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A somewhat misplaced attempt at humour I feel.
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No, a misplaced attempt at humor would have been if I stated concern for the accessibility of Tier 1 technical support for various American companies that feel compelled to offshore that kind of job.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Nah. He can just say "Israel". That's way more awkward than Birmingham.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: He can just say "Israel". That's way more awkward than Birmingham.
Birmingham is a 'national disgrace' says Ofsted chief inspector[^]
Compared to Birmingham, Israel is an Earthly Paradise!
(Of course, that doesn't say much...)
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Um, Ofsted is all about schools (OFfice of STandards in EDudation), not places.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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The article notes that in Birmingham, children have starved to death (in a supposedly first-world country)! Do you really believe that the only thing wrong with Birmingham is its school system?
I freely admit that Israel has its social and other problems, but not on that level!
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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I didn't read the article, because it's the opinion of one of the people in charge of Ofsted, which is well outside my range of interests.
I imagine that children suffered because of mistreatment, not because of whatever it is that you're implying.
Unfortunately, children are mistreated everywhere -- far worse in the Middle East than the UK.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I think my is a Soapbox material...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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A fluorescent tube manufacturing line. A furnace at one end pouring out molten glass; 600 feet later, a tube of hot glass. We wrote the software to control the machinery on the finishing end of the line.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Loveland ski area in Colorado. Trying to get my then boss's wireless lift ticket scanning system working up and down the mountain and in the base camp while early season skiers were using and abusing it.
Cold as $%^&!. LCD metering equipment would just fade to nothing in the -22 degree working environments in the morning.
I was hustled up and down the mountain as needed on snow machines.
SSSSSSucked.
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In my dream was the most awkward place. I woke up, wrote the code and it - to my surprise - really worked. 
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[edit] I'm taking "awkward" to mean uncomfortable, out of the ordinary, or just weird. [/edit]
A couple interesting places.
At a test range in Utah, outdoors with several cameras all watching a missile test from different angles. The video was recorded onto VCR, frame grabbed, then we manually marked the tip of the nosecone in each image, then the software gave (very imprecise) info as to velocity, acceleration, position, etc. Cold, windy, stupid. In a related "demo" of the system, China Lake CA. That was fun, got to see this airplane (can't remember the name of it now) with a huge wingspan that was going to circumnavigate the world, and got to bounce up and down on the wing of a 727 (while it was on the ground).
Another interesting place -- Slidell Louisiana (or thereabouts) at a test facility for shuttle engines. A 104% power burn for 11 minutes with a camera pointing at the exhaust to detect hydrogen fires. In a related test, somewhere out in the middle of the mountains north of Santa Cruz CA, there's a NASA test facility. This one was for a 1/4 scale shuttle motor, where they were testing for hydrogen fires during an emergency shutdown. Took forever to find the place. It was the damnedest thing -- they had all these hydrogen sensors near the engine (so as not to get incinerated) and the video showed this massive hydrogen fire that snaked all around the hydrogen sensors but never actually touched one.
Anyways, this was all done years ago, lugging Compaq "portable" computers around.
But by far, the worst place was in a 120F degree freight car in San Bernardino CA. The freight car was one car out of several that housed the personnel and equipment for the now (thankfully) defunct MX Missile train.
Marc
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In a car.
Didn't work out though, the screaming passengers are pretty distracting 
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Sander Rossel wrote: Didn't work out though, the screaming passengers are pretty distracting
You were also the driver? 
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. — Lyall Watson
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I remember working for one client from the back of a station wagon. Every morning I would string half a kilometre of power leads and connecting cable to the computer room, only to retrieve it at the close of business in the evening. This carried on for two months when my Winebago office arrived with a duplicate of the client's computer system onboard.
The difficult may take time, the impossible a little longer.
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Karratha - 25 years ago, pimple on the arse of nowhere. Setting up a system to manage the maintenance of ore cars, hot, dirty, RED for Ghu's sake. Computers had to be enclosed to keep the bull dust out!.
They do grow some great rock out there!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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My worst experience isn't even in the running - at least it was in an office! My hat's off to anyone who has had to work in the conditions described in their messages.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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During my Cadetship many many years ago, we had to crawl along geothermal steam pipes to inspect the condition inside them. Worse part was going round a 90 degree corners and hoping you could get back. Long before computers!
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Inside a -40ºC freezer of about 500 square meters and 8 meters high in a factory that made all the Burger King meat for all the BK shops in Spain. Just for testing the database and the automated control of the meat boxes path along the production line...
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Turned up on a customer site many years ago, for a planned job that was estimated as a week's work.
They'd been told they needed to provide me with a workstation.
They had.
it was on the floor, in what was originally a broom cupboard; a hole in the wall led to the server room, where a cable had been passed through.
I couldn't actually fit in the cupboard with the terminal. But I called their bluff (they were, I think, just being arseholes as they felt that my company should be paying for a bug fix, while my company was charging them for an enhancement)
So, I lay on the floor, legs out of the door. 2nd day I brought in cushions and blankets to lie on.
Programmed like that for a week.
I admit I had to take the occasional walk around the office to straighten the spine - but all in all it wasn't actually too bad!
'course that was when I was young; these days if I got into position I'd never get up again!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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At least they couldn't tell if you were napping or not.
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
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I guess I didn't have it wedged in there tight enough! 