Consultants: Threat or Menace


Yet more happy fun consultant tales from the office. So far, the division of the company I work for has had four consultants, three of whom have sucked, and the fourth still works for us so we're not entirely sure of his level of suckiness. We've been left with crap programs written in visual basic with no level of commenting and weird workarounds that are impossible to update... With almost no error checking whatsoever. Case in point, this week a co-worker and I spent several hours patiently traipsing through one of these programs only to discover that it was simply assuming that a certain database feild would contain a value, and exploding horribly if it didn't. Not that this was a necessarily erronious assumption, but still, you generally want to check for these sorts of things. I don't know how much we paid those consultant scum, but clearly the money would have been better spent on other causes, like sprucing up my cubicle.

The thing that annoys me about these consultants is they don't actually seem to know the programs we're hiring them to write. So we're paying them to learn as they go. Mutter. We must _really_ be desperate for warm bodies if we're having to turn to _these_ clowns.

Uh... what else. Break published another of my articles (yay), which is always a good thing, and should continue to increase my status as a local celebrity, alongside that guy who can consume an entire pig in one sitting, and that other guy, wossname, the Governor. Something 'shrub'...

Speaking of which, Florida's Own Leader-Type Shrubbery seems to be not quite as bad as most people would make him out to be. Sure, he's all for lots of guns, but hey, aren't we all? The fact is that apparently he's tough enough on stuff like pork that even his own party are getting cranky at him. And anyone who draws surl from both parties over political issues can't be all bad.

And while we're on the subject of politics... how 'bout that Catch-22 of Presidential Candidatia. On the one hand, we've got Gore, who knows what he wants, and what he wants is bad for us. Harsh medicine, don'cha know. Anyone who's married to Tipper "Censorette" Gore can't exactly be Liberal in the classic meaning of the phrase. He's quite clearly a twit from the looks of such statements as "I invented the Internet"... but how stupid is he really? We may get to find out if he's elected. Our other option is the Elder Shrubbery, who's Republican. I mean, what more can you say?

Man, where's Ventura when you need him?

And, of course, there's the possibility that Der First Lady will end up running for president one of these years. That's distressing. At least Clinton was incompetant. Hillary would have the same general philosophies _and_ be competant.

Gleep.

If two paths diverge in a forest and both lead straight to Hell, which one do you take? It's a pity we're too early to put them all up against the wall and inaugerate me as Supreme Ruler. I promise free cheesecake on Wendesdays! Mmm... cheesecake. Now if two paths diverged in the forest and both lead to different flavors of cheesecake, could you take both? That's a question worthy of serious pondering.

Mmm. Flavors.

Rant 'o the day contains no additives, preservatives or small woodland creatures of any kind. Use only as directed. Do not expose to direct sunlight. Do not fold, spindle, multilate or remove identifying tags. Handle with care. Contains less than 3% milk fat by weight, not by volume. Squeeze the lemon.

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