The joys of software development (instalment 48 of 1,992,444): Getting bug information from users

User: “There’s a bug.”
Me: “Shit. Where?”
U: “On a page.”
M: “Which page?”
U: “Basket page.”
M: “What happens?”
U: “Button doesn’t work.”
M: “Which button?”
U: “Is there more than one button?”
M: “WHICH BUTTON?” For the love of god, does it matter if there’s more than one button?
U: “The payment button.”
M: “Ok, so what happens?”
U: “When I click it, nothing happens.”
M: “Do you have anything IN your basket?”
U: “Yep.”
M: “What?”
U: “Nothing.”
M: “*#’!!$”

THAT'S going to end well.

Overheard in the ‘throom; a dude on the phone:

“Sup bro?”
“------------“
“Oh my fucking god.”
“------------“
“Oh my fucking god.”
“------------“
“Who the fuck told her?”
“------------“
“Who the fuck. Fuck man, ok don’t worry about it. Is she coming over?”
“------------“
“Fuck, ok bro. It’ll be ok. Just tell her the truth. It’ll be fine.”
“------------“
“Yeah. Just say you got into bed, and then she ran and jumped into bed, and you two fell asleep. Just be honest bro.”
“------------“
“Yeah, it’ll be fine. She’s coming over? Damn. Who the fuck told her? Just be honest bro, just say nothing happened. Nothing did happen, right? Say ‘I knew you’d react like this, and you DID react like this, which is why I didn’t want to tell you’. It’ll be fine.”
“------------“
“Yeah bro, text me her number, I’ll tell her what happened. Fuck.”
“------------“
“Yeah ok bro, laters.”

Yeah dude, you women all sorted out. Let me know how it works out for you.

The view from here

Well, before we even get started, I have some pretty “bad-taste” warnings to give you. Ok, done. I mean, it’s not as though you actually need one of those if you’re reading my blog. Chances are, it’s going the same way, every day.

Right, so every now and then I hit the gym and see people wearing some tees from New Zealand or some Super-13 jerseys for training. That’s cool; I do like to see people supporting the country. I do it with my numerous Huffer tees and stuff. However, it kinda depends on what you look like. Don’t get me wrong here, actually, do get me wrong, but whatever, I’m not the slimmest dude on the block. I still had to pay what my mates refer to as the ‘fat tax’ when I went skydiving, and I run out of breath walking from the couch to the kitchen (which, in my place, is literally 2 metres away). But seriously, there was a pretty big person at the gym sporting a New Zealand tee and I couldn’t help but wonder what other people’s views of our country are. I definitely didn’t want everyone to think all kiwis were overweight (although, I technically can’t comment without being a hypocrite).

We’ve all seen the adverts on TV for NZ, which would be hard-pressed not to strike emotion into the hardest of convicted rapists, but that’s only once every few months they pop on the box. Most of what I see about New Zealand over here is the bad stuff. For sure, it’s the media that constantly puts a negative spin on anything it can find. People would, or at least consciously would, rather hear about the bad stuff. The good stuff just isn’t as exciting – let’s be honest. But it annoys me when I read about stupid fucking kiwis back home attacking foreigners in their own back yard. Fair do’s, they’re not to know he was English, but it’s really sad that people are willing to make our country look like this, given that we have so much to offer. It’s really a waste.

Not all kiwis are like this. For Waitangi Day (“New Zealand Day”), here in London, all the 12,000 kiwis here get together to conduct one of, if not the, biggest pub crawls in the world. And, strangely, there’s next to no violence and next to no trashing of property going on. We’re a good set of guests, us kiwis. Compare that to a group 1/10th the size of English people, and they’d leave nothing standing and have a good 15 hospitals full of half-dead people missing ears and other parts of their bodies. It’s nothing to be proud of; it’s pretty fucking embarrassing, but whatever. Each to their own. I’m just impressed that we can have a good get-together and not trash our host’s living room.

It’s a pity our comrades back home don’t have the same sense of decency.

Maybe I’m just too worried about what other people think. I don’t think our country is considered one of the dangerous ones that should be avoided; to the contrary. My girlfriend and her brother travelled the country by themselves for a month in a little van without any problem. It’s pretty safe. So it can’t be that bad, and the view of us is clearly good given some comments I’ve read recently. I just wish we had a 100% unblemished record.

That'd be something I could truly be proud of.

Three Thoughts

1. Guys that put their hand around the back of their girlfriend’s necks. Not in the violent way, but instead of putting their arm around them while walking down the street. What’s with that? I can’t imagine in any way how it’s an ‘intimate’ or ‘kind’ thing to do. I swear, it actually makes me worried; all I see in my mind’s eye is him strangling her. For god’s sake man, don’t rest your fingers around her neck. Psycho.


2. Guys. With pierced ears. That may have been ‘the thing to do’ when Vanilla Ice was around, but no longer. Take them out. Let the hole grow over. Be done with it.


3. And, more importantly, women. I’ve got some kind of magnet for women who are travelling. They always seem to be at the clubs/pubs I go to, or I always seem to end up talking to them (not that that’s a bad thing). It does beg the thought though, are women that travel easier to talk to/date than those who aren’t? There are a few elements [worth?] observing here (thanks to MK for offering most of them, and a shot of vodka to boot).
   
   • The Outgoing Girl. Girls that travel a lot are, by their very definition, outgoing. They’re always challenging themselves, getting outside of their comfort zone. Talking to a stranger in a packed pub isn’t a worry; more interesting and challenging.
   
   
   • The Friendly Girl: Girls that travel are forced to meet people. They’re usually by themselves or in a small group, and meeting people is a necessity for getting by. That, or they actually like meeting people. Either way, they get lots of practice and enjoy it. If they didn’t enjoy meeting new people, they wouldn’t be backpacking.
   
   
   • The Non-City-Dwelling Girl: City girls have attitude. I’m not surprised. Being a male (and, more specifically, one that’s not so easy to look at), I don’t have the problems that a big-city girl would have. Namely, getting hit on every 30-40 seconds. That, and having all the friends you could need. Meeting people isn’t such a necessity in the big city, and therefore, acting like you have an attitude will get you the space you probably need or want. I get it, it’s cool.
   
   
   • The Non-Committal Girl: It’s ok to have a fling. That’s a part of what travelling is all about. She’s cool with spending time with you because she knows in 3 weeks she’ll be long gone and you’ll just be a [pretty terrible] memory. There’s a pretty slim chance that something good will come of it, and even if it does, we all know we can move on and find something else. Such is the nature of relationships in this day of age.
   
   
   • The Girl who likes the Exotic: Face it, big cities like London offer pretty much the whole range of races and cultures, and when travelling this is clearly one of the more fun things to look forward to. I can say with some conviction that my accent has worked to my advantage more than once. People that haven’t been to New Zealand like to talk about it, as do those who have; it makes a pretty useful talking point if the rest of my life proves too boring. This sounds pretty boastful, and I don’t mean it to, but I guess it does help to some degree. God knows it didn’t do shit when I was in NZ.
   
   
   • Well, that’s all I got. I guess that with all these points above, we could conclude that they in fact easier to talk to. More approachable. This definitely supports what I have experienced. I raise the topic because I have a travelling girl coming to see me soon, so we’ll see how it goes. Only one way, from the list above, but it’ll be fun finding out.

For granted

I think I just realised how much we take our mobiles for granted. We’re always hearing about people saying we rely on them too much, and I guess that’s true, but it’s like pretty much everything in life these days. The internet, computers, fast food, travel, health, relationships even. Everything has gotten easier, and when something doesn’t work when and as soon as we want it to, we get pretty irrationally pissed off. I, myself, am constantly guilty of it. But I get angry at anything, really. Just give me a reason.

Anyhoo, I just realised how rare it is that mobile phone coverage actually goes out. I can’t remember the last time I was walking around somewhere where I usually get coverage and then all of a sudden I didn’t. I was talking to my landlord just before, and some strange things started happening, and I realised that my reception (which is always full bars) was down to one or two, and he was cutting out. Of course, I felt the rage build up inside me, thinking that it was my RIGHT to have coverage wherever I am - it doesn’t help that I’ve always ‘just had it’ for most of my life. But still, it strikes me as strange that cellphone coverage is one of the very very few things in life that is pretty much guaranteed in a built-up area.

Just think of that next time you get pissed off because the lift in your building stopped working.

Humans. Not the smartest.

Right, so, I’m sure at some point I wrote something about something to do with humans not thinking ahead when they do stuff. Developing nuclear weapons, out-of-control A.I. robots, climate change, human cloning (you just know this is happening in a secret lab somewhere). There are endless examples of stupid people doing wholly unnecessary things without considering the consequences and effects. People just aren’t built to think of anyone or anything other than themselves. It’s a constant struggle for us to be considerate.

And this concerns me.

When the most powerful nation on earth (populated mostly with people that can medically be described as ‘vegetables’) votes in a hell-bent, suicidal president like Bush, it’s time to get nervous. And here’s why.

We’ve just sent out a new probe into space, and by ‘we’ I mean the population of the earth (we’re all in this together). Its primary focus is to find other planets that are in the same rare minority as our one is. Just close enough to the sun to support life, but also far away enough to allow water to settle without evaporating. There’s not that many, but they are out there. And when we find some, and figure out how to travel sensibly over that distance, we’re going to visit those planets. That’s all very good and well, but what happens if we find it’s already populated with some kind of being? Which it well could be?

My concern lies with how we treat living things on our own planet. All humans and animals seem to be treated with contempt. We fight for nothing sometimes, kill living things for no reason, other than to make ourselves feel better. The things living on this ‘planet’ we visit will be at either one of two stages.

a) Earlier in the lifecycle development than us. Be it by 10 years or 10 million, we’ll just rock onto their planet and take it over. Look at the way we used to colonise countries 200 years ago. We’d arrive, declare that we’re better than whoever was living there previously, and proceed to screw the ‘newly found’ environment for everything its worth. Only now are we growing a conscious about what we do to the people around us and our environment, but will this make a difference? America, who undoubtedly will be the spokespeople in cases like this, still won’t admit there’s a global warming problem, and insist their way is still the only way. It’ll be Iraq all over again, but with more casualties.

b) Later in the lifecycle development than us. The fact we’re still alive means one of two things. One, they haven’t discovered our planet yet, which could be possible. Two, they haven’t fucked their planet up and aren’t looking at taking over other planets. They’re leaving us alone, to do our thing. If our race is anything to go by, this is clearly not the case. Maybe they realise our planet is too far gone to be of any use? Better to focus on another? Either way, they have modes of space travel, and [much more effective] weapons. We wouldn’t stand a chance. But that’s never stopped us trying before.

No matter how this goes down, I just can’t see it working out for the best. I feel ashamed. And scared. I guess it’s a bittersweet realisation I’ll be dead long before this gets to work itself out.

(Please do note here that I haven’t even considered the possibility we’re alone. We’re well, well past that point, aren’t we?)

How you know life is really fucked

Seen on the Intraweb; an advert for, well, people who are pretty screwed, presumably:

“Laid off? Take advice from astrology”

God knows how that will help. Seriously.

N.I.I.A.

So, you know those times where you have an opinion (every few seconds for me) but you aren’t really fussed if anyone agrees with you? I do. I have them all the time. I can’t really sum them all up as being things that are important to me. Sometimes I just don’t feel like arguing. If someone picked a fight with me about whether Nokia’s were bad phones, or if there really was a god, then I’d stand up. I really would fight to the death, but only if they picked a fight. If they merely made a passing comment then I wouldn’t waste my time. I have my opinions, some I’m not so sure are valid, and some I know are, but I just can’t be bothered fighting for them. You disagree? I don’t really care.

And there’re some opinions where I just don’t mind. It’s a strong possibility I could be wrong. Why argue it?

Anyway, I think from now on when I issue an opinion that I’m not prepared to argue over, I’m going to tag on the end “N.I.I.A.” It stands for “Not Interested In Arguing.” If you disagree with what I think, then that’s great! Do it your way. I don’t really feel like arguing my point.

Sure, it’s a cunty thing to say, but it saves me from patronising you in front of everyone (read: “yeah dude, I totally agree with you [so you’ll go away]”), effectively notching up another ‘dislike’ point on your opinion of me.

See? It saves us both some time.

Shopping with hangovers and positive bank balances

As I’m sure you’re well aware, there are a few rules that apply to food shopping. For instance:

“Don’t go shopping when you’re hungry.”

And the point of that is, if you’re hungry, you’ll buy anything you like the look of. And for me, that’s the contents of the entire meat section, and any frozen pizza without vegetables on them. And once you get home, you have one of the 30-odd pizzas you bought, and realise you only needed one. And what the hell are you going to do with that leg of ham? Once again, it’s a mild yet frustrating indication of the weakness of the human brain. The fact that a) we don’t realise it’s happening, and b) if we do realise, we still can’t beat it, makes me feel like beating my head against a wall made of angry Knights.

Last night, I was pretty well hung over. It wasn’t a serious SERIOUS day, but I still felt pretty crappy and had only 5 or 6 hours sleep. I literally fell asleep at the desk for a bit. Bad form. On my way home from work, I realised I needed some dinner, and, well, fucked if I was going to have something healthy. You know the feeling; you just want to fall into a vat of fish and chips and sleep. This, I found, was also a bad time to go shopping for food.

You see, all you need when you’re hung over is comfort food. Something with ‘substance’, something with a huge fat content and something with lots of [bad?] taste because your taste buds took quite a thrashing from the beer the night before. The list in a typical supermarket for this type of food is long and comprehensive. So many things look so good when you’re hung over! The basket quickly fills up and you realise, only once you get home, you really didn’t need it.

Moral? Don’t shop at the supermarket for dinner when you’re hung-over.

Solution? Takeaways.

One thing I did notice when I got home with my trolley of bacon and eggs was that I had paid for the food, and not actually realised how much I had spent. I didn’t even check the amount. I could’ve been charged 70 pounds for the packing bags and would’ve happily walked out and gone home.

There’s two different reasons for why this could have happened happened. The first was that I was absolutely exhausted. I was well hung-over, with half the hours of sleep I need to maintain 100% power. And the second? Well! Since you ask, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing this ‘diet’ thing. I don’t know much about it, but it seems to me a ‘diet’ is just a way to be miserable. Basically, if you want to be on a diet, stop doing anything you enjoy, and replace it with painfully mundane things, like eating dust. “Eat dust, and the weight will just fall away”, they say. I don’t know who “they” are, but I want to beat them. With a stick made of death.

Anyway, my strict diet of ‘dust’ has resulted in something I’ve never experienced in my life before, and that’s a positive bank balance. I’ve never had one before. Never. In fact, it’s so alien to me, I want to do anything I can to get it back into negatives – like take a woman shopping – so I’d be more comfortable again. It may seem normal to you, but I’m not quite sure what to do. My friends that mock me for the last week of every month when I’m totally skint won’t have anything left to hassle me about. Scrap that, there’s lots of stuff to give me shit about.

Anyway, the point. Ever since I was about 4 years old and got my first 5c, I’ve been worried about how much I have left to spend. Whenever I’m paying for something, I stand at the cashier, nervously, praying to god my card won’t be rejected. And I pray again, because I know I don’t have another card to cover it with. It’s an uncomfortable time. But this time, I knew, subconsciously I had some spare cash. I must have known that no matter how much the amount came to, I wouldn’t be struggling to make the end of the month. And that’s the other reason I didn’t bother checking how much I had to spend. It’s not a good thing though. It’s times like that people put an extra 100 pounds on your account without you noticing, and that’s not cool.

So there you have it. Shopping with hangovers and bank balances.

I don’t recommend it at all.

Twitter?

Why? What does it do for anyone on a daily basis? Like, everyone in the office wants to talk about it, but yet it hasn’t actually done anything for anyone. I understand it from a business perspective, however. My mate at work has used it to great effect with other users to get people talking about and using our company’s products, but it’s more of a necessity to be in the loop and being seen with the latest and greatest social network tools.

But for you other people? Who just talk shit?

No.
One.
Gives.
A.
Fuck.

I couldn’t care less if you just got your hair cut. Watching a movie? Wow! What an eventful and exciting life you lead keeping everyone up to date online!

Bah. This topic deserves no more of my time.