Ramblings - Dummies Personified
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
A word of caution... The following narrative is wrought of the angst that has sporadically shrouded the mind of your tied up and twisted writer... Did I say "a word"? Pick any of the 21 aforementioned and it might just make sense... Might...If you've reached this part, then I guess you're ready to venture into the anxiety that is about to be painted through the words of a psycho, somatic, addict, insane (much thanks to The Prodigy, I couldn't have termed it any better) programmer. One lazy afternoon, our hero was invited to attend a mentoring function on a floor up, up, and away from where he was working. Now whether he was working hard or was hardly working is left for a later discourse. I said later... Don't push it!
In essence, the sharing of information that was to be performed is about a certain application that is said to be the next big thing that the company our hero was working for played a vital role in. Of course the BIG thing was the second coming of an application aptly named after plants with sword-shaped leaves and erect stalks bearing bright-colored flowers composed of three petals and three drooping sepals. Why the hell did they name it after those freaks of nature? Leave it to our forbears... But they do have people with pretty desirable traits... Need I mention the girl with the lovely feet?
Moving on, the planned session seemed intellectually arousing... With a very intricately outlined itinerary for the first day, boy, our hero's mind was drooling! Down to the last drop of its juice? Not really, but heck, was he all too giddy to learn something about this much talked about service that's taking the whole industry by the tip of hurricane Katrina's lovely guts. Lo and behold, a few minutes into the lecture and it seemed as though time stood still. What was going on? Our hero was like Shaider caught in the Time Space Warp! This can't be happening! All that juice wasted for this monotonous preaching. What went wrong? Why has food lost its taste? (Exaggeration, with the double g, but I think our hero had mentos, so mentos actually lost its taste...)
I was able to interview our unsung hero and he promptly replied "@$@#%$#@%*&#@$!!!!" which was immediately followed by a "@%$#@#^#@#@%#$%!!!" Asked if he could do away with the expletives, he formally confided "That was very insulting to a programmer's intellect! Imagine having to sit through a whole hour having someone tell you that 'If you want to cancel, click the Cancel button' and 'If you want to print a copy, click the Print button'. Well, click my fat round @$$!!!" Well, according to an insider, the preacher did sound a little like your resident love quack Joe D' Mango (only this kid had a great slang for a Pinoy). But hey, he was doing what he was asked to do, preach the basics of that application. To each his own... But things do look promising for our hero on the second day of this lecture, hoping that, eventually, they'd have discussed the rest of the buttons to be clicked by EOD of 20 September 2005.
That remains to be found out... But for all the precious minutes spent constantly slurping one's own saliva and praying that this UI would eventually run out of buttons, our hero made the realization of the century... That some people actually dig button-clicking... A whole lot of pun intended...
To appreciate the work of fellow developers who made that UI possible was never removed from our hero. With all the detailed functions convoluted to make that application work, our hero remains to be in awe...
But did they have to torture him with a Dummies personified?
