So I passed phase 12 a couple days ago. Yeah. Thrills. No more kidding myself about being young. At least Queiba Command ordered an overhaul of CENT-COM, our newly named central computer network. Hopefully they'll add progress indicators. But I seriously doubt it, what with the levels of incompetency going around these days. Maybe I'll just pick up a rock tablet and etch everything into it. It would be so much less hassle.
So my command was pulled. Again. They said it was temporary pending investigation of my alleged insubordinate altitude. Bah. Never got it back. Went back home, wrote a replacement CENT-COM server package for my own benefit, read every book in my library, and finally called up Command. Apparently my C.O. completely forgot that I existed. See if I ever work from home again. In the mean-time, they had the Qlaque shifted to control of a new Commander. Rumors say that it's Vurr, Command's new up-and-coming star officer. Without a ship to command, I've been reassigned to a development station to develop new software. Apparently my computer has been bugged and some bigwig caught wind of CENT-COM-ng. I give whoever pulled that off some points for skill; my kernel must have been patched because there were no rogue processes, and system checksums came back OK.
Bah. Being a ship Commander was getting boring anyway. Still, I'm not a formally trained software engineer; it was just a hobby. I hope I still get to fly.
-(Former) Commander Nemulo
Showing posts with label just plain stupid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label just plain stupid. Show all posts
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Monday, March 31, 2008
Loadus Interruptus
If there's one thing I hate more than that central computer network Queiba Command started making us use last month, it's the software we run on it. The programs are full of useless controls that make things go completely haywire if you hit them at the wrong time.
A screen full of mission reports is loading from the database. You try to expand one. It stops the rest of the list from loading. Now you have to exit the report viewer and restart it (which takes forever, of course, because of network delay). The short answer is not to touch the controls until something has fully loaded.
There's only one problem with that advice, though: Programs on our computers don't have progress indicators. You can't tell if it's one report left to load or one thousand. Chalk it up to the overpaid, incompetent programmers Queiba Command has write our computer programs. They probably don't know try{...}catch{...} from if{...}else{...}, and certainly don't know what a progress indicator is.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to Headquarters and write the software, instead of using it. I know Queiba Command would never approve my transfer, though. I guess I'll just stay out here, writing reports on the ridiculous interstellar computer network and avoiding skirmishes with the Rorbulans.
A screen full of mission reports is loading from the database. You try to expand one. It stops the rest of the list from loading. Now you have to exit the report viewer and restart it (which takes forever, of course, because of network delay). The short answer is not to touch the controls until something has fully loaded.
There's only one problem with that advice, though: Programs on our computers don't have progress indicators. You can't tell if it's one report left to load or one thousand. Chalk it up to the overpaid, incompetent programmers Queiba Command has write our computer programs. They probably don't know try{...}catch{...} from if{...}else{...}, and certainly don't know what a progress indicator is.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to Headquarters and write the software, instead of using it. I know Queiba Command would never approve my transfer, though. I guess I'll just stay out here, writing reports on the ridiculous interstellar computer network and avoiding skirmishes with the Rorbulans.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Central Computer
I hate central computers. Not dislike, hate. With a vengeance. Queiba Command has done it again with their new initiative to link all the ships together on one big interstellar computer network. It makes doing anything a royal pain.
Take starting programs on a desktop terminal, for instance. Ordinarily, under the old system with average conditions, starting the log recorder or viewer, or opening up sensor logs, took a few hundred milliseconds to a second or two. That was with the ship handling its own processing and data storage. Now, with the single computer at Queiba Command handling every little minute task for every ship in the fleet, doing anything takes five minutes, if not longer.
Just opening the program to record this log entry (I am using my 'personal' tag for this entry, even though I know they read everything anyway) took ten minutes. First the program had to start, then it had to connect to the central computer. Next, it loaded a list of all my previous entries. Finally, and this is the longest step, it loaded the full text and audio of every entry in the list, even though it's just a log recorder and can't play the logs back. It's a flaw in the program's design, for sure, since it's loading a ton of data that it doesn't need; but at least under an on-board system the delay was tolerable.
The latency of doing anything on a central computer is ridiculously high, too. Not only do programs take ages to load, but issuing commands results in a several-second delay before any results show up. Even changing "tabs" (I'm not sure what to call them, actually; that's just a nickname) takes on average five seconds. Accessing data in the Automated Reporting, Reporting, and Reporting Interface (ARRRIn, so named because it submits triply-redundant data and wastes even more time that way) or opening a queued report waiting to be sent takes another ten seconds per request. Most of the delay time is made up of wait intervals, spent giving data time to be transmitted across the ridiculously slow radio network.
I'm thinking of writing up a petition and clandestinely (can't do anything in the open, of course) gathering signatures from other commanders whose ships have been affected. Once I've gotten enough signatories, I'll present it to Queiba Command anonymously, in the hopes that they'll see all the signatures and go back to the old one-ship-one-computer model. If only to have the performance back...
-Commander Nemulo of the Qlaque
Take starting programs on a desktop terminal, for instance. Ordinarily, under the old system with average conditions, starting the log recorder or viewer, or opening up sensor logs, took a few hundred milliseconds to a second or two. That was with the ship handling its own processing and data storage. Now, with the single computer at Queiba Command handling every little minute task for every ship in the fleet, doing anything takes five minutes, if not longer.
Just opening the program to record this log entry (I am using my 'personal' tag for this entry, even though I know they read everything anyway) took ten minutes. First the program had to start, then it had to connect to the central computer. Next, it loaded a list of all my previous entries. Finally, and this is the longest step, it loaded the full text and audio of every entry in the list, even though it's just a log recorder and can't play the logs back. It's a flaw in the program's design, for sure, since it's loading a ton of data that it doesn't need; but at least under an on-board system the delay was tolerable.
The latency of doing anything on a central computer is ridiculously high, too. Not only do programs take ages to load, but issuing commands results in a several-second delay before any results show up. Even changing "tabs" (I'm not sure what to call them, actually; that's just a nickname) takes on average five seconds. Accessing data in the Automated Reporting, Reporting, and Reporting Interface (ARRRIn, so named because it submits triply-redundant data and wastes even more time that way) or opening a queued report waiting to be sent takes another ten seconds per request. Most of the delay time is made up of wait intervals, spent giving data time to be transmitted across the ridiculously slow radio network.
I'm thinking of writing up a petition and clandestinely (can't do anything in the open, of course) gathering signatures from other commanders whose ships have been affected. Once I've gotten enough signatories, I'll present it to Queiba Command anonymously, in the hopes that they'll see all the signatures and go back to the old one-ship-one-computer model. If only to have the performance back...
-Commander Nemulo of the Qlaque
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