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Police: South Carolina Robber Dies After Spray Painting Face to Conceal His Identity

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

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A robbery suspect in South Carolina has died after police say he spray painted his face to conceal his identity during the crime, WLTX reported.

Investigators said 24-year-old Thomas James started having trouble breathing immediately after the crime and died shortly thereafter, the station reported. Cause of death had not been released.

Officers told WLTX James and 23-year-old Michael Gregory Thomas held five employees of a cell phone store at gunpoint and stole wallets, purses and credit cards.

The employees identified Thomas as a suspect, WLTX reported.

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	If architects had to work like software developers
by Neil Middleton 1:05 pm Wednesday, 18 February 2009.

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet.

However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It

therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case..

5 Comments »

1. 

   Sounds just about right, except that often the client does like to focus on the colour of the carpet from the start, in my experience, before we even know which rooms get carpet.

   Comment by betty — Wednesday, 18 February 2009 @ 2:18 pm

2. 

   Very few technical blog posts make me laugh and cry at the same time. This is one of the best articles I have read on software development in a long time. Thank you so much this is fantastic!

   Comment by Dan — Wednesday, 18 February 2009 @ 2:43 pm

3. [...] Middleton has a great read for all software developers.  His post if architects had to work like software developers will make anyone involved in software laugh and cry while reading.  Great post Neil!  [...]

   Pingback by Great Article on Software Development | Flex Cubed — Wednesday, 18 February 2009 @ 2:56 pm

4. 

   hey - isn’t this the real world!!!
   happens weekly here…

   Comment by Richard Sams — Wednesday, 18 February 2009 @ 3:20 pm

5. 

   To bad this only gets read by developers.

   Comment by roppert — Friday, 3 April 2009 @ 3:51 pm

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Great article!

Peter's known for the Judy Moody books, Fablevision books and materials, illustrations for sites and software, etc. Besides, he is a very nice person who is dedicated to providing great materials for kids. He has also worked with the Worcester Preparatory School - http://www.worcesterprep.org (my alma mater) and helped the students there with many projects.

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