The Daily Grind

July 30, 2020

What is it that you actually do?

Ha! I’m glad you asked. Well, let me tell you…

Today, dissolving into tomorrow, I’ve got this issue with a software project that contains more than 1,000,000 lines of code where the primary “tribal knowledge” developer was summarily laid off due to economic and COVID related business reasons back in May. “Hey ‘Mole, can you fix this?”

“Uh, does my livelihood depend upon it?”

[Cough]

“I’ll get right on it.”

So, here’s the deal:

Azure Constant Integration/Constant Deployment, CICD in DEVOPS parlance, has been building and deploying this 54 project, 1,000,000+ code line web application, containing ASP.NET, RazorPages, AngularJS, Angular+, EntityFramework and myriad other industry provided WebService endpoints for WSDL configuration and JSON data translation and has failed to XML/XSL translate the web.config file to include the RELEASE version of the configuration payload.

So, I had to figure out exactly why this CICD Publish step in AZURE’s incredibly useful but mindbogglingly complex Build + Release Pipeline process was NOT honoring our web.config transform embedded in the .CSPROJ file that contains the instructions for Publishing the entire ensemble.

Ah, I said, we’ve (I, now that all the other developers have been cast to the COVID wayside) included a BeforeBuild step in the project file but not a BeforePublish step, where we should be injecting the RELEASE nodes of the XML so that when we ship the whole payload from DEV to QA to UAT to PROD server (allowing each band of Quality-Assurance brothers/sisters their time to pass muster on the said server environments) the appropriate changes accompany the aforementioned web.config file.

Voila! Problem solved. Until tomorrow, when the apparent solution exposes internal corporate credentials, during non-TLS1.2 compliant transfer to a vendor that “says” they need the API to the EF data project but, hey, we know better and they can use the default login’s to access the data through REST just like all the other smucks who want in.

Right? Am I right?

If you’re reading this, way-the-fuck-down-here, know this: all of that up above is legit. Real, actual, nightmare inducing, shadow in the mirror—with a ghostly hand upon your shoulder, shit. Everyday is like this. Only way, way more involved, with another dozen software languages tossed in. Who the fuck has even heard of X++? Or VUE or BLAZOR, or geezus ach crist!

So, now you know what I do for my day job. What do you do?

[Here’s a funny aside: Azure is Microsoft’s Cloud solution right? Well, what is the definitions of “azure”… the color of a cloudless sky! What Dumb Fucks! I’d have called it Olympus, The Data Fortress in the Sky! Armed with God like capabilities and protection against Titan-like threats.]

Corporate Charity

May 23, 2020

Public corporation charity is a crock.

Public corporations, those with symbols on a stock market exchange, have a single master – share holder equity. Absolutely everything they (the executives in concert with the board of directors) do is with the intent to increase (or maintain) share holder equity.

Everything.

Including pretending to “care” for the environment, community or their employees.

Last week the public corporation for which I work fired 10% of the corporate headquarters staff (40 people) and 10% of the shop floor staff (1000 people).

I slipped by (||) that far from getting the ax. Unfortunately, the fellow with whom I work, everyday—side by side—on software projects got the knife. His Business Analysis partner was cut too. And so, with a single whack of their brain dead sword, corporate gutted the “tribal knowledge” of one of the more important software applications in use by two dozen repair shops around the country. “The rest of you developers will have to take on the load.” — yeah right.

The CEO, up to now, had been one of those who touted the “we’re all one big family” vibe at every quarterly all-hands meeting. — yeah right.

And so it was with incredulity that I received an email which explored how important it was for this corporation to account for all the volunteer time we had invested in the last 12 months, including how important we thought the environment, community and education was and how this corporation should pursue supporting such things.

What a crock.

No matter what a public corporation says to the world, despite all of its press releases, all of its so called public principles of business conduct, there is one tenet they must obey above all others — increase share holder equity.

Everything else is a lie.

Time for a cruise?

May 11, 2020

Cruise ship zombie crews

come drifting ashore.

CruiseshipGraveyard

The cruise industry is dead. Nearly 100 massive cruise ships are anchored around the world, still full of crew who are trapped with no way to disembark save to swim.

What do you do with a fleet of abandoned floating hotels?

Connect ’em in a circle and SeaStead? Waterworld anyone? Run ’em up upon the reefs in Tonga and Kiribati? Floating laboratories? Prisons?

If there was every an industry so tenuously poised at the end of exorbitant spending, this is it.

P.O.S.H.? Ha!

T.R.A.S.H maybe: Terrified Rabid Adults Seething Hysterically.

United States Postal Service

April 25, 2020

The USPS is a service.

A utility really. A vast network of delivery agents, offices, machines and infrastructure. Delivering the mail, packages and such is like delivering water or electricity or natural gas. It’s a Public Utility.

usps

And, as a Public Utility the service of mail and package delivery should be executed, governed and controlled by a public entity.

The USPS should subsume Federal Express, United Parcel Service, and the other delivery services. Hell, just look at the names of those other “corporate” entities: FEDERAL Express? UNITED Parcel Service? They’re practically already government services.

There’s no need for such a service as the delivery of the mail or packages to be a competition. Corporations should not be in charge of such a utility as the delivery of goods from point A to point B. The USPS was created to do exactly this. But today, the USPS is under the gun as its contractual obligations to its employees runs afoul of its ability to compete in what should NOT be a competitive market place.

Next Day Air is just that. Two Day Delivery the same. There should be just the one entity that performs this service, at a publicly decided price. Period.

That glass of water you just poured, or the kilowatt of electricity you just consumed are both delivered, managed and priced by a Public Utility.

And so should mail and package delivery.

A rusty Golden Gate

April 23, 2020

Here’s an interesting fallout from this pandemic… Toll roads and bridges have collapsing revenue streams.

The Golden Gate Bridge is losing nearly $3,000,000 a week because we’re all staying home. The GG Transit Authority needs that money for not just the constant repainting and maintenance of the bridge, but that revenue pays for other requirements in the area as well.

GoldenGateBridge

How many toll roads and bridges and ferries and bus lines and small airlines, and regional airports and… will suffer or fail without a few months’ revenue?

I’ve been reading about the permanent ramifications of this situation and the idea that companies have /finally/ been forced to adopt the fact that telecommuting works. Information workers CAN stay at home and get shit done. I wonder if middle-managers everywhere are quivering in their boots, they’ve got no one to lord over, prowling the cube-halls, spot-checking your bathroom breaks.

The world (at least the work world) will never be the same.