I decided that I should probably try to catch up on some sleep last night. I'd been staying up way too late working on Logic and my little training/tutorial book. Between that and working on my guitar tone question, I've been up past midnight every night this week and dragging most afternoons for it.

So, I went to bed with Mrs. NFB and the pups and, in the usual twist of events, stayed awake talking to her until the wee hours. I'm sorry, I can't be expected to sleep when I go to bed early.

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Do you fill in the backstory on TV commercials? I realized I'd been doing this for months a few days back when Mrs. NFB hits me with a question about that weight-loss soup commercial. All these women are going, "Oh, that's the chicken and rice diet." Or, "that's the steak and potato diet." Or whatever. She turns to me and says, "Do you realize all those women are wearing black dresses?"

Without missing a beat, and not even realizing I was saying it, I popped off with, "yeah, that's because they're at a funeral and they're all such selfish bitches that they're excitedly and happily telling each other about they're stupendous weight loss, rather than mourning whoever's funeral it is."

"You're probably right."

But it got me to thinking, and I realized I do that with a lot of commercials in my head. The cellphone commercials where Chad is supposed to be the good guy and the other generic losers are supposed to be the bad guys? Chad strikes me as a bit of a prick who's always had everything handed to him on a silver platter and therefore thinks life should be fair while the other guys come across as genuine people, albeit with a bit of a grudge against the preppy douchebag that likely made their highschool life a living hell. Now, they've tried to book those boys as the bad guy by having fatty tell Chad he was going to beat him with a tube-sock full of wood screws and having them kidnap a puppy to bribe someone with or having the leader loser pop the head off a bobblehead, but it always backfires and in the end you end up feeling like the losers are actually better off in life than Chad. I mean, sure, Chad's the good guy, but he's all alone, cocky and sure of himself. And while the losers have a bit of a self-esteem problem because the world has constantly told them that Chad's better than them, at least they have each other.

And one of them has a super hot mom.

And the Mac and PC commercials? As a happy Mac user, I should feel more affinity with Mac. But they way the stories are written I always end up feeling like I should be rooting for PC. He's nerdy and geeky and awkward and, essentially, a TV me. Whereas Mac is a self-assured, uppity jerk, always convinced of his own superiority. Which is strikingly similar to a certain subset of the Mac users community. I have this whole odd-couple sit-com style thing in my head when it comes to them where they live in an apartment where everything is spotlessly white. PC eats pizza on the couch and spills beer and Mac throws hissy fits because PC is such a slob. Come on, you know it'd happen that way.

And the Caveman sitcom? That shit played out in my head way before the TV show started. And was funnier, come to think of it.

So, what commercials have you filled in the backstory to?

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Long ago and far away, last year if I remember right, I put together this app for tracking engineering changes. The concept was the users could make a request, it would forward the request to the engineering department, they would fill in the details necessary to complete the request, supervisors would have the option to sign off, and it either gets dumped or completed based on approvals.

So, fast-forward a couple months and we have a new guy in engineering that every couple of days throws a fit because the app doesn't work the way he wants. I go and chat with him and figure out that he's told people to fill out paper requests. Then he takes the paper request, and adds it to the online system. So, what he wants is to change it so it notifies people AFTER a details are filled in. Oh yes, and can we make it so it can print out the request form once it's completed?

Essentially, he wants to change the scope of the application from being a requests system that the users use to being a tracking only system that just his department uses. Why? Mostly because this company has an obsession with paper. It's not real if it isn't on paper. If the users make a request via the database, it doesn't actually exist. They need to fill out that little paper form he has and HE has to make the request, thus making sure he can filter out the undesirable requests up front. Something that could be done within the system as it was intended to be used, but he'd rather be able to crumple up the paper right in front of the user as that's more humiliating than getting an email that "your request has not been accepted for this reason: . . ."

Now, I wouldn't attribute such malice to him, but he left me a nasty-gram voicemail this morning before I got here. Don't hit me with nastiness first thing in the morning. You set yourself up for a tough argument if you do. You want to change the system, we can talk about that like reasonable adults. But don't start it with, "as it is now, it's completely useless" when you weren't even with the company when the app was written and thus were not included on the original usability test and development cycle. It's useful for what it was written to do. It may or may not be useful for a completely different set of requirements which were developed months after it was put into practical use.

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Randomness:

Zippy is dressed, to quote myself, "like an upscale hobo" today. Scruffy beard, nasty hooded sweatshirt with the company logo on it, and loose-fit, super-thick kaki pants with pockets and loops all over them. No idea what he's doing. I asked BB and he said, "who knows." He says that a lot when it comes to things pertaining to Zippy.

Optio is throwing hissies left and right over the past few days. We're not sure what that's about.

We have a query tool that the entire IT department is capable of using, is easy to use, and works beautifully for making reports accessible to the users. We also have a tool that's damn near impossible to use, only I have the capability of using, sucks to develop with, and leaves data outside of the user's reach until we run it fresh each day. Guess which one Destro wants us to push forward?

A teenage boy was caught boarding a plane with handcuffs, ropes, and other restraining devices. After capture authorities uncovered his plot to hijack the plane and fly it into a Hannah Montana concert. Speculation is that he was upset he couldn't get tickets. I speculate that he may in fact be a she.

Enough, outs.