This is just neat stuff. Picture link opens the washingtonpost.com article.
It’s inevitable that one will make mistakes while doing whatever it is they do for their job.
However, take situation A:
Harry America is working on Joe Customer’s old car. Harry needs to perform maintenance on Joe’s carburetor. While monkeying with the fuel jet, Harry drops the nut that holds the carburetor together down the manifold into the engine block. Harry is, for the most part, screwed. He really should have taken the carburetor off the manifold before working on it. Harry does, however, have possible retribution for the mistake, however ugly and time consuming it is.
…now, compare situation A to situation B:
Matt…err, we’ll call him Max. Max Henderson, the mighty IT administrator. Max is making adjustments to Joe Important’s database systems, where the database importantdb is chugging away, doing important things which Joe relies on 24 hours a day.
Max is given the charge to expand Joe’s empire and creates the database importantdb2:
create database importantdb2;
A few minutes later, it is concluded that importantdb2 should be somewhere else, not on the same system as importantdb.
So, Max removes importantdb2:
drop database importantdb;2
..whoops! Max was typing too fast and made a small error. It should have been:
drop database importantdb2;
The result of the misplaced semicolon instantly trashes Joe Important’s extremely valuable database. Weeping and gnashing of teeth occur. Max prepares for seppuku. Max is, without a doubt, completely and utterly screwed. He really should have been typing a bit more carefully. There is no chance for retribution.
…
I should have been a mechanic.
Out of the awesome gifts I got for Christmas, including some fuzzy socks, a multi function ladder, Thing Hands, and Goodfellas on DVD, I got these items of massive cheers:
The complete Calvin & Hobbes
I was actually not aware of when the series started (1985). I have been wanting an archive of C&H for as long as I’ve read the comic, and now I’ve got it! I win! The quality of this collection is absolutely stunning. The weight of the paper, the binding work, the coloring, and the layout (each comic’s original run date are footnoted on each page) are all top notch… I suppose it would have to be that way, considering most, if not all of this collection could be generated by way of the component books we’ve seen for years. Best comic EVER.
The Tivoli Model One
I won’t talk much about this one. Have a listen to one to hear what I mean. This is by far the best built, nicest looking, and best sounding radio of its class. Thank you, Corryn!
This place is a good one to statically bring up neat Firefox widgets I come across and use.
The latest one I’ve found to be invaluable is ‘Viamatic foXpose‘ which lets you hit the shortcut it makes in the bottom left of the frame or hit Ctrl Shift X, which brings up a navigation menu full of whatever tabs you have open in your particular browser window.
It’s pretty great. If you use Firefox, you should try it. If you don’t use the browser yet (v1.5 just recently released!), then try Firefox itself first.
I’ve turned up a LOGD (legend of the green dragon) game on my webserver. I have named it ‘Sauloth’ (eventually I’ll configure this to be the name of the endgame dragon thinger.).
Find it here. The keys underlined on the left are actually keyboard hotkeys; you rarely have to click.