Thar be an ill wind a-blowin'

Winter has given notice.  When we went to MFF we left behind unseasonably mild weather, but we returned to frigid temperatures and snow.  (We also returned to icy roads, but that's another story.)

This morning as I was walking to work, I noted that the wind had acquired a new set of teeth.  It's not quite the bitter, brain-numbing cold that we will have in another month or so, but it was a poignant reminder that winter is quickly approaching.  I may have to regrow my beard.

As a hopeless urbanite I should be used to this, but has anyone else noticed how the wind always blows in your face when you're downtown?  Walk the length of the block and it's blowing in your face.  Turn around and walk back and somehow it's blowing right in your face again.  Now maybe I'm old-school, but this seems to be violating some fairly fundamental laws of physics in my opinion.  I know that physics aren't subject to the whims of my opinion (ooooo - wouldn't that be cool?), but it's no less annoying.

(Edit: A bucket load of rotten tomatoes on the first person who replies with, "The answer my friend is blowing in the wind...")

On another, slightly unrelated subject...

I'm finally digging through the quagmire of my inbox after being mostly away from work for the last couple of weeks, and there is a surprising amount of work that built up in that time.  I was in last week, and while I spent most of my time working through it (instead of prepping for my annual review), I barely made a dent in the pile.

Speaking of annual reviews;  while I was going through my annual review last week, my boss made an interesting comment about productive and non-productive time.  Here is what he said (somewhat paraphrased):

"There's been a lot of arm waving and hand wringing lately on the subject of unproductive time, but I'm not losing much sleep over it.  I can spend a good percent of the day just going through my inbox, and I don't really regard that as productive time.  Let's say that I get a message from somebody with a request that I'm not quite sure how to handle.  I could spend an entire hour staring at the message and making no headway, where you could spend ten minutes staring at the message and the next  fifty minutes surfing the web and we'd both be in the same situation at the end of that time.  Whose time was more productive?"

His point was well taken, but I couldn't shake the little voice in the back of my head saying, "How about ten minutes of email, followed by seven hours and fifty minutes of surfing...?"

The stupid. It hurts.

I don't mean to pick on lawyers, but some of the stupidest questions that land in my inbox come from them.

At their request, I dug up an old train consist sometime around the middle of last year for an incident that took place back in 1998ish.  They poured over this data for about 15 months before sending me a list of questions this morning regarding the data.  Some of the questions strike me as being a bit loaded, such as "what does HVM Equipped mean?"  Other questions have left me wondering if the bar exam has some physical components to it; i.e., a lobotomy.  There is one question in particular...

I will quote the question verbatim:

"45.        Advise what six followed by three stars 2000 feet from the tail end of the train means."

This is the line that is causing them confusion:

6 *** 2000 FEET FROM THE TAILEND OF THE TRAIN ***

How can I answer this one without sacrificing my last remaining shred of faith in humanity?  Part of my job requires me to be polite and politic, but it's all I can do to stop myself from prefacing my answer with, "At risk of responding to a question for which the answer should be painfully self-obvious..."

Maybe I could be passive-aggressive and give him the information in excruciating detail.

"6" - This indicates that this line in the consist is a 6-Card.  This term is a carry-over from the days when the information was actually stored on cards.  A card prefaced with a "6" indicates that the data therein is purely informational.

" " - This is a space.  Its function is to make the rest of the information in this line more readable.  You may notice more spaces interspersed throughout this line of data, but they serve a function identical to this one.  If you encounter a space later in the line and are unsure of its function , refer back to this explanation.  Hope this helps.

"***" - These three stars (or "asterisks" as they are also sometimes called) are designed to capture the reader's attention, and to differentiate this line of data from those above it and below it.  They say to the reader, "Look at me - I'm an important bit of data!"  Please note that the number of stars used is irrelevant to the importance of the data.  The decision to use three stars for this function was based purely in aesthetics.

"2000 FEET FROM THE TAILEND OF THE TRAIN" - The term "FEET" refers to a measurement of approximately .3048 metres.  The term "TAILEND" may be confusing, as the programmers appear to have combined two words into a single word.  The term could also be expressed as "TAIL END".  Regardless of how it is written, the term "TAILEND" refers to the opposite end of the train to which the locomotives are attached.  Taken as a whole, this line of data means, "This line in the consist indicates a point on the train which is 2000 feet (or 609.6 metres) from the non-locomotive end of the train", or more precisely, "This line indicates the point in the train in which the sum of the lengths of the cars between this point and the non-locomotive end of the train makes its nearest approach to, without exceeding 2000 feet."  Please note that fractions of cars are not utilized for this flag since we do not, under normal operation procedures, divide rail cars into fractions.

"***" - These three stars serve a function identical to the three stars identified earlier in the line.  The three stars are simply repeated here in order to  encapsulate the main informational point of the line between two eye-catching points of demarcation.  They serve no other function beyond aesthetics.

(no subject)

Screwing over spammers makes Plonqie smile.

It's not a DDOS attack, it's just a huge bandwidth suck.  My biggest concern with this is that the sites in question might interpret the jump in bandwidth as evidence that spamming works and use it as an excuse to sent out even more.