No can do. Thatâs application support. No way am I abandoning my place at the top of the IT pecking order.
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Think of it as a nostalgia trip?
IT is a self serving industry
Develop shit code that need hardware upgrades to run and a phalanx of support staff to manage
The only way to get what you want is to buy in a shit load of middle ware or 3rd party apps because the developer canât be arsed to program in essential features
Then the developer write more code to fix the bugs in the old code, but this new code is written on state of the art hardware and to run it effectively requires a complete hardware upgrade. More support / consultancy / apps etc and an anal reaming for the poor customer
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I got a call from a head hunter! Wow!
For a job in the sandpit. Meh.
But for silly money I would go back but keep base camp/commute from here.
Anyway, he went through it all and wondered why i laughed at him.
Enterprise Software sales. UK reseller of International vendors.
No local licence, no Visa, commission only.
As i said does your contact have MBA after their email signature.
Yes was the reply.
Of course was mine.
I did say call me if you get a proper job
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Iâve always said that developers should be given the oldest shittiest hardware to write stuff on, then theyâd write efficient code that works properly on contemporary machinesâŚ
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Iâve mad a career out of fixing poor shit, it has to be said. There have also been times in my career, particularly in the early days, when I was that programmer. Everyone starts out shit relative to where they end up.
If I have a guiding principle in developing software, it is laziness. I fucking hate solving the same problem again so I write complete fixes so I can be lazy again.
Itâs one of Larry Wallâs three axioms of being a programmer.
- Laziness
- Hubris
- Impatience
My boss is fully aware that I score well on all three and loves it. Being âbusyâ means loads of shit is going wrong.
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Totally agree with the last point. IT reports to me - when everything works, life is great. When it doesnât, you just get belly aching from the whole company.
Which is why I always ask
What happened
Why did it happen
How did you fix it
How are you going to stop it happening again
The guys know that they need to have the answer to all four before they see me
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This question used to annoy the shit out of me when something unexpected went wrongâŚ
That is the question That when I am asked reply with âhow much can we spend?â
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Any bats out tonight or is that just in the restaurant?
Sea food mush. Red snapper and prawns the size of lobsters with a mixed sea food fried rice and a few cold beers to go with it.
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Went to the pub at lunchtime and had seafoodâŚFish ânâ Chips. 
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Hate you
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Itâll not surprise you to learn that Iâve developed a few maxims over the years. What youâre describing is root cause analysis. It really is at the heart of being lazy. If you donât suss out the underlying fault youâre stuck addressing the bastard forever.
A couple of tips of my non-IT friends when dealing with IT people.
- Do not trust any IT person that calls a machine-based thing âtemperamentalâ. Itâs not. Itâs a fucking machine. It is prone to external forces that can break it, but that is because some component, software or hardware, is fucked. It has probably also been their go-to excuse for 70% of their professional career.
- Do not trust any IT professional that says âanything can happen!â. No it fucking canât. Youâre not some 16th century sailor dangling your legs over the edge of a wooden hull pondering the endless mysteries of the sea. Youâre dealing with a finite problem which should only ever go a number of ways.
- Do trust people who say âI donât know⌠yetâ. Far better to deal with honesty than bullshit on perceived demand.
- Most importantly, always ship anyone who canât tell the truth. Iâve fucked up more than once in my career and admit my complete fucking incompetence each and every time, and have never been sacked for it *
* They normally sack me because Iâm a cunt 
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My approach as a layman is stick to logic
After all if you boil it down IT is just 1s and 0s - it simply has to make sense
So when some doesnât work and I am given an answer that my logically minded brain cannot compute I generally call bullshit - itâs amazing just how many times I am right
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When we started at our new place, we had to learn a lot of new stuff very quickly. We were often confused, so weâd develop a mantra.
âWhat do we know?â
Keep asking that question and the unknown becomes pretty apparent because you eliminate so much in the process.
Without divulging any commercial secrets, my latest projects have involved optimising operations that happen often.
One process can take between 5 and 30 seconds to complete today, and happens around 200 times per day, Iâve got it down to about a second.
The present implementation bungs things onto a work queue on the server for (eventual) generation, tying a busy enough computer up with binary busy work.
Iâm just generating it in place and just letting the server know what Iâve done. A 50kb row update, sent complete and confirmed, instead of all that fucking about.
I shut down after getting that far.
Itâs why we employ an IT Dept
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Today is the eve of All Hallows Eve.
Regular readers will recall that over here, that is not (only) kids & Pumpkin day, but the day before All Hallows - All Saints Day.
Saintsfc go all Catholic this time of year remembering those fans who passed away. Here it is all about the Cemetery and remembrance.
The work started on Tuesday, cleaning the graves of relatives. Today, where there are normally 2 or 3 cars parked up there are 30+. There is a pop-up Candle stall (we bought ours in bulk last week) and a trip to the Chrysanthemum farm in the next village where we queued for the flowers.
Today is about cleaning & preparing âDadsââ grave ready for Sunday.
On Sunday maybe 30% of the population will visit their relatives parking will be a hellish nightmare and Covid concerns are right up there.
This does have a point.
Iâm now deep into âbut Saints are playingâ negotiationsâŚ
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