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O Comfort-Killing NightWhoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel. |
   
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Monday, September 15, 1997
I am writing this at work, here late to help another group that is having trouble making their documentation work in our product. Apparently they were quite offended a few months ago when someone pointed out some problems in the HTML (not me! I'm the soul of tact.) and had convinced themselves that it would be our problem when their users installed our product and then had difficulties. Finally someone on their team woke up and realized this was not the correct attitude to have.
We'll have to go through some gyrations to look at their pages and sort out what's going wrong. This is definitely the wrong time for this to be happening, but needs must when the devil drives. I really hope I'll be able to figure it out.
So while I'm waiting for another team member to install the other team's latest and greatest, I decided to write an entry. It's kind of like writing in a vacuum, since I don't access my personal email from here.
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I have actually pulled a few all-nighters at work, but not on this product. When I was working on Microsoft Complete Gardening, I worked all night so the content developer could stay on task. He had a lot of changes to make to his parser and database, and another pair of eyes really helped! I really liked working with him. He was a tall, extroverted, gay geek. Lots of fun, lots of energy. He taught me a lot about databases. I just did a web search on his name, but found only other people with the same name. Hi, Chris!
I don't anticipate staying here all night, but it may be a late one.
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I made good progress in my cleanup efforts yesterday. I was even so domestic as to cook some beef, carrots and potatoes in the crockpot! The floor of my room is pretty well clear. I have recyclable materials to get rid of, clothes to process (wash and put away, or eliminate) and books to sort. I think there is only one empty aluminum can sitting by my keyboard (the thin end of the wedge!).
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Dinner with the devs! Before I came to MS, I always called them programmers. Here the usual term is "developer".
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Well, it's a good thing I went upstairs to the build lab to check on things, because the guy up there had completely forgotten what he was supposed to do for me. So I investigated my problem on the version already installed up there. *Sigh* It isn't just a matter of them doing a few simple fixes.
The build lab is a very strange environment, with long rows of desks with shelves above (called "benches" in this environment). On the shelves are mini-monitors, with some full-size ones on the desks themselves. There are racks in between each desk for the CPUs themselves, and complicated switches and wires.
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