When Nothing is Something
I have nothing to write about today, so will prove that nothing is something by writing this. Tada!
Seriously though, today is proving very slow indeed. Highlight so far – discovering that the HTTP Status code “418” means “I’m a teapot”. I kid you not. If you were to send a message over the internet to a tea making machine, asking it to make a cup of coffee, it would respond with “418”. I can’t imagine why anybody would have done it, but the code has made it’s way into the software that exists on web servers all over the world.
It makes you wonder what other oddities exist, baked into the fabric of systems for decades. I didn’t realise for years what the flip-out plastic lugs were for on Macbook chargers, for example. Turns out you can wrap the wire around them. Then there’s the cartons that takeaway food comes in – did you know the carton can be folded out to make a dish? Well now you do.
I guess more than anything, this post proves that you need to have a daily life to write anything about daily life. Getting up, having a shower, getting dressed, cycling to work, cycling home, eating dinner, washing up, and repeating the process over and over again doesn’t make for the most exciting “day in the life” posts.
Maybe it’s not about the big stories though. Maybe it’s about the little things. The third cup of coffee before lunchtime that makes you feel sick. The co-worker who brought donuts in this morning. The lady that lives opposite the office moving out (has she met somebody? has her job changed?). The temptation to make everybody yet another coffee purely to go stand in the kitchen for ten minutes and not be hassled about anything.