markjgsmith

I made a bit more progress on the reusable workflows. There were so many small niggly loose ends to tie up that weren’t really strictly part of the feature so I created about 4 new feature items and added them to the backlog. That way I can concentrate on getting the reusable workflows feature across the line. It’s 95% complete now. There’s still 1 non essential repo to be converted, then update API keys. Then check all tests are running. It’s the sort of stuff that’s really tedious, jumping between repos.

Now that essentially all repos are using the reusable workfkows, it will be intetesting to see if the design is right or needs some adjustment. One of the follow up features that fell out of this is there are a few repos that just need to run the backup without a build and a deploy step. The problem is the current setup uses artifacts to pass files between reusable workflows, which works fine, but I assumed all workflows require a build step so that’s where the artifact gets created. That doesn’t make immediate sense in it’s current form in a backup only scenario.

So there might be some adjustments necessary.

That’s the end of this note, because I’m now being tsunami’d by a huge gang of boys all wearing the same tshirt. Just like the gang of girls the other day, but this time with boys. They aren’t actually all that roudy. Of course as soon as I typed that, they started getting roudy. The universe is clearly still trying to be funny. #

All sorts of weird merge conflicts in getting yesterday’s links and posts ready. It’s odd how this always happens after the universe goes on one of it’s rampages. I end up having to fix merge conflicts, in addition to zips on my bag, and all the other things from yesterday that I still need to fix, because as is always the case, it endee up being a whole string of similar universe breaking things that happened. #

cat << EOF > How great, or not, is poker?

Everyone’s playing poker these days. It would seem that anyone who’s anyone, and certainly anyone that’s successful, is playing poker. Just ask Nate Silver. He’s been doing the rounds explaining what it is about poker that’s so unbelievably great. It’s a perfect mix of difficulty and luck. It’s about spotting your opponents mistakes and exploiting those mistakes. Blah blah blah.

Poker is dull as fuck. Sorry but it is. It’s like all the people that optimise things in the world got together, and the people that optimise those optimisers discovered each other, which is no easy feat, because presumably that’s all very secret, and created game that they think is literally the best thing in the universe, making everything "game theory optimal", a sort of combination of extracting water from a stone and death.

Anyway, one of the things about poker that’s like this apparently uterly wonderful thing is developing your ability to see people’s 'tell’s', the body language and turns of phrase that give away some other thing a person is 'really' doing or thinking. It all sounds kind of like it makes sense until one day, you hear them call a tell on someone for saying something completely normal that you yourself occasionally say, and you know for a fact that their tell spotting is total bullshit, because you yourself aren’t doing or thinking the thing they are complaining about when you say said thing. You're just saying something that people say sometimes, a popular turn of phrase that’s a totally normal thing to say.

It’s quite frankly apauling and to tell you the truth, is all total fucking bullshit, just like when you realise that most of journalism might actually be total fucking bullshit too.

Perhaps playing and loving playing poker is the tell y’all. Seems a lot more likely to me. #

The thing at the minute that shop staff are doing to me, and it's happened at least 3 times over the last 2 days in different locations, is to manufacture a situation where they order me to lay the items on the counter rather than take them directly from me. It seems they are trying different variations to see which situation works. Of course now anything they do just seems suspect, so I just wait until they are ready and give them the items. Interestingly when I do to them the same thing they do to me with the receipt, they do something different too. Another reason to just wait until they are ready and give them the items. It’s been my experience that when something that’s been working perfectly fine for ages is suddenly changed, there is usually something else going on, some other trap they are trying to get you to walk into. Btw, it’s not all shop staff that are doing this, but it’s very obvious the ones that are doing it. #

The other weird thing that’s been happening the past 2 days is people randomly saying sorry. People sitting nearby, people walking past, people apparently on the phone. But also strange variations like saying sorry in the typical way and tone you say it, but using different sylables, so they are effectively saying something totally different but said in the 'style' of sorry.

Also shop staff saying 'it’s ok' as you enter the store which could be giving you permission to enter, but also they could be assuming you are in some way sorry. Which is really just another way of saying something is your fault before you’ve even done anything.

Anyway, it’s very odd but people are clearly doing some form of sorry hacking. If you think about it, it’s all a bit sorry not sorry isn’t it?

No doubt they will have broken sorry by the end of the week. This type of thing never ebds well, it’s really just warpathing while pretending to not be warpathing. How long until it escallates into a religion war? #

Got accussed of not being real by, wait for it, a couple of people that were about as real as a 7 dollar bill.

Yesterday I went to a caffee shop that I haven’t been to in ages. They always do weird shit whenever I go there. They are experts in making it look like you did something that you absolutely did not do. I honestly believe they could make Mother Teresa, should she be alive today, look like a shoplifter. Anyway they were up to their old tricks again yesterday, but that’s not what this note was about. What this note is about was the middle aged man and the fat kid, that called me 'not real'. They weren’t there yesterday, but they were today.

When I used to go to this shop cafe they would almost always showup. The odd thing is that I doubt the man is the kid’s dad, they look nothing like each other. The man is skinny, well dressed, the kid is short and fat. Also they just kind of sit there, without saying anything, but both focussed attention on my every move. And also oddly, this time, the kid seemed to be in charge.

I ended up on the same bench as them as it was the only bench with seats available. They arrived some time after me. I was listening to podcasts, and doing some writing on my device. After a while the kid basically decided it was time to go, and made the man get up and leave, but he did it in the same way an adult would do the same to a young kid. He said something to the man, then did a "come on we’re going now", and a head gesture, and walked off.

It was the man that said in my direction, 'you aren’t real', as they departed. Very weird weird.

What’s even more bizare is that the two people that were sitting in their place right before them were doing some weird shit too. Two blokes in their mid twenties. One was clearly "in charge", the other was sort of messing about. Had his naked left arm out on front of him the entire time he was sitting there, he was constantly rubbing the inside of his arm, in the place where doctors give you injections. He appeared to want me to notice what he was doing. I was affording him zero attention whatsoever because he was being kind of a weirdo, which of course made him act d even weirder.

The interesting thing was that the other bloke, the one that was 'in charge' suddenly got up and said something along the lines of 'time to go' and walked off. The other bloke was very suprised and he had to scramble together his things to catchup with the other 'in charge' bloke. Anyway when the man and fat kid turned up a few moments later, the fat kid sat exactly where the 'in charge' looking bloke had sat, and the skiny well dressed man sat where the bloke with the arm fetish had sat.

It’s all very odd, but very on brand for this place. It’s exactly the type of stuff that happens every gosh darn day. Weirdness in plain site, which could just about be passed of as normal, but is not, and is just weird mascarading as normal. Just over the uncanny weird line. In fact it’s almost like it’s some sort of trial baloon to figure out where the uncanny weird line is. #