So I'm a shareware software developer, since I wrote a program last summer when I was unemployed that at least three people have paid me $5 for. It is a Gmail notifier for Mac OS X, much like the Windows 'Gmail Notifier' made available by Google. Since it had the same function but a different platform I gave it the same name - or, more accurately, 'Gmail Notifier for Mac OS X.'

At this point in history, most or all of the Mac Gmail notifiers were defunct or inoperable, and Google had not exactly thrown us Mac users a bone.

Until, that is, a couple months after mine hit the 'net. I got about ten emails that day saying 'uh hey, somebody stole your program's name, and you won't guess who it is.' Well, I knew who it was and I admit it was kind of an assy thing of me to bogart their name, so I don't begrudge them that. Their program had about the same feature set as mine, the main difference being that mine lives in the dock while theirs lives in the menu bar. Also the icons were different.

Ah yes, the icons. Funny, you don't really give icons much thought. Mine was kind of a weird ugly red 'mvelope' with your typical Mac OS X candy-coating:


Theirs was an admittedly better-executed blue mvelope, rotated slightly:


But today I got two emails saying, hey, how come Gmail Notifier is in my menu bar rather than the dock where I like it? And I said, ehm, it's always been in the dock; you're thinking of the Official Gmail Notifier, which is in the menu bar. And he said, no, I'm pretty sure this is yours, because it's got the same icon. So I grabbed a copy of the Official Gmail Notifier and holy shit:


What the Hell?!

Furthermore, they've confused a number of software-tracking websites who are now convinced that I am a Google developer and theirs is actually a continuation of mine - and confused those sites' users in the process. I had always planned to name the 1.0 release something else like 'Dave's Gmail Notifier' or something dumb like that, but I'm seriously considering renaming it 'The Google Asshats Can Suck It.'

- Z

OK, I admit to being a total Achewood junkie, and the Great Outdoor Fight storyline has got me hooked.

I believe that 'fugue' deserves to become the next overused and misunderstood pop-culture mental health issue [see also: paranoi(a|d) (WIKIPEDIA - paranoia) , anal(-retentive)? (WIKIPEDIA - anal-retentive) ] - once (e:dragonlady7) explained (WIKIPEDIA - fugue state) it to me, that is. With that preface:

Today I am ecstatic because we will have hired someone to take over all my nonprogramming duties by the end of the week - and all the candidates were excellent. Back at my old job my boss was always complaining about how he had to spend all his time 'putting out fires,' as he liked to call it, and could never concentrate on programming. I thought he was a tool. But now that I've tried programming and 'fixing peoples' shit,' as I like to call it - well, I still think he's a tool, but at least now I understand. Back then, though, I was just a programmer [Objective-C, thank you very much], and I would get in around ten to nine, grab a cup of coffee, read the news, and fugue until about ten to five. When I snapped out of it there'd be papers all over the office, half a tuna salad sandwich stuck to the ceiling, and another KLOC (WIKIPEDIA - KLOC) in CVS (WIKIPEDIA - Concurrent Versions System) . Man I miss those days.

- Z