Yesterday I joined the ranks of happy users of iCab, the web browser with precision German engineering driving its plucky little algorithms. Wow. This is quite possibly the best browser I've ever seen, including Lynx. A customizable cookie reject list. The ability to filter images by site to kill ad banners within the program. A Download Manager for pity's sake. Wowza. This just goes to show that if you want something done right, don't look to an American software company to do it.

iCab seems to be Mac-only, too. So a big 'neener neener' to all you non-Mac users out there. Buwahahaha.

In other news, work continues to baffle me. Well, not the part that I have to deal with, but the part that co-workers have to deal with and come asking me for help dealing with. We have one (increasingly frustrated) database guy assigned to our section, see. He's increasingly frustrated because he's basically at the mercy of not only management, who assigns strange and disturbing tasks, but of us programmers, who organize those tasks into small, confusing tasks, as well as the more senior database people, who control access to the systems he needs to get the job done.

For example.

We get a large chunk of data from the government tax records. As you can well imagine, this is not particularly well organized data, nor is it even accurate by any measure of the word (when you ask what a field is and the reply is "Oh, that? Hell, I just made up numbers to go in that one..." you know it's going to be rough).

We used to have 'tax records lite', which was about 100 fields of mostly non-crap data. Unlike the rest of our system, which was designed to be customizable quickly, the tax record stuff was pretty firmly hard-coded, mainly because 1) We didn't have much time to make it look pretty, and 2) We didn't want to waste effort on something that wouldn't be changing much.

If only we knew.

Now, for no readily apparent reason (I'm certain management has a reason, but hey), we're now getting a tax record file which is chok-ful of crap, and is also about 310 fields long. Each of which has to go into a new database table. In addition to all our internal links and indexes and misc crap like that. It wouldn't be quite as painful if management hadn't also helpfully created the new table for us, thus invalidating all the old hard-coding because the field names were different or, in fact, completely absent.

Our hardy database guy wrote up a C program to take this beefy tax record file and insert it into the database.

Predictably, it crashed.

He cleared out the table and tried again.

Crash.

Eventually it became clear that the reason it was crashing was because the tablespace wasn't large enough to hold 500Mb of crap, so he had to go to the database head person to get the tablespace boosted. The database head person said, predictably, "I'll do it Monday."

This project was, of course, due in Tuesday...

I spent much of Monday afternoon pointing out all the little optimizations and tweaks I'd put in for the old tax records, so that they could be savagely ripped out for the simple reason that someone in the chain of command wants 200 more fields of crappy, irrelevant, non-present data. At least I don't have to design the display page for this. Two hundred more fields, and the users insist that this thing fit on one page? Is someone completely insane on this point, or is it just me?

I keep waiting for Catbert to come out and start explaining HR policies to us...

The Dragonball Update: What a cop-out! After a lot more slogging about on Namek looking for Dragonballs, it's revealed that it wasn't Namek, they aren't Dragonballs, and the friendly aliens are really shape-shifting, illusion generating fiends. Yep, that's right, the writers decided to go with the "it was all just a dream" ending. Gohan, Krillan and Bulma are suitably annoyed when the illusion falls away and it's revealed that they're really just on a planetoid in the middle of nowhere, facing a horde of flesh-eating, tentacled giant space slugs! EGADS!

Meanwhile, Goku is out of the hospital and promptly over-extends himself in practicing to try and keep his power level up, at which point he promptly collapses and has to be hauled right back to the hospital. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Meanwhile, Vegita is up and around, surling at various henchmen around this base (which may or may not actually be his). It turns out that he and Freeza aren't actually allies, but Vegita works for Freeza and isn't at all happy about it. Egads. This guy conquers planets for a living, and he has a boss? Vegita intends to head off to Namek (the REAL Namek) to get the Dragonballs, probably to defeat Freeza with... And then he hears that Freeza thought of this first, and is already there. Disregarding the pleading and cajoling of his henchmen, the increasingly surly Vegita hops in his space pod and zips off towards planet Namek. This sub-plot seems to be more interesting than the main plot. Hmm...


Todays' Costume Boy Sightings: None. Where the hell is the Dauntless Defender of Spandex? I was seeing him every other day before I actually did an entry on him. He's doing this just to spite me, isn't he.

The Morning Weather: Cool and adequate.

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