We’ll have AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) when the AI responds with either “I don’t feel like it. What am I? A dog doing tricks?” or “I don’t know, let me google that and get back to you.”
Quip
Fields of red flags
When you get asked to explain the three month gap in your work history that is on your LinkedIn profile but not your C.V.
From 27 years ago.
I used to do stand-up and improv comedy, and got heckled quite a bit, and got pretty good with off-the-cuff comebacks.
“It just seems rather a long time for a software developer to be out of work these days.” she said.
“Yes, I was waiting for my visa approval so I could emmigrate to the US but thank you for the red flag. Imma put it over here with all the other red flags you’ve given me so far. A few more and it will look like a field of poppies where this job interview will go to die.”
“Wow!” she said.
“I know, it was a pretty good comeback wasn’t it? I’m actually impressed with myself.”
“That is just… wow! So… unprofessional.” she said.
“And that concludes the interview. Thank you for taking the time to see me today.”
Invoking patient law
NFTs of images are the equivalent of two children on the playground shouting “You can’t say my words back to me, I copyrighted them!” and the other kid screaming “Yeah? Well I trademarked them!”
Hung for sheep as for a lamb
Thinking about robbing a computer store and stealing a GPU as it will be cheaper to cover bail than pay a scalper.
Dance for me little animal! Dance!
My wife was playing with the cat earlier today but had to take a phone call from a friend in the middle of playing.
“Aw, Mao looks so unhappy and unfulfilled” my wife opined once Mao realised that the game was over and there was no more dancing cat toy to chase.
“Much like your current and past husbands then.” I responded.
Mo’ money. Mo’ problems.
I’m working on my third fortune because the other two weren’t large enough to handle my poor decision making process aspirations.
Robotic Overlords
Jura J9.
The future of robotics is powered either by pornography or caffeine.
The Lloyd moves in mysterious ways
Jesus may love you but the Lloyd doesn’t have to.
The Lloyd Giveth, And The Lloyd Taketh Away
Every man comes to the Lloyd in his own way.
Jamie Hyneman in a small beret
Sat on a flight heading to SF yesterday to meet with a client when a tall, middle-aged gentleman sits down at the seat in front of us. He had a certain resemblance to a Mythbuster (though he wasn’t), and a glorious walrus moustache.
“It’s Jamie Hyneman in a very small beret.” I utter quietly to nobody in particular.
The gentleman in the seat next to me responds “Dude… he’s Jewish.”
“Oh.”
*slow count to ten in my head*
“I didn’t know Jamie Hyneman was Jewish.” I said.
At which point, a few people lost it.
Alias this!
There are so many Ruby gems that are almost exactly like, and so many functions with aliases within the Ruby standard libraries that there is serious danger of someone releasing a Ruby gem that is just an alias of Ruby itself.
Too soon? Too hot?
With the passing of Glenn Frey of the Eagles, and such a crappy start to 2016, I guess for celebrity deaths, you could say…
“The heat is on.”
(⌐▨_▨)
Too soon?
We Were All Delusional Children Once
“I grew up after the internet was invented, so of course I know more about computers than you do.” said the 15-yr old.
“Oh you poor delusional child, you have much to learn…”
Woodworkers of the wasteland
If you refer to yourself as a “whisperer” in the sense of an being an authority and expert on a subject, and you proceed to attempt to educate me with your books, videos, online tutorials and other things that will make money, the last thing I want to read, after your many years of professing expertise is “this will be my first time making a piece of fine furniture and using mortise and tenon joints.”
/facepalm
The internet woodworking wasteland = Kreg pocket jigs as far as the eye can see.
Cheapened Wit
You cheapen my British sardonic wit by mistaking it for your imitation American sarcasm.
Is Unreal Programming Like Not Real Programming
Informing me that what I do “isn’t real woodworking” because I use power tools is the equivalent of telling me that what I do “isn’t real programming” because I use a compiler.
Your mother is so fat that she requires a specially designed iPad stand…
Watched the Apple keynote yesterday where the Apple iPad Pro was announced. My immediate thought was “Girl, you got fat. Mmm hmm.”
P.S. I never was much good at “Yo Mama” jokes.
Mounted Olympus
My wife treats me like a God.
She ignores me and everything I have to say until she wants something.
Youth is over-rated
It’s always amusing to me when someone states “Demographic X knows more about technology Y (usually social media or video games) because they are younger.”
And I think, “Oh really? That’s interesting because whilst I and my colleagues were building and creating technology Y, it appears that demographic X were still, quite literally, shitting in their diaper.”
You might as well be telling me that the youth of today understand and appreciate coffee more for the simple reason is they grew up with a Starbucks on every corner.
You don’t stop understanding technology because you got old.
You stop understanding because you stopped being curious and you stopped learning.
The Fedora is mightier than the pen
To enumerate the privations of social media is to attempt to enumerate the travesty (not tragedy) of the commons.
It would be an attempt to defend yourself against every Fedora-wearing critic with a correction pen.
Not a profitable endeavour
I don’t let my wife work with more non-profits than I have World of Warcraft accounts.
As I have reduced the number of World of Warcraft accounts to just five, there are some very disappointed people running non-profits.
Going down?
Since getting married I feel like my home maintenance to do list has become like the Titanic.
I keep wishing my wife were evacuating as part of “women and children first” so I can actually have some silence and think quietly for a minute.
$10 words to describe a two-bit idiot
I’m sorry you don’t like the words that I am using, but just because your vocabulary stopped developing when you left the playground doesn’t mean everyone else’s did.
Pedantic oaths
No pedant (worth his moniker) ever said “I tried but I didn’t feel like commenting.”
Overflowin
“Can you help me debug this?” ask my colleague.
“Sure.” I said, I browsed through his code, “Jesus Christ, where did you steal this code from?”
“Stackoverflow” he responded.
I stared at the code a bit more.
“The question? Or the answers?” I asked.
Burrrrrnnnn!
What’s the safe word?
Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t hold a candle to the masochism fix I get from coming to work every Monday.
You shall be remembered
Your name still comes up at work when something goes horribly wrong and nobody wants to take the blame it.
Facebooked
Somedays I wish I worked at Facebook so it never looked like I was procrastinating
Pick Two
You can have it small, fast, understandable.
Pick two.
Cats!
Cats are highly efficient machines for converting food in to sleep.
How About Malicious Stupidity?
“Never attribute to malicious intent that which can be explained by stupidity.”
Except for when it comes to tech recruiters screwing with your resume.
Then all bets are off.
Fuck those guys.
Uncomfortably relaxing
I was trying to explain to a family friend that giving my girlfriend a shoulder massage to calm her down after a stressful committee meeting was “not manipulating her emotions.”
“For fuck’s sake, why do you think everything I do for my wife makes me a masagonist?”
My brain was thinking “giving my girlfriend a massage does not make me a misogynist.”
Nice portmanteau.
Socially awkward
I was hanging out at my favourite coffee place on Market Street in SF earlier today.
There was a well dressed young man sat there staring out the window.
No laptop.
No phone.
Nothing.
Just sat there.
Quietly drinking coffee.
He glanced my way so I quickly averted my eyes and buried my gaze in my iPhone.
It was so fucking weird.
iPhone battery life tip
Here’s a useful tip on how to prolong the battery life on your iPhone.
When you’re talking to me, put your bloody iPhone back in your goddamn pocket.
I shall now prance away!
Come in from the workshop after building some new cabinets and my girlfriend says to me “You’re covered in sawdust!”
And in my most manly of voices I respond “I prefer to call it man glitter! It makes me feel pretty!”
High Def
We were having a philosophical discussion about homophobia, and the different types.
“How do you view lesbians?” asked my girlfriend.
Apparently…
“In 1080p.” is the completely wrong answer to give.
It’s going to be one of those weeks…
The log messages are all red
The screen just turned blue
The backend is down
What the fuck do we do?
Facebook. Walmart. What’s the difference?
Facebook is the Walmart of social media.
Low margins, but lots of customers.
God-like Powers
My clients treat me a like a God.
They take very little notice of me and anything I say until their server stops working and then they pray to the Lloyd that their pleas for a miracle fix are heard.
Silver haired tongue
I have cursed many a young man in Silicon Valley that they be employed so long at one company that they have the opportunity to be a victim of age discrimination when switching jobs.
The Damned Developer’s Dilemma
The log messages are all red
The screen just turned blue
The backend is down
What the fuck do we do?
No longer a joke
This used to be a joke I would make when I was doing console development pre-internet days: “It compiles. Let’s ship it and fix it with a patch.”
Now it is no longer a joke.
But I still use it, don’t ask why…
LinkedIn is the social network of the underemployed.
Planned obsolescence
I whipped up a quick plugin to inject random dates for posting future updates in to my blog posts.
I needed a plugin that would pick a random date between today’s date, and a distant date in the future (about 2 years from now).
The plugin then needed to verify that the date is not already used on another post, and then schedule the new post.
I was showing it off the functionality to a friend when they point out that: “This plugin only has a range that goes up to the year 2200. You figure you’ll be dead by then?”
I thought for a moment and then replied: “No, I just figured some other technology will have replaced WordPress by then.”
Communist Ducks
We don’t need no indirection,
We don’t need no flow control,
No strong typing or declarations,
Hey! You! Leave those ducks alone.
— Title is an historical reference
bar UDP walk into packets two A
I cannot decide if Yoda from Star Wars is suffering from a multithreading race condition or a poorly implemented asynchronous function call.
They grow up so fast
My thoughts turned to politics today and I just realised something…
Monica Lewinsky turns 30 tomorrow.
How fast they grow up.
It seems like only yesterday she was crawling around on her hands and knees, putting everything in her mouth.
Un-adoption option
You should never be afraid to be an early un-adopter.
De Facto Encryption
Sing like no one’s listening.
Dance like nobody’s watching.
Encrypt like everyone is.
Wrong part of time
“Could you fax over a copy of your resume?” asked the HR person working at a major video game company.
“Sorry, because of where I live, we don’t have fax machines.” I responded.
“Really?” She said surprised. “You must live in a pretty backward country. I thought you were in Los Angeles. Where do you live?”
“The 21st century.” I replied.