

I sometimes don’t know how we’d get our jobs done if our predecessors had known what they were doing.

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Methodological naturalism states that when considering the causes of things only natural laws and principles should be reviewed.  Experimentation has yet to produce compelling evidence that things traditionally called psi or ESP exist and most claimed cases have pedestrian causes like fraud or experimental errors.  I do, on the other hand, think it’s perfectly reasonable that sometimes we put together bits of data and come to correct, almost oracular, conclusions but this is usually a case of remembering the hits and not giving our brains enough credit for its deductive powers.

Today, a coworker indicated that they needed to see someone in marketing and I blurted out “she’s gone”, a claim for which I had no apparent data and  he looked at me quizzically after he returned and relayed that the person in question had indeed either been fired or relocated.  She’s not someone with which I regularly interact and I’d go so far as to say I can’t even name anyone in her department besides her.  This revelation had me off my game until about 2 PM when I had my 3rd can of Pepsi Max for the day and learned what I think was the source of my Delphic moment:  The fridge seemed to be more luminous.  The yogurt lady was the missing person in question, and her yogurt was gone.

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I don’t like golf.  Not in the way that I don’t like anti-vaxxers but in the way that I don’t like fashion, it’s just not something I pay attention to.  Kyle likes golf.  It’s his thing in the way that Team Interrobang is my thing and everyone’s entitled to their thing.  Today, I followed him as he did his thing and took pictures.  I think this helped balance out the number of times I’ve drowned a meal in the marginalia of the people on my Steam Friends list.

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Not Golf

This is not golf; this is the background of a slide presentation on something or maybe the ghosted stock on a wedding invite.  Kyle was setting up for his first shot and I didn’t much notice.

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Not Golf

This is a gazebo and also not golf.  Kyle’s putting down his ball and he didn’t let me ask him to do it again with him as the focus.  We were in a hurry.

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Not Golf

There’s a brutality to the swing of the golf club that suggests that the club is a golf cudgel and therefore not golf.  The swing slowed is not the grace of a person diving, or running, or casting an atlatl dart where the frames have an obvious before and after.  That would probably change with training or with maybe another person’s swing, but Kyle is my world of golf knowledge and I refuse to go Columbus on him.

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Not golf

I hate this picture.  It looks like a damn motivational poster and should have “Goals: They’re the bullshit we say we’re trying to do” or something below it.  Motivational posters aren’t golf.

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Not Golf

I hate this one more.  Again, cue bullshit inspirational poster line.  Neither of these are golf, these are the tools or implements of golf and their mating is a necessary sub-unit but putting is not golf in the same way that getting on a ski lift is not skiing nor is shuffling a deck of cards a game of poker.  Again, not golf.

After many holes, a pair of Asian fellows held us up through their slow play.  I requested Kyle yell “Ladies” at them, but the Argyle Fury chose not to release the storm.

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Not Golf.

This was Kyle previously waiting for someone who later let him play through and through forced inaction, not golf.  Here, we have the meta-game, the necessary pre-actions that aren’t skills to me.  Kyle says it is, but it’s one of those things that appears to be malarky until you have to deal with it like treating a person for shock or lamaze.  There is no contemplation here, just bewilderment and may 10% anger.

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Not Golf.

This is a failed artistic shot of a hole.  Holes are not golf.  I wish I were better at knowing how light changes will affect a shot, but I am not, yet.  This was the penultimate hole of the day and everyone was mad, two groups in front of us, and two groups behind.  Golf seems to be the only leisure activity where not ending in a state of paroxysm is a triumph.

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Golf

While not containing a depiction of a club, ball, or hole, this is golf to me.  It is the formality of argyle on the savagery of hands that could rip a phonebook in hands.  It is reflection on top of analysis that is ultimately passed to a primal kinesis despite the introduction of polymers and carbon fiber.  It is repetition to perfection coupled with knowing you never play the same hole twice.  Golf is a fight.  Other people watch, and other people may be fighting at the same time but it is never a melee.

Kyle moves back to Florida in two weeks or so.  Last time he moved there, I didn’t miss him as  I was angry and small.  This time, I will miss him.  Goodbye, Kyle.  I still don’t like golf, but thanks for not requiring that to love you.

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The bars of white chocolate lingered, slowly being picked at by those foolish enough to be pulled in by their sickeningly sweet siren song.  White chocolate coats the mouth and punches the pancreas but does little else.  So I asked if anyone would mind that I took the remaining bars home with me to reforge them into something more compelling like a proper fudge or maybe, just maybe… chocolate.  The four wrapped bars sat silently awaiting their reincarnation as I mixed water, corn syrup, and sugar into a pot and started melting dark chocolate.  The bars were chopped and added to the dark and baking chocolate to be reincarnated as the cocoa half of a chocolate fudge and I smiled as the last remnants of identity “MAUI 2010, GREAT JOB” slipped from their faces.  “I will make you better” I said as I mixed the two parts together at around 110ËšF and let them sit.

This morning, I was greeted with… incredibly crappy fudge.  Somehow, their white chocolate in under 8 ounces destroyed the quality of the other four pounds I had prepared, turning it to a gloopy pile.  I had to re-melt and forge the fudge anew again to get it to a reasonable consistency.  On Monday, I will bring it into work and be met as a savior.

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I don’t want to quite say I hate my work’s sales teams, but when R&D launches a multimillion dollar product, we get a nice lunch, when a sales team beats their sales goal, they’re flown to an exotic local and any paraphernalia of such trips serves as a building-wide emetic.  Apparently, in 2010 some arbitrary goal was met so bars of white chocolate were minted to celebrate a trip to Maui and they were made in such quantity that there were enough that the proles could have some.  It’s a nice idea, except for it’s white chocolate, which technically isn’t chocolate, and I spent much of the day reminding people.

Coworker: Terry, did you catch the chocolate outside the office row?
Me: No, there’s no chocolate there.
Coworker: It’s white chocolate.
Me: Which isn’t chocolate.  It cocoa butter, sugar, and cream.
Coworker: That’s basically chocolate.
Me: Nope, no cocoa solids, not chocolate.  That’s like dropping an olive into a bottle of vermouth and saying “it’s basically a martini”.
Coworker: That’d be a crime.
Me: You know what else is a crime?
Coworker: Murder?
Me: That too… and calling white chocolate chocolate.
Coworker: The world must be told.

I’m on it, buddy.

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Using Short Declarative Sentences:  Many of my posts are beginning to rhyme and I am worried.  My scenery hasn’t changed and I’ve not said anything useful here in some time.  There is a wisdom in humor that comes from novelty and repetition kills that.  I have no immediate fix.  There are other things I’d like to talk about, but I’m not sure about where to put them.  Thinking.

Using Longer Ones:  Authors sometimes refer to echoes of events that seem to span time and space as “rhymes” when some arrangement of elements repeats itself.  To a certain extent, these can tip off a sense of the divine, but to me, when they are recycled bits of the quotidian I find the result soul-deadening as I think the wisdom that is embedded in humor comes from novelty.  There is only so many times I can make a “funny thing that happened with food” post or “here’s something about my attempts to lose weight’ before I feel it becomes just re-used drivel.   I’m not sure if this is something I can fix, but until I do, the quality of posts I try to prevent here will probably drop as the raw material from which they are fashioned decreases in quality.  While I think there is some rich veins to be mined along the archetypes of oddities I encounter, I’m not exactly sure if that’d fit with the tenor of this blog.  Calling myself in-tune in any way with the profound would be an act of either ignorance or arrogance I don’t wish to suffer so what of the rest?  Thinking.

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Despite my best efforts, I’m still on the short list of those who are contacted when someone has a problem with a technical resource regarding Ockanickon Scout Reservation.  A leader contacted me about having trouble with a form.  Here’s the email back and forth.

Leader:  i’m trying to download the weekly schedul ebut i keep getting a this came from the internet and is currupt error. I could download the daily schedule from home just fine please fix.
Me: I appear to be able to open both just fine.  Can you be more detailed about the error message and whether it’s from Excel or in the web browser?
Leader:  The error comes up when i open it at wokr now the other one does not work either please fix like it was the other one.
Me:  Is the error you’re getting “The file is corrupted and cannot be opened.” ?  If so, I think it may be because of your work’s local policy.
Leader: No the file worked fine at home please fix.
Me: Ok, I’ll email it to you, tell me if it opens.  I’m pretty sure it’s your work computer’s problem.
Leader: Does not open from Outlook at work, will catch up with you tomrrow may see you from home
Me: I’ve modified the file, try opening it now.  *I made no changes*
Leader: File opened fine, thank you for fix!

The reply came from a @verizon.net account rather than his firm’s domain.

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Boss stops me while I walking around the building wearing a pair of bluetooth headphones like these:

My phat cans

Boss: Terry, did you ever see Episode 5?
Me: Empire Strikes Back?  The scientifically best movie of the series?  The one where story-telling is brought to a high art and the idea of not telling the audience everything builds a richness that compels us through as everything breaks down for the heroes.
Boss: The ones with Billy D Williams.
Me: As Lando Calrissian, former swashbuckler now turncoat who operates Cloud City, a Bespin gas mining operation.
Boss: And that guy who was with him.
Me: Lobot, chief administrator and computer-liason officer for Cloud City played by John Hollis.
Boss: You look like that guy.  So you’ve seen the movie?
Me: Once or twice.

 

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My new shirts arrived today and they had a pulpy maiden voyage in the washing machine as I didn’t know they had cardboard braces under the the neck collar.  I was next saddened to see that the shirts were not wrinkle resistant and did a magic trick where they transformed in what looked like rhino-skinned rugs upon contact with water.  Finally, I found that I purchased the wrong size and all the sleeves were an inch shorter than I wanted.  Should anyone need me to do a disheveled white collar Bruce Banner impression I could do it once for each day of the week.

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Dad: So, how was Cleveland?
Me: Cincinnati.
Dad: Did you get to visit Paul?
Me: Peter.
Dad: I guess you’ll need your brakes changed.
Me: Oil change.
Dad: Did you call your mother for her birthday?
Me: Yes. Did you?
Dad: Yes.

At least he remembers the important stuff.