Burning Agony – Liquid Egg Product

The third stage

March 12, 2016 Liquid Egg Product 2 Comments

Burning Agony, Patently Ineffective, Uncomfortability

So for my job, there are three mental stages I go through when new software needs to be demoed:

1. Despair: Impending sense of doom. There is no way we’ll be ready for production. The scope’s too big, we barely have the resources for an alpha build, never mind sufficient time for testing.

2. Resignation: Realization that whatever happens, happens. No one has killed me yet.

3. Unfounded optimism: Some of the most critical tasks/bugs get resolved just before software has to be demoed. It’s an incredible feeling of relief that temporarily overshadows the knowledge that there’s still way too many features with scant review and testing. And that there are some lingering requirements unfulfilled.

4. Tragedy: Product promptly fails in presentation to client.

Rinse and repeat.

Right now, two hours before the meeting, I’m at stage 3.

Poe’s Law, sort of

October 28, 2013 Liquid Egg Product 1 Comment

Burning Agony, Religion, Uncomfortability

I can’t tell whether this was actually performed by a church, or some sort of parody.

I don’t mind

August 26, 2012 Liquid Egg Product 2 Comments

Burning Agony, Entertainment, Uncomfortability

In general, I listen to songs for the melody, not lyrics. Often, lyrics are simply difficult for me to make out, even more so when the singer does not share my accent.

Last night, I listened to one of my old favorites as a youngster, Winston Soso’s “I Don’t Mind”:

Even the chorus, I’ve heard wrong all these years. It’s not “I don’t mind, I don’t mind if you want to give me a bit of music”, it’s “I don’t mind, I don’t mind if you want to give me, I won’t refuse it”.

Making it worse: reading the comments on YouTube, it was revealed that the song’s about…cunnilingus. Not too surprising, considering many old soca and calypso lyrics favored these type of double entendres. Kids could easily listen to these songs not realizing what’s up (granted, “Doctor Kitch” was less subtle than most).

Still, I don’t mind listening to this song in the future. Har.

Don’t do this

July 16, 2012 Liquid Egg Product 4 Comments

Burning Agony, Patently Ineffective

A query that had been used to authenticate users to a website:

SELECT COUNT(PKID_Users) as 'c' FROM Users WHERE UPPER(Username)='"+this.username.ToUpper()+ "' AND Password='"+this.password+"' AND Active=1

As an added bonus, the code checked the count to make sure there weren’t multiple rows returned (was there was a chance more than one user could have the same user name?)
Thankfully, I replaced the authentication with something sane quite some time ago.

But geez.

Eating a Jar of mayonnaise for CHARITY

June 12, 2012 Liquid Egg Product 3 Comments

Burning Agony, Uncomfortability

There’s always the possibility that this was a well-thought out ruse and the contents were actually vanilla pudding. (I know the container was “sealed”, but it could have been a seal glued back in)

Still, I prefer to believe that he was actually eating mayonnaise.

EDIT: Yes, it’s worth watching to the end.

Gotta do something

April 5, 2012 Liquid Egg Product 2 Comments

Burning Agony, Patently Ineffective, Sports

Yeah, I plan on blogging again.

At the very least, I could do like before, where LEP was a conglomeration of random, vaguely entertaining news items. It didn’t really take much time.

For example, here’s Blake Griffin making a fool out of Pau Gasol:

Now…back to work.

Immortality Rings do not improve your singing voice

January 18, 2012 Liquid Egg Product 10 Comments

Burning Agony, Snake Oil

We haven’t talked much about Alex Chiu recently…probably because we’ve exhausted most of what could be talked about.

I did run across this clip of him (allegedly) singing. The resolution is bad, so it could be some kind of imposter.

Going to the supermarket now requires Mixed Martial Arts

January 13, 2012 Liquid Egg Product 9 Comments

Bad Ads, Burning Agony, Patently Ineffective

I’m not sure how prevalent the survivalist movement is outside the United States. “Survivalists” or “preppers” focus heavily on being self-sufficient in case of the inability of society to function as normal. They will focus on preparing by storing massive amounts of supplies, being able to grow or hunt food, and other useful skills.

Naturally, they need to be good with a gun. How else will they can defend their stuff from the hordes of people who are starving because they didn’t prepare for Apocalypse?

Much like any group of people, survivalists are targeted by various companies, salesmen, or hucksters who think they can make some money off them.

From the plausible (“You can buy heirloom seeds from us”) to the dubious (“Dollars will be worthless after the apocalypse. You can use our gold coins to trade for stuff!”), there are any number of angles used to pitch to survivalists.

And then there’s Jason Richards.

Do not pay attention to the “6 minutes” he mentions in the second sentence of his video (which you can’t rewind). It must be more than half an hour. I did not bother to finish the whole thing and I am still unclear as to exactly what he’s selling and how much it will cost.

He is excellent at making assertions and calling it proof.

He believes the United States imports 1/3 of its food because it can’t grow enough food.

He thinks supermarkets were cleared of supplies after Harold Camping’s failed Tribulation predictions.

He asserts that having to share a half-empty supermarket with 600,000 people is a plausible scenario in the near future.

His grasp of spelling and grammar is also shaky…food was not “rationalized” during World War 2, it was “rationed”.

Just to be safe, though, if you don’t want to get in a violent bloodbath with your neighbors over the last scrap of bread, buy this guy’s stuff.

Source: http://www.survivefoodcrisis.org/new/t29/index.php

How to commentate on sports, part 2

November 14, 2011 The Mascot 5 Comments

Burning Agony, Sports

TMSN

Lesson 2: A vital part of commentating on sports is to criticize the playcalling with the benefit of hindsight. You should ignore the fact that even good coaching decisions have a chance to fail.

This is especially effective when you point out that you agreed with the initial call, making you a hypocrite.

Let’s look at ESPN’s Pat Yasinskas’ blog to give us a perfect example:

When Mike Smith first decided to go for it on fourth-and-inches in overtime, I liked the call. I thought it was gutsy and ambitious. After watching Michael Turner get stuffed, I changed my mind. Smith should have punted and taken his chances with his defense.

Hey, no one said sports commentary had to make any sense.

Halloween #2

November 2, 2011 Liquid Egg Product 6 Comments

Burning Agony, Entertainment

So I did not dress as Tim Tebow. It was really Natasha Fatale from Rocky & Bullwinkle:

Unfortunately, I do not have more pictures or a video at this time, which would have showed off my heels and sexy legs.

I donned this costume over two weekends. The first time had the additional benefit of make-up. A couple people were actually fooled enough to very briefly mistake me for a female.

A few females also expressed dismay that my legs were better than theirs, and it didn’t seem like they were completely joking. I don’t know whether to be flattered or not.