A conundrum

I had thought of using the plural of conundrum in the title of this, the 126th edition of A homegrown DBA exploring #notsobigdata, but I ran into a small problem: it seems that there is some disagreement as to exactly what the proper plural is. Not having a foundation in any language from whence this word may or may not have originated, I will defer to the OED's verdict: conundrums. And, for those of you who never knew a world without the internet, Google did not put a red squiggly line under the OED version, so it must be correct. Now, if only the Urban Dictionary (sorry, no link; I tried to keep this safe for viewing anywhere) would second this motion....

I suppose the thing that brought all of this up was a situation that happened at work recently. A few months back, my boss asked me to confirm or deny a certain habit of a coworker. This made me somewhat uncomfortable, and my boss was quite aware of it, but it was an important matter and he needed to get an answer specifically from me, as I was the only human being who could verify the matter (it probably could have been settled through the review of certain electronic records, but for some reason that avenue was not explored). I told my boss quite honestly that I could not confirm the allegation. Recently, however, I found myself in a position to revisit the question- hence, the curiosity of the plural of conundrum. My problem was this: I was quite uncomfortable when the topic was first broached, and I answered the questions honestly, all the while giving my colleague the benefit of the doubt. Recent events, however, put me in a position to conclusively verify what my boss had suspected, and so I found myself with no choice but to reopen the matter and confirm the allegation.

To say that things like this make me uncomfortable is an understatement. I can usually "fake it 'til you make it" in most social or business settings, but when it comes to coworkers and serious stuff, I'm an invertebrate.

In other news, I'm in the final "era"of my very favorite online game, Rail Nation. I say this also with mixed feelings, as this will probably be the last round I play for some time. Rail Nation is an RTS (real-time strategy) game, and has players from all over the world. I love the game- what's not to like: it's trains. Think the original Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon- if you liked that game, chances are you'd love this one. But, as much as I love this game, I need to take a break from it, as it's a major time suck.

Continuing from my previous topic, there are two programming languages which were not on my laundry list of things to learn. I can't believe I omitted HTML5 and CSS3. I actually have a tiny bit of experience with HTML, having once had as one of my many job responsibilities the title of "website administrator" for a company that really didn't want to do business on the web. And these folks were all engineers!

No data news to report- this work situation has really unsettled me. And there's a reason for it, but I'm currently not at liberty to discuss it.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.