The shoe store I managed had a manual. I kept it in the lower left-hand desk drawer. The general manager on his tour of all 52 stores informed me that the manual was supposed to occupy pride of place on the desk. I told him that:
a) I preferred common sense and:
b) I used the desk surface for actual paperwork, i.e. stock orders, sales receipts/daily reconciliation, and payroll.
Yup. This was way back in the day when paperwork involved actual paper. I had already begun my two weeks' notice so I figured I had nothing to lose by being honest. I even wrote out my resignation by hand on a sheet of paper using that clutter-free desktop.
RE Coming up with believable names: I write code as a hobby, and I struggle to come up with good variable and function names. I end up naming everything after Witcher characters. My program texts read like bad Witcher fan fiction, but if you run them, you can play a crappy game of Solitaire.
RE Situations not covered by the manual: Matthew Crawford's book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, described how employers intended to eliminate highly paid employees before AI came along and tried to oust everyone. Everything in a particular field, such as Crawford's trade of motorcycle repair, would be reduced to procedures expressed in grade school level language and printed in manuals. Thinking would be eliminated. Just follow the Bible! (of motorcycle maintenance) or the Holy Grail! (of box store management.) Like a good wage slave showing deference to his corporate overlords, Crawford attempted a repair using a manual. The manual said "First, remove the cover from the whatsit." According to the manual, if the thingamajingy wasn't working, the whatsit was the first thing to check, hence, the necessity of removing the cover. The problem is that on that particular motorcycle, the screws holding that cover on are rusted in place more often than not, so the whatsit is typically the last thing experienced mechanics check. They can examine the gogguzzler, the snoofpoodle and the whippitgud in less time than it would take to get one of the screws out of the cover. Manuals didn't eliminate the need for thought. They simply demonstrated that the people who compiled them had never burdened themselves with thinking things through.
What does a function named "snoofpoodle" do? What does a variable named "whippitgud" stand for? If you know, you are better at this garbage than I am.
I wrote mutually recursive functions named Triss and Ciri, after two Witcher characters, for a script I added to an image editor I use. I cannot remember what the functions do unless I look at the code and try to figure out what in the hell I was thinking. More descriptive names would be helpful.
When I was learning to write code in C, I wrote a program that converts Fahrenheit to Celsius, a standard, classic exercise. I called the function that does the computation "doesMath." This vague function name was fine for a program that converts temperatures and nothing else. It became problematic when I wrote a reverse Polish notation calculator and wrote my own square root, quadratic and trig functions. Calling everything "doesMath" didn't work. I have trouble being specific.
You got caught up in my need to pontificate. While I was blathering about variable and function names, I was supposed to be writing something else and found myself procrastinating. My apologies.
I come from the time before cassettes and have been through all the stages of (so called) improvement. From vinyl to cassettes, from cassettes to cds, from cds to streaming, from streaming to ? The current trend seems to be back to vinyl but our record player doesn’t work and we don’t want to buy a new one. We don’t have cassettes anymore, just a sad, lonely dual cassette player that gets no love anymore. Same for the cd players we have. The one bright spot is our dvd player that like yours gets used occasionally to play old movies without the interminable commercials.
I played with an 8 track once. With the push of a button, I could go from the middle of the song that was playing to the middle of another song. The controls were confusing and I couldn’t quite figure it out. At least the cases were more durable.
Thanks for making the Penny-Berle sibling situation clear. In the first strip I thought Vickie was saying something uplifting about the brotherhood of man (Be kind to one another! We’re all brothers and sisters!) Now I understand why Berle is still employed.
I was listening to some music on my iPhone that I realized I still had on CD. Trouble is, I have no good way to play CDs anymore. May have to fix that…
Yes, I have CD's, DVD's, etc, but we also have Disney plus, Amazon prime, and Plex.
My wife watches the streamers, she's rewatched the first 3 seasons of Will Trent in the last week in preparation for it arriving on Disney plus (and is extremely annoyed that despite it looking like it should be the whole 4th series only 3 area available currently.)
And me? When I get the house to myself I watch the discs because if I try doing it if she's home you can guarantee she will either need to talk about something else or ask questions "who's that?", "what's happened?", etc.
Yet, if I try that if she's watching something....
Reading is also an advertisement for people to start talking to you. There must be some school of etiquette that trains its students to talk about anything trivial the moment they see a book.
You can still buy them at Walmart. I know this because I played with one until I accidentally broke a button. I occasionally do this sort of quality testing as a pubic service.
Having lived in several countries and having bought DVDs 'en masse' in those languages, I now had to realise with great regret that I won't be able to watch those DVDs, reading the several hundreds of books any longer as my eyesight is so minimal that I can't be bothered. Our radio/cd/cassette desk sits sad and disregarded in a corner of the living room, because I can't get my favourite radio stations any longer, can't be bothered to exchange and put in my CDs and don't own any cassettes any more. I've brought my 800+ DVDs, hundreds of books, dozens of CDs, most DVDs still priced and in original packaging, because I always thought 'when I'll have the time, I'll watch/read them' - all and sundry to various charity shops. Only to those who accept things in E/F witout G subtitles, of course..... Manuals were written before YT videos and IKEA and such get by with raw drawings nobody understands - just like manuals.
In my experience, a manager “leaving suddenly for new experiences” is corporate for “we caught him stealing but we can’t legally say that because the case is still pending.”
I’ve seen several of those as well, but my region of the world is cheerfully called a “dumpster fire” by retailers. Some stores have a don’t blink policy so you don’t miss the current manager in charge.
I get DVDs from thrift stores all the time, & completely agree: it seems ridiculous that we got rid of expensive cable to save money only now to “watch tv” we now pay for internet provider so we can pay to subscribe (pay) to streaming service provider and then have to subscribe (pay) to multiple individual apps to watch a few good shows and pay a premium for “no ads” (which used to be what paid for all of the above!) Don’t get me started on cell service and the price of “unlimited data”!
Mad men was one of those series I couldn't believe they were made. Loved watching and shaking my head until I got neck problems..... I'd watch them however again, doing Sudoku or Binoxxo or something at the same time. Same goes for Suits. Too American for me - but great fun to view. And yes, I bought whole series, at full prize, I was that crazy (and lived in other countries, and had no TV, hence no subs to those channels). One series however will never be dated, is Downton Abbey, because already it plays in a gone-by time but also because it shows good old England's best homes, fantastic landscapes, fab costumes, fancy scenes!
The shoe store I managed had a manual. I kept it in the lower left-hand desk drawer. The general manager on his tour of all 52 stores informed me that the manual was supposed to occupy pride of place on the desk. I told him that:
a) I preferred common sense and:
b) I used the desk surface for actual paperwork, i.e. stock orders, sales receipts/daily reconciliation, and payroll.
Yup. This was way back in the day when paperwork involved actual paper. I had already begun my two weeks' notice so I figured I had nothing to lose by being honest. I even wrote out my resignation by hand on a sheet of paper using that clutter-free desktop.
I think Post It notes are perfect for resignation letters.
Post It Partings? (PIPs for the acronymically-inclined.)
Imagine: “you can take my resignation and stick it!”
“Need coffee filters in break room. Also, I quit.”
🤣 "lemme see. Yep. That covers everything."
Or the traditional “big turd left on the boss’s desk (either from an animal outside or, y’know, something more personal).”
RE Coming up with believable names: I write code as a hobby, and I struggle to come up with good variable and function names. I end up naming everything after Witcher characters. My program texts read like bad Witcher fan fiction, but if you run them, you can play a crappy game of Solitaire.
RE Situations not covered by the manual: Matthew Crawford's book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, described how employers intended to eliminate highly paid employees before AI came along and tried to oust everyone. Everything in a particular field, such as Crawford's trade of motorcycle repair, would be reduced to procedures expressed in grade school level language and printed in manuals. Thinking would be eliminated. Just follow the Bible! (of motorcycle maintenance) or the Holy Grail! (of box store management.) Like a good wage slave showing deference to his corporate overlords, Crawford attempted a repair using a manual. The manual said "First, remove the cover from the whatsit." According to the manual, if the thingamajingy wasn't working, the whatsit was the first thing to check, hence, the necessity of removing the cover. The problem is that on that particular motorcycle, the screws holding that cover on are rusted in place more often than not, so the whatsit is typically the last thing experienced mechanics check. They can examine the gogguzzler, the snoofpoodle and the whippitgud in less time than it would take to get one of the screws out of the cover. Manuals didn't eliminate the need for thought. They simply demonstrated that the people who compiled them had never burdened themselves with thinking things through.
Snoofpoodle and whippitgud? And you are bad at variable names?
What does a function named "snoofpoodle" do? What does a variable named "whippitgud" stand for? If you know, you are better at this garbage than I am.
I wrote mutually recursive functions named Triss and Ciri, after two Witcher characters, for a script I added to an image editor I use. I cannot remember what the functions do unless I look at the code and try to figure out what in the hell I was thinking. More descriptive names would be helpful.
When I was learning to write code in C, I wrote a program that converts Fahrenheit to Celsius, a standard, classic exercise. I called the function that does the computation "doesMath." This vague function name was fine for a program that converts temperatures and nothing else. It became problematic when I wrote a reverse Polish notation calculator and wrote my own square root, quadratic and trig functions. Calling everything "doesMath" didn't work. I have trouble being specific.
I just thought they were funny. I wouldn’t use them in a program either, especially if someone else would need to update it later.
You got caught up in my need to pontificate. While I was blathering about variable and function names, I was supposed to be writing something else and found myself procrastinating. My apologies.
I come from the time before cassettes and have been through all the stages of (so called) improvement. From vinyl to cassettes, from cassettes to cds, from cds to streaming, from streaming to ? The current trend seems to be back to vinyl but our record player doesn’t work and we don’t want to buy a new one. We don’t have cassettes anymore, just a sad, lonely dual cassette player that gets no love anymore. Same for the cd players we have. The one bright spot is our dvd player that like yours gets used occasionally to play old movies without the interminable commercials.
You forgot 8 track!
I played with an 8 track once. With the push of a button, I could go from the middle of the song that was playing to the middle of another song. The controls were confusing and I couldn’t quite figure it out. At least the cases were more durable.
We used to have it built-in in our car. Circa 1970 or so.
Thanks for making the Penny-Berle sibling situation clear. In the first strip I thought Vickie was saying something uplifting about the brotherhood of man (Be kind to one another! We’re all brothers and sisters!) Now I understand why Berle is still employed.
Berle is still employed because of a genie that came out of his beer bottle. I try to rerun that strip every so often.
Ohhh, got it. Some people just have a genie to take care of them. The rest of us, not so much.
I’m with you on the home dog owner!
We’re behind the times in Scotland where the machines don’t speak to us (neither do we much, come to think of it)
One more reason Scotland is such a great place.
Ehh, we've been watching you good folks in Boston during the World Cup. You LOVE talking to people!
I was listening to some music on my iPhone that I realized I still had on CD. Trouble is, I have no good way to play CDs anymore. May have to fix that…
I know an animator who bought a digital copy of a movie because he didn’t want to dig through his DVDs to find it. It’s a funny world we live in.
2024 Outbacks have CD players hidden in the middle section.
My car might have one, too. But CDs are best listened to in the dark with good headphones and even better whiskey. Can’t do that in a car.
Sure you can. Just bring a Walkman and leave the keys in your pocket.
Walkman? I haven’t seen a working Walkman in decades.
But alas, Scott--have you been looking? 5 bucks says in the next 90 days you'll see TWO!
As I recall, we’re actually talking about the Diskman. The Walkman played cassette tapes.
Yes, I have CD's, DVD's, etc, but we also have Disney plus, Amazon prime, and Plex.
My wife watches the streamers, she's rewatched the first 3 seasons of Will Trent in the last week in preparation for it arriving on Disney plus (and is extremely annoyed that despite it looking like it should be the whole 4th series only 3 area available currently.)
And me? When I get the house to myself I watch the discs because if I try doing it if she's home you can guarantee she will either need to talk about something else or ask questions "who's that?", "what's happened?", etc.
Yet, if I try that if she's watching something....
Reading is also an advertisement for people to start talking to you. There must be some school of etiquette that trains its students to talk about anything trivial the moment they see a book.
What is Plex?
Anybody can download the app, and a family member uses it to share episodes of shows that haven't got to the UK yet.
Why, yes! I still own CDs. And DVDs. And vinyl records. And somewhere, I still have a box of factory recorded cassettes.
Now, if only I still had a player for the cassettes...I'm literally jonesing to hear that Ethel & the Shameless Hussies tape.
You can still buy them at Walmart. I know this because I played with one until I accidentally broke a button. I occasionally do this sort of quality testing as a pubic service.
Well, if you don't test to destruction, you're not testing properly, right? :D
Having lived in several countries and having bought DVDs 'en masse' in those languages, I now had to realise with great regret that I won't be able to watch those DVDs, reading the several hundreds of books any longer as my eyesight is so minimal that I can't be bothered. Our radio/cd/cassette desk sits sad and disregarded in a corner of the living room, because I can't get my favourite radio stations any longer, can't be bothered to exchange and put in my CDs and don't own any cassettes any more. I've brought my 800+ DVDs, hundreds of books, dozens of CDs, most DVDs still priced and in original packaging, because I always thought 'when I'll have the time, I'll watch/read them' - all and sundry to various charity shops. Only to those who accept things in E/F witout G subtitles, of course..... Manuals were written before YT videos and IKEA and such get by with raw drawings nobody understands - just like manuals.
In my experience, a manager “leaving suddenly for new experiences” is corporate for “we caught him stealing but we can’t legally say that because the case is still pending.”
I’ve seen several of those as well, but my region of the world is cheerfully called a “dumpster fire” by retailers. Some stores have a don’t blink policy so you don’t miss the current manager in charge.
I loved all these!
I don't use them very often, but mostly the movies I can no longer get without more subscriptions.
I get DVDs from thrift stores all the time, & completely agree: it seems ridiculous that we got rid of expensive cable to save money only now to “watch tv” we now pay for internet provider so we can pay to subscribe (pay) to streaming service provider and then have to subscribe (pay) to multiple individual apps to watch a few good shows and pay a premium for “no ads” (which used to be what paid for all of the above!) Don’t get me started on cell service and the price of “unlimited data”!
It’s now a more complicated system to just have the cable TV that we got rid of. Progress!
Mad men was one of those series I couldn't believe they were made. Loved watching and shaking my head until I got neck problems..... I'd watch them however again, doing Sudoku or Binoxxo or something at the same time. Same goes for Suits. Too American for me - but great fun to view. And yes, I bought whole series, at full prize, I was that crazy (and lived in other countries, and had no TV, hence no subs to those channels). One series however will never be dated, is Downton Abbey, because already it plays in a gone-by time but also because it shows good old England's best homes, fantastic landscapes, fab costumes, fancy scenes!
Downton Abbey (a name to forever challenge autocorrect) was also a dollar.
Wonderful as always
Kiki, that made me sad a little. . .