The Audacity of Nope / BWE (but not too bad)

In which our Hero has a little glimmer of insight in the middle of the driest desert

I’ve been getting teased a little about my lactose intolerance at work. It’s a mildly irritating circumstance, but I take it as the poorly reasoned humour intended. My lactose intolerance also made for a simpler demurral than “Pizza doesn’t excuse bad manners” and “I utterly loathe your choice of pizza place.” And certainly a more polite excuse than, “Sorry but right now I can’t think of anything less appealing than having lunch with the bunch of you,” which takes me back to that old rule of thumb, Never eat with prey.

The frustrating thing is that I can’t seem to find the source for that. I don’t think it’s original, it’s much too simple to be original, and yet I can’t find it. Searching my own diary, I find the phrase repeatedly, but I say it like it’s old proverb and I can’t find the source anywhere. I would have sworn that it’s based on a Kzinti saying (Yes, the felinoid species from Larry Niven’s Known Space) but a) I only have hardcopy of those books, b) I can’t find the quotes on line and c) a lot of searches for Kzin quotes end weirdly with remarks about the middle east and Palestine, which is weird since all I can see most Kzinti saying about the matter is either “Kill them all” or “Eat them all” and those make even less memorable quotes than what I was looking for.

Still, I don’t know why I find myself whipped by that idea so consistently. Nor do I understand why I draw from the martial philosophy of a race that followed the strategy of “Scream and leap” to crushing defeat in multiple cycles of war. But while leaping without looking is stupid, the other idea is important.

Differentiate. And make sure they know.

On the other hand, now I’m irritated about the lactose intolerance thing too. You don’t mock people about their health issues. Not safely. I know they think it’s friendly. I just wish they’d realize that they first have to treat me like a friend.

There are other phrases that have been challenging me. I use the phrase fire drill to describe my situation at work, particularly since I sometimes explain my own role as a firefighter. “Fire drill” covers the unreality that goes with the endless charging about, making plans and breaking them for new plans, all based on schedules designed by executive fiat because the VPs get snippy when we try to explain reality to them.

But the phrase is actually Chinese fire drill, which is supposedly more pejorative (and probably what makes me just call them fire drills). The Chinese fire drill describes the condition where there’s a lot of activity for no result. The example in wikipedia cited a story about a boat fire where the English and Chinese folks trying to put out a fire in the boat got their orders mixed up and mistranslated and ended up running pails of water *past* the fire to the other side of the boat where they would throw it over the side.

The version I learned was funnier, which is the one where a car full of people get to a traffic stoplight where they get out, and run around the car till the light is about to turn green. It’s intense, it’s spectacular, it’s impressive. And it achieves little or nothing.

(And suddenly I can explain the TSA.)

The latest salvo is an executive who took our project plan and cut it. Gutted it really. As in, ripped over 90% of the time we said we require out of it. So we’ve spent the last week in a furious justification to explain that the VP is thinking of his experience with one particular piece of the system, but we have to still make all the other pieces talk to the new bit. Or to put it a different way… Yes, it only takes an hour to change a tire, but that presupposes the car is not moving. And on fire. Those things make changing the tire a little harder.

But the pièce de resistance was yesterday when a project manager asked me to send him a copy of my requirements document. My reply: “You’ve had me doing Powerpoints to justify our choices for the last three months, where do you think I had the time to start other work?”

Hilariously frivolous work story. The floor Hollywood and I work on is in the middle of the building. The cafeteria is two floors down. So every morning, (and usually multiple times a day) for the last (suddenly don’t want to think about the) number of years, we go down two flights of stairs, get hot water for tea, and then come back up stairs.

Well yesterday, Hollywood was asking me about a system I was building and he was intensely interested as he preceded me up the stairs. And when he rounded *PAST* the door to our floor and kept going, I fought down my grin, and turned as if I was going up the stairs and stomped my feet in place till he suddenly paused, turned around, and realized I was a half a flight of stairs below him laughing.

Sure he swore at me, but he was laughing too.

I paused from my work yesterday, to just stop and think about a little software doodad I wanted to write. Indulging in that bit of frivolous design work, I felt like there was this tone of warm pleasure ringing like a bell.

And later, I realized that that’s the sound of love. That’s the thing I love about what I do. It’s also the thing that I’m doing very little of lately. Which is why despite the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of good work, I haven’t been enjoying it at all.

So I have another piece of the answer to what is my dream job. Design. Creative design of technology solutions. An answer so obvious it goes all the way back to funny again.

I’m very pleased by this reminder.