Rob Lally : Robert Lally

Everywhere I go, I see the same thing. “The best way to avoid swine flu is to wash your hands after you go to the bathroom.”

So, if this advice were to be believed, the source of swine flu is one’s own genitals. This does not seem likely. I don’t understand why seemingly rational, intelligent people keep stating this again and again as if it made sense.

My penis is not the source of swine flu. If my penis had swine flu, then I’d have swine flu. I cannot catch a disease from myself.

When I say I can’t understand why smart people would relay this same, obviously bad, advice again and again I’m really lying. I can understand it. There’s a whole host of reasons but mostly it is people attempting arithmetic with small numbers and failing.

1. I should wash my hands after I use the small room
2. I touch lots of things with my hands and so they are a significant vector of infection

Washing your hands may be able to help reduce your chances of catching certain ailments. Or it might not. But it has nothing to do with making use of the WC.

Sadly this sort of conflation of ideas happens all the time in the programming world. People take some idea that seems reasonable, toss in a dash of something else reasonable, shake and concoct a third thing of ‘limited utility’.

Looking for an example: well, take much of BDD for a start.

BDD = Penile swine flu.

I’m just going to leave that hanging there for a day or so whilst I write up my thoughts properly.

I’ve just been on godaddy.com looking for domain names for a side project I’m working on. I hadn’t checked in a while, so I popped in roblally.com to see the status of it (please give it to me Irish Rob Lally… you don’t really use it). It still isn’t available but godaddy had some alternative choices for me, apparently Godaddy wants only bad things for me. Here are the choices it suggested

• DEPRIVELALLYLIVE.COM
• YOURDEPRIVELALLY.COM
• DEPRIVELALLYPRO.COM
• DEPRIVELALLYONLINE.COM
• BESTDEPRIVELALLY.COM
• EASYDEPRIVELALLY.COM
• DEPRIVELALLYSTORE.COM
• MYPILLAGELALLY.COM
• PILLAGELALLYLIVE.COM
• YOURPILLAGELALLY.COM

Why does Godaddy think I need to be pillaged and/or deprived so badly? What do they think I need deprived of? I guess I’ll never know, but if anyone comes near me at tonight’s techmeetup in a godaddy shirt I’m going to punch first and ask questions later.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve left JPMorgan and I’m now a free agent. Free agency is a term from the sports world, where it is a coy way of saying ‘you can hire me’.

I don’t really like coy so, in short, I’m available. You can reach me on rob@(domain).com if you’re interested.

Sales pitch aside, I want to use my free time productively. I intend to write here whenever I have something to say. I’m going to catch up on the giant pile of books that I’ve bought over the last few years that I haven’t had time to read.

Beyond that, my friend Clarke has been encouraging me to write. Like everyone else I feel I have a book inside me, so I’ll try committing it to bits and see how it turns out. Maybe it’s a book in there, maybe just gas.

There’s also a huge pile of technical topics that I’ve touched the surface of, but haven’t dived into as deeply as I’d like over the last year or two.

For the moment, as least, I’ve got time without commitments. I don’t intend to waste it.

After six and a half wonderful years with JPMorgan we’ve decided to part ways. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the smartest, most dedicated, hardest working group of people I’ve ever met. It was an honour and a privilege to know you and to work amongst you. We achieved some amazing things, you’ve forever enriched my life, and my time with you is something I’ll never forget.

I thank you all.