Mild Amusement

porque a la cara te caerá. For those who don't speak Spanish, the saying goes, "don't spit at the sky, lest it land on your face." It's roughly equivalent to warning someone that karma has a funny way of getting back at people. And as of this week, I know all about this, from first-hand experience. I have mentioned before that I am mostly a software developer at work. As such, my main focus is mostly to write code & develop applications that are at least mildly useful to my customers. Sure, I have to interact with my customers to tease out requirements from them, and I also have to be mindful of project deadlines and budgets. But, by and large, I consider those things as peripheral responsibilities. They're chores I have to get done in order to do my actual work, rather than my primary responsibility. However, I have more than one friend whose primary job responsibility is to handle many of these very tasks. In many companies, these are all lumped ...

I don't quite remember when it happened, but sometime earlier this year, I resolved to write blog posts a little more regularly than last year. It's not like I was neglecting this blog, but I pretty much did it haphazardly last year. For example, I wrote a grand total of 2 posts in August of 2010, but I wrote 8 of them in February. At some point, I figured it couldn't hurt to even it out a little. Also, a fairly well-known programmer claims that it's going to make me awesome to stick to a schedule. Anyhow, I've resolved to write at least one blog post per week. I can't save them up or just decide that I don't want to write that week. Nope, I am holding myself accountable for at least one post per week. Incidentally, I am granting you all permission to hit me if I don't stick to this schedule, to put more skin in the game. Now, that's nice and all, but the point of my writing is to be amusing. I may not amuse everybody with every single post (the...

I once paid the price for opening a door for a lady walking in behind me. Well, as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. And as it happens, I seem to be a slow learner, so I have yet another tale of woe to tell. I was going to lunch with a friend of mine, and I had offered to drive. This was actually the first time that I had ever given her a ride, since she usually was against the idea of walking all the way to the other side of the parking lot. Given that, she was unaware of my usual habits. See, I routinely open the passenger side door for other people. It's just another one of those little quirks I have (along with opening doors for people), but it's an ingrained habit. So, I opened her door and then walked over to the driver's side. She looked at me a little funny, but didn't say anything. We had lunch, and then we walked back out to the car. Again, I opened her door and then walked over to the other side. This time, however, she said something, ...

A while back, I noticed that the motion detectors in our offices led to much hilarity . Well, I have since moved to a different office, so I don't have to deal with those motion detectors anymore. However, I have once again noticed that there are light-related shenanigans afoot. About a month back or so, I walked in at my usual time and noticed that the lights were off. I happen to work in a cubicle, so it's not like the lights in my office were just off. I didn't have any light, so I knew that a bunch of other people didn't have any light, either. Resolving to remedy this situation, I went hunting for a light switch. I figured it must be nearby on one of the pillars near by cubicle, but this was not the case. I started making larger and larger circles away from my cubicle, but none of the pillars or walls yielded any results. Even when the guy in the next cubicle showed up, we couldn't find it between the two of us. Defeated, I called the group in charge of t...

I'm a logical person, in the sense that I have an affinity for things like logic and abstract concepts. I suspect that it started when I was a kid and I just wanted to know how things worked. That mentality will quickly lead you down the path of math and science, so I am no stranger to the " hard sciences ." According to Scott Adams, that also means I am no stranger to an abnormal life , though, so I'm not about to brag. For the most part, this serves me well. I have a decent shot of solving every day problems, and it has led to a career that I mostly enjoy. There is, however, one very small problem. An inquisitive mind isn't something you easily turn on and off. That means that I am constantly amused by small logical fallacies around me. For example, I chuckle when I see an email that says, "if you are having trouble receiving this email, please email us."  It's just how it goes. For some reason, though, the transitive property seems to come ...