Friday: Dealing with Management, Cutting Manes, Fattening Foods, Purple Children

[elfs]

So, today ends the week during which I have faced reality and decided that it was time to actually craft documented requirements for the product I develop at my company. It's been nice to fly by the seat of my pants for two years, but with the latest rev a clear picture has emerged of what we're supposedly doing and now I need strict documentation.

So I do it the best way I know how. I start out by describing our foundation, existing decisions and their consequences, and then go into the various routines (or "circuits" as they're called in web application development). I describe each as a Use Case document.

And in the system-wide requirements section, I mention that we need to use the Internationalization catalog system since the next rev we hope to sell overseas, we need to be Americans with Disabilities Act compliant if we want to sell to civilian federal agencies, and we need to be HTML 4.0/CSS compliant if we want to be able to resell through third-party channels. My immediate manager, who's just recently been promoted to his position and is far to eager to please his immediate superiors, tells me that those three requirements are not on his list.

I take a look. He has the technical specifications requirements as derived from the marketing requirements documentation. He apparently missed the whole section on marketing the product. You know, selling it.

Looks like I'll be doing some stealthwork this time. Again. I hope to demonstrate the OEM capability by showing our product as it were being resold by Ikea just by swapping theme files, and I've already written a PO.txt catalog converter to turn an English catalog into Swedish Chef. Bork bork bork!

Later, I went and got my hair cut. All of it. About nine inches gone. I've got short hair for the first time since puberty. Dunno why; I just decided that it was time to get it cut. I'm too old to have a mullet.

My barista liked it. She noticed it and said it looked really good. Well, that's one vote.

I got home to find Omaha busy in the kitchen and Kouryou-chan asleep on the couch. We think she's had a bit of a bug because she's been complaining of a sour tummy and sleeping fitfully. fallenpegasus showed up for an offer of home-cooked dinner: home-made vegetarian burgers and potato chips. I used our deepest pot and deep-fried slices of potato, yam, and daikon. The daikon didn't come out-- too soggy, perhaps not cooked enough-- but the yam chips were delicious.

The kids ate very little. We ended up giving them leftover pasta dinners we had in the fridge. They didn't even like the potato chips. What's up with that?

After dinner, I find Kouryou-chan in her bedroom and her hands are purple. Yamaarashi-chan had an inking pad for stamps, and Kouryou-chan found it and thought it was funny how it made her hands purple. She's covered in ink and it doesn't come off. She freaks out when she realizes she might be blue for days.

Omaha had had enough. I tell her and Pegasus to get lost, go out somewhere and have fun. Dinner made a disaster of the kitchen; it takes me an hour to clean it up, while I also bathed the kids, washing their hair, and get them ready for bed. The ink turns out to be water-soluble and Kouryou-chan turned her natural color. I read to them more Hamtaro books, then finished up in the kitchen.

I installed WineX on my desktop. It doesn't work. If I can't get it to run this weekend, I may cancel my subscription immediately. The new version of gThumb, though, is very very nice.

Hmm, Gatekeepers 21, Chobits, or Wolf's Rain before I head to bed?

None of the above. I'm just going to bed.

Comments

[j5nn5r.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to seeing your hair. Maybe Saturday night.

You have my sympathies about managers. :)

Locks of love

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

If I ever lose patience with my hair and decide to whack it all off, I'm going to give it to: locks of love this time. It's curly, and if a kid doesn't like the color, they can dye it.

[kenshardik]

So do we get a picture of the shorn Elf? (That is SO much fun to say!)

gThumb looks way cool. If I were a Linux user, it'd be on my system.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Just so's omahas doesn't follow suit with the hair. That would be a shame (and da Kitty agrees).

I never could see growing mine out simply because it itches the back of my neck once it gets so long.... and I like the whole wash-and-go thing. And a mullet just doesn't look right with a lack of fur topside... :)

Re:

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Just so's omahas doesn't follow suit with the hair.

Oh, no...I have a different kind of relationship with my hair than Elf does. For me, it's almost sacred. I don't plan on whacking it off for anything other than an extremely major event in my life.

[fallenpegasus]

Indeed. You are not a "short hair" person.

[fallenpegasus]

The new hair indeed does look good. From the front you look pretty much the same, from the back it looks very neat, not too tight and close.

The look of shocked surprise on Kouryou-chan's face when she saw it was utterly priceless, I wish I had had my camera ready.


I'm seriously considering abandoning my year-long grow-the-hair experiment, and getting it whacked short again, tho not as short as I was wearing it the year before.

[ttall.livejournal.com]

Every time I read something about you and your child, it makes me smile. It is so nice to read about a father who happily and competently nutures his children. You seem to be very good at it. Thank you for sharing that part of you with your readers.