Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • They’re back! They’re back! I

    I made it to BWI in record time (75 minutes), waited around in a terminal chock full of people waiting to go somewhere exotic. They were all wearing clothes too big or too small, and there were several large women in their Sunday best. Everyone spoke different languages and it was kind of fun waiting around for 45 minutes listening to all the conversations.

    They finally appeared and… it was great. We rushed down baggage claim and waited for the bags to show up. Max now knows “big” and “little” and pointed out all the “little o’s” and “big o’s” on our SmartCarte. We piled into the car and headed home, which we made in about an hour (amazing, ain’t it, when you consider our first trip to the airport).

    Max was so happy to be home. He jumped his big jumps, made “Max’s House” with the couch cushions and was his normal happy, adorable little self. The best part is that he learned new words like rascal, hiyakka, patui, etc. Grandma Lang also taught him some songs! We sang Twinkle, Twinkle on the way home and he knows all the words. For Max, a song is more like a Spalding Gray monologue, but it’s still really funny.

    I wanted to take today off… but here I am.

  • Missing

    With less than twenty-four hours before Jen and Max get back, I am starting to go a little crazy. I’m sitting here on the couch at eleven pm without my pants (because there are only so many hours in a day – where are my Playtex 18-Hour Pants?). I’m watching SportsCenter and surfing after putting a filing cabinet together, changing all the burned out lightbulbs on the second floor, and cleaning up so the house is ready for them to come home tomorrow.

    It’s been weird, being alone for two weeks. I’ve been too sick to actually do anything fun. I was going to hang out with the guys from work and go to Happy Hour. Instead, I slept, watched a lot of movies, coughed up many-colored lucky charms, and worked my butt off. Not as hard as some, as there are a couple people who worked on that huge project who were at work for three days straight, which I am in awe of. I just pulled six 12 hours days in two weeks with a raging sinus infection and some weird stomach flu.

    Yesterday, this lady I work with was at my desk talking about search reporting stuff (an extremely intoxicating topic… OH MY the fun involved in reporting). We were testing something out, so I searched for “Lawver” and voila, Max’s page came up. We went and looked at pictures, because she wanted to see what he looked like. It was hard not to cry when looking at him. I don’t think she caught on or even noticed. He is beautiful in those pictures: happy and excited looking at all the animals. I miss him more than I’ve ever missed anything.

    And then there’s Jen. Once you’ve learned to sleep in the bed with someone else, sleeping in an empty bed is tough. Sleeping in an empty house is even harder. The novelty of going to the bathroom with the door open and walking around the house late at night with the lights on and TV on loud gets old after a couple days. I’d much rather have a munchkin running around pulling on hands pleading for the pullee to follow him on whatever adventure comes next. I’d rather have a wife who holds my hand on the couch and laughs at my jokes.

    Come on home guys, I cleaned up and everything. I even promise I’ll wear pants at the airport.

  • Ok, Britney, you’re at the

    Ok, Britney, you’re at the top of your game. You’ve got endorsements, rabid pre-teen fans, and hit songs. There’s one thing you’re missing though, in your rise to the top of the media heap. You need a restaurant. Not a Planet Hollywood or Hard Rock over-priced event place, but a real down-home, like your mama used to make restaurant. You could invent a new cuisine, “Nouvelle Cracker” and serve fried balogna in new and fascinating ways. You could call it Britney Spears’ Oops I Fried It Again. It would be a huge hit with those little girls and homosexual men who want to be just like you. Pickled pigs feet on the counter, grilled peanut butter and jelly sam’miches, cheez whiz on crackers, Pepsi products in mason jars. Think of it as a cross between Cracker Barrel and Kenny Rogers’ Roasters (only without the whole bankrupcy thing). It could be huge, baby, huge!

  • I need me some Vietnamese

    I need me some Vietnamese food. I need it bad. Guys, lunch, tomorrow? Saigon Cafe? Come on, you know you want some fried spring rolls. You neeeeed them almost as much as I do.

    You need the pork with funny noodles. The perfectly barbecued pork slices on top of thin rice noodles, covered in chopped peanuts. The crunchy carrot strings and bean sprouts. You want that little splorch of hot sauce in the corner of the bowl to dip the pork into and for a nice bite at the bottom of the bowl when you go to finish up your noodles. It’s like crack, I tell you.

  • I laughed, and laughed. Man,

    I laughed, and laughed. Man, Steve Ballmer is nothing if not entertaining.

  • Save Time Now, Waste Money Later

    I’ve been working on a theory for a few weeks that you all probably know already. I want to share it just in case you don’t. There seem to be many people where I work who just don’t get it even when I use small words and exaggerated hand gestures. I even drew a diagram with stick people and arrows. I think I even used multicolored white board markers. Yes, it was pageantry and sophistication all rolled together in the round mound of me.

    Equipment: The boxes and software that will run your site, tool, database, whatever.
    Backend Programming: Writing stored procedures for the database, setting up data sources, creating daemons, etc.
    Webserver Integration: Hooking up the backend systems to the webserver and writing procedures and/or functions to surface them to the webserver.
    Frontend Integration: Using the stuff written by the previous step to build the actual pages returned to the user.
    Users: Ummm, they use it. The “intended audience”, if you will.

    I bet you’re wonder what this theory is now, huh? I’m getting there, just hold on. I work on some very large projects involving many different groups. The flow is in a lovely table to the right. The problem is that if the system involves daily interaction with employers, or worse, the general public, any steps you’ve taken to cut corners that make the product less usable will ultimately cost you more more in time and money than if you had just done it right the first time. Every hack that the person after you has to create in order to get code to work is a waste of time and money. Every useless step a user has to do to accomplish the purpose is wasted time that gets compounded by the fact that there are probably many more users than there are programmers. It’s even worse if this is a consumer site. If it doesn’t work, or is difficult to use, they won’t use it at all, and it will really be a waste.

    Cost-cutting measures during development made in the sake of saving time or money save neither. Every mistake made that isn’t fixed wastes the time of the next person to work on the project. If the next step involves multiple people, you’ve multiplied that waste by the number of people who have to compensate. No matter how much your backend developers make, it’s not enough to justify wasting the time and talent of the people who take over. The same goes for everyone else involved. When building something, do your part right. Talk to the people who will be using what you produce. Let’s say you’re in the webserver integration group and you’re writing something that will be used by 20 people. Talk to them and make sure you’re not doing something that will make them have to work around your product instead of using it as intended.

    This all boils down to usability. The principles of usability don’t go out the door just because it’s software and not a webpage. Writing crappy code because it takes you less time is no excuse. It’s the poorest of excuses because you’ve just inflicted a giant time and money waster on the people who then have to use it. So, think before you code, please? Say it with me: I will not write crappy code. I will do things the right way, deadlines be damned!

  • Do you know who Bela

    Do you know who Bela Fleck is? Should you? Laws, yes you should! He and the Flecktones have been creating amazing music for about ten years now, and show no signs of slowing down. They’ve broken all the laws of their instruments and man, you should just go out right now and buy Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, Live Art, Tales From the Acoustic Planet and Live at the Quick right now and melt into music bliss.

    Other than that, I have nothing to say today that I haven’t said already. Work is really busy and it’s sapping all my creativity.

  • Next stop, flying cars!!

    Next stop, flying cars!!

  • Stumpin’

    I am so tempted. Unfortunately, I can’t because I work for the company that owns HBO, but man would I love it. Every time I think I understand the system, something happens to shake my faith it. This whole thing with Cheney and refusing to turn over documents about the energy taskforce is driving me nuts. I don’t want the energy policy for my country decided in secret after talking to the heads of all the major energy brokers. Everything about government that’s not related to national security should be transparent and out in the open. This wasn’t an RNC meeting. It was a meeting between the Vice President of the United States and people who spent a lot of money on his campaign (not just his, but several). The American people have a right to know what decision lead to the policies that are inflicted on us. It’s the only way we can make informed decisions about who to vote for and what to support.

    My favorite part of the administration’s argument is the need for “unvarnished” advice. You’ll never get “unvarnished” advice from a CEO for a company you’re about to set a regulatory policy for. The argument is thinner than Calista Flockhart. You’ll never get completely objective advice from anyone who’s actually involved or affected by a policy. The only way to come to an semi-objective conclusion is to take all of the subjective advice, compare it to the available facts and proceed with a course of action.

    I have to actually get work done now, but I’ll come back to this topic at some point, I’m sure.

  • Lazy Saturday

    I’m going to spend today recouperating. I think, if I wake up, I’ll go get some pork with funny noodle at Saigon Cafe, and go see SuperTroopers.

    This being alone thing is really starting to suck. The novelty of going to the bathroom with the door open and playing video games with the volume way up. Then, I realized that if I really wanted to, I could do that when Jen and Max are here. I need to find something to do with myself for the next ten days. There are only so many movies to rent and TiVo one guy can watch. Now that I’m starting to feel better, I can leave the house even!