Ah, a unix-head, eh? 
I am in mighty awe of thee, Steve.
AWE.
:::thunderous applause:::
Call me an idiot, but I didn’t make the connection between the username and the character in the story. I read all the way to the end, greatly amused, thinking, “Oh, that poor, poor developer, I know just how he feels, and I’m so impressed, that this Doper has taken it upon himself to empathize with his co-worker’s plight and post a rant detailing his woes.” And then I get to the end, glance back up at the username, and think, “Oh, wait, this is you!” So I got to laugh twice, for two different reasons. Bonus! Even if it did require a moment of stupidity on my part…
Anyway, very nice.
Great stuff Steve! Get out there and smite them with dirty laundry!
lno, I’m not worried if it’s hard to read, so long as it follows the coding standards. We must have rules, after all – what? Why, yes, I did begin my working career as a petty bureaucrat in local government. Does it show?
Coldfire, I think it’s down to bathos, which my dictionary of writing no-noes defines as “sudden change of level of diction” - essentially, the sort of incongruity that’s bound to crop up when you get a whiny rant about coding standards expressed in the language normally reserved for God and Destiny and Moral Absolutes. A lot of my (alleged) humour depends on bathos. All my friends tell me I’m bathetic. (I think.)
iampunha, velvetjones - those are the best offers I’ve had all year…
I’ve always had an aversion to arbitrary coding standards. I understand that they have their place, of course, but …
Many moons ago, when I was studying computer science at university (before I said “Forget this, I’m studying something fun, like medieval history” which was before I said “Forget this, I’m gonna get a job that’ll pay the bills”) I was of the habit of naming my variables with underscores in them. For example, user_name, requisition_id, and so forth.
A professor informed that his coding standards required that I write those as UserName and RequisitionId. I explained that that was harder for me to read, and really preferred to use the other style. I felt they were equally valid, and I continued my previous convention until he began marking me down for it.
I chose to retaliate through nonviolence. The next assignment had variable names like IHateThisShit and YouRuinedMyLife.
We didn’t get along too well after that, sadly.
The only problem I see with that is that, in some fonts, an upper-case I is hard to distinguish from a lower-case L. So there can be some confusion there. I don’t know if that point has ever occurred to you?
:: :)d&r ::
"And, lo, he was sent forth to pee unto the Jar of the Testing
“His attitude is sorely wroth” sayeth Phyllis Stein, who was the Director of the Resources Human. “He is without sin, and must therefore be stoned.”
“Let him be cast down unto the IT, where he shall dwell amongst the Sodomites, whose loops are without end, forever and ever.”
So let it be written, so let it be compiled.
If I make it to LonDope II, Steve, you’re a dead man. 
Damn.
Just damn.
You can follow the Tao of Steve, but I don’t think it will help much with tech support.
And if it does, I’m going to have to reconsider not going into tech support.
Ben