6FU Junkie Dodges A Bullet

Well, I think I'm addicted to old Six Feet Under episodes. With the series ending this Sunday I felt like looking back to when it all began, so the other night I popped in my tape of Season One. (Yup, I've got them all taped. Every season, every episode.) I meant to stop after the pilot, but somehow I couldn't quite press "Stop"... The same thing happens every night. I'm just enjoying it so much! Over the years the characters progressed and changed, and it's funny and touching to see how they were when I first met them. Kind of like watching old home movies. And as with the home movies, looking back with foreknowledge makes it all the more poignant.

Today was a better day at work than yesterday, but not much. It's always tough when I'm the only one there in my group; I either run myself nuts trying to fix things I don't know anything about, or feel guilty that I don't have time to try. Today it was the latter. But I dodged a big bullet -- at least, I hope I dodged it! An analyst was using a procedure that I'm responsible for, and it was blowing out when he ran it under a started task. It ran fine when submitted in a batch job. I'd never looked at the program before (hell, I'd never even heard of it!), and when I did, this is what I found in the first line of comments: "THIS PROGRAM IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART." I said to myself, Self, you are so screwed. But then I looked at our team's list of responsibilities by person, and noticed that two asterisks followed the name of this procedure. Down at the bottom of the list I found the notation "Contained". Dare I hope that that means...? I went over to my team lead's office and greeted him, "Here's your chance to make my day." And he did! My guess was correct, "Contained" means "No enhancements", and the change to enable the program to run under a started task would indeed be an enhancement. I'm so glad I noticed those asterisks! You know what I always say: I'd rather not risk my ass, but I'm just glad I've got an asterisk.