For some time now /dev/husband has been wanting a ladle. So we finally purchased one. It is hanging on the wall in the kitchen with a lemon in it. I kid ye not. It is now on its second lemon, as the first grew elderly and had to be put to sleep.
From: Bragg, Kathy
Sent: 05 April 2007 11:34
To: $Employer_Global_List
Subject: IT support 12.00-13.00
Hi,
the IT department (me) is going to lunch from 12.00-13.00 today, so if you’re going to break anything, please schedule this for before or after this time. Should anything really disastrous occur, that you think I can help with, please call 0789404**** and summon me back.
Kathy Bragg
Systems Developer
$Employer_Name
I’ve been idly perusing the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and am slightly concerned by one of the provisions:
Duty of person responsible for animal to ensure welfare
(1) A person commits an offence if he does not take such steps as are reasonable in
all the circumstances to ensure that the needs of an animal for which he is
responsible are met to the extent required by good practice.
(2) For the purposes of this Act, an animal’s needs shall be taken to include—
(a) its need for a suitable environment,
(b) its need for a suitable diet,
(c) its need to be able to exhibit normal behaviour patterns,
(d) any need it has to be housed with, or apart from, other animals, and
(e) its need to be protected from pain, suffering, injury and disease.
This concerns me, not because I want to mistreat my cats (although that’s not what *they* say when the Wrong Food has been provided..), but because I’m concerned about part C.
Does this mean that you can no longer keep a cat totally indoors, as that’s hardly normal behaviour for a cat, and what about the fact I put a Liberator collar on her to stop her eating every single baby blackbird she can find? That’s cramping her style somewhat.
While most of the provisions of the Act are long overdue, and much needed, I’m a bit concerned that this puts a little too much power in the paws of my cat. There is insufficient detail as to what constitutes ‘normal’ behaviour. I’ve been careful not to leave the information up on screen in case she sees it and there will be no discussion about it in this house, but I’m worried a neighbour might let slip and then she will be unstoppable. “Yes it’s normal for me to be driving your car, get out of my way puny human.”
I’ve just been sent a copy of the contact list for our major client. Listed within are instructions as to how to navigate the automated switchboard to reach various people.
As some of you may know, I’m in the throes of redesigning the software our company uses to manage its contracts/contacts/operations and stuff. What didn’t occur to me was to build in some facility for storing pathways through switchboards. Maybe I’ll just make the telephone field a bit bigger…
It seems to me that I’ll never be done designing, never mind building - there’s always something that no-one thought to tell me, or that I didn’t question sternly enough what I was told.
This is one of the thoughts that stops me from being self-employed: I’d never be able to get the full picture out of the users, not being fully immersed in the situation, so I’d never be able to design something that matched exactly to what is required and I’d be so fearful of making a shoddy system that I would be quite unable to produce anything at all for fear of it being unhelpful. That tells you too much about me, I suspect.
Having said that, I did spend some time working on a system for a local council, and managed to conquer my fear of producing Bad Things enough to deliver a system that seems to have made them happy. It would be too much to expect *two* such happy outcomes from freelance work..
Maybe I’m just too much of a perfectionist, but everywhere around me I see the results of bad software causing people to have to do daft things and I’d never want to do that to anyone. The infamous doom-system that I babysit here has a screen that I can’t even begin to fathom how to use, and apparently you can’t add more than one entry at a time, you have to close the screen and go back in every time. Personally, that would make me stabby if I have a pile of 50 things to process, but apparently ‘it’s always been like that…’ so it’s okay. No damnit, it’s not okay. If we put up with things like that then standards won’t ever improve.
I learned today that one of the more pleasant and amusing members of our company is off to fulfil her dream of working with her twin sister on her glassworking hobby and hoping to make a business out of it. I’m jealous beyond all measure.
