There’s this co-worker of mine, and to say that he’s mildly interested in UFOs is like saying I’m mildly wearing pants. Sure, I could just forward this link to him about a possible close encounter between some F-16s and a UFO, but I’m going to send him this link instead, which is about some contaminated oysters that killed some people. The news site says that the two stories are “related”, so apparently we have some common interests. How odd.
By sending a link to a co-worker, I can kind of justify the fact that I’m at work on a Sunday, because that’s about the only work related thing I’ve gotten done today. Ok, that’s not entirely true, I did discover a lot of ways not to do something, but doesn’t mean much progress has been made on the actual project. It’ll make for good discussion in the status meeting though: “great news everybody! I’ve 100% ruled out the use of spinning banana graphics! Extensive research has proven that they’re not appropriate for a system with no GUI!” Argh, code drop is tomorrow night.
As I’ve been too busy (or boring) lately, here’s a tale from my mental archives: I was called by a telemarketing firm on Monday, but it was kind of a good call, because they wanted me to come in and be part of a focus group for some banking stuff, and they’d pay me $75 for it. Even better, the meeting would be in the same building as TVA, at the same time as TVA, so I could just slip out for a bit and come back with a wad of cash. Of course, for some strange reason I wasn’t eligible for the job, so the caller was essentially doing what all telemarketers do: wasting my time and making my dinner go cold. Fast forward to Wednesday. I’m on my way to TVA and a guy with a clipboard hops on the escalator behind me. He’s with the same market research company that called Monday, but he has questions about beer. Again, I don’t qualify (I’m not between 30 and 35, so I’m guessing it was something about my Carlsberg years). This is getting ridiculous. I’ve been turned down for two of the, say, five things I know the most about in the same week. It’s payback time. We’re still on the escalator. I start talking to him. He’s got nowhere to go, so he foolishly responds to my questions. By the time we get off the escalator, he’s in a full fledged conversation with me, and he’s realized his error. With every word his eyes are dancing towards his target audience of males aged 30-35 that keep walking by, and he can’t bother them because he doesn’t know how to get out of the social situation I’ve created. Finally he breaks down and just says “I’m sorry, I have to work here”, but he feels really bad about it. I wanted to say “yeah, but I had to eat my dinner Monday and you guys didn’t care about that”, but he was already running away with his tail between his legs. He was still there 3 hours later, but I was too tired to play again.