roguemonk.com

This was the penant number I saw while swimming around the HMCS Chaudière—a Canadian destroyer escort that spent roughly fifty years in active duty.

It saw the Second World War. It saw the first Gulf war. It must have seen much between those times too.

Now it rests in the Sechelt Inlet. It was sunk in 1992 to create an artificial reef for both animal life and divers.

What stories could it tell? Would it speak of acts of heroism?

Tyranny?

I would hope they would mainly fall under the first, but surveying this ancient husk of a war machine, I can’t help but wonder about all the possibilities.

“Fortune smiles on the Brave” – Chaudière’s Motto

For something that claims to work out of the box, I sure had to put in a lot of effort setting up a gallery.

CSS alignment issues aside, I’m sure that I’ll have to tweak a few settings (this software is a beta after all), but for now, I no longer have an excuse—I’ll have to start posting some photos.

Check back soon for something other than general test images.

I work in print production.

I have for the past five years.

I’ve learned and honed my skills from people that have been doing this all their lives. I’ve also become very good at developing techniques to increase productivity without cutting necessary corners.

More than anything, I hate blunt stupidity. It makes me want to hurt small, furry, woodland creatures.

Allow me to explain that past statement…from an experienced production worker’s point of view (really the only view I’m offering here).

Production is based on an undocumented set of beliefs that state you should take the most direct, most obvious course of action for any given decision. You need something copied. You pick a copier and go.

File servers are also based on this “cardinal rule”. You can find anything you need on the server with a few pieces of information. This can be a date, a docket number, or in my case, the company name followed by the contact name followed by the job name. If there’s no company name, you obviously default to the final two elements.

This will get you a file path ever single time.

At least it does when I do it.

So why whould you ever need to write this file path down?

There would be no point. It would be an unrequired action. And another important rule states that anything that doesn’t help, hinders.

And herein lies a source of my frustration. It may be a small thing…writing the file path down…but do it more than once in ten minutes. It will interfere with your productivity by breaking state. When that happens, you have to spend time thinking about what you were doing. Gearing back up to speed.

Now, since my “superiors” tried enforcing this, I’ve argued the point and have more or less won that battle. They don’t ask me for a file path any more.

But recently,there has been an increasing number of redundant paperwork implimentations that fall under this same stupidity.

Why would I have to enter skus on a piece of paper that will never be used? This information is entered into the computer at order time.

Why would I have to write down that I have a till—and what that till contains—if I have to enter it into a computer anyway?

Why?

The answer that I received was that we would fail an audit—resulting in my “superiors” getting in trouble.

They say, “Yes, I agree with you that this is redundant, but do it anyway”.

If you agree with me that this is stupid and unnecessary, why aren’t you calling you “superiors” and arguing the case?

WHY?

All these little things only serve to piss me right off. The real sad point is that I’ve ended up having this same fight with most of my previous employers.

And I’m sure it won’t be the last.

And only as the boat was pulling into the dock, no less. Maybe he’s punishing me for not having a gallery up yet (I only have 6000 images taken over the last five years… sheesh!).

I completed my Advanced Open Water certification today. I also obtained my boat specialty. That combined with an awesome couple dives made for a great afternoon.

Seventy feet of visibility at seventy feet below the surface. Sascha took an underwater camera. I’ll see if I can scan a couple in when they’re developed (”Your sooooo analog”).

And now, a shower.

In the last few days I’ve had more visitors to this little “corner” of the web than I’ve on every other I’ve held put together. I’ve shot up from less than 30 unique visitors in June to over 6000 in July (and we aren’t done yet). I’ve transfered 12 GB of bandwidth. Which means I’ll have to start paying more attention to the way I optimise stuff for this site. Many of the current post images aren’t and this is going to be a problem (I intend to update said images in the next few days).

This is of course, due to my recent tip to MacOSXHints. I’ve since learned that this tip isn’t new. Just new to most.

But I digress…

I’ve always known that you can drive site traffic by contributing to community sites, but have strangely avoided it. This was probably a little bit of fear coupled with the fact that I never had anything significant to talk about (hopefully, I do now).

Thank-you to everyone—both old guests and new. And thank-you to those people that commented on various communities where my tip garnered attention.

I do have more stuff in the works (not just posts about “Davy Jones’ Locker“) and will try not to disappoint.

I started my Advanced Open Water scuba course today.

Its basically five specialty-type dives. I also get to complete another specialty along the way.

Something I didn’t know when we began our decent to 95 feet is that sugar water is heavier than salt water. My instructor, Sascha, brought a bottle of Coca Cola down and several straws (one for each person). Once opened, we each took turns at sipping pop from the bottle.

The bottle itself wasn’t inverted or anything. Justed opened slowly to release the little bit of air without stirring up the pop.

Definitely try this if you get the chance.