little. yellow. different. A weblog by Ernie Hsiung

seventeen

Yesterday, I worked my first ever seventeen-hour work day, from 9 in the morning until 2 in the morning. Here are some things I’ve learned:

• Most of my seventeen hour work day was spent in the cubicle of an engineer, integrating my code with his, staring at lines of code, drinking an assortment of caffinated drinks and eating caffinated mints. Did you know they had caffinated mints? I sure didn’t.

• When you spend seventeen hours staring at PHP and Javascript and your body is crashing from the sugar and caffeine that has previously surged through your body, things start becoming way more funny than they should. For example, commenting the projects in your versioning control system “Front-end Integration, Episode III - Revenge of the Logic” and “Front-end Integration, Episode IV - The Phantom Deadline” was side-splittingly funny last night, but now that I look at it now, I feel dirty, naked and ashamed.

• The engineer is, naturally, a Trekkie. Of course he’s a Trekkie - not one of those ironic Trekkies, either, but the ones that will erase half of his notes on his cubicle white board and explain to you exactly why a freak occurance in the time warp continuum could have the crew of the Enterprise on Dagobah With illustrations.

  (The scene: The engineer and I are programming at separate terminals in the same cubicle. We are on hour 14.)

  Engineer: You know what? There needs to be a cell phone ringtone for those Star Trek communicators. That would be cool.
  Ernie: Heh. Would you just attach the cellphone to your chest? “Yes Capt’n!” *stares off into space*
  Engineer: …
  Ernie: …
  Engineer: EEEW! NO. Those are the communicators for “The Next Generation.” I would want the communicator from the classic series. I’m don’t want people to think I’m some type of nerd.
  Ernie: But^H^H^H Uhhm^H^H^H^H Oh look, another Javascript error.

  Now, to his defense: he’s a good guy. We’re just on two completely different wavelengths, that’s all. I’m sure he has a LiveJournal somewhere, and he’s writing sarcastic entries about me: the token gay web developer, a book on the Document Object Model in one hand, a fabulous Prada man-purse in the other, walking through the cubicle aisles while Donna Summer plays in the background. And then he signs off his entry with a “Live Long and Prosper” emoticon, and everything is okay with the world again.

• Yeah, you’re right. I do need more sleep. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about either.

I hope you never have to do another 17 hour workday again.

Remember boys and girls, if you work too much, you end up like me. Scary, isn’t it?

I am now consummed with the fear that somewhere on the Internet rests a Live Long and Prosper emoticon just waiting to leap out from my email program and get me.

I know the proper response to “Live Long and Prosper.” I’ve been to a few Star Trek conventions. I even used to know how to say “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Klingon,” in Klingon (strictly for self-defense purposes, you understand).

But the idea of this emoticon really disturbs me.

Hope you got some good sleep after your very long day.

Hey, Ernie…

Haven’t checked out your blog in a while, but I’m always glad when I do… You’re funny as hell!!!

Well, I’m no longer an Engineering Aide for an Explosives firm… While I loose points for no longer being able to tell everyone that I meet “Yeah, I make bombs for a living”, I AM having more fun than I should acting as a Network Administrator/ASP Developer for a small MLM.

And… To add to my new found joy exponentially…

We just got a new Flash guy in. I FINALLY have someone to talk to about the subtleties of JavaScript and ASP!!! (Even though unless it’s related to Flash ActionScript I get replies like “Yeah, well you use a PC! Don’t you know how much better my iMac is?”

And… Something that should be illegal for anyone working with computers; I actually only work 8 hours every week day! And I’m on Salary!!!

Jealous yet?

Thanks for keeping your Blog live; you ROCK!!!

F~

I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I saw a brand of caffienated water a few years back named Water Joe. It might still be around. I wonder what it tastes like…

i once had an engineer wipe my white board clean of a very important UI workflow only to diagram how many slices are in a large pizza. well duh, i work with a development team, of course i already knew that answer!

Ummm…you know I live like 5 minutes from Yahoo and you can crash at my place any time, right?

You should make the trekkie speak chinese so his lines are in italics! That would rule!

You can get caffeinated mints, caffeinated water, caffeinated soap, espresso brownies, the list goes on and on. I’m waiting for caffeinated beer - sort of a zero-sum thing. (Or caffeinated Smirnoff, for some of us.)

Donna Summer? I always pictured you as more of a NKOTB guy…

Which communicator sound? I don’t think that the handheld communicators made a sound; the ship’s intercoms made the attention whistle, but that’s all I can think of.

I’ve been in your shoes, with a maverick developer from Montana. Saw more pictures of mountains than ever expected.

Hey Mike, wasn’t caffeinated beer already “invented” on the Drue Carey Show?? I think it was called “Buzz Beer”!??

What we really REALLY need is caffienated condoms!

My lil’ brother used to use Water Joe to brew coffee. I haven’t seen the stuff in years though.

Someone should make caffeinated air and be done with it.

but ernie, you have a cs engineering degree –doesn’t that make you an engineer? ::sigh:: i have no idea how the real world workds :-/

“the token gay web developer”

What am I, the back-up token? Daaaaamn.

Meanwhile, I got out of there at 12:30 after hour 12, saying, “ERNIE DON’T STAY TOO LATE I WILL RESCUE YOU FROM WORK MYSELF IF I HAVE TO” over IM, and what did he say? “okay :)” Next time, I’m coming in, pink pistols blazing.

Actually, I should say “hour 13″, but there was an hour in there I wasn’t working, somewhere. I forget why. Probably related to the DDR machine I hear they’re putting in the game room.

Atleast it got you blogging again.

Damn, Jason, you get into work at 11:30? Sweeeeet.

New poster here…I check your blog from time to time. Hi!!

“KRANK-2-0″!!! (as in H20) THAT is the caffeinated water that I have seen sold around me. I live in the Northeast, so I am not sure if it is sold outside of my area, but I had a friend that was totally addicted to the stuff!! It was scary.

You only have to work 17 hour days? I’m so quitting the law and going back into Web Development. Do they even call it that anymore?

Lack of sleep definately makes a lot of stuff much funnier than it should be.

The problem with using caffeinated water to brew coffee is that caffeine is so volatile. At room temperatures, it *wants* to be a vapor. So, boiling caffeinated water is going to drive out the caffeine before the water boils and you’re left with, well, water.

Better bet is to use (I believe - might have this backwards) lighter roast beans, which have a higher caffeine content. Then brew them double strength (for an auto drip maker, use one slightly heaped tablespoon per number on the carafe) for a bit more flavor and kick. Serve immediately, or at most within 15 minutes of brewing, as the volatile chemicals in the coffee start to decompose or escape after that time.

Sorry. Back to geeky lurking.

caffeinated soap, mints, gum, truffles, t-shirts with the caffeine molecule. It’s alllll here!

Not to be a spoilsport, but bugs start becoming invisible after a certain number of hours work, and actually start inserting themeselves in the code.

In reference to Mike’s Jan 27th comment, the communicators in the first series did make a sound. It was two sequential chirps that occured as the front cover was lifted to reveal the controls.

Just FYI

My cellphone has a real sound ring tone of the communicator chirp. I had to download it, but now when certain people call me, I am able to answer in the Shatner Voice.

Of course, I’m enough of a trekkie to be able to tell you which characters were gay on Star Trek. I live in a bizarre world where everything is made of entirely of metal, but still looks like it came from ikea.

*shakes head*

okay, first: you have a prada man purse?!? oooh i want one.. and i’m a girl… prada!!!
and secondly: i am a total new-wave trekkie (TNG only, really). and yet the emoticon for the live long and prosper does kind of freak me out. yeah, no. we don’t want anything like that.

They really DO make caffeinated wine. It’s called Vinergy. I’ve never tried it, mind you, but there were advertisements for it all over Boston’s public transport last year.

Bah! After innumerable nights awake on caffeine, sugar or other miscellaneous substances (I am, of course, talking about gurana or alcohol), all I can say is, unless you’re jumping up and down dancing or banging on a keyboard playing video games, they do *nothing* to improve your overall performance. I mean, they’re really just the mental equivalent of something poking its finger into you to wake you up when you’re already dead tired. You’ll still be awake, sure, but you’re less focused, more impatient and less likely to finish something with a steady, precise hand. Take a cat nap somewhere, then get back to work.

Believe me. I build scale models for a living. =b

I wonder what the quality of code was like from hours 12-17.

I know that I suck at doing mathematics if I’ve been up for a long, long time, and I would imagine the same happens in programming.

They sell caffeinated mints at Target as well as at Thinkgeek.com…for obvious reasons. My husband has had many of those long days…after we first got married I remember him staying up several times til 6am working to meet a deadline or fix someone else’s screw up. Of course he was working from home and then he’d sleep in til 2 the next day….

haha I love how you always talk smack about LJ, grrrrrrrl. its a fucking journal site, not a brilliant piece of non-fiction meant to keep you on the edge of your seat.

-P