Sharing underwear Nov 22, 2006
It was recently brought to my attention that sharing underwear is a universally unacceptable thing.  And I fully agree.  I'm ok with letting people borrow a shirt or two.  I'm more hesitant about pants and shorts, but I'll usually give in.  Socks and undershirts might be given out reluctantly with a "Hey, it's your problem" disclaimer. 

But when it comes to underwear, there's just no acceptable reason, socially, mentally, physically, or spiritually, to let another person wear your underwear.  It just can't happen.  The borrower would be virtually unable to make it through the day.  They might accidentally slip up and say, "Hi, I'm Bob.  I'm wearing my friend's underwear.  I mean..."  Or it might just happen to be the most hot and humid day of the year.  I don't need to elaborate on that point. 

The lender of the underwear would be equally at fault.  No matter how many times you wash them, no matter how much bleach and other industrial cleaners you use, they're still the underwear your friend borrowed.  Every time you wear them after that, you'll remember.  It's not one of those things you'll conveniently forget about like the dust bunnies you swept under the refrigerator or the cookie you accidentally dropped on the floor and ate.  I think you'd be so riddled with disgust and self-loathing that you'd be unable to continue being a functional human being.  You'd have frequent mental health breakdowns.  You'd start yelling at squirrels.  You'd be unable to enter normal society again until you burned those underwear in a bonfire and publicly renounced your utter moral failure. 

In conclusion, don't let people borrow your underwear, and don't be a borrower of other people's underwear.  It's just completely unacceptable. #lifestyle
Software design Nov 22, 2006
I'm not technically a software developer, but I sometimes work with code that will eventually be used by other people.  This sorta makes me a software developer, in some small way. 

One of the rules of thumb to keep in mind when programming is this:  "It's a good idea to keep the user in mind when developing software".  That sounds dumb, but it's surprising how often it isn't followed.  I'm working with a guy who's been doing minor programming work for 15 years.  Nothing major, just a bunch of in-house simulation codes and things like that.  But the code he's written has been distributed to other people.  In fact, the project he and I are currently working on is meant to be shared with several other groups of people, none of which even work in our office.  So I was at least slightly shocked/disgusted by a little "feature" he added right at the beginning of the project.  When the user opens the main window of the program, he/she can input data, run the simulation, and plot stuff.  When the user wants to exit, he/she simply clicks on the "Exit" button at the bottom.  And that's where my coworker decided to make a pop-up say "Are you sure?  Yes/No".  I questioned his logic on it and he said, "Eh, it's what I've seen other programs do."  Wow.  That hurts.  You include a useless feature simply because you saw it in some other piece of software?  I'm no expert, but that sounds pretty stupid. #technology