this is my job

[labmate] is a brilliant, kind non-native English speaker who is a little shy, but I like that we crack each other up on IM:

(02:03:19 PM) [labmate]: yeah may be. but there are 2 versions of parses while 5 versions of asr output
(02:03:30 PM) [me]: yep. it's a mess, no way around taht
(02:03:47 PM) [labmate]: I will try it if it breaks
(02:03:58 PM) [me]: let's just hope it all works.
(02:04:10 PM) [me]: that's not exactly "good software practice" -- hoping -- but sometimes it's all we got
(02:04:20 PM) [labmate]: praying
(02:04:23 PM) [me]: haha
(02:04:35 PM) [me]: i actually *did* LOL
(02:04:47 PM) [labmate]: good!
(02:04:58 PM) [me]: praying to the gods of software and algorithms
(02:05:21 PM) [me]: I'm prepared to consider sacrificing chickens to the minor demons of data management
(02:06:15 PM) [labmate]: are chickens good enough?
(02:06:25 PM) [me]: heh. what else you got?
(02:06:35 PM) [labmate]: maybe try some bigger investment
(02:06:45 PM) [me]: heh. I don't have any children ready to go