I’m not an aggressive or overly assertive person. However, I have learned that a sense of certainty should always be a warning sign. What follows is a transcription of a classic tactical error.

(10:03:11 AM) Boss Man: You’ll bet your life that the statusID code is only set to 4 once it goes live at the site? The timing does not indicate that
(10:03:51 AM) Zero: I try to avoid betting my existence on anything, but if I had to, I would bet it on this. I’m watching our code spit out correct data right now.

…and a little later…

(10:16:48 AM) Zero: To be frank, I’m confident the webservice is returning the correct the data. So I’m inclined to think this is either a transmission error — the data getting lost between here and there –
(10:16:57 AM) Zero: or an issue with the way the results are being interpreted.
(10:17:23 AM) Zero: Not to sound arrogant or anything — heh — but the code checks out on this side

Fumbling and making mistakes is a natural consequence of uncertainty and development. However, making a complete ASS of oneself while behaving like an arrogant know-it-all is a different thing entirely. Oy, it burns.

Update: COMEUPPANCE!

Kevin Nielsen: But here’s my point.
Kevin Nielsen: When we were (doing X), this happened about three times a week and effected everything.
Kevin Nielsen: In (state Y), this has happened once in the last five weeks and effects a very discrete number of features across our applications.
Boss Man: So you have gone from a “F” grade to a “C-”