Now and Then

Now and then I have days where I seem to be a mistake magnet. When I seem to be tripping over issues while getting repro for the unexpected behaviours observed during diagnosis of side-effect of a problem I wasn't even trying to provoke. Days where, when I close my eyes for a minute, I'm suddenly in the back of an open-top limousine cruising down Defect Drive with bug reports showering me like ticker tape.

On those days, it's tempting to think about some rose-tinted previous release where "everything" "worked" or the requirements weren't attached to a bungee rope or the interested parties had a common lexicon or the team wasn't spelled tiiiiim or whatever.

But that's just a waste of time and mental energy, and likely to lead to ennui and sourness. (OK, extra ennui and sourness.) When I find myself at the top of that slippery slope, I remember the wise words of Mark E. Smith in It's A Curse: "Balti and Vimto and Spangles were always crap, regardless of the look back bores." Utterly negative but, crucially, direct: that was then and this is now.
Image: http://flic.kr/p/4vsLXy

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