Vacations and weekends
3 October 1996.
Boss, what's vacation?
"Boss, can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Everyone's always talking about vacations and free time and things like that. How come I never have any?"
"You wouldn't like it."
"But they think it's better than work. They really look forward to it."
"Remember last year, when the office was shut down for a week."
"When they replaced all windows? Sure I remember. I couldn't play with a computer for a week. Horrible."
"Vacations are like that."
"Oh."
"So you wouldn't like them."
"But everyone else does."
"Ah, but that's because they're lusers, not hackers."
"Oh."
"Now go back and write that compiler. We need it last week."
An algorithm for recognizing weekends and vacations
A weekend is that time when it takes ages for other people to answer mail and talk requests. It sometimes takes several days. I can't imagine what they are thinking. Perhaps they're in the middle of a really intensive game of Doom. It usually takes about two days and happens five days after the previous one ended.
I don't think weekends are the same as vacations. They look the same, but vacations happen more irregularly and can take several weeks at a time. Also, vacations seems to cause changes in skin color for some people, but it doesn't seem to last for very long. (Too bad, a bit of variation is always helpful for those awful face-to-face meetings. Why can't people just send me mail.)