I hate coding. Seriously I'm the last person you want staring at code all day. I'm dyslexic and my brain is completely disorganized. I have never been capable of thinking in a straight line. I work in circles rarely completing a full thought, and leaving sentences hanging in most of my conversations. I have never successfully followed all the directions in any manual or instruction booklet, nor do I wish to. Personally I believe that is what makes me a good troubleshooter. I work more on instinct and jump quickly from thought to thought. My boss rarely asks anyone to work with me on projects in an effort to maintain the sanity of my co-workers.These qualities might lead me to fix a hardware or network error in record time, but they are near useless for any one looking for good linear process. As I have been painfully reminded today, code requires straight line logic. I got none.
Even with this shortcoming I am on occasion relegated to the task of mashing code. Mostly because there is no one else around to do it. Code mashing is the only appropriate term for what I do. Actually pulverizing isn't bad either. Email I sent to my boss two weeks ago after a similar assigment.
subject : I now code in VBS
Boss;
4.5 hours for 2 lines of code.
Do I get a pay raise or do I get fired?
-Peter
Given that benchmark, and the fact that I'm still gainfully employed, I figure I have a decent chance of improving on todays task. I set out to accomplish a simple task. Or rather what I presumed to be a simple task. Find out how many client computers on my network where missing anti-virus software. We have a nice shiny and expensive Altiris Management Server. You would expect there to be big button like:
"Tell me if everyone has anti-virus software installed on their PC so some dingle butt in accounting doesn't bring the network down while searching for chili recipes on the Internet"
Look as I might there was nothing like that. Only the ominous, "insert your raw SQL query here" field. Raw SQL? Sounds like a dermatologist nightmare.
Well it only took 3 hours, 12 Google searches and 7 or so typo's for me to finally get the query working. I sent out another email.
subject :Software Filter in Altiris
All;
Anyone needing a software filer added to Altiris should ask me within the 15 minutes. After that time the process will be removed from my brain as an act of self preservation.
-Peter
It's been 2 hours. It's gone now and I can think straight, er not so straight, again.
