Outside a coffee shop I took a seat at a table snugged up to the side of the building, which holds a series of little shops including a small cardio gym and a salon, on either side of the coffee shop.
I am working on my computer, struggling to understand why git can’t automatically merge the upstream changes for a file: as far as I can tell, there are no conflicting changes. This really should have been a fast forward.
I’ve been staring at both sides, trying to find anything in conflict.. People come and go, walking by, carrying coffee and snacks. A long hair floats down, landing on my typing fingers. Annoyed, I shake it off to the ground at my feet and refocus on my task..
Time passes. I’ve copied both "competing" versions into pristine files and
performed a regular diff as a sanity check. Sure enough, only one side,
the side I’m merging in, has any changes. I still can’t figure out why
the automatic fast forward strategy failed.. Oh well.
A few short hairs are sitting on my keyboard; huh, are those mine?
I brush them off.
I commit the merge and push back to github. Task complete! I take a deep breath and sit back slightly, after having been hunched over my laptop for the last hour. I look over at my phone, and there are about a dozen short bits of hair, clearly from a hair cut, that have gathered on my screen.
In disbelief and horror, I look to my papers: covered in bits of hair. My laptop: tiny hairs all over! My slacks: hairy. My COFFEE: thankfully lid covered, phew. Even as I watch, more bits of hair float slowly down onto my table. I look up; there is an exhaust vent about eight feet above my head on the exterior wall. I suddenly realize why I’ve been smelling shampoo and conditioner so strongly; the salon’s air flows outside directly above my table.
Perhaps I won’t sit here tomorrow.