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how delicious it is to imagine
Tuesday, July 15 2025
As I was driving to work early this morning, I could feel a continuation of the rage I'd been feeling since learning yesterday that my work-issued laptop was being wiped and that my access to its latest incarnation would be restricted. Feeling like rage-quitting comes easily to me these days, especially since it's now clear that any money I earn is just a nice-to-have. I could retire right now! But then I would feel like I wasn't pulling my weight.
But rage-quitting is rarely the best course of action, no matter how delicious it is to imagine. Also, the people I work for, for all their faults, aren't deserving of such treatment. So on the way to work this morning I began mentally composing an email that I would send the CEO and Director of IT arguing for having the right to administer my own work-issued laptop despite what had happened when I was in Sri Lanka. The email ended up being a little flip in tone, but it made some good points about a developer's administrative needs. I also pointed out that I've been entrusted with the ability to run arbitrary SQL queries on a live database for one of our clients, so they already have decided that I am trustworthy. Another important point I needed to make was to say how hostile I find some of the defaults of a Windows 11 installation. I particularly hate features like drag-to-maximize (having come of age in the world of Macintosh OSes 6 and 7, I almost never want to maximize a window) and find they seriously degrade my experience when using a Windows computer.
Within a half hour or so, I'd been given all my old administrative capabilities, with the proviso that I should first clear any software I intended to install with the Director of IT. This was a little patronizing, but one has to choose one's battles, so I agreed.
At lunch today, it was just me, the one senior developer who is part of the lunchroom court, and the king. The latter greeted me enthusiastically with, "Hey, Sri Lanka!" He's terrified of flying in airplanes and seemed a little surprised I'd made it back in one piece. So I told them all about watching the birth of a wild elephant, about the food poisoning, and the mish mash of religions on the island. When the king of the lunchroom court mentioned wanting to visit Scotland at some point, I told them about how my wife and I hitchhiked through Scotland back in 2008. This led to a discussion of hitchhiking, which the king himself had done many times back in his youth. This of course gave me the opportunity to tell the story of hitchhiking in Quebec with two young women and ending up spending several days riding around with a dashing young man in his sports car only to learn, upon attempting to cross the border to Burlington, that he was a notorious bank robber.
I spent most of the day coaxing my work-issued laptop back to a state where I could use it again, and by the end of the day I was back to doing code review.
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