I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.

Last week I started development on a new report, running against a new data source they just created.

I ran some test reports, and then did what I always do when I am replacing an old report; I compared the output from the new report against the old one.  Ideally, they should kick out a near 1:1 match with a few exceptions that I knew about in advance.

They matched up about 99% perfectly.  Alas, that 1% that did not match was critical data which was missing from the new report.  A co-worker and I spent a couple of hours doing research on the problem and determined that the glitch was not with my report, but with the new data.

Today I ran another test and started comparing it against the old report again, not because I expected to find the problem fixed, but because I wanted to gather some fresh results so that I could file a formal treatise on the matter.  I ran my job, grabbed the output from the old job and had just started comparing the two when I did a double-take and looked at the old report again.  It has an equally bad, but different glitch in the same data element.

My report is not showing things that are there, but the old report is showing things that are not there.

Now I just need to write this up in such a way as to not confuse people who are easily confused.

Last minute shopping again (as usual)

I made a lunchtime trip over to the mall to do some (last minute) Christmas shopping for atara.  She's been a little vague about what she actually wants for Christmas, and up until a week or so ago we were planning to just buy a couple of large, joint gifts so I hadn't really given much thought to what I could buy for her.  Well that plan mostly fell through, so now I'm scrambling around trying to find something that I think she'd like. 

I'm easy to buy for; if it has blinky lights and/or could take an eye out then I'm all over it.  Alas, my wife has more discriminating tastes than I do, so this is turning into something like real work.

I wandered over to the mall today with a couple of (what I think were) brilliant gift ideas.  In the end I was batting .500 in my shopping.  I couldn't find the thing that I know she'll want, but I found the thing that I think she'll like.  I have a pretty good idea where I can track down the former though, then I'll finish off with some Pokemon slippers that are 4 sizes too small and I'm done. <purr>

I probably shouldn't laugh

... but the though of an exploding Zamboni is really funny.

http://www.kstp.com/article/stories/S5048.html?cat=64

Fortunately nobody was seriously hurt.