Freudian Slip

I've never much liked peer reviews.  It's not that I can't profit from input; it's that I figured that if I was doing something wrong or could do something better, it was worth finding out right away and not some time in the future.  I had a manager who loved them.  I called him Tim the Manager.  Most people thought that it was because there was a programmer named Tim.  They couldn't have been more wrong.  I called him Tim the Manager because, in my view, he had the same middle name and managerial capabilities as Winnie the Pooh. 

Tim wanted people to pledge allegiance to him.  I wasn't very good at that.  He was in his element when he had a room full of people to listen to him spew forth "pearls of wisdom".  During one meeting he started speaking about our new regional manager, a guy named Steve.  Tim the Manager said, and I'm quoting, "Steve's a good guy, I deal with him every day."  The room was quiet.  That's when I made the following, unplanned statement, "Tim, I wonder if your Freudian slip is showing when you say that Steve's a good guy and yet you deal with him every day."  Tim was speechless as laughter welled up throughout the room.

This may have been the reason for my favorite peer review statement of all time.  It was, "Likes to give Tim flack."  Tim was a nice enough guy but not well loved by experienced analysts and coders.

Walking the Dog

It’s been cold here. I know that without hearing the weather prognosticator. The metric I use is the nose wrinkle. I’ve noticed that when it’s really cold, one’s wrinkled nose unwrinkles slower than when it’s hot.

Over the years we’ve rescued a number of dogs. We currently have 2. Miss Chievious is supposedly a Pekinese/Poodle mix but she looks like a Schnauzer. I recently heard that the word “schnauzer” can be defined as “barks for no reason at all.” Missy fits that as she needs to announce herself every time she goes out. The other dog is mostly a Lhasa Apso. She is a Floridian stray we call Little Bit. Little Bit was broken when we got her in that she is not able to go into our fenced back yard to do her business. She has to have formal forays into the foreign environs beyond the boundaries of our property.

At times, I’ve noticed that some dogs or their owners leave unwanted messages in our yard, I don’t like this. Therefore I always carry biodegradable plastic bags with me when I walk the livestock. When deposits are made, I transfer them into the plastic bags. It’s kinda gross but I noticed a cold weather benefit this week in that for a short time, their deposits help to warm my hands.