What are you supposed to be doing right now at work?

Translating some powerpoint presentation to some roundtable on pork products on regulations for farm buildings in Ontario. Smelly business and not quite my specialty.

Writing a RESTful API for a Peoplesoft enterprise system. Then I need to configure a flow on a Mulesoft ESB to consume the API and post some JSON to a remote centralized UC hub. None of the business logic is mapped, so I'm winging it until I get specs.

That's the medium-term task.

Immediate term is to fix a few bugs in a couple of PHP apps & fix some crappy SQL in an old PL/SQL block. Just got done writing a one-off job to decrypt some SSNs for some folks who set up an encryption but never got around to the other half of the setup (idiots).

Frohike wrote: Writing a RESTful API for a Peoplesoft enterprise system. Then I need to configure a flow on a Mulesoft ESB to consume the API and post some JSON to a remote centralized UC hub. None of the business logic is mapped, so I'm winging it until I get specs.

Are you one of those programmers who complains that he doesn't have specs.... then when he GETS specs, he totally ignores them and does whatever he wants? Because EVERY programmer I've EVER met is like that.

Trying to replicate the statistical models of a paper that got accepted on Google takedown requests. Since the project has been kicking around for 4 years, that means figuring out what the fuck I was thinking in my documentation like 3 years ago. It's all a haze.

Black Barney wrote: Mad dog, I wrote a paper to the regulators up here that they published on their website on better ways to measure risk for mutual funds specifically for the purpose of assigning risk ratings. Yay advocacy.

I used to know a guy here that had to do the work of assigning risk ratings. Looked super boring but he did some pretty robust spreadsheets to support the findings. I was happy to see someone was taking that seriously since it's important even though I never look at risk ratings when choosing or recommending funds

These are for internal purposes and I don't use any spreadsheets. Its mostly reading annual reports and prospectuses then filling info into software that spits out a rating.

Joebot wrote: I'm supposed to be writing Online Help for a big UI update for our flagship software product. Aaaaand ... I'm here instead.

How did people waste time at work before the Internet??

Affairs, casual boozing.

I'm supposed to be designing a bunch of pages for all these tabloid circulars ads that are due tomorrow at noon, but they haven't even been assigned to the designers yet ...

Joebot wrote:

Frohike wrote: Writing a RESTful API for a Peoplesoft enterprise system. Then I need to configure a flow on a Mulesoft ESB to consume the API and post some JSON to a remote centralized UC hub. None of the business logic is mapped, so I'm winging it until I get specs.

Are you one of those programmers who complains that he doesn't have specs.... then when he GETS specs, he totally ignores them and does whatever he wants? Because EVERY programmer I've EVER met is like that.

I was in the weird position of not really needing specs when I started because I had transitioned over to the programming job from the office that I would end up supporting, so I usually helped the business analyst get up to speed and they would eventually write up specs for their own documentation.

Then the IT culture started to get more strict and eventually mired in a "waterfall" SDLC rut, and the work wouldn't even come to me until my boss had a spec. That really slowed stuff down, and it sucked for everyone involved. That culture eventually deteriorated back to the state that I'm more accustomed to. Now if I get a problem to solve (almost always without a spec), I meet a couple of times with the business unit and we cocktail napkin a solution, then I write something. They test it and ask for some tweaks and start building out a real spec. Then we publish and document. It requires the programmers to know their customers and take on some of the business analyst tasks, but I'm fine with that. But, yeah, this doesn't sit well with some of the more traditionally trained programmers here who just like to get their spec and work from there.

I'm supposed to be moving 40,000 pounds of lumber from the edge of the known universe (Maine north of Bangor) to the middle of nowhere New York but due to poor dispatching I have to wait until tomorrow to get loaded so I'm in the sleeper berth wondering if I'll have to put my shoes back on an venture out in this god awful cold and walk across the snow swept parking lot to take a piss in this rest stop's public bathroom or if my prostrate still has enough strength for me to hold it until dawn....or if I should say fuck it and just piss in the empty water bottle and be done with it.

Livin' the dream.

Packing stationary product into boxes.

JonJacob wrote: ...truth is, things are slow here right now and there isn't much to do.

Especially now since I'm not there to kick your ass in Samurai.

Sorry, back to the original question:

Kicking JJ's ass in a game of Samurai.

I'm mostly freelance/self-employed so I get to do whatever I want. However, what I should be doing is this:

1. Write jokes for a stand-up show I'm doing at a festival in Leicester next month. But it's about geek stuff, so this is sort of like researching.
2. Prepare a show I have tonight.
3. Write boring texts for a game about leading volunteers. It's not difficult and it probably won't take long, but it's a small task I promised to do for a company that has already paid me, so I'm not overly motivated.

A crap ton of work just got dropped on me. Three pages of a direct mail piece to design, two of which have multiple versions and seven emails to make corrections to or release as the primary email designer isn't coming in today.