As anyone who uses unix knows, ps is a simple command that lists process for a specified user, whether it be yourself or otherwise. ps is a helpful command to use, and I use it often, my programming skills are nowhere near where I'd like to pretend they are.

ps can be used with arguments, -f specifies a full more complete listing of processes, and -u will give you the option of specifying a username.

Enter Jake, a coworker. Can I say he is only mediocre? That would be presumptuous of me, not to say rash and uninformed. But the truth is, I don't like him. You know why? Because he is ubiquitous and childishly delights in finding loopholes in the SA's work and mostly, he uses ps much too often. There are times when I find myself at work late, grappling with some sort of coding issues (such as right now), and he is there late too, and I will do a random finger to see who is still logged in. This is usually when I discover that he is paging through one of the programs I have been working with all day, usually the one that I have discarded and does not work.

ps -fu Jake
Yes, he has been looking at this stuff for the past 2 hours, no, he is not on my team and not working on this project, but a lousy irritating snoop. Oh sure, anyone can read this stuff, and it's not confidential and I tend to overreact, but I positively hate the feeling that there is someone trailing around at 6:30 p.m. reading my stuff for the hell of it.

Obviously it's not really what he's doing, but still, I feel uncomfortable. There is something about it that makes me queasy, yet I have no basis on which to ask him to stop. Because he's reading up on new source code? If anything, that's only to be encouraged. Still: I feel violated.

P.S.: Fuck you Jake.

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