Random or Design?

For years (24) I worked as an analyst/programmer. For the first 11 years that was with my father in Galway running a Bureaux service and all the software we used was written in house by both of us. I then moved to Dublin and started working as a contract programmer developing all manner of packages, it was during this period when I came to the realisation that I was a tool maker. The tools were of course virtual.

This distinction of a tool maker is important to me as it helped remind me what it was that I needed to do, and that was to provide the software which best helped my clients perform their jobs and not what I thought they needed. There is a tendency within the software industry to assume that we know best what your requirements are and that you guys are a bunch of numpties who haven't a clue. How wrong.

I left the industry having worked with an employer who took the phones off our desk because we shouldn't ever have need to talk to the systems users. I think they forgot that they had hired me as an analyst, but my siblings and I were finding that the new class of employer was now more likely to be someone looking for a shop front on the internet and had no understanding of software development, nor any interest in how a system is analysed.

Anyway I ended up working in a pub/restaurant washing dishes and doing the occasional odd job and eventually became a full time handy man and decorator. I still found myself making tools this time physical tools, hence the odd shaped piece of plastic. Today I have been mostly fixing and painting things. Since we had a bit of a leak in the bathroom the mouldings in the hall have been damaged. When I removed the damaged plaster I discovered an old repair to the concrete moulding where someone had used an angle grinder on the moulding. So I have treated it for mold and applied a damp seal then covered the gash with plasterboard tape.

Tomorrow I will reapply plaster to the moulding, using my oddly shaped pice of plastic as a moulding shaped applicator.

The other fuzzy thing is a well designed tool for dusting window blinds and a cup of coffee which is the only tool required to get me going.