Dave Lloyd, co-founder of the company and Chief Bit Shoveller, looked up as I walked into the room. He seemed nervous; sheepish. Perhaps even guilty. I stared him down. I knew he'd crack eventually.
"Ingram," he gulped, "good to see ya! I, er ... I didn't know you were back in town. I'd love to stay and chat, but I got things to do, you know? Gotta run!"
I wasn't buying. This schmuck knew something, and I was going to find out what. I grabbed him by the lapels of his smart checkered suit.
"Spill it, Lloyd," I growled, "whadya know?"
A single bead of perspiration rolled down his craggy cheek, glinting in the moonlight, and then dropped to impact on the top of his trusty MacBook like a gunshot.
"I made some changes." he whispered, "I'm sorry! I didn't know it would go this far!"
I might have guessed. Lloyd was always pulling crazy stunts like this. They didn't call him "The Workaholic" for nothing. I pulled out my copy of The Ruby Way from inside my trenchcoat and pressed it to his throat. Violence is the only thing these engineers understand.
"Show me," I muttered between clenched teeth, "or I'll cut you a new programming language."
I felt sick. All my hard work had been for nothing. My documentation was now as useless as a J2EE engineer on an OpenGL project. This job gets to you sometimes. It eats away at your soul like a World Of Warcraft addiction. Still, as I walked down the smoke-filled alleyway towards my office, I had to admit: Lloyd's changes were good. Crazy, but good. Maybe I could document them after all ...
3 comments:
Johnnie, you cut me real deep there with your "useless as a J2EE engineer on an OpenGL project" remark...<sob/>.
Wow! Such a small thing, but so extremely useful. Keep up the great work.
Very enjoyable post, Johnnie. And such a pleasure to see you and talk at the Festival.
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