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WIDLM

WIDLM: Corner Cutting

Again, a misleading and/or vague title. Coming up for titles for these WIDLM things is kinda difficult sometimes. Anyway, I’ll explain.

I actually like corner cutting. That’s sorta the problem, I like it too much. I dislike following procedures and doing everything by the book. Some people are very different, I know. They’re the type that store everything in its proper place and examine every tool for dirt and dings before they begin a project. Those people are not me. I just do stuff, usually without any plan more complicated or long term than what I can hold in my head and have come up with since I started.

Now, I like cutting corners, that’s why I do it. I feel like I’m saving time and avoiding tedium. What I don’t like is when that backfires. It happens somewhat frequently. Frequently enough that sometimes I consider altering my behavior. We’ll see.

The example today was vacuuming. I am home maker since Lauren has a job now. Anyway, I was vacuuming and it wasn’t working very well, so I sorta did absent minded inspection of the vacuum and thought to myself that it was producing very much suction. But there was no crimp in the tube, and I had this stupid carpet cleaning attachment that might have been affecting things, so I just decided I’d do as good a job as I could and maybe the bag needed to be emptied or whatever. Actually, I didn’t really have that much of a thought, I probably mostly thought, “Ehh…, whatev. Vacuums suck.” (No pun intended)

Of course, after I had thoroughly done a poor job with a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner I found this little sliding hatch in the nozzle that revealed a large mass of hair and detritus and pins which I surmised, correctly, was limiting the functionality of the vacuum. I extracted the blockage and then re-vacuumed, although, I doubt I was as thorough the second time around. Against my nature.

Anyway, this issue is about more than just vacuuming. It comes up much more often in coding. Part of the reason I like computers is that they are so forgiving in this aspect. Copy Paste, a little Undo, minimizes the pain caused from these corner cutting backfires. But sometimes in the coding world the problems, even with the labor saving properties of computers, are still very annoying and time consuming to fix.

It’s a little strange. Sometimes I am so very methodical. Some people probably suspect me to be exactly the sort I claim in this post I am the opposite of. But I tend to try and use the methodical approach as a last resort, barring special circumstances. I will just have to keep in mind that maybe the last resort should be tried a little sooner than I would like to admit.

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WIDLM

WIDLM: The anti-rangers

Lauren dibs this topic first, but I think we’ve decided that they’re so bad we can both write about them. The title is not clear, but I’m talking about people at national parks and stuff that don’t follow the rules, like stay on the path and don’t feed the wildlife. We’ve seen a few of those people up here, and it’s sad. Lauren hasn’t written her post yet, so I don’t know what she’ll focus on, but I’m going to propose a solution.

I think we should have some website where you can submit photos of these offenders. The parks service would have then review them to make sure they were violating a law and then use facial recognition to penalize/bill them appropriately. They could make it mandatory when coming into the park to sign up and have your mug shot or whatever, if need be. Anyway, facial recognition could make them pay for the damage they do, at least a little, and the law abiding among us could feel useful by snapping pics of the offenders.

So, come to the future parks service. Let’s fine those bastards.