We're gonna open the book and read every word we can see

[austin_dern]

It's not paranoia when they tell you outright that they're talking about you behind your back, right?

Here's the setup. My project at work is done enough that most of my days are occupied with the many ways a little XSL and CSS can produce untraceable and impossibly complicated bugs that make the appearance intolerably awful. So, my boss has started sharing the site with the people who really want what I've been making and haven't had the chance to convince their bosses to pay for it just yet. And he's been passing on to me feedback, although it is often something like ``there's ambiguities in the marker presentation'', to which I e-mail back, ``I have no idea what this means'', which he never answers.

But he recently let slip that he's got a little Facebook community of these early experimental users where they can drop a quick note when they find things and chat with him about it. I don't have the snide disdain for Facebook that a guy who still uses nn and emacs for Usenet for crying out loud might be expected to have; what I mostly wanted to know is, what's the page so I can read the feedback? I don't figure to get an account, but if that's the best way to find out what real actual users expect or find baffling, well, that's responsibility for you.

Only he won't share. It's somehow a little private section of his Facebook page and don't worry, he'll pass back anything they find that needs fixing. Ah. Fortunately, as best I can tell, all they want is more data in the system, which is easy to do and doesn't require new programming, just adding database files to one server and lines of Javascript identifying them to another page. All I'm left with are his e-mails at random moments of the night which he admits in he day he can't understand. It's made Outlook Express the most absurdist part of my day.

Trivia: Following the British evacuation of Philadelphia in 1778 the city estimated property damages and theft during the nine-month occupation to amount to £187,000. Source: Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris --- The Rake Who Wrote The Constitution, Richard Brookhiser.

Currently Reading: Weird Tales, Editor Marvin Kaye.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

For some reason, the image that comes to mind is of a dancer on stage - they're permitted to see almost everything, but there is an inviolable separation between the audience and performer.

So, um. Yes.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Mm, that's an interesting interpretation of it. I could see that.

I'm reassured that we've gone a while without any catastrophic reports, at least. But I'd like at least glimpses of the raw data.

[lexomatic.livejournal.com]

Has your boss ever programmed himself been a programmer written end-user programs? If not, he may not understand that debugging requires a precise description of the symptoms. Is he familiar with the game of "Telephone" and its inevitable distortions?

(Similarly, auto mechanics are probably driven to distraction by customers who say, "There's a noise somewhere in the front, maybe in the wheel well but I'm not sure; sort of a clunk or thud but I can't tell because I always play the radio, loudly; and it happens when I stop, or possibly when I turn left.")

To commiserate, I can barely get one of my bosses to admit that, when he alters our mission-critical systems, he should tell the rest of us. "The SQL query for QA has changed" or "You can now run QA through the web interface" or "In the time we've spent arguing about how you're too busy to write the two-line email, you could've written the two-line email." I finally volunteered myself to research and summarize all the changes he's made and then notify the group. (Hmmm. This may've been his cunning plan because he's very complimentary about my ability to translate/improve his written drafts.)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

He certainly has programmed himself --- I don't think there's any job in the company he's not experienced at, which is the sort of thing you do see in small businesses and makes his steadily erratic attitude easier to take --- and even managed to find and fix some Windows Networking issue substantial enough that he earned a lifetime golden ticket off of Microsoft back in the day. It's just he's ... well, he's got way too many projects going on, and way too many things to distract him, and that encourages a natural flightiness that results in erratic and half-formed messages written at 4:18 am that you have a 60 percent chance of being able to safely ignore.

I have had critical items changed out from under me, but that's been mostly they decided to relocate stuff from one server to another, particularly in the IP addresses. It gave me the chance to go downstairs and growl at everyone, the boss included, to not change things without telling me, and made me consider the value of bringing in a cricket bat. Nobody would get the reference, but the bat would have its value.