Null Space

Bad, Bad Smells

Oh, there's a million and one things I want to blog about. And should have blogged about, but the most overwhelming thing right now is the smell in my office. It's bad. It's real bad. It's setting off gag reflexes bad.

My guess is that rodent baits that got put under the floor a few weeks ago have actually had an effect. Now, if only it hadn't climed into a wall cavity to die.

Adventures in Bedding

It has come to my attention in recent weeks that I needed to get new pillows. Both Lisa and I (Lisa being my up-until-this-point-not-named-on-the-blog-partner) have been folding my current pillows in half so they're comfortable for a number of weeks now. So off I went to my local Target. As you do.

I also resolved to look to see how much a new quilt would cost - mine was getting a bit thin, which has suddenly became even more apparent these last couple of mornings. So I checked the label on my current quilt to see how big it was. As you do.

My quilt (originally from Target) said it was 'Queen Size' in a nice sans serif font. Which I took to mean that it was, in fact, the accepted dimensions of a Queen size quilt, and thus my bed was a Queen size bed. As you do.

So off I went, and soon came home with two new fluffy pillows, a queen size quilt and a nice new queen size mattress protector, mostly bearing Allergy and Asthma Foundation logos. (Whilst I'm not asthmatic, I'm quite sensitive to range of allergens.) I stripped off the old bedding and tore into the packaging on the new stuff to get it out and onto the bed. As you do.

Only to discover that my bed is not a Queen size bed. By quite a large amount. It's a standard double. My old quilt LIED to me. Me! It lied to me! After all these years!

Bastard. No wonder I'm replacing it.

An Conversation with Oracle Support

Me: "I've got a problem with perl not finding modules. Look what happens when I run 'perl -V'."
Oracle: "Oh. Can you run some perl thing that doesn't use modules?"
Me: "Yes."
Oracle: "Oh. Can you run this other one?"
Me: "Yes. That works fine too. Because it doesn't use modules."
Oracle: "Oh. Umm. Can you provide us with a simple test that we can try on our machines?"
Me: "Sure. How about, ooooh, 'perl -V'?"

Morons.

(Sorry to the non-techies, but you get the gist. Oracle is the suppiler of a very robust corportate database product and associated utilities and applications, and is responsible for most of the grief I put up with in my job)