Seasoned programmers know that abends are never a good thing. You see, abend is programmer lingo for abnormal end such as when you work on a program for 12 hours straight and still it wouldn’t run as expected. Pair abends with series and you know that stopping now and reading the review on the latest cellphones would brighten your day more than reading through the end of this article. For abends and series and unfortunate all together in a sentence never lifted any programmer’s spirits. Add deadlines and status meetings and users and you know that this article will never end with happily ever after. As everyone knows, or as everyone of a certain age should know, happily ever afters are to fairy tales as automatic promotions and salary increases are to myths.
Dear Reader, this is your last warning: nothing fortunate ever came out of an article with unfortunate in its title.
The horoscope should have given our hero ample warning, “The lack of exact astrological aspects today is like the calm before the storm… hang on!” It should have been enough reason for Mr. Programmer to take a long leave of absence and hole out somewhere where cellphone callers would only get the irritating taped message, “The subscriber cannot be reached, please try again later”.
Our hero had the week mapped out – here to mean he had planned major accomplishments each day of the week in his mind not knowing that he would have been better off not getting off the bed at all. Monday, his rest day apart from Sunday, he had planned as work from home day. Monday was the day he would finally triumph over XY8RRH00’s sneaky control break, finalize the Detailed Design using template version 1.02, and accomplish the Unit Test Plan using template version 1.04. Yeah, if you’re on CMMI, you got to be precise with those versions. Those guys don’t care what you put inside those documents – use the correct template version and you’re in.
Monday dawned bright and clear, though it did not exactly start at dawn for our hero as he had gotten up at 10 am. The anticipation of a success-filled Monday had got to him and he’d had a fitful sleep.
Still fighting off sleep, Mr. Programmer set up his laughtop (yes, laptops weighing over 5 kilograms get the honor of being called laughtops), and attempted to connect to the office. First attempt, connection speed = 7 kbps. Fast enough to go for a “wee wee” break, thoroughly wash hands, drink a glass of water, look for the Chinese classical CD, adjust the volume of the CD player, and still come back to the same X on the TSO/ISPF screen. Second attempt, connection speed = 9 kbps. Third attempt, connection speed = 6 kbps. On the nth attempt, he finally settled on 19 kbps.
11:30 am and he was finally able to submit his test job. SUB, enter, SWAP, SDSF, ST, and nothing. What normally took seconds to execute was not executing at all. Nothing was running. There was no initiator. There was only one explanation for this. Some kind of system maintenance was being done and Mr. Programmer, as usual, had not been paying attention to the e-mails and TSO reminders. It was time to quit, have lunch, and a troubled siesta.
3:30 pm, still enough time to conquer XY8RRH00. Connection speed = 21 kbps, initiator = 0. 5:30 pm, connection speed = 21 kbps, initiator = 0, headache = gargantuan. Scorecard for Monday: effort and good intentions 100%, accomplishment = 0%.
Tuesday started at 7:30 am with a project status teleconference in the office. A colleague was taking a long overdue medical leave and our hero, like Don Quixote in all his foolish glory, could not resist the challenge. Meeting output: 2 additional programs to code fixes for and a never-ending problem investigation. Never-ending here to mean something that began 6 months ago, is still ongoing, has the user fuming mad and breathing fire, has management on the edge, and has no one on the development team with any clue at all on how to lick the problem. A very good start to a day that ended at 12 midnight with a call that said the night’s scheduled teleconference was postponed to the next night.
Wednesday started as auspiciously as Tuesday. Mr. Programmer was awakened at 8:30 am by the duty phone for another status meeting. Only then did he remember that there was a short training on time-entry and other administrative tasks scheduled right after the teleconference. He was going to miss that training and worse, he was beginning to break out in boils due to meeting allergy. In Mr. Programmer’s opinion, only the “management types” enjoyed meetings. For management, things get done during meetings. For programmers, no source code gets coded during meetings.
By 10:30 am Mr. Programmer was inside the LRT station waiting for a train. A train did come, and another, and another, and still another, all with no space for Mr. Programmer. He had planned on meeting a programmer friend for lunch and it was getting increasingly likely that he would miss that too. He finally got onto a train with enough space for his skinny frame and just as it seemed his luck was turning for the better, the train had to go on a 20 km per hour speed “due to maintenance being done on the system”. After the train, the jeepney ride that normally took 10 minutes became 30 and he arrived at the office after lunch. It was still Wednesday and Mr. Programmer could hardly wait for Sunday.
Status as of Wednesday: XY8RRH00 still pending, 2 additional programs pending, and 1 problem investigation hanging over Mr. Programmer’s head like the sword of Damocles.
And if you think the rest of the week would turn out well, you are in for a nasty surprise. I will spare you the details but it ran like a programmer’s nightmare: 10:30 – 11:00 pm nightly meetings, 1 – 2 am Thursday teleconference with users, missed a programmer friend’s wedding on Friday, and a one-on-one status reporting to a member of the senior management team on Saturday. If there was anything Mr. Programmer was more allergic to than meetings, it would be close contact with management. Mr. Programmer was itching all over by the time his week came to an end.
Dear editor, the next time you pass through Singapore, be sure to visit my favorite vegetarian food center in Tampines in front of the Tampines Sports Center. Order a curry puff with bee hon for take away and as you pay whisper the password, “ABEND”. I have entrusted Volume 2 of this series to these kind-hearted hawkers who have vowed to protect the article as fiercely as their recipe for yummy curry puffs. By the way, thank you for your comments. They are all appreciated and welcomed at itdinosaur@gmail.com.
