I spent all day trying to track down a segfault that was giving me a 7k core file. 7k is a fat lot of good for an executable that allocates about 40M of RAM. All in seemingly random locations, with no backtrace to point me in the right direction. Found the problem at 6:10pm this evening by attaching gdb, waiting for a segfault, then doing the backtrace. Weird.

Bugs of a different variety

Last night I was sitting at my PC typing away, when a huge cockroach scuttered into the room. At least that's what I thought it was at first. Once I got a good look at it, it freaked me out a bit. This thing was a good 1.5" long. Check this out...

That's the weirdest looking bug I've ever seen. It has claws! Anyway, I captured it, photographed it (after a 15 minute search for batteries), and released it into the wild of the neighbour's backyard. Most people at work had never seen anything like it before, but one guy identified it as a mole cricket. Doesn't look like any cricket I've ever seen before. Doesn't look much like a mole either.

I have a pretty reasonable tolerance for bugs, but not for giant crickets with claws.

A job that's not much fun

I won't say it's the worst job in the world, but it's Not Very Good. We write software that goes on ships. Not attractive cruisey ships, but ugly uncomfortable navy ships. This afternoon an email went around looking for two volunteers to go out on the ship for a week of testing. Seven days straight away from home, and away from the conveniences of modern life. As our soon-to-be-departing tech lead says, it would be an experience. Certainly would. But just because you've never done something before is not a good reason to rush out and do it now.

I really hope they get volunteers, because otherwise they're going to start looking for less willing candidates, and I'm guessing I would be on their list. I can't think of anything less fun to do for work.

ICQ

I've been back on ICQ again in the last couple of days. Haven't done that for years. I'm a bit amazed that people still use it. I bet my 7 digit ICQ number would impress the kiddies these days.