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Admin
Actually no.
By putting gratification as a priority over reproduction, you're less likely to reproduce and survivable raise children than Power Troll's model Christians.
Evolution is about who is best adapted to reproduce the most. People who, in their minds, separate reproduction and sex the farthest are least well adapted.
Traditionalists think of love, marriage, sex and family and reproduction as all part of the same sequence each enabling the next. This is, of course, where these concepts came from. Love and sexual desire exist to motivate reproduction - there may be other beneficial side effects - other species have been observed to masturbate or engage in non-heterosexual behavior - but these are not nearly as relevant in EVOLUTIONARY terms.
Moderns think more in terms of the individual (non-evolutionary terms) and so reproduction is a distant second priority to gratification - (thinking of reproduction as a lifestyle choice that may not be fashionable or may get in the way of gratification) - as explained, this is a less well adapted mindset and behavior.
The irony is that sexual desire is just an approximation. The primitive part of the brain, or maybe just your brain, can't think in such complex terms as raising a family, so its impulse is just to fuck. I don't think its unreasonable to conclude that people who are able to keep long-term pair bonding (marriage), reproduction (having children) and sex together as cohesive ideas in their mind are more evolved (again, better adapted) than people who cannot.
Why do you think cultures who lose these traditional family concepts cease to exist shortly thereafter? Why did they even evolve in EVERY successful civilization unless they were important to its success?
You fail at evolution. You don't even seem to understand the concept.
Admin
Now, if you're talking about something else.... guilty as charged, I suppose.
Admin
OK... slightly confused why you think the guy arguing on the basis of evolution is a christian...?
Perhaps rather, the clue to his opinion might be in his name? Just a thought...
Oh, and we actual Christians (as opposed to random people you slap the label on because you wish to insult them with tired stereotypes) do enjoy our sex very much, by the way :)
Admin
Admin
The problem is that the cobbled together crap is forced to scale, then has random features glommed on to it in no particular order, then the creator dies/quits without leaving documentation, and the whole thing becomes an unkillable WTF.
Proof of concept is proof of concept. BEFORE you decide its good enough for the world, you need to learn your lessons, and fix the obvious design flaws.
Admin
Admin
Have Mrs. Kelly come back here and do an interview or something on how she saw the whole thing with Filbert coming. I'm sorely lacking in that skill and I could use some training.
Admin
I'd like to address this, since it gets brought up almost every article-- and it was something that was discussed at Penguicon.
First and foremost, I do want to thank Hubert for sending in his story. The site wouldn't exist without everyone's misery.
Now, to address rewrites: In most cases, what gets sent in needs a minimal amount of touchups... things like CodeSODs, Representative Lines, or vignette-style articles like Tales from the Interview. Those tend to get posted with only, perhaps, a spelling correction, or formatting the code. This is because these stories speak for themselves.
Featured Articles are a slightly different best. I've seen the inbox, and there is a wild range of content. Some submissions are very brief. Some are missing details. Some contain a great amount of detail, but are a bit dry. The one thing they all have in common is that they have a great story to tell.
The problem is not all of them tell it.
These stories are about more than just a clinical, technical recollection of details. They're about someone's experience... those specific, singular moments of pain, frustration, anger and confusion. That's the true heart of the matter. I don't just want to tell you that Hubert had a frustrating time with bureaucracy-- I want you to feel it.
Thus, the rewriting process begins. There's some technical steps: It needs to be in third person. We need to anonymize whatever needs to be. We need to bold the protagonists' name.
I then read the submission a few times, and try to find where the real "WTF" moments are. What did this person actually experience? And how can I present them so that they don't just show up from left-field, or seem utterly illogical-- and have the right balance of humor and drama. I keep the original submission on hand at all times to use as many phrases and touchpoints as I can.
Then comes the matter of filling in the details, and reading between the lines. Sometimes something needs to be created out of whole cloth because the facts were never given. Example, Ms. Kelly's hair color. I knew someone like her before, and she was blond-- arbitrary decision.
Other times, some of the action needs to be inferred. I've had my own brushes with educational administrators, so for this particular story, I had quite a bit to draw on to help flesh out the story.
At this point, the article has a beginning and an end, and a parts of the middle. The superstructure of the story is in place-- who the person is, where they ended up, and what the theme of the story is. It's the small details that need to be put in place to finish it off.
And some details need to come out. Things that are redundant, or unnecessary, or are secondary to the WTF. Hubert's submission mentioned, long after the fact, another employee clashed with the principal over asking her to do things that weren't in her job description. A nice point, but one that didn't fit with Hubert's narrative. In some other cases, secondary characters need to be omitted entirely. Other times, if multiple secondary people serve the same purpose, I'll have to merge them together in an amalgamation entity.
(For the record, this article is a bit longer than most, mainly because it was written to be read during a 50 minute presentation with an introduction and a Q&A)
Dialog is very rarely provided, and is one of those things that falls under "inference".
And then the final spice needs to be added: drama. Drama involves conflict, and change. WTFs don't happen in a vacuum. Someone wrote that code, or implemented that policy, or said some stupid, stupid thing. At the very heart of it, there's another human being in play, and there's conflict between them and the story submitter. For the conflict to be dramatic, exciting and ultimately satisfying, one of two things have got to happen: the hero overcomes, or the hero is defeated.
I tend to work backwards, since the climax-- the WTF-- is already in place. In Hubert's case, the project at his school was effectively destroyed, he was manipulated by the administration, but he ended up in a good place because of the good work he did. 100% straight from the submission.
In the submission, things seemed to run fairly smoothly for Hubert, all things considered. But the undertone of it all-- combined with experiences we've all had in similar situations-- well, the drama tends to just present itself. The submission described Ms. Kelly leaving as a "dropping a bombshell". No other details-- but how should a devastating departure of co-worker feel in the midst of an administrative charlie-foxtrot? Disappointment, betrayal.
During this last coat of paint, I will fully admit I take dramatic license to get the WTF to have the maximum impact it can. Hubert's ego was my dramatic interpretation of the submission. Give him credit for only the good parts, and blame me for everything else. =)
And there you go. For me, in a nutshell, that's the rewrite process. Find the essence of the WTF, keeping it as close to the original submission as possible-- refine it into a sleek, powerful instrument, polish it up with a bit of "between then lines"-- then ram it straight into the heart of the reader, so they can truly feel what has been inflicted upon the submitted.
In the comments for The Speed of Code, whenever someone said "this one made me sad"... then I know I've done my job in spreading the submitter's misery.
(Oh, and one last note-- that whole sexual tension all y'all are picking up from Hubert and Ms. Kelly-- yeah, that's all your own work there. There was none of that in the submission, and I didn't put it there. Way to perv it up :| )
Admin
My genes have had much greater chance of being passed on, in many more combinations, than you will ever dream of.
I win at evolution. AND I enjoy sex. That's probably why, to be fair.
Admin
@Lorne Kates -
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
I am definitely not a writer, and dry technical details are usually more important to me than drama or feelings and whatnot. So I have a lot more memory of the bare facts than I do of how they made people feel, or what emotional responses they had. My submission was definitely lacking in the human element.
The characterization of Kelly and Principal WTF was pretty much spot-on. When Kelly read it she said (referring to PWTF): "That's pretty accurate".
Kelly herself is actually a writer (in addition to everything else she does), and we talk a lot about the process. So, I really should know better when writing my submissions to give more attention to the characters, their interactions, and dialog. But my mind just doesn't think that way.
Regardless how it turned out, Kelly and I really did enjoy reading the article. It brought up a lot of old wounds, and we talked about it for a while.
Though, she and I were pretty irked by the proofing errors. I'd pay a subscription fee to TDWTF if it meant you could get some freelancers or something proofing articles, if only to spare my eyes.
It will be interesting to see if my other submission is ever transformed into an article here - if so, I don't envy the person that is tasked with figuring out how to condense eight pages of my rambling down to something that would work in the TDWTF format.
I have a 9 page sequel to that story I'm working on for submission too.
So my apologies in advance.
Admin
Yeah, I admit, this one is a bit less proofed than normal. Mainly because I was working on it right up to the Friday night before Penguicon. I've read it over so many times (and read it aloud) that I have writer's blinders.
Combine that with the fact that I read it out loud, and my brain auto-corrected as I went...
Normally my wife gives the articles a proof read, but like I said-- right to the wire on this one.
No need to apologize for anything! I enjoyed reading your submission. It was a treasure trove of details, and I certainly could sympathize with what you went through. I look forward to the sequel.
Glad you two enjoyed it.
Admin
I was expecting it to turn into 'Ms. Kelly throws Hubert under the bus, then introduces a "new" system suspiciously similar to PEN and gets credit for it', and was pleasantly surprised when it didn't.
Admin
Look dude, mega-successful novels have been based on less. Good reads based in the IT industry are few and far between. I wasn't 100% joking when I said "the movie of the book". If you don't do characters, not to worry, let Mrs. Kelly do that bit. Give it a go - you have nothing to lose but the time it takes.
Admin
Compared to what she went through in her time working with PEN, I was merely a bystander. Really, it's her story to tell.
I've been begging her to dedicate more time to it and finish it, as has her writing coach, but it might have to wait until her kids are finally out of the house.
From what I've read and know about her novelization, I think it could be one of those classics like Up the Down Staircase. She's a great writer and does better justice to the characters than I ever could.
My other unpublished submission (and the soon to be submitted sequel) are a lot more focused on technology and IT in business, and I think have some potential to be made into a novel.
Those two stories/submissions basically follow me and my experiences at one company (beginning with my transition from working with PEN to working at my next job with Kelly). While those two submissions focus on a particular project (namely the selection of and migration to a new ERP system), there are innumerable WTFs that happened throughout the course of my time with that company - a lot of strong characters, conflict, drama, you name it.
So it would certainly be possible to use my experiences at this company to weave together a complete, cohesive, novel about the failure of non-technical business people to appreciate, understand, and use technology well - and the struggle of the lone, inexperienced, tech-guy and his friend & mentor trying to transform a business that's firmly rooted in analog modes of thinking.
The problem is: I'm just not a writer.
I don't think I ever could be; though it was something I've always wanted to do.
But I'm to busy dealing with WTFs at my current employer to give any time at all to learn.
Maybe it'll happen someday when I can afford a ghost writer or something.
Until then, I'll happily settle for submitting dry and overly verbose stories to TDWTF.
Admin
In my case, I read the daily WTF to find funny examples of people's stupidity when writing code. I'm not really into 'experiencing bureaucratic anguish'. This was definitely longer than normal also. I understand now the 50-minute criteria.
I'm really wondering if this was appropriate for a student presentation - 'if you work hard, life's full of pain, and don't trust your principal' is the message I came away with. I suppose the humor in a technical tangle of code would be hard to convey to a mixed audience however. But maybe the funny interview stories would work in that case.
Admin
Though I would extend it to be "don't trust teachers, education administrators, or bureaucrats, without good reason".
Or, more simply: "don't trust anyone who has power over you, without good reason".
And hard work & dedication does make one's life full of pain. The trick is to make sure that what you are doing and/or your reasons for doing it is worth it.
PEN was painful for everyone involved. Especially so for Kelly. She was passionate about the program, and about helping the students. But PWTF made it so that the program couldn't help students, and it wasn't within our power to do anything about it, no matter how much we wanted to.
Admin
As for me, I come to this website to get a laugh (albeit sometimes a rueful one), and this story did not fall into that category at all. But obviously it did strike a chord with several of the responders here.
Admin
One last comment - I too made a program for our school to use (keeping track of lunch money), collaborating with a friend. But that one was quietly successful, so my friend convinced me that we should go to the principal and ask for a payment for our work. We go there, and then my friend clams up, and so it's up to me to plead the case, even though it was never my idea. So I think we get $20 each or something (back in the 80's).
Later, a friend found out we had "made money" on this, and tried to argue that we shouldn't be allowed to compete at a regional computer contest because we lost our "amateur" status. Luckily he didn't try to push the issue, he just wanted to make a point.
We also made a program to help kids learn to tell time, and our shop teacher wanted one that would help kids with fractions, but we never got to that. The point is, though, in our case, the school was very supportive of our efforts. Most of my real-life bosses have been pretty good too, no shenanigans on the scale you saw. So I don't think we should say that kids should expect this, or you should be distrustful of everybody in authority, but just know that it does exist.
That being said, I did lose my employer loyalty on job #1. I was working productively, being very conscientious and staying on track. The company was having layoffs because a different division lost a big contract, and I was totally surprised when I was laid off. So I learned right away that hard work and loyalty does not mean your job is safe, so it is important to take care of your own finances & well-being first, company interests second.
Admin
I like birds.
Admin
Ding ding ding!
The scheduling problem is NP-complete.
And it's probably very useless to figure out if a your schedule is compatible with a student's across town. I know I wouldn't have taken three buses to get to a glorified tutoring session.
Then again, I said TL;DR about 2/3 of the way through the story.
Admin
Counter-example: bees. In any given colony, there is one single female capable of reproduction. There are a few dozen males capable of reproducing with her. The other millions are all sterile. They might as well be homosexuals, as far as the evolutionary argument goes. And obviously, a colony of bees would not survive without the workers.
Thanks for playing!
Admin
Umm-- I know it was announced on the site-- and linked to in the article-- but maybe you're using one of the builds of IE9 that doesn't support hyperlinks.
Penguicon isn't a school.
Admin
I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-A-T! I mean S-M-A-R-T!
Admin
Excellent story to use at school. Students are supposed to be subverted or subversive. Nothing sadder than a young conservative.
Admin
Let's not get involved in false dichotomies. Hubert's work was, by his own admission, a cobbled-together house of cards. It reminded me all-to-unfortunately of a bit of commercial software that was started, according to the company, by a science teacher in his spare time.
Unfortunately, it has yet to shed its spare-time amateur beginnings. It's a piece of crap, through and through. It's a very successful piece of crap, commercially. But its short-comings are a non-ending source of frustration for those charged with its care and feeding. It's a castle built in a swamp.
The company has had ample time and resources to fill in the swamp and build a proper foundation. But as long as they've got school districts ready to sign up first and ask their IT people to look under the hood later, they've got no motivation to fix it.
Admin
+1
Admin
So you would rather go through a hurricane with any house at all?
While there is a lot of Grey between good and bad. No shelter is always BAD!
Cobbled together might not be good, but it is better!
Admin
I have been informed that in the UK 50% of the money spent on education is used to monitor what is happening to the other 50% percent. Shameful state of affairs but here at least it's the government (a right wing one) that insigated this - certainly not the teaching unions.
Admin
I enjoyed the article - a longer narrative is good from time to time. Interesting reading the comments from the submitter and the WTF rewriter too.
But please - don't feed the trolls!
Admin
Superb article - insightful and touching.
I can see why you chose it for a talk - good choice.
Keep up the good work,
James
Admin
You should submit this one to the Harvard Business Review. It's practically in their house style already.
Admin
Indeed, big boy.
Admin
So, did you read all the typos and grammar errors aloud, too? Geez, as if the story weren't depressing enough...