I’ve recently become addicted to a new substance. No, not cocaine, crack, crystal meth or even alcohol. Far worse. I’m hooked on Cadbury’s Brunch Bars. By the description on the box they are a “Tasty Cereal Bar” consisting of “oats, bran flakes, raisins, crispies and honey in a bed of Cadbury’s milk chocolate”. If you break down the ingredients (right) then they’re nothing more than flapjacks covered with chocolate. But it doesn’t stop me eating them by the box-load.
Back in my triathlon training days I’d sometimes buy an entire trifle, and then just eat the whole thing at once. I realise that they’re supposed to be eaten by four people but I’d be pretty hungry and I like trifles. Well, I eventually managed to cut that habit out, although I do still occasionally buy and devour trifles and it’s just like old times.
Back to the main point. Brunch bars come in boxes of 6 and currently retail at 99p. They’re chewy, sweet without being sickly and very more-ish (the more you eat the more you want to eat). I buy a couple of box and have the first one eaten an hour later. I tried buying three boxes to make them last longer but I just ate more of the damn things. I’ve just finished yet another box and I’m going to try and make that my last. Enough is enough. I will not be controlled by 35g chewy cereal bars. No chance. Not any more.
On a lighter note, I see that the UK air traffic control centre in Swanwick has gone horribly wrong again causing travel chaos for thousands. Opened 6 years later than planned, this part-privatised project has been a demonstration of how not to run a large mission-critical project. The software was written from scratch and the management changed hands several times over the years, both contributing heavily to the problems. As a software developer myself (and, I hope, a pretty good one) this comes as no surprise to me. It’s a well known fact in the industry that you can’t get a late software project finished faster by throwing more money at the problem. Conversely, throwing more money in will make it even later.
It can take just one person to fuck up a project like this one up. A bad critical decision here and there can snowball and result in a total fiasco of astronomic proportions (pun intended). However, the fact that over a year was spent fixing 1400 bugs is pretty good by my estimations. Nevertheless, I’m glad I wasn’t on that project – I can’t stand incompetence at any level, and while I’ve no doubt there were a lot of highly intelligent superstars there, their performance was dwarfed by those not in the same bracket making the decisions.
My two cents: maybe the technology sector wouldn’t be in such a slump if there hadn’t been so many idiots in the business that had no technical right to be there.
