Entries this day: Dream work_barf

Dream

4:30am Tuesday 26 march 2002

(Dream)

I went back to work at Kroger, back in Tomball it seemed. I had just arrived we they were all, "okay, whoever does the best work helping to clean up he store will get a prize of some sort."

I had noticed that on top of the display cases was enough dust to keep me busy collecting dust for a while. So I searched briefly for a broom and a bucket to collect dust in. I then went to the aisle of the store where they might sell those dust picker upper things (static cloth) and I found gloves instead. I found some relatively nice gloves for $8, which I decided that I could use later, so I would buy them.

Put them on and climbed up onto the.. actually there were steps available to climb up the first couple of feet - items like a upside down bucket and a stepstool randomly left by the end of the display case so I climbed easily up on top and found that the guy who had bee working at Kroger 15 years ago was still working at Kroger, ad I didn't really like him then, but I was willing to get to know him this time and not immediately continue to dislike him. He had had the same cleanup idea as me, but he had a mop instead of a broom, and making a terrific mess of all the dust because the top of he case was made of plywood or particle board, so it was soaking up the water. He also got sidetracked doing something else, so he wasn't even working on cleaning up the dust.

We talked a bit about the new vantage point from up on the display case; we could see customers doing silly hings and watch other people work. I was sweeping the dust into a pile at the end of the row and I noticed that my gloves kept coming off, or I was taking them off and not remembering it.

I swept a pretty big pile of dust into a pile and put on my gloves to begin putting it into the bucket. I noticed something like carrot shreddings in the pile and asked him what they were. They were from the small potted plants on the top of the case that were losing their thin leaves. Ah. that makes sense.

Walking below us a manager lady was all, "do you have anyting to do?"

"no," I stated plainly as I filled the bucket.

"then you can leave."

"What? I was just kidding! gee I thought it was obvious given that I'm putting a huge pile of dust and grass clippings into this bag."

She continued on her way.

So I was dumping all this grass clippings and dust into the bucket, and the bucket was full before I finished, so I had my friend get another bag or something to put the rest in. I had a grocery bag (paper) to pile some in, but it had some old clothes in the bottom. I gave these clothes a mental blessing that they would be found by someone who could use them, but then I had a sense that I sould not put them in there and I asked my higher self, and I saw a snake nearby on the forest floor on top of the freezer case in the store. I noticed there were actually three snakes there, and I got out my camera to take a picture, which I did, and I think it came out well on the second shot.

I noticed some more snakes hanging from the branches of these large pine trees, and walked cautiously so I wouldn't step on or otherwise encounter a snake; I didn't know if they were poisonous or otherwise aggressive.

I noticed that this freezer case seemed wider than it had been; used to be that I dould walk to its edges in a few steps, that I was a bit concerned about falling off. Now it was a forest with a huge grassy plain beside it. I found an old linux book from about 1970, which had a description of procmail as a techniqure for getting rid of spam.

I began to flip through it as I walked toward the train, and as reading the book, noticed that the words were not making sense, and woke up.

work barf

1:38pm CST Tuesday 26 March 2002

So I've been given a task that seems trivial to the requestor (or I imagine it could seem trivial): "notify the user if they miss any questions when they fill out the survey like you do on the other survey."

Thing is, the code behind these two surveys is dramatically different, designed with different features in mind. The one that they've seen before can skip questions depending on the user that is filling out the survey, and can notice what questions were skipped.

The other survey type can span multiple pages, can skip questions depending on previous answers given, can have questions displayed as drop down lists or radio questions.

One trick in determining if a question was missed is in the user interface part of it. If we have multiple pages, should the questions be numbered 1-n, (n+1)-m, (m+1)-o, on subsequent pages, or just 1-n, 1-(m-n+1), 1-(o-m+n+1)? God this sucks. I can't even easily explain what is the problem, much less solve it in the general case.

- - - -

I did some research on Japan, and I have been assured that it's not as easy as just "go to japan and get a job teaching english." It will require like $5000 US cash to get set up, and all kinds of pitfalls to be avoided.... I'm now more inclined to go visit first, and/or go with Lee-eh so I have a place to stay while I get set up.

But right now I'm going to go to Walgreens to get envelopes and mail registration for Plano rally.