Nothing as profound as it might sound to be found here.
I almost didn't go for my swim this week. I had arrived home later than usual, eaten even later and felt tired.
It was however, the best swim I've ever managed. I had a lane to myself for over 30 lengths. Technique was winning through and it just felt faster. I'm still not fast at all, but as a casual swimmer in it for the exercise it's more about endurance. Last week I did the mile non-stop. My body was done. This week, I saw no need to stop. I did anyway. As explained some time back, swimming for too long gets boring and puts me off doing it at all. 64 lengths took 48 minutes. A little will be due to the way I turn (cramp avoidance means I don't really push off, so I am having to build fresh momentum every length), but overall it's not even an average time and that doesn't matter. I just enjoyed it a lot more. It's becoming easier, and my muscles are much more willing to respond than they were a few months back.
What would I have gained from not swimming? An hour and half's leisure time. What did I gain from going? Feelin' good.
The next day I crashed completely throughout the work day, leading to two days off work sick. Did it have anything to do with the swim? I don't think so. Just an office bug.
The last bit's irrelevant. The point being, what was the barrier to going for a swim? Willpower? Willing? Reason? Perhaps the lack of all that and more. Must remember to focus on the reasons behind the goal when trying to talk myself out of doing something.
SO, i'm rewriting the manifesto to explain the reasons behind each goal. I'm also removing the easy/hard split. The mind does some weird trade-offs based on that split which i'd rather lose.
The 2008 Manifesto
1. I will stick to my weekday food and drink ethic as set out previously plus consider the portion size of every meal, cutting back where necessary. Why? Long term I want to be in good health, and short to long term I want to weigh at best less, but certainly not more than I do now.
2. I will stick to wasting less weekday time playing fake poker. Why? Because time is precious and as much value as I place in entertainment, too much of one type of entertainment should be avoided.
3. I will take my camera with me whenever I go, or feel i'm likely to go, somewhere i've never been before but only on a night out if there are more than two people involved. Why? So I have some kind of record of where I've been and the people I've known, liked and loved.
4. I will stay in touch with my friends weekly and start trying to initiate some weeknight activities. Why? Because spending any extended period of time alone is a terrible idea, and the more you initiate, the less likely that is to happen.
5. I will continue to write a song each month and make up for missing one in March by writing an extra song before the end of the year. Why? Because some of the best times I've had in the last few years were band/music related, and lack of natural talent doesn't mean I have no ability. What I have, I want to keep using, at very least so as not to lose it.
6. I will continue to work towards my set work goals. Why? Because all career uncertainty aside, if I'm doing something, I'd rather be doing it well, plus it's the only way I will continue to advance in my current career.
7. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly. Why? Because in the last year or two I have enjoyed my work less, feel I should be doing something more meaningful to me and others, and don't want to find myself still doing exactly the same thing in five years time.
8. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule. Why? Much like the eating, it's about long term health gains and short term physical gain. Lose a little weight. Tone up a bit.
This week...
1. Doing fine on food and drink. A little off kilter due to the sick days perhaps, but all in all reasonably restrained. I did eat a fry up brunch last Sunday. That was a strict one-off last meal before my guests left, and I have no desire to completely forget what good fried food tastes like.
2. I played some extra poker whilst I was sick. Why not? It's not a time for getting things done. No foul.
3. Not been anywhere of note this week, or with enough people to take a camera. I've barely left the house in the last few days since I got sick.
4. Did manage to catch up with a few semi-distant friends this weekend, despite the illness. Goal ok.
5. I mentioned last week that I was thinking of revising this goal. I still am. I have 6 days left to come up with a song idea for May, but I also have loads of other stuff I want to do musically involving what I already have. It doesn't make sense to prioritise the former over the latter. Will make a decision on this next week.
6. Still awaiting new work goals. Maybe this week?
7. Whilst it's always on my mind, I can't say i've done much towards career clarification this week. It is about time to start thinking more about this again.
8. After a few very good weeks exercise takes a fall. All I have done is swim this week. I'm not a big fan of exercising when not fully recovered from sickness. It tends to set me back. There is a good chance I won't swim tomorrow for this reason, so next week is also a potential risk, although next reasonably weathered day I will certainly get out on the bike. Today is amazingly windy in the UK.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Cycles and Burnout
I'm forming a theory.
I actually formed it many weeks ago but didn't post it because I couldn't quite get it to make enough sense. The problem is I wrote it to hang on the concept of cycles, when in fact what I describe is far more the concept of 1+2=3. Rather than edit it and risk it losing it's original point, i'll leave it as it is, with this paragraph as a caveat - it doesn't make perfect sense, but it makes a point.
A feeling of dissatisfaction with life doesn't reach big crunches. It ebbs and flows in cycles. The closest to crunch is the burnout, but the burnout tends to be manageable with just a few weeks of variation to provide a new feeling of worth, either in self or surroundings.
This, people, is why people like me, and many, many other people talk a lot about change don't make changes. Many speak of talkers and doers, berating the talker and promoting the doer. This is too simplistic, and yet, it was depressing watching an old Office episode earlier this week to hear a well though out argument about dice. Having first rolled a 3, in playing again, one could roll a 6, but could also roll a 1. Leave the dice alone. This is presented dead pan in comedy, and the intended reaction to this is a feeling of superiority, but this is fear of failure boiled down almost perfectly.
The cycles occur due to balance and inbalance. This sounds almost matrix-like, but hear it out. Fear of failure regulates crunch. Other factors in life drive the cycles. Career, relationships, social life, recreation and i'm sure more are in the mix. I can't tell you how the people with a good record in all areas feel, having never been there. What I do believe is that one on the up will mitigate dissatisfaction with the others.
Who cares how much work sucks when you're enjoying yourself so much?
Who cares if you have no friends if you love your work so much?
Who cares about relationships when they've got good friends?
Who cares about friends, when they've got a good relationship?
Any two, and you can probably be reasonably well balanced. Some people manage 2 a lot of the time. A stunning number of people manage 3. A lot of these people don't think half as much as i'm thinking right now, but they do think they're happy. I'm not going to try to convince them they're not, nor am I remotely convinced that they're not.
With an average of 3 you may dip into 2 territory sometimes, but the 2 remaining will usually keep you afloat long enough to get back to 3. With an average of 2 though, dipping into 1 territory is quite possible.
Once down at 1, it's burnout. The 1 thing that's working is being dragged down by the other things that aren't. You hit a wall. Something has to change. There has to be more than this. Suddenly the thing that was going well seems insignificant.
One good night out later (for example), suddenly nothing seems as bad. Somehow a good night out has convinced you that the other thing that you burnt out on a few days ago isn't actually as bad as you thought it was.
Unfortunately, the two things aren't related. The other thing was as bad as you thought it was, but you've managed to avoid the difficult bit.
Congratulations. Welcome to the beginning of the cycle.
I actually formed it many weeks ago but didn't post it because I couldn't quite get it to make enough sense. The problem is I wrote it to hang on the concept of cycles, when in fact what I describe is far more the concept of 1+2=3. Rather than edit it and risk it losing it's original point, i'll leave it as it is, with this paragraph as a caveat - it doesn't make perfect sense, but it makes a point.
A feeling of dissatisfaction with life doesn't reach big crunches. It ebbs and flows in cycles. The closest to crunch is the burnout, but the burnout tends to be manageable with just a few weeks of variation to provide a new feeling of worth, either in self or surroundings.
This, people, is why people like me, and many, many other people talk a lot about change don't make changes. Many speak of talkers and doers, berating the talker and promoting the doer. This is too simplistic, and yet, it was depressing watching an old Office episode earlier this week to hear a well though out argument about dice. Having first rolled a 3, in playing again, one could roll a 6, but could also roll a 1. Leave the dice alone. This is presented dead pan in comedy, and the intended reaction to this is a feeling of superiority, but this is fear of failure boiled down almost perfectly.
The cycles occur due to balance and inbalance. This sounds almost matrix-like, but hear it out. Fear of failure regulates crunch. Other factors in life drive the cycles. Career, relationships, social life, recreation and i'm sure more are in the mix. I can't tell you how the people with a good record in all areas feel, having never been there. What I do believe is that one on the up will mitigate dissatisfaction with the others.
Who cares how much work sucks when you're enjoying yourself so much?
Who cares if you have no friends if you love your work so much?
Who cares about relationships when they've got good friends?
Who cares about friends, when they've got a good relationship?
Any two, and you can probably be reasonably well balanced. Some people manage 2 a lot of the time. A stunning number of people manage 3. A lot of these people don't think half as much as i'm thinking right now, but they do think they're happy. I'm not going to try to convince them they're not, nor am I remotely convinced that they're not.
With an average of 3 you may dip into 2 territory sometimes, but the 2 remaining will usually keep you afloat long enough to get back to 3. With an average of 2 though, dipping into 1 territory is quite possible.
Once down at 1, it's burnout. The 1 thing that's working is being dragged down by the other things that aren't. You hit a wall. Something has to change. There has to be more than this. Suddenly the thing that was going well seems insignificant.
One good night out later (for example), suddenly nothing seems as bad. Somehow a good night out has convinced you that the other thing that you burnt out on a few days ago isn't actually as bad as you thought it was.
Unfortunately, the two things aren't related. The other thing was as bad as you thought it was, but you've managed to avoid the difficult bit.
Congratulations. Welcome to the beginning of the cycle.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Ubuntu and VNC.. well.. Linux and Anything actually.
In all my years playing around with computers, I have given up many times on many difficult things. Usually I eventually figure it out. I haven't figured this one out yet, and I just gave up.
Nothing before has ever frustrated me as much as trying to get VNC working the way I want it to work with Ubuntu.
There is no problem getting VNC control over an existing X session. Piece of piss. This is useless. I want to login using VNC. Ideally I don't even want this box to be a sit down computer with a screen and keyboard anymore.
There are instructions detailing how to do so much in Linux all over the Internet, but they're all as bad as each other. Just the fact that every tutorial writer insists on inflicting their choice of text editor on their instructions is a red flag for trouble. If I'm writing a tutorial, I will assume you know how to edit text files rather than risking confusing somebody perfectly happy with emacs by throwing in words like vim. Frankly to send the uninitiated into any Linux text editor they haven't used before and then not give them further guidance is a big "fuck you". There isn't one unpretentious Linux text editor that i've ever been shown.
The frustrating thing is not that following one route fails, but that following one route after another route after another route all leads to failure. Half the time applications don't return the responses the tutorials insist they will. Other tutorials will completely forget to mention you might need to install some other packages before starting. By the time I was testing the first aborted attempt I didn't even have an Xvnc binary of any kind present! I literally hadn't installed the actual software, and the tutorial didn't tell me to!
For some reason it's far easier to find answers on closed source software than it is to find answers on open source software. Why? Just elitism I'm quite sure. If I can't figure this out I don't deserve to be using it. Go back to Windows little boy. In 3 years of spending significant portions of time in Excel/VBA i've never once failed to find a working solution to a problem.
Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love the fact that there is so much great free (as in beer and speech) software out there, but the community surrounding it is counter intuitive for users anywhere from newbie to tech savvy. Only the top 10% can use these tutorials, and chances are they don't need them anyway.
And, to cap it all off, somebody almost always insists that the best solution to a problem is to switch to the rival. Listen arsehole! There may be a rival. It may be great. It may be much better than what i'm trying to use, but at the end of the day, the software i'm trying to use doesn't just exist and not work, and all I asked was how to get it working! I'm not looking to start over at this point!
Okay now that I've got that out of my system i'm going to give it another go. Linux sucks.
Nothing before has ever frustrated me as much as trying to get VNC working the way I want it to work with Ubuntu.
There is no problem getting VNC control over an existing X session. Piece of piss. This is useless. I want to login using VNC. Ideally I don't even want this box to be a sit down computer with a screen and keyboard anymore.
There are instructions detailing how to do so much in Linux all over the Internet, but they're all as bad as each other. Just the fact that every tutorial writer insists on inflicting their choice of text editor on their instructions is a red flag for trouble. If I'm writing a tutorial, I will assume you know how to edit text files rather than risking confusing somebody perfectly happy with emacs by throwing in words like vim. Frankly to send the uninitiated into any Linux text editor they haven't used before and then not give them further guidance is a big "fuck you". There isn't one unpretentious Linux text editor that i've ever been shown.
The frustrating thing is not that following one route fails, but that following one route after another route after another route all leads to failure. Half the time applications don't return the responses the tutorials insist they will. Other tutorials will completely forget to mention you might need to install some other packages before starting. By the time I was testing the first aborted attempt I didn't even have an Xvnc binary of any kind present! I literally hadn't installed the actual software, and the tutorial didn't tell me to!
For some reason it's far easier to find answers on closed source software than it is to find answers on open source software. Why? Just elitism I'm quite sure. If I can't figure this out I don't deserve to be using it. Go back to Windows little boy. In 3 years of spending significant portions of time in Excel/VBA i've never once failed to find a working solution to a problem.
Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love the fact that there is so much great free (as in beer and speech) software out there, but the community surrounding it is counter intuitive for users anywhere from newbie to tech savvy. Only the top 10% can use these tutorials, and chances are they don't need them anyway.
And, to cap it all off, somebody almost always insists that the best solution to a problem is to switch to the rival. Listen arsehole! There may be a rival. It may be great. It may be much better than what i'm trying to use, but at the end of the day, the software i'm trying to use doesn't just exist and not work, and all I asked was how to get it working! I'm not looking to start over at this point!
Okay now that I've got that out of my system i'm going to give it another go. Linux sucks.
The Vista Dilemma
I was very positive about Vista when I first started using it. After a month, let us revisit the topic.
I still like the interface. Aero is a slick look.
I still like the intuitive Computer/Network access points.
I still like the explorer icons in their various sizes.
I still like how quickly it boots.
I still like how quickly it resumes after standby.
I still like the speech recognition, although it's far from perfect.
The problem is this. In the past whenever I've upgraded to a newer, faster machine, I've been blown away by it's performance. I never got the chance to feel that way about this machine, and the only logical explanation for this is Vista being a resource hungry hog. This is certainly the chief complaint amongst detractors.
I feel certain that XP or Ubuntu would fly on this machine. The dilemma is whether to abandon Vista to realise the true performance of my brand new laptop, or accept it. I haven't made a decision on this yet.
I could once again dual boot, but to which alternative (I don't have a legal XP to install, naturally). I also don't like partitioning hard drives. Always feel like this time it'll go badly wrong and break everything. It never actually has. If anything it always goes too smoothly.
So, yeah, the only conclusion in this post, Vista is the hot girl. She's expensive. XP is the girl next door. I guess Ubuntu is the girl giving it away for free all over town. This metaphor fell apart.
I still like the interface. Aero is a slick look.
I still like the intuitive Computer/Network access points.
I still like the explorer icons in their various sizes.
I still like how quickly it boots.
I still like how quickly it resumes after standby.
I still like the speech recognition, although it's far from perfect.
The problem is this. In the past whenever I've upgraded to a newer, faster machine, I've been blown away by it's performance. I never got the chance to feel that way about this machine, and the only logical explanation for this is Vista being a resource hungry hog. This is certainly the chief complaint amongst detractors.
I feel certain that XP or Ubuntu would fly on this machine. The dilemma is whether to abandon Vista to realise the true performance of my brand new laptop, or accept it. I haven't made a decision on this yet.
I could once again dual boot, but to which alternative (I don't have a legal XP to install, naturally). I also don't like partitioning hard drives. Always feel like this time it'll go badly wrong and break everything. It never actually has. If anything it always goes too smoothly.
So, yeah, the only conclusion in this post, Vista is the hot girl. She's expensive. XP is the girl next door. I guess Ubuntu is the girl giving it away for free all over town. This metaphor fell apart.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Fucking HDMI Cables!
Sick at home today (genuinely, even though I did go out last night) I finally ordered my new TV from the comfort of my bed. I'll perhaps talk about that when I get it rather than now.
Afterwards, I went looking for a HDMI cable with a good price to quality ratio. In the time it's taken me to really be no clearer I could have earned the money to buy a mid priced cable quite comfortably.
The problem here, and this applies to a lot of technologies - knowitallism.
There are a myriad of idiots who are obsessed with explaining that because the signal is digital, the cable quality is irrelevant. It's just 0's and 1's, and they either get there or they don't. All or nothing. Everyone understands digital because somebody explained 0's and 1's at the height of the digital TV launch. They didn't actually understand how the analogue that came before it worked of course, but they're happy to be an authority on the differences.
They nail the entire point without understanding it. Yes, it is 0's and 1's, and sometimes 0's and 1's don't get there. Sometimes they get interfered with on the way. Sometimes the bit pattern changes enough to knock the whole video stream off, and sometimes just enough to distort the video or audio.
An interference laden digital stream is far less usable than the equivalently interfered analogue signal. Anybody trying to watch Sky during just the right type of rainstorm knows this.
My parents have been happily watching below par analogue TV signals at their house for 15 years. With their current aerial, they would have no chance of picking up a digital terrestrial TV signal.
Back to the point - the difference between cables that do the job is not be that important. A cheap cable of reasonable quality that delivers the bitstream flawlessly will deliver audio and video no differently to an expensive one of higher quality, but buying a really cheap cable with poor shielding, it's signal being distorted by the 10 or so other wires currently behind my TV, may actually not be a great idea.
I would say half the sites and cable reviews I read didn't understand this as well as I'm confident I already do, so why are they putting up this information, and why are they writing as if they're an authority?
I can see why some people just say "fuck it" and spend the money on the first thing they see.
Afterwards, I went looking for a HDMI cable with a good price to quality ratio. In the time it's taken me to really be no clearer I could have earned the money to buy a mid priced cable quite comfortably.
The problem here, and this applies to a lot of technologies - knowitallism.
There are a myriad of idiots who are obsessed with explaining that because the signal is digital, the cable quality is irrelevant. It's just 0's and 1's, and they either get there or they don't. All or nothing. Everyone understands digital because somebody explained 0's and 1's at the height of the digital TV launch. They didn't actually understand how the analogue that came before it worked of course, but they're happy to be an authority on the differences.
They nail the entire point without understanding it. Yes, it is 0's and 1's, and sometimes 0's and 1's don't get there. Sometimes they get interfered with on the way. Sometimes the bit pattern changes enough to knock the whole video stream off, and sometimes just enough to distort the video or audio.
An interference laden digital stream is far less usable than the equivalently interfered analogue signal. Anybody trying to watch Sky during just the right type of rainstorm knows this.
My parents have been happily watching below par analogue TV signals at their house for 15 years. With their current aerial, they would have no chance of picking up a digital terrestrial TV signal.
Back to the point - the difference between cables that do the job is not be that important. A cheap cable of reasonable quality that delivers the bitstream flawlessly will deliver audio and video no differently to an expensive one of higher quality, but buying a really cheap cable with poor shielding, it's signal being distorted by the 10 or so other wires currently behind my TV, may actually not be a great idea.
I would say half the sites and cable reviews I read didn't understand this as well as I'm confident I already do, so why are they putting up this information, and why are they writing as if they're an authority?
I can see why some people just say "fuck it" and spend the money on the first thing they see.
Wednesday Night at the Musician - Nice Peter
Here's something I didn't try before. Going to a small gig alone. I tried... semi-hard to find somebody to come along. I kind of didn't want anyone along, thinking most people I knew wouldn't appreciate the guy I was going to see. I'm still right about this, but still wish i'd tried harder not to go alone.
EDIT: I didn't explain this nearly well enough. Many of my friends are outwardly musical snobs. They'll masquerade as most do under the banner of broad taste, but they'll be very quick to judge something they haven't given much time to. I get the feeling they'd brand last nights leading act guitar comedy, when in fact it's it's a lot more than that.
All support was good. The main support was technically brilliant but not quite gripping me towards the end. Nice Peter (www.nicepeter.com) was awesome. Brief emails and hearing him on a podcast didn't quite prepare me for just how self confident this guy is - a great thing, but suddenly making the dude harder to talk to. I managed to utter "dude, fantastic", shaking his hand as I left at the end after having earlier suffered embarrassing stagefright alongside him in a confined toilet saying nothing to the guy before his set. Pathetic, but true. Better than not showing any appreciation, but can't help feeling I was maybe one of only 2-3 people there who knew his material, and i'd have liked to actually explained why I liked it.
Meanwhile he breaks his set halfway through and takes the majority of the small audience (don't book a gig on the night of the Champions League final) out for a smoke, and has a great time either way. This guy deserves to be a lot better known than he is. Some artists own the stage. Nice Peter owns the stage, the room, the audience and the smoking area outside (the UK and his home town Chicago share this fairly recent restriction).
Pete - if you ever see this... dude, fantastic.
EDIT: I didn't explain this nearly well enough. Many of my friends are outwardly musical snobs. They'll masquerade as most do under the banner of broad taste, but they'll be very quick to judge something they haven't given much time to. I get the feeling they'd brand last nights leading act guitar comedy, when in fact it's it's a lot more than that.
All support was good. The main support was technically brilliant but not quite gripping me towards the end. Nice Peter (www.nicepeter.com) was awesome. Brief emails and hearing him on a podcast didn't quite prepare me for just how self confident this guy is - a great thing, but suddenly making the dude harder to talk to. I managed to utter "dude, fantastic", shaking his hand as I left at the end after having earlier suffered embarrassing stagefright alongside him in a confined toilet saying nothing to the guy before his set. Pathetic, but true. Better than not showing any appreciation, but can't help feeling I was maybe one of only 2-3 people there who knew his material, and i'd have liked to actually explained why I liked it.
Meanwhile he breaks his set halfway through and takes the majority of the small audience (don't book a gig on the night of the Champions League final) out for a smoke, and has a great time either way. This guy deserves to be a lot better known than he is. Some artists own the stage. Nice Peter owns the stage, the room, the audience and the smoking area outside (the UK and his home town Chicago share this fairly recent restriction).
Pete - if you ever see this... dude, fantastic.
Monday, May 19, 2008
2008 #21 - Concentration
Since youth, concentration has been slipping. Surroundings don't help. I now sit on a bank of desks with three people who like to talk pretty much throughout the day. The difference is they seem to be able to work at the same time. I cannot. It's not a big problem. My main job can be carried out with relative ease. In most cases either I can do something well or not at all because I don't have the tools, but the concentration lacking slows things down. I'm not ploughing through requests at a decent rate at the moment. Then again, there aren't that many and the level of non-commitment to what's next for us is getting real old. Did I mention i'm sick of this job? I think I did.
It really is stuff like this that causes this feeling too. It's not the work itself. For some reason as soon as somebody reaches management they immediately start to disregard just these types of issue. A survey completed by 100% of people in our department revealed communication to be the thing we're worst at. The same survey said the same thing last year in what was essentially the same department.
The only thing worse than the communication is the ability of management to take any real action to improve it. LIKE ensuring cascades actually happen, LIKE realising that everybody knows the rumours, and there might be no benefit to not just confirming it now. Let's be honest. If you're not telling us, it's probably because you don't really want to. KiP, right?
It may not be that simple in our case. There may be nothing to say. I have suspected for a few months now that the entire line of management above me has no real plan for our team of 7 beyond the rest of this year.
Yeah I know waah waahh I work for a big company that's just like every other big company. Spreadsheets, restructures and lack of shareholder value. At least our unique market position means the share price is fairly independent of how people perform. That said, the fact that this is realised is also probably what leads to the actions that cause this type of discontent. Why do things differently when everything appears to be working out. Impressive earnings were reported last week. Wonder if there's a bonus for that. Probably not a big one. I work in the part of the business that does least well and makes much less money.
Quick update on the points:
1. I suck with this food thing. I have snacked at work two of the last two work days. Since removing the salad, the Tuna tastes better, but it doesn't feel like a meal. Thought required. On a related topic, 3.3 breasts of chicken cost me over £6 at ASDA late on Sunday. I really hope this was just leftover non-value brand and not the new normal price because otherwise that has doubled over the last year. At least i'm getting more meals from the same amount of purchased food now.
2. Poker time minimal at the moment. I fancy a real game. The Facebook game is getting duller. I'm hovering around broke again. It's only fun when you have some chips. Very much keeping to the rule. Some days not even bothering.
3. My Camera went with me on Saturday night. Took a few nice pics and a ridiculous 3 minute video in which I tried to force my friends to give their opinions on recent natural disasters. Why? No idea. Did it achieve anything? Not really. Still, the camera finally got used again, which is good. Also marvelled at sliding it's SD card into the slot on the new laptop that i'd forgotten about. Very handy. USB cables hardly necessary for that kind of thing anymore. The TV I will almost certainly buy also has a slot.
4. Saw my London friends at the weekend, as mentioned above. Good times. Missed the opportunity to see a few others the same night, and have a feeling I missed something major. Will go fishing for that later. I'm not above talking about people i'm afraid.
Hard Part
1. Getting dangerously close to not having a song for May. I find myself wanting to work harder on the songs I have already put together rather than forcing myself to come up with a new idea for the sake of it. I may actually succumb to this, because I can't see any reason not to. As far as the music goes, whatever means the most to me is probably the best thing to do. I'm not committing to this change yet though. Check back next week. Maybe i'll hit on an idea.
2. As discussed, no goals at work for the moment. Another contributing factor to everything I talk about above.
3. Not having much in the way of ideas at the moment. Part of the problem might be realising I seem to very much in the swim category financially now. There is very clearly a storm coming, or already atop us, and it's hard to see how quickly it will begin to lift. I'm in a very good position to weather this storm right now. Cheap rent, slightly above average salary (for age) and no dependants. I am of course reliant on about 30 litres of diesel fuel a week, which is pretty much spearheading the current price rocket. That's a tough one. There will be a point where work will have to understand the sheer cost of travelling to work is unacceptable when there are acceptable alternatives. I hope.
4. Not a bad week of exercise. A little less cycling due to a few days of less favourable weather, but all in all I believe I have swam, in what was my finest non-stop 1 mile swim to date, I have cycled on at least two occasions, but I think it was three, all reasonable distances, and I have this evening capped it off with a little weight work. I'm sure i'm lifting too much weight. It seems very hard compared to how it used to feel. Somebody suggested perhaps the sandstone in the weights took on water whilst it was in storage. That seems feasible. Next week I might cut them down a bit. Must also remember not to do weights and swimming on consecutive days as a rule.
Failed again to keep this short.
Bullet time:
- My boiler might be breaking.
- I think i'm gonna get a 1080p TV. The popular Panasonic 37" LCD model with 80 in the model number. That will of course mean getting the more expensive bench to hold it.
- I bought loads of house plants. Well... 3. This room looks infinitely better now.
- My laptop makes noises that I don't like the sounds of at completely random intervals. I want to think it's fan related but it sounds like it's from the drive. I wish I had some idea what it was. Best described as a spring loaded plastic release sound. Hopefully it's nothing. That aside this laptop is still the best thing in my home. Except me of course. It can even watch the place when i'm not there and email me if anything moves. Would love to understand how that's useful.
EDIT: Just realised what it sounds like. Remember the sound a floppy drive would make as it drew back the metal/plastic guard in order to read the disc. Sounds very much like that. Ideas?
It really is stuff like this that causes this feeling too. It's not the work itself. For some reason as soon as somebody reaches management they immediately start to disregard just these types of issue. A survey completed by 100% of people in our department revealed communication to be the thing we're worst at. The same survey said the same thing last year in what was essentially the same department.
The only thing worse than the communication is the ability of management to take any real action to improve it. LIKE ensuring cascades actually happen, LIKE realising that everybody knows the rumours, and there might be no benefit to not just confirming it now. Let's be honest. If you're not telling us, it's probably because you don't really want to. KiP, right?
It may not be that simple in our case. There may be nothing to say. I have suspected for a few months now that the entire line of management above me has no real plan for our team of 7 beyond the rest of this year.
Yeah I know waah waahh I work for a big company that's just like every other big company. Spreadsheets, restructures and lack of shareholder value. At least our unique market position means the share price is fairly independent of how people perform. That said, the fact that this is realised is also probably what leads to the actions that cause this type of discontent. Why do things differently when everything appears to be working out. Impressive earnings were reported last week. Wonder if there's a bonus for that. Probably not a big one. I work in the part of the business that does least well and makes much less money.
Quick update on the points:
1. I suck with this food thing. I have snacked at work two of the last two work days. Since removing the salad, the Tuna tastes better, but it doesn't feel like a meal. Thought required. On a related topic, 3.3 breasts of chicken cost me over £6 at ASDA late on Sunday. I really hope this was just leftover non-value brand and not the new normal price because otherwise that has doubled over the last year. At least i'm getting more meals from the same amount of purchased food now.
2. Poker time minimal at the moment. I fancy a real game. The Facebook game is getting duller. I'm hovering around broke again. It's only fun when you have some chips. Very much keeping to the rule. Some days not even bothering.
3. My Camera went with me on Saturday night. Took a few nice pics and a ridiculous 3 minute video in which I tried to force my friends to give their opinions on recent natural disasters. Why? No idea. Did it achieve anything? Not really. Still, the camera finally got used again, which is good. Also marvelled at sliding it's SD card into the slot on the new laptop that i'd forgotten about. Very handy. USB cables hardly necessary for that kind of thing anymore. The TV I will almost certainly buy also has a slot.
4. Saw my London friends at the weekend, as mentioned above. Good times. Missed the opportunity to see a few others the same night, and have a feeling I missed something major. Will go fishing for that later. I'm not above talking about people i'm afraid.
Hard Part
1. Getting dangerously close to not having a song for May. I find myself wanting to work harder on the songs I have already put together rather than forcing myself to come up with a new idea for the sake of it. I may actually succumb to this, because I can't see any reason not to. As far as the music goes, whatever means the most to me is probably the best thing to do. I'm not committing to this change yet though. Check back next week. Maybe i'll hit on an idea.
2. As discussed, no goals at work for the moment. Another contributing factor to everything I talk about above.
3. Not having much in the way of ideas at the moment. Part of the problem might be realising I seem to very much in the swim category financially now. There is very clearly a storm coming, or already atop us, and it's hard to see how quickly it will begin to lift. I'm in a very good position to weather this storm right now. Cheap rent, slightly above average salary (for age) and no dependants. I am of course reliant on about 30 litres of diesel fuel a week, which is pretty much spearheading the current price rocket. That's a tough one. There will be a point where work will have to understand the sheer cost of travelling to work is unacceptable when there are acceptable alternatives. I hope.
4. Not a bad week of exercise. A little less cycling due to a few days of less favourable weather, but all in all I believe I have swam, in what was my finest non-stop 1 mile swim to date, I have cycled on at least two occasions, but I think it was three, all reasonable distances, and I have this evening capped it off with a little weight work. I'm sure i'm lifting too much weight. It seems very hard compared to how it used to feel. Somebody suggested perhaps the sandstone in the weights took on water whilst it was in storage. That seems feasible. Next week I might cut them down a bit. Must also remember not to do weights and swimming on consecutive days as a rule.
Failed again to keep this short.
Bullet time:
- My boiler might be breaking.
- I think i'm gonna get a 1080p TV. The popular Panasonic 37" LCD model with 80 in the model number. That will of course mean getting the more expensive bench to hold it.
- I bought loads of house plants. Well... 3. This room looks infinitely better now.
- My laptop makes noises that I don't like the sounds of at completely random intervals. I want to think it's fan related but it sounds like it's from the drive. I wish I had some idea what it was. Best described as a spring loaded plastic release sound. Hopefully it's nothing. That aside this laptop is still the best thing in my home. Except me of course. It can even watch the place when i'm not there and email me if anything moves. Would love to understand how that's useful.
EDIT: Just realised what it sounds like. Remember the sound a floppy drive would make as it drew back the metal/plastic guard in order to read the disc. Sounds very much like that. Ideas?
Monday, May 12, 2008
2008 #20 - Cycling, Unnatural Law and Goals
Really enjoying cycling in the warmer weather. Always have too. Not sure why eventually I stop. Tire of the same old routes? Not letting that happen at the moment. Exploring Leicester. Great thing about Leicester is it's practically impossible to get lost. If you keep going for long enough, you will hit a familiar main road.
Tonight I did start down a single carriageway section of the A563 that suddenly became a busy stretch of dual carriageway with absolutely no way off. Two police cars rolled past, and for a moment I wondered if I was breaking any laws. Then I remembered that I really don't believe in those types of law. Why do I need to remind myself of that?
Either way, common sense would dictate probably don't cycle on that type of road too often. I've seen and been in cars that use that stretch (you know, the one that goes past the Meridian business and leisure parks) as a racing straight. Natural law says if a car side swipes you at over 100mph you'll probably die.
What happened this week?
1. The food thing continues to go reasonably well. I did eat a few snacks. This is the dumb part of me that thinks i'm doing so well I can have a treat, which of course negates how well it's going. The portion thing is going very well. I now realise that crap about only knowing you're full 20 minutes after eating is at least partially true. That doesn't mean you don't feel hunger later because you ate less than you're used to, but therein lies the real challenge. Must keep machine snacks in check. I've killed the salad portion of lunch now. I'm sick to death of ASDA's ridiculously inconsistent bags of salad, and the tuna actually tastes great on it's own. It is a shame to lose a veg portion, but I eat a banana at breakfast, an apple mid morning, a pear at lunch, an apple mid afternoon and have a veg portion with the evening meal, so I seem to be hitting the all important 5 a day target that someone else set for everyone anyway.
2. I have not even managed to fit in a game of Poker tonight due to cycling. Must remember to log in and collect free chips before bed. Rule remains, and adhered to.
3. Another failure. I went out with work people at the weekend and absolutely intended to take my camera. As it turns out it wasn't really that kind of night anyway, though enjoyable. I remain less and less convinced that this was ever a sensible goal, but until I'm ready to kill it, I continue to fail it.
4. Also out locally with friends this week. All great early on but seemed to get weirdly tense later. I think I'm about at that inevitable age where the enjoyment of going to clubs wanes. I've never been good at hearing voices over music, and consequently if I'm not enjoying the general vibe of the night I get bored very easily because I can't talk to anyone. It just seems stupid when I was having a great time with the same people two streets away half an hour ago.
Harder Stuff
1. Still thinking about what to record in May. Played with a few ideas on Sunday. I'm not coming up with much at the moment. As my skill level has increased, as slightly as that may be, I'm less impressed playing the really basic bar(re) chord stuff I used to stick to, but a move to open chords and capos has led me to a slight stagnation. Put a capo on, play an open D shape, hammer on the pinky, move to the A shape, hammer on again, move to G shape. Time I think to start properly learning the other chords rather than just discovering them accidentally.
2. I officially have no work goals as of my review last Tuesday, which went reasonably well, although I did at one point freeze up when trying to recall a policy from memory. I don't like that these reviews have started to become exam-like. To me being able to talk around the literature of a policy in an intelligent manner proves far more than parroting it's bullet points. Anyways, this goal takes a break until I find out if I have achieved the competency level I wanted to. If so...
3. ...I'll need to do some more towards this goal. I said that core competency in my current role was as far as I wanted to go in the company I work for some time back. By now I had hoped that i'd be a bit closer to some ideas about what i'd do after that, but as anybody reading this will know, this hasn't happened. Needless to say, I continue to be thinking.
4. Exercise. I have cycled four times this week, lifted once and swam once. The pool was chopped in two again but I hogged a wall this time. This is a great idea. Nobody can avoid you on one side, and the only way you can possibly avoid them is to swim right across and round them, which would just be silly, right? Exactly. So what happens? They have to get out of the way. Widths still suck, but it was a lot better than the previous week. The astute will notice that the extra cycling has pitched me way above the goal this week. I'm not going to change the goal, but I'd like to keep this up. There are certainly times when cycling that I feel I absolutely must be getting great exercise.
Okay this is going to go on a bit now.. Specific goal stuff over for this week.
A bit of clarity hit me this weekend. I've been whining about seemingly having a lower level of confidence now than I did 4-5 years ago, when I feel I was happier. I've realised that the confidence came from achievement at work. Between mid 2002 and late 2005 I was constantly moving forward. I actually hit a lull in late 2004 and remember desperately trying to find a new job, but then in April 2005 I took an opportunity to start commuting to another location, which led by application to the job at the level I still remain at (although doing different work). By the company's own HR literature, I am about where I should be three years later, if not slightly ahead, but the somewhat fast track from low level admin to team leadership perhaps set unrealistic expectations. By those expectations I'd be at the next level now (the watershed £30k job)
The problem with the above is that I keep saying I don't much care about my job and that I want to follow a different path, but if it's so clear that I gained my self-confidence through advancement at work, and began to lose it again through failing to advance further, then maybe I'm not placing enough importance on work in amongst all this chatter.
At some point I got re-interested in technology and convinced myself that I wanted to be involved with it, but whenever I try to get back to coding, I get bored very quickly. More so than I do when coding VBA at work (which I still hate using as a self-selling point because it sounds like I write macros, and what I do is orders of magnitude lot better than this).
Somewhere I lost sight of my strengths, or rather allowed myself to believe that my strengths lacked significance because plenty of other people had them.
At uni I could tell for a good while that I had top 10% potential, and also knew plenty of people that I suspected may fail. At some point my priorities changed for reasons that today seem completely pointless, and although I took a good final run after I got past the pointlessness, I never got back to where I should have been. Most of the aforementioned people ended up passing with the same mediocre honours as I did. The Maths of a CS degree was a problem for me, but I know not all that deep down that I was 1st class material. I'm the idiot that worked hard in the first year and then less so later. Did it backwards.
I'm definitely rambling here, and these dots don't necessarily connect. What I'm doing here is exploring motivation. In uni my motivation changed and changed back. I was able to work hard again. At work my motivation changed and changed back. I was able to work hard again. Then it changed again, but since then, it hasn't changed back. I feel little incentive to work hard, but the only time I ever enjoy work would be when the day flies past because I'm working hard. I have plenty to do, but it's all so mediocre and similar to the last piece of work.
What did I learn? I need new motivation. If I think back, writing this blog this year, I can't recall talking about WHY I wanted to do something, just THAT I wanted to something else.
That's the thing to think about now. Apologies for the incoherence beyond the goal review. Helped me a little. This laptop really gets warm.
Tonight I did start down a single carriageway section of the A563 that suddenly became a busy stretch of dual carriageway with absolutely no way off. Two police cars rolled past, and for a moment I wondered if I was breaking any laws. Then I remembered that I really don't believe in those types of law. Why do I need to remind myself of that?
Either way, common sense would dictate probably don't cycle on that type of road too often. I've seen and been in cars that use that stretch (you know, the one that goes past the Meridian business and leisure parks) as a racing straight. Natural law says if a car side swipes you at over 100mph you'll probably die.
What happened this week?
1. The food thing continues to go reasonably well. I did eat a few snacks. This is the dumb part of me that thinks i'm doing so well I can have a treat, which of course negates how well it's going. The portion thing is going very well. I now realise that crap about only knowing you're full 20 minutes after eating is at least partially true. That doesn't mean you don't feel hunger later because you ate less than you're used to, but therein lies the real challenge. Must keep machine snacks in check. I've killed the salad portion of lunch now. I'm sick to death of ASDA's ridiculously inconsistent bags of salad, and the tuna actually tastes great on it's own. It is a shame to lose a veg portion, but I eat a banana at breakfast, an apple mid morning, a pear at lunch, an apple mid afternoon and have a veg portion with the evening meal, so I seem to be hitting the all important 5 a day target that someone else set for everyone anyway.
2. I have not even managed to fit in a game of Poker tonight due to cycling. Must remember to log in and collect free chips before bed. Rule remains, and adhered to.
3. Another failure. I went out with work people at the weekend and absolutely intended to take my camera. As it turns out it wasn't really that kind of night anyway, though enjoyable. I remain less and less convinced that this was ever a sensible goal, but until I'm ready to kill it, I continue to fail it.
4. Also out locally with friends this week. All great early on but seemed to get weirdly tense later. I think I'm about at that inevitable age where the enjoyment of going to clubs wanes. I've never been good at hearing voices over music, and consequently if I'm not enjoying the general vibe of the night I get bored very easily because I can't talk to anyone. It just seems stupid when I was having a great time with the same people two streets away half an hour ago.
Harder Stuff
1. Still thinking about what to record in May. Played with a few ideas on Sunday. I'm not coming up with much at the moment. As my skill level has increased, as slightly as that may be, I'm less impressed playing the really basic bar(re) chord stuff I used to stick to, but a move to open chords and capos has led me to a slight stagnation. Put a capo on, play an open D shape, hammer on the pinky, move to the A shape, hammer on again, move to G shape. Time I think to start properly learning the other chords rather than just discovering them accidentally.
2. I officially have no work goals as of my review last Tuesday, which went reasonably well, although I did at one point freeze up when trying to recall a policy from memory. I don't like that these reviews have started to become exam-like. To me being able to talk around the literature of a policy in an intelligent manner proves far more than parroting it's bullet points. Anyways, this goal takes a break until I find out if I have achieved the competency level I wanted to. If so...
3. ...I'll need to do some more towards this goal. I said that core competency in my current role was as far as I wanted to go in the company I work for some time back. By now I had hoped that i'd be a bit closer to some ideas about what i'd do after that, but as anybody reading this will know, this hasn't happened. Needless to say, I continue to be thinking.
4. Exercise. I have cycled four times this week, lifted once and swam once. The pool was chopped in two again but I hogged a wall this time. This is a great idea. Nobody can avoid you on one side, and the only way you can possibly avoid them is to swim right across and round them, which would just be silly, right? Exactly. So what happens? They have to get out of the way. Widths still suck, but it was a lot better than the previous week. The astute will notice that the extra cycling has pitched me way above the goal this week. I'm not going to change the goal, but I'd like to keep this up. There are certainly times when cycling that I feel I absolutely must be getting great exercise.
Okay this is going to go on a bit now.. Specific goal stuff over for this week.
A bit of clarity hit me this weekend. I've been whining about seemingly having a lower level of confidence now than I did 4-5 years ago, when I feel I was happier. I've realised that the confidence came from achievement at work. Between mid 2002 and late 2005 I was constantly moving forward. I actually hit a lull in late 2004 and remember desperately trying to find a new job, but then in April 2005 I took an opportunity to start commuting to another location, which led by application to the job at the level I still remain at (although doing different work). By the company's own HR literature, I am about where I should be three years later, if not slightly ahead, but the somewhat fast track from low level admin to team leadership perhaps set unrealistic expectations. By those expectations I'd be at the next level now (the watershed £30k job)
The problem with the above is that I keep saying I don't much care about my job and that I want to follow a different path, but if it's so clear that I gained my self-confidence through advancement at work, and began to lose it again through failing to advance further, then maybe I'm not placing enough importance on work in amongst all this chatter.
At some point I got re-interested in technology and convinced myself that I wanted to be involved with it, but whenever I try to get back to coding, I get bored very quickly. More so than I do when coding VBA at work (which I still hate using as a self-selling point because it sounds like I write macros, and what I do is orders of magnitude lot better than this).
Somewhere I lost sight of my strengths, or rather allowed myself to believe that my strengths lacked significance because plenty of other people had them.
At uni I could tell for a good while that I had top 10% potential, and also knew plenty of people that I suspected may fail. At some point my priorities changed for reasons that today seem completely pointless, and although I took a good final run after I got past the pointlessness, I never got back to where I should have been. Most of the aforementioned people ended up passing with the same mediocre honours as I did. The Maths of a CS degree was a problem for me, but I know not all that deep down that I was 1st class material. I'm the idiot that worked hard in the first year and then less so later. Did it backwards.
I'm definitely rambling here, and these dots don't necessarily connect. What I'm doing here is exploring motivation. In uni my motivation changed and changed back. I was able to work hard again. At work my motivation changed and changed back. I was able to work hard again. Then it changed again, but since then, it hasn't changed back. I feel little incentive to work hard, but the only time I ever enjoy work would be when the day flies past because I'm working hard. I have plenty to do, but it's all so mediocre and similar to the last piece of work.
What did I learn? I need new motivation. If I think back, writing this blog this year, I can't recall talking about WHY I wanted to do something, just THAT I wanted to something else.
That's the thing to think about now. Apologies for the incoherence beyond the goal review. Helped me a little. This laptop really gets warm.
Monday, May 05, 2008
2008 #19 - Transformation at Home and Work
As I think I mentioned, Im transforming my home into somewhere I enjoy spending time more. Perhaps even somewhere other people won't dislike visiting. Nobody has ever said they felt this way, but certainly until this week it wasn't very welcoming. Too baron.
At work i'm part of Transformation, with a capital T. That's what it's called. My job doesn't actually have anything to do with it, it's just the name of the programme my team has been sitting under for a while. Under this programme we get to watch as they restructure the whole thing every couple of months at various levels. Tomorrow they will tell us how they're going to restructure the "workstream" I sit under. My expectation is that the manager 3 levels above me will announce he's moving to head up another workstream, and that the team of 6 I sit in will be looking to lose 2 people. I have some level of confidence that I'd be one of the last 2-3 people standing in a face off (much as I like and respect my immediate colleagues - all five), and nobody in a company this size is ever made redundant in the traditional sense of the word, so I'm not worried. I mainly mention it because I'm looking forward to the meeting. For some reason I like watching those on the corporate borderline shifting things around what seems like far too often, but that's if it's taken at face value, which it certainly shouldn't be. There's always a real reason, and it's always money, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's weirdly interesting to watch.
Why mention that? Just that I'm not dreading going back to work tomorrow. I even have my annual review, and my evidence is pretty much ready!
Easy
1. I did buy a machine snack once last week. There was a sort of excuse but it was weak. Will try harder this week. Portion curbing is going really well. I have at least 2 extra meals worth of food each week, and my weight which was worrying me has fallen back in just a few weeks. I'm almost ready to make a weight related goal, but I wonder if I have a minimum threshold at this point, as I haven't dropped much below 12 stone in the last 3-4 years whether in exercise mode or not, and 12 stone isn't actually overweight for my height.
3. I did go somewhere I hadn't been before on Saturday night, but only one person I actually knew was present. I'm not pointing my camera at strangers.
4. Good weekend, plus made some plans to see older friends in a few weeks. Have noticed that my fear of rejection (waa waa waa) is so bad that it prevents me from asking friends to do something because I assume I'm going to be told they have something better to do. This is pretty bad and no question I just need to get over it and do it anyway. Goals and self-therapy!
Challenging
1. Ideas forming for a May song. Plenty of time.
2. Review tomorrow. Pretty much consumed the days I was in work last week.
3. Still not thinking so much about it. Definitely happier. Beginning to think the general population may have a point. The cycle is becoming clearer - happy enough at work, happy denial, wanna better job, wannabe entrepreneur, coastal campervan then back around. If I'm lucky I'll hit coastal campervan around July time so I'm in the right mood for a trip to the coast.
4. Fanfare! Finally did it. Tuesday I swam, Friday I lifted and today I cycled. The swim sucked because a short staffed Braunstone Leisure Centre decided they had to halve the pool, meaning no lanes and swimming widths. They then proceed to open both sides of the divide, meaning the staff cover exactly the same amount of water had they just opened it up as normal. Nuts. Here's hoping it was a one time thing. My weight lifting stamina is also far lower than it used to be. I'm not even lasting long enough to get bored two sessions in. I feel sure this will improve though, so I'm not worried.
At work i'm part of Transformation, with a capital T. That's what it's called. My job doesn't actually have anything to do with it, it's just the name of the programme my team has been sitting under for a while. Under this programme we get to watch as they restructure the whole thing every couple of months at various levels. Tomorrow they will tell us how they're going to restructure the "workstream" I sit under. My expectation is that the manager 3 levels above me will announce he's moving to head up another workstream, and that the team of 6 I sit in will be looking to lose 2 people. I have some level of confidence that I'd be one of the last 2-3 people standing in a face off (much as I like and respect my immediate colleagues - all five), and nobody in a company this size is ever made redundant in the traditional sense of the word, so I'm not worried. I mainly mention it because I'm looking forward to the meeting. For some reason I like watching those on the corporate borderline shifting things around what seems like far too often, but that's if it's taken at face value, which it certainly shouldn't be. There's always a real reason, and it's always money, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's weirdly interesting to watch.
Why mention that? Just that I'm not dreading going back to work tomorrow. I even have my annual review, and my evidence is pretty much ready!
Easy
1. I did buy a machine snack once last week. There was a sort of excuse but it was weak. Will try harder this week. Portion curbing is going really well. I have at least 2 extra meals worth of food each week, and my weight which was worrying me has fallen back in just a few weeks. I'm almost ready to make a weight related goal, but I wonder if I have a minimum threshold at this point, as I haven't dropped much below 12 stone in the last 3-4 years whether in exercise mode or not, and 12 stone isn't actually overweight for my height.
3. I did go somewhere I hadn't been before on Saturday night, but only one person I actually knew was present. I'm not pointing my camera at strangers.
4. Good weekend, plus made some plans to see older friends in a few weeks. Have noticed that my fear of rejection (waa waa waa) is so bad that it prevents me from asking friends to do something because I assume I'm going to be told they have something better to do. This is pretty bad and no question I just need to get over it and do it anyway. Goals and self-therapy!
Challenging
1. Ideas forming for a May song. Plenty of time.
2. Review tomorrow. Pretty much consumed the days I was in work last week.
3. Still not thinking so much about it. Definitely happier. Beginning to think the general population may have a point. The cycle is becoming clearer - happy enough at work, happy denial, wanna better job, wannabe entrepreneur, coastal campervan then back around. If I'm lucky I'll hit coastal campervan around July time so I'm in the right mood for a trip to the coast.
4. Fanfare! Finally did it. Tuesday I swam, Friday I lifted and today I cycled. The swim sucked because a short staffed Braunstone Leisure Centre decided they had to halve the pool, meaning no lanes and swimming widths. They then proceed to open both sides of the divide, meaning the staff cover exactly the same amount of water had they just opened it up as normal. Nuts. Here's hoping it was a one time thing. My weight lifting stamina is also far lower than it used to be. I'm not even lasting long enough to get bored two sessions in. I feel sure this will improve though, so I'm not worried.
Home Entertainment
It feels so much better sitting doing this in the living room. It feels so much better not to be spending my relaxation time in my bedroom.
This has of course been enabled by my new laptop, which as I think I mentioned, is wonderful. Naturally now I'm in impulse splurge mode.
(This was going to be my 2008 #19 post but some way through it became clear that to combine the two would lead to a ridiculously long post, and personal goals and home entertainment really don't fit well together)
Now I have a laptop with an HDMI output, I need a TV with an HDMI input to use it to watch digital video directly. I need a better sound solution for the living room also. It's where I listen to music now! To tie this together, there is a TV unit for a reasonable price that matches my new black glass coffee table. I can't use that with my current TV though. Too heavy. Needs to be a panel. Can't be any bigger than 32", otherwise will need to spend over 3 times as much on what I can only assume is a stronger unit.
Now, a 32" TV in 2008 is the same height as a 24" screen from yesteryear, which is what I have now, so for wide programming i'd be trading way up, but for standard programming i'd be looking at a picture of about the same size. Don't even get me started on the fact that the majority of the population sets their TV to stretch everything. I don't even feel this should be an option.
Suddenly though 37" has become the new standard. Just a few months ago 42" was what the big boys got, and the average home user bought 32". In Currys this afternoon I counted approx 8-10 32" models. There must have been 40 or so 37" models. 42" also seems to have vanished in favour of slightly smaller 40" and much larger 50". Strange how quickly this has all changed.
Complicated enough, but i'm also grappling with the 1080p issue. It's very clear that 1080p is being given a big sales push. It was hard to find 720p/1080i models in Currys, and yet most of what I read says that right now 1080p really isn't worth much. I'm mainly drawn to it because it's the same resolution as my new laptop, and it would be pretty cool to be able to perfectly project. I'm a few years from wanting a Blu-ray player though, I don't have any real intention of getting Sky HD (it'll be the standard package eventually, no question) and any DivX|XviD stuff i've seen seems to be 720 lines deep.
So, I have this narrowed down to a few options:
1) Lowest cost - Buy a 720p 32" TV and the £50 unit. Definitely cost effective.
2) Next lowest - Buy a 1080p 32" TV and the £50 unit. All signs point to 1080p being a waste on time on a screen this small.
3) Next lowest - Buy a 720p 37" TV and the £130 unit.
4) Next lowest - Buy a 1080p 37" TV, the £130 unit.
We're looking at a minimum of about £500 for option 1 and a minimum of about £900 for option 4. Can I afford either? Technically yes, but I did just spend £800 on a laptop. That said I do absolutely run everything I own into the ground before replacing it.
I won't decide now, but I wanted to get this down on paper... well, screen. The sound element will have to wait. Adding that in would be too complicated.
Right, now I'll write about the week.
This has of course been enabled by my new laptop, which as I think I mentioned, is wonderful. Naturally now I'm in impulse splurge mode.
(This was going to be my 2008 #19 post but some way through it became clear that to combine the two would lead to a ridiculously long post, and personal goals and home entertainment really don't fit well together)
Now I have a laptop with an HDMI output, I need a TV with an HDMI input to use it to watch digital video directly. I need a better sound solution for the living room also. It's where I listen to music now! To tie this together, there is a TV unit for a reasonable price that matches my new black glass coffee table. I can't use that with my current TV though. Too heavy. Needs to be a panel. Can't be any bigger than 32", otherwise will need to spend over 3 times as much on what I can only assume is a stronger unit.
Now, a 32" TV in 2008 is the same height as a 24" screen from yesteryear, which is what I have now, so for wide programming i'd be trading way up, but for standard programming i'd be looking at a picture of about the same size. Don't even get me started on the fact that the majority of the population sets their TV to stretch everything. I don't even feel this should be an option.
Suddenly though 37" has become the new standard. Just a few months ago 42" was what the big boys got, and the average home user bought 32". In Currys this afternoon I counted approx 8-10 32" models. There must have been 40 or so 37" models. 42" also seems to have vanished in favour of slightly smaller 40" and much larger 50". Strange how quickly this has all changed.
Complicated enough, but i'm also grappling with the 1080p issue. It's very clear that 1080p is being given a big sales push. It was hard to find 720p/1080i models in Currys, and yet most of what I read says that right now 1080p really isn't worth much. I'm mainly drawn to it because it's the same resolution as my new laptop, and it would be pretty cool to be able to perfectly project. I'm a few years from wanting a Blu-ray player though, I don't have any real intention of getting Sky HD (it'll be the standard package eventually, no question) and any DivX|XviD stuff i've seen seems to be 720 lines deep.
So, I have this narrowed down to a few options:
1) Lowest cost - Buy a 720p 32" TV and the £50 unit. Definitely cost effective.
2) Next lowest - Buy a 1080p 32" TV and the £50 unit. All signs point to 1080p being a waste on time on a screen this small.
3) Next lowest - Buy a 720p 37" TV and the £130 unit.
4) Next lowest - Buy a 1080p 37" TV, the £130 unit.
We're looking at a minimum of about £500 for option 1 and a minimum of about £900 for option 4. Can I afford either? Technically yes, but I did just spend £800 on a laptop. That said I do absolutely run everything I own into the ground before replacing it.
I won't decide now, but I wanted to get this down on paper... well, screen. The sound element will have to wait. Adding that in would be too complicated.
Right, now I'll write about the week.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Dell XPS M1530 First Impressions and of course, Vista
Barring any unforeseen breakdowns, the Dell experience ended up being solid. The estimated delivery date of 30 days was way off. It took 8. I even delayed the courier by a day so I could take delivery. Bear in mind however that apart from upgrading the screen everything else was uncustomised, so perhaps that makes a difference.
One word of warning if interested in this machine. Most reviews talk of high quality noise cancellation ear buds included in the package, as well as an XPS branded CD holder (of less interest). Neither were included in my package, and whilst I will put in a call to see if I can wangle something, I expect to be told that they weren't listed in the quote. Something to ask about up front i'd say.
It does come with a perfectly good sleeve which barely gets a mention as you're encouraged to buy a heavy duty carry case. The sleeve is actually slightly heavier duty than I had expected, although it's not going to be able to carry anything besides the machine itself.
Moving past accessories, lets talk aesthetics. It's a very nice looking laptop. On the inside it looks very much like a Macbook Pro but less bland. I thought i'd have preferred the red option, but now I see the machine in the flesh I think black was a good choice, as the exterior matches the interior trim. None of this is hugely important, but let's not pretend this isn't a factor.
Getting into the detail: I find this screen fantastic. I was scared into upgrading to the higher resolution screen by a post in a forum pointing out that 1200x800 is the widescreen equivalent to 1024x768, which is pretty much the bare minimum resolution acceptable any more. I didn't quite twig that 1920x1200 is significantly higher. Even higher than the resolution i've been using on my 22" desktop display in fact. Everything is very small, but that gives me loads of space. The screen, as pointed out elsewhere, is a little shiny, but I like this.
I'm a little disappointed that the media buttons don't seem to be willing to drive third party software, but I won't admit defeat on that just yet.
The trackpad is smaller than I'm used to, but its only been 3-4 hours and I'm already getting used to it. The keyboard layout is great. I can't recall ever taking to a laptop keyboard as quickly as this one.
First impressions of Vista? I like it. Bear in mind this only refers to time spent setting up, installing a few applications, a bit of browsing the file system and control panel etc. Up to this point, I haven't seen anything that XP did better than this does. Complaints over speed aren't going to be something I can comment on as this is a new and reasonably well specified machine. I can certainly tell i'd have no chance of running it on the machine i'm leaving behind.
It's a nicer looking environment than XP and Ubuntu, more akin to Leopard, whether anybody cares to agree or not. The Alt-Windows-Key task switching method looks great but is more than just eye candy. The mind has an image of the window I want to return to, and this allows me to select it from flying slabs (apart from Winamp which appears in it's unskinned unextended form for some reason). Maybe OS X did this first. I have no idea.
Certainly my original thoughts on perhaps installing XP as the second OS after Ubuntu on this machine are changing. I think I will install Hardy in the next few weeks, but I'm going to keep Vista. I always thought all the hatred for this product seemed to lack substance, so I'm not in the least bit surprised by my own reaction. It was entirely expected.
So, mostly pros so far all around. A few cons:
- I cannot get the fingerprint reader to accept my swipe as being good enough. I am wondering if it works properly, but I don't really need or want to use it, and it would be an enormous ball ache to have to send this back just for that. Hopefully I'll try again with more success.
- The internal speakers are only average, which I was prepared for by many reviews. They are perfectly fine for what they're intended.
Things i'm looking forward to trying:
- HDMI output to an HDTV which I'll eventually buy.
- Playing more with the webcam
- Spending more time not at the desk in my bedroom.
- Figuring out how to have speakers to plug this into in the living room without it looking messy.
So, that's the first impression. Based on almost a day's use, I don't regret buying this machine in the slightest. It cost just over £800 all in. Still quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent Mac.
PS - if anybody knows anything more about the bundle stuff I mentioned earlier, i'd appreciate a comment, cheers.
One word of warning if interested in this machine. Most reviews talk of high quality noise cancellation ear buds included in the package, as well as an XPS branded CD holder (of less interest). Neither were included in my package, and whilst I will put in a call to see if I can wangle something, I expect to be told that they weren't listed in the quote. Something to ask about up front i'd say.
It does come with a perfectly good sleeve which barely gets a mention as you're encouraged to buy a heavy duty carry case. The sleeve is actually slightly heavier duty than I had expected, although it's not going to be able to carry anything besides the machine itself.
Moving past accessories, lets talk aesthetics. It's a very nice looking laptop. On the inside it looks very much like a Macbook Pro but less bland. I thought i'd have preferred the red option, but now I see the machine in the flesh I think black was a good choice, as the exterior matches the interior trim. None of this is hugely important, but let's not pretend this isn't a factor.
Getting into the detail: I find this screen fantastic. I was scared into upgrading to the higher resolution screen by a post in a forum pointing out that 1200x800 is the widescreen equivalent to 1024x768, which is pretty much the bare minimum resolution acceptable any more. I didn't quite twig that 1920x1200 is significantly higher. Even higher than the resolution i've been using on my 22" desktop display in fact. Everything is very small, but that gives me loads of space. The screen, as pointed out elsewhere, is a little shiny, but I like this.
I'm a little disappointed that the media buttons don't seem to be willing to drive third party software, but I won't admit defeat on that just yet.
The trackpad is smaller than I'm used to, but its only been 3-4 hours and I'm already getting used to it. The keyboard layout is great. I can't recall ever taking to a laptop keyboard as quickly as this one.
First impressions of Vista? I like it. Bear in mind this only refers to time spent setting up, installing a few applications, a bit of browsing the file system and control panel etc. Up to this point, I haven't seen anything that XP did better than this does. Complaints over speed aren't going to be something I can comment on as this is a new and reasonably well specified machine. I can certainly tell i'd have no chance of running it on the machine i'm leaving behind.
It's a nicer looking environment than XP and Ubuntu, more akin to Leopard, whether anybody cares to agree or not. The Alt-Windows-Key task switching method looks great but is more than just eye candy. The mind has an image of the window I want to return to, and this allows me to select it from flying slabs (apart from Winamp which appears in it's unskinned unextended form for some reason). Maybe OS X did this first. I have no idea.
Certainly my original thoughts on perhaps installing XP as the second OS after Ubuntu on this machine are changing. I think I will install Hardy in the next few weeks, but I'm going to keep Vista. I always thought all the hatred for this product seemed to lack substance, so I'm not in the least bit surprised by my own reaction. It was entirely expected.
So, mostly pros so far all around. A few cons:
- I cannot get the fingerprint reader to accept my swipe as being good enough. I am wondering if it works properly, but I don't really need or want to use it, and it would be an enormous ball ache to have to send this back just for that. Hopefully I'll try again with more success.
- The internal speakers are only average, which I was prepared for by many reviews. They are perfectly fine for what they're intended.
Things i'm looking forward to trying:
- HDMI output to an HDTV which I'll eventually buy.
- Playing more with the webcam
- Spending more time not at the desk in my bedroom.
- Figuring out how to have speakers to plug this into in the living room without it looking messy.
So, that's the first impression. Based on almost a day's use, I don't regret buying this machine in the slightest. It cost just over £800 all in. Still quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent Mac.
PS - if anybody knows anything more about the bundle stuff I mentioned earlier, i'd appreciate a comment, cheers.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Facebook Chat, which I haven't used, and Facebook, which i'm still trying to use
I have a theory tonight.
Facebook is nothing like as popular outside it's original demographic as blogosphere pundits were claiming it would be late last year.
I feel this simply because if these people had any real day to day interest in Facebook, SURELY i'd be able to find ONE OTHER POST, ANYWHERE pointing out that EVER SINCE FACEBOOK LAUNCHED CHAT a week ago (which I haven't touched), the entire service BARELY WORKS AT ALL.
This cannot just be me. I wrote an entire diatribe on this two days in, posted it, then erased it because I realised there had been a torrent client running in the background the whole time, and chances are it was strangling my bandwidth. It probably was, but that wasn't the problem, and i'm not running a torrent client tonight...
Currently I have three Firefox tabs at the top of my screen that say "Problem loading page". All three were Facebook.
Why in hell is this not getting any coverage? It's extremely frustrating and a couple of months ago people wanted to bash this service every chance they got. Now, nothing. It's MUCH, MUCH WORSE than the old Myspace "an unexpected error occurred". You wait a lot longer and don't even get an explanation.
Come on.. other people searching for the problem; here's some keywords and phrases - Facebook, broken, not working, outage, timeout, overloaded, untested, scaling problems. Bring me into the loop on this one. How is this just annoying me?
Facebook is nothing like as popular outside it's original demographic as blogosphere pundits were claiming it would be late last year.
I feel this simply because if these people had any real day to day interest in Facebook, SURELY i'd be able to find ONE OTHER POST, ANYWHERE pointing out that EVER SINCE FACEBOOK LAUNCHED CHAT a week ago (which I haven't touched), the entire service BARELY WORKS AT ALL.
This cannot just be me. I wrote an entire diatribe on this two days in, posted it, then erased it because I realised there had been a torrent client running in the background the whole time, and chances are it was strangling my bandwidth. It probably was, but that wasn't the problem, and i'm not running a torrent client tonight...
Currently I have three Firefox tabs at the top of my screen that say "Problem loading page". All three were Facebook.
Why in hell is this not getting any coverage? It's extremely frustrating and a couple of months ago people wanted to bash this service every chance they got. Now, nothing. It's MUCH, MUCH WORSE than the old Myspace "an unexpected error occurred". You wait a lot longer and don't even get an explanation.
Come on.. other people searching for the problem; here's some keywords and phrases - Facebook, broken, not working, outage, timeout, overloaded, untested, scaling problems. Bring me into the loop on this one. How is this just annoying me?
Monday, April 28, 2008
2008 #18 - More Bullets
- Do I really need an extra room? Suddenly managed to fit everything I need into my 1 bed. Even my weight bench. It's in the kitchen!
- In 2005/6 I changed employers (technically anyway). This somehow caused me to underpay income tax by £112, and now the tax man wants it back. They're not asking. Would say they're telling, but they didn't actually tell. Had to ask them why they were taking even more of my money than usual.
- Still hopeful for a real summer, despite talk of La Nina messing it all up this year.
- Twitter fever has now officially reached the point where it's unbearable to read or hear about it, what it means and how it's changing everything. Standard test people: Do you non-tech friends with Facebook accounts have Twitter accounts? None of mine do (EDIT: Kara Swisher makes a similar point a little earlier in the day, and with somewhat more focus). Many of my favorite episodic shows (formerly podcasts) seem to drift on to the topic, acknowledge that it's over-discussed, then continue to talk about it anyway. What then, is the focus of the majority of these conversations? "HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE FOLLOWING ME". Some guys have managed to convince supposedly well rounded intelligent people to participate in the myspace friend count war 2.0. The old "Nobody cares what you're doing" argument doesn't even get a look in anymore.
- That last one was really too long to quality as a bullet.
Manifesto Check:
Easy
1. New extended less is more philosophy going well, plus normal goal fine.
2. What annoys me is that I win piddly tournaments against the odds but then suffer bad beat after bad beat at around the prize point where I can finally score enough chips to be playing the game properly again. People are pulling random straights out of their arses everywhere this week using cards that no real player would ever have in a hand in the first place. Goal fine.
3. This week, "In Her Shoes". I'm seeing a lot of chick flicks lately I must say. Big Lebowski tonight. Realistically i'm not going to hit 8. No more Blockbuster subscription. As this goal existed to ensure I wasn't wasting said subscription, i'm going to lay this one to rest this week. Does this mean I won't see enough films? Hope not. I may subscribe to another service in the future. If I realise I'm missing out, I'll introduce a new goal.
4. Okay look. Whenever I take a camera on a night out I can't help but feel I'm being looked upon as annoying camera guy. I did go to a great little club in Birmingham on Saturday named "The Jam House", owned by Jools Holland. Much as I enjoyed it though, I can't imagine what photos I would have taken (without a group situation), and I haven't been anywhere else of note in the last week that would merit photography.
5. Remains good. I'd like to extend this to maybe seeing more people between weekends. This is something I guess I need to make happen.
Harder
1. I really thought this goal was crashing and burning but somehow as rain poured on Leicester midway through Sunday afternoon on the final weekend of the month, I stumbled upon a beautiful little acoustic chord progression, which also inspired a chorus, and recorded it. I may not have managed to make up for failure in March yet, but April has a theme tune!
2. Finally got a date for my annual review - a week tomorrow. Perhaps after that I can get back to just doing my job rather than trying to prove that I do it. Needless to say, very much working towards these goals in doing the above, but this blogged goal may need an update in a few weeks, as knowing the business there will be an obligatory gap during which I have no goals. Then, later, they'll tell me I had a year to work through the ones they did set.
3. With last week in mind I decided to think a little less about direction to see if it made me feel any better. Hard to say, because I'm in a good mood now, but I recall feeling weirdly low on Saturday before I went out and enjoyed myself. I did actually have some thoughts amidst the not thinking. Maybe part of the problem I'm having is my insistence that I'm somehow supposed to be part of this world of tech that I for no clear reason decided to reconnect with a few years back. I'm less interested in the tech blogs I subscribe to than ever, skipping most of the posts most of the time. It's become another inbox clearing ritual for a number of feeds. As usual, no conclusions here, but at least some thoughts.
4. This week is the week I hope to finally be able to say I met this goal. I will swim on Tuesday, I will lift weights on Thursday or Friday, and I will cycle at the weekend. I failed to swim last week due to too many weeknight commitments, but I did go for a ride today. Great to have the weights back in the house, although i'm not going to lift too much too soon. Made that mistake before. Easing back in.
Updated Manifesto:
The Easy Stuff
1. I will stick to my weekday food and drink ethic as set out previously plus consider the portion size of every meal, cutting back where necessary.
2. I will stick to wasting less weekday time playing fake poker.
3. I will take my camera with me whenever I go, or feel i'm likely to go, somewhere i've never been before but only on a night out if there are more than two people involved.
4. I will stay in touch with my friends weekly and start trying to initiate some weeknight activities.
The Challenging Stuff
1. I will continue to write a song each month and make up for missing one in March by writing an extra song before the end of the year.
2. I will continue to work towards my set work goals.
3. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly.
4. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule.
- In 2005/6 I changed employers (technically anyway). This somehow caused me to underpay income tax by £112, and now the tax man wants it back. They're not asking. Would say they're telling, but they didn't actually tell. Had to ask them why they were taking even more of my money than usual.
- Still hopeful for a real summer, despite talk of La Nina messing it all up this year.
- Twitter fever has now officially reached the point where it's unbearable to read or hear about it, what it means and how it's changing everything. Standard test people: Do you non-tech friends with Facebook accounts have Twitter accounts? None of mine do (EDIT: Kara Swisher makes a similar point a little earlier in the day, and with somewhat more focus). Many of my favorite episodic shows (formerly podcasts) seem to drift on to the topic, acknowledge that it's over-discussed, then continue to talk about it anyway. What then, is the focus of the majority of these conversations? "HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE FOLLOWING ME". Some guys have managed to convince supposedly well rounded intelligent people to participate in the myspace friend count war 2.0. The old "Nobody cares what you're doing" argument doesn't even get a look in anymore.
- That last one was really too long to quality as a bullet.
Manifesto Check:
Easy
1. New extended less is more philosophy going well, plus normal goal fine.
2. What annoys me is that I win piddly tournaments against the odds but then suffer bad beat after bad beat at around the prize point where I can finally score enough chips to be playing the game properly again. People are pulling random straights out of their arses everywhere this week using cards that no real player would ever have in a hand in the first place. Goal fine.
3. This week, "In Her Shoes". I'm seeing a lot of chick flicks lately I must say. Big Lebowski tonight. Realistically i'm not going to hit 8. No more Blockbuster subscription. As this goal existed to ensure I wasn't wasting said subscription, i'm going to lay this one to rest this week. Does this mean I won't see enough films? Hope not. I may subscribe to another service in the future. If I realise I'm missing out, I'll introduce a new goal.
4. Okay look. Whenever I take a camera on a night out I can't help but feel I'm being looked upon as annoying camera guy. I did go to a great little club in Birmingham on Saturday named "The Jam House", owned by Jools Holland. Much as I enjoyed it though, I can't imagine what photos I would have taken (without a group situation), and I haven't been anywhere else of note in the last week that would merit photography.
5. Remains good. I'd like to extend this to maybe seeing more people between weekends. This is something I guess I need to make happen.
Harder
1. I really thought this goal was crashing and burning but somehow as rain poured on Leicester midway through Sunday afternoon on the final weekend of the month, I stumbled upon a beautiful little acoustic chord progression, which also inspired a chorus, and recorded it. I may not have managed to make up for failure in March yet, but April has a theme tune!
2. Finally got a date for my annual review - a week tomorrow. Perhaps after that I can get back to just doing my job rather than trying to prove that I do it. Needless to say, very much working towards these goals in doing the above, but this blogged goal may need an update in a few weeks, as knowing the business there will be an obligatory gap during which I have no goals. Then, later, they'll tell me I had a year to work through the ones they did set.
3. With last week in mind I decided to think a little less about direction to see if it made me feel any better. Hard to say, because I'm in a good mood now, but I recall feeling weirdly low on Saturday before I went out and enjoyed myself. I did actually have some thoughts amidst the not thinking. Maybe part of the problem I'm having is my insistence that I'm somehow supposed to be part of this world of tech that I for no clear reason decided to reconnect with a few years back. I'm less interested in the tech blogs I subscribe to than ever, skipping most of the posts most of the time. It's become another inbox clearing ritual for a number of feeds. As usual, no conclusions here, but at least some thoughts.
4. This week is the week I hope to finally be able to say I met this goal. I will swim on Tuesday, I will lift weights on Thursday or Friday, and I will cycle at the weekend. I failed to swim last week due to too many weeknight commitments, but I did go for a ride today. Great to have the weights back in the house, although i'm not going to lift too much too soon. Made that mistake before. Easing back in.
Updated Manifesto:
The Easy Stuff
1. I will stick to my weekday food and drink ethic as set out previously plus consider the portion size of every meal, cutting back where necessary.
2. I will stick to wasting less weekday time playing fake poker.
3. I will take my camera with me whenever I go, or feel i'm likely to go, somewhere i've never been before but only on a night out if there are more than two people involved.
4. I will stay in touch with my friends weekly and start trying to initiate some weeknight activities.
The Challenging Stuff
1. I will continue to write a song each month and make up for missing one in March by writing an extra song before the end of the year.
2. I will continue to work towards my set work goals.
3. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly.
4. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Virgin Media do something slightly positive for a change Shocker!
I have just received an email from my illustrious ISP, Virgin Media (that's to say, NTL), stating that they're cutting the premium rate broadband support line in favour of a free number. About time!
This premium rate support line is definitely something I've complained about before here, in essence because when a knowledgeable person with a good level of computer literacy needs broadband support, it's only ever going to be due to an error or problem on the part of the ISP.
I don't contest that for every one of those people there are probably ten morons who haven't yet tried switching their cable modem off and on again, but to force me to incur a steep charge through no fault of my own when a contractor in a green box on the corner decides the next new customer's cable is more important than the one he just displaced, isn't what I'd call good customer service. Forcing me to sit on hold for 45 minutes and stay home for an engineer in that scenario isn't too good either, but that's not the point here...
It is comforting at least to know that finally after what i'd imagine is about 2-3 years, I should at least be able to inform the company of their mistakes at no expense to myself.
That's one for Virgin Media. Unfortunately, due to their interest in "three strikes" and their lack of interest in net neutrality, they're still very off-putting right now.
If, VM, this is to counter a few weeks of bad press, good job, but you've more than exposed your true colours to your more clued in customers at this point. I'm very curious to see what your next story of note will be about.
This premium rate support line is definitely something I've complained about before here, in essence because when a knowledgeable person with a good level of computer literacy needs broadband support, it's only ever going to be due to an error or problem on the part of the ISP.
I don't contest that for every one of those people there are probably ten morons who haven't yet tried switching their cable modem off and on again, but to force me to incur a steep charge through no fault of my own when a contractor in a green box on the corner decides the next new customer's cable is more important than the one he just displaced, isn't what I'd call good customer service. Forcing me to sit on hold for 45 minutes and stay home for an engineer in that scenario isn't too good either, but that's not the point here...
It is comforting at least to know that finally after what i'd imagine is about 2-3 years, I should at least be able to inform the company of their mistakes at no expense to myself.
That's one for Virgin Media. Unfortunately, due to their interest in "three strikes" and their lack of interest in net neutrality, they're still very off-putting right now.
If, VM, this is to counter a few weeks of bad press, good job, but you've more than exposed your true colours to your more clued in customers at this point. I'm very curious to see what your next story of note will be about.
Scrubs Season 7 Post Writers Strike
This post will appeal to practically nobody but I must say this somewhere because it's annoying the crap out of me.
There is no way in hell that a single episode of Scrubs aired since the writers strike in the US ended was written by any of the same people that wrote it in the past.
It's just not possible. Every character is a shell of their previous self. There is a complete lack of complicated dialogue which the show is so well known for. The scenes, and even the episodes don't end on any kind of a punchline. They shoe-horn in plot reminders with no grace whatsoever.
Despite others protests that this show is past it's best (yawn, it's said constantly about every show that lasts beyond 2 seasons), the writing and humour has been pretty consistent up to and including season 7, all the way up to the strike hiatus. Now, something is definitely wrong.
You can almost detect the embarrassment of the better actors as they read as if from cue cards their out of character sitcom by numbers lines. John C McGinley seems to have hardly any lines at all. He used to dominate every scene he was in, which was most of them.
My only hope is that these are some stock scripts written by cafeteria worker scabs during the strike that NBC insisted were used to fill out the season to it's original length, so that hopefully we can get back to the real Scrubs at some point over the next few weeks. At the moment, it's painful.
There is no way in hell that a single episode of Scrubs aired since the writers strike in the US ended was written by any of the same people that wrote it in the past.
It's just not possible. Every character is a shell of their previous self. There is a complete lack of complicated dialogue which the show is so well known for. The scenes, and even the episodes don't end on any kind of a punchline. They shoe-horn in plot reminders with no grace whatsoever.
Despite others protests that this show is past it's best (yawn, it's said constantly about every show that lasts beyond 2 seasons), the writing and humour has been pretty consistent up to and including season 7, all the way up to the strike hiatus. Now, something is definitely wrong.
You can almost detect the embarrassment of the better actors as they read as if from cue cards their out of character sitcom by numbers lines. John C McGinley seems to have hardly any lines at all. He used to dominate every scene he was in, which was most of them.
My only hope is that these are some stock scripts written by cafeteria worker scabs during the strike that NBC insisted were used to fill out the season to it's original length, so that hopefully we can get back to the real Scrubs at some point over the next few weeks. At the moment, it's painful.
Monday, April 21, 2008
2008 #17 - Grounding/Constants
GROUNDING - something to keep you in touch with reality.
CONSTANT - something to keep you grounded.
On Saturday night I tried badly to explain to a friend that right now I have no one constant in my life that is keeping me grounded. As I said it I realised two things:
1. It this actually quite insulting to my friend and other friends, as they're about the only constant keeping me grounded.
2. Was I really saying anything insightful or was I essentially trying to steal a concept from the best episode of Lost ever (The Constant).
The answers are yes, and yes, but the friend didn't take it as an insult, and Lost has many fantastic ideas. Just wish I could time travel too. That's really all I want.
Quick list review this week - i've written a lot since last Monday for once.
Easy:
1. Honed further. Lunch salad gets worse each day. I may have to start making my own. Main meal portion throttling also now in use. Meals that gave me 2 large portions will now give me 3 either reasonable sized portions or 3 slightly too small portions. A little alternative will be added for variety and to make up the shortfall. This is about health and gluttony more than it's about money.
2. I just cannot win at poker right now. Awful run. Back to 0 chips. Still keeping to the rules though.
3. In the month of April - Something about Mary, We Own the Night, Knocked Up, High Fidelity. One more in the pipe then 3 to hit my target. Could happen. By the way, never saw High Fidelity before - outstanding film.
4. I don't even think I like taking photos. I should have taken it out last weekend though, so theres a fail.
5. Read the start of the post.
Hard
1. I've sat and played, i've hit record to see what happened, but all with very little result. I have something, but it's in no way enough to be considered a song. It might be in 9 days, you never know.
2. First enjoyable day at work today in a while, but no time to work on goals - there's stuff to fix. I like fixing stuff. Is this useful information I should be taking note of?
3. Once again, my mind is consumed by directional issues. I set myself a goal to "consider my career inside and outside of my current role weekly". I'm beginning to wonder if this was a good idea. Is it good that i'm spending so much time thinking about this when i'm getting no answers? I can't say no, unfortunately. The box is open and it won't close.
4. Last weeks swim was a nightmare at 4pm with only 3 open lanes marked for speed. Give me the unmarked 8 lane spread any day. Must figure out why i'm so slow at front crawl. Nonetheless, it can't fail to be exercise as long as I go and do it. Who cares if I annoy people. I am also bringing my old weight bench back from my parents house tomorrow evening, although I have nowhere to put it. This can be my second regular activity. Cycling and walking remains the third. Finding somewhere to put the bench will be interesting. These things aren't small.
That wasn't anything like as short as I intended. I'm happier with the last week than I realised. Reviewing things works!
Side bar on buying stuff - do you get the endorphin rush when you confirm the purchase, or when you receive it? I think both, but it's an 80/20 in favour of the receipt i'd say.
CONSTANT - something to keep you grounded.
On Saturday night I tried badly to explain to a friend that right now I have no one constant in my life that is keeping me grounded. As I said it I realised two things:
1. It this actually quite insulting to my friend and other friends, as they're about the only constant keeping me grounded.
2. Was I really saying anything insightful or was I essentially trying to steal a concept from the best episode of Lost ever (The Constant).
The answers are yes, and yes, but the friend didn't take it as an insult, and Lost has many fantastic ideas. Just wish I could time travel too. That's really all I want.
Quick list review this week - i've written a lot since last Monday for once.
Easy:
1. Honed further. Lunch salad gets worse each day. I may have to start making my own. Main meal portion throttling also now in use. Meals that gave me 2 large portions will now give me 3 either reasonable sized portions or 3 slightly too small portions. A little alternative will be added for variety and to make up the shortfall. This is about health and gluttony more than it's about money.
2. I just cannot win at poker right now. Awful run. Back to 0 chips. Still keeping to the rules though.
3. In the month of April - Something about Mary, We Own the Night, Knocked Up, High Fidelity. One more in the pipe then 3 to hit my target. Could happen. By the way, never saw High Fidelity before - outstanding film.
4. I don't even think I like taking photos. I should have taken it out last weekend though, so theres a fail.
5. Read the start of the post.
Hard
1. I've sat and played, i've hit record to see what happened, but all with very little result. I have something, but it's in no way enough to be considered a song. It might be in 9 days, you never know.
2. First enjoyable day at work today in a while, but no time to work on goals - there's stuff to fix. I like fixing stuff. Is this useful information I should be taking note of?
3. Once again, my mind is consumed by directional issues. I set myself a goal to "consider my career inside and outside of my current role weekly". I'm beginning to wonder if this was a good idea. Is it good that i'm spending so much time thinking about this when i'm getting no answers? I can't say no, unfortunately. The box is open and it won't close.
4. Last weeks swim was a nightmare at 4pm with only 3 open lanes marked for speed. Give me the unmarked 8 lane spread any day. Must figure out why i'm so slow at front crawl. Nonetheless, it can't fail to be exercise as long as I go and do it. Who cares if I annoy people. I am also bringing my old weight bench back from my parents house tomorrow evening, although I have nowhere to put it. This can be my second regular activity. Cycling and walking remains the third. Finding somewhere to put the bench will be interesting. These things aren't small.
That wasn't anything like as short as I intended. I'm happier with the last week than I realised. Reviewing things works!
Side bar on buying stuff - do you get the endorphin rush when you confirm the purchase, or when you receive it? I think both, but it's an 80/20 in favour of the receipt i'd say.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Talking to India on a Sunday afternoon - the DELL experience
Everyone has an opinion on India based call centres for western companies. Most people have the same opinion in my experience, and they get it way off. The phrase "I can't understand a word she's saying" is rarely something I can relate to, and has very little to do with the problem.
On the phone to a company it's vital to be understood. The frustration comes from not being understood. I don't mind if I don't understand, because i'll insist on labouring the point until I do.
I have just had a ten minute conversation with Priyanka of Dell, originally calling to query how delivery worked, but eventually agreeing to a quote. which i'll get to briefly at the end.
When I gave my address, I explained that it was Flat 1, House 36 Oxford Street. I wouldn't normally be so explicit, but I wanted to be SURE I HAD BEEN UNDERSTOOD.
A little later in the call it was quoted back to me as "Flat 1 3 6". Ambiguous. She could have meant "Flat 1, 36", or she could have meant "Flat 136". To clarify, I restated, "Flat 1, House 36". I was given an "ok" as if to communicate understanding.
After the call ends, my quote arrives. The line in question reads:
"flat1 oxford street"
The problem is, now this issue has been exposed, all confidence is shattered. I simply can't trust this person to handle my business in any way. The irony is she insisted that it would be a personal experience. One person, beginning to end. This is a risky promise to make until you're sure somebody respects your abilities.
The mistake is too fundamental, and the most troubling element of the miscommunication is the false expression of understanding. "House 36" was obviously heard twice by Priyanka, but she somehow chose to discard it entirely, as if any part of an address a person is giving could possibly be irrelevant!
The Quote
I was talked into this quote because if I order over the phone I can allegedly specify that I require a call 24 hours before delivery to ensure I can be home. If I order online, this is not possible. I find this almost impossible to believe. One against Dell.
The quote itself was for exactly the same price, down to the last penny, of the online quotation system. I was given some bullshit that seemed to suggest the customer service element over the phone might be worth a little extra money. After this, at least that turned out to be false. One for Dell, but not really.
I was also told in this phone call that Dell 10% discount coupons appear once in a blue moon. This is the first time I haven't been able to find a valid one, and the last one that could have knocked my £730 down to £640 expired just 4 days ago. I can see other coupons from early April, March and Feb. I'll take that as a lie. One against Dell.
One more thing. The estimated delivery date if I order TODAY is 30 days from today. I had heard Dell was having speed issues these days but that's a long wait. A friend managed to get a new Inspiron in 3 days in the recent past. I want an XPS. Perhaps if you want to pay more for the better machine you're not a priority because you must already be hooked. How very Apple of Dell.
Wrapping Up
- Flat 1, 36 Oxford Street is not my real address dummy. I wouldn't post that. Priyanka knows the truth, but I think she'd be risking her job posting it here, and hey, I'm still not convinced I have any readers.
- Talking to Dell on a Sunday was a polite but ultimately fruitless experience. I really want an XPS M1530, but I don't think I can stomach a months wait and having to deal with this company. This is pretty much what i'll tell Priyanka when she calls me back tomorrow afternoon to aggressively close the deal.
Unwrapping to Rewrap
I could retain dignity by not amending this post, but I'd really rather not. The address issue was actually explainable, and I managed to get a requote showing my correct address. Although I am terrified that I may have an even more negative Dell story to tell in the near future, I just really wanted this laptop. I'm going to hope for a painless transaction. Just in case it isn't clear by now, I was talked into it. My change of heart was partly how well the phone call this evening went and partly looking at the piles of dreggy non-competitively priced alternatives at John Lewis in Solihull this lunchtime. I walked past the Apple store. I'm not ready for that just yet. Maybe in 5 years.
Side bar on the Macbook Air - total victim of it's own hype. If you haven't actually physically picked one up yet I urge you to do so. The first thing you'll think is how much heavier it is than you expected. The second is that it's not as thin as it looked in pictures. Photoshop?
NOTE: The full name of the Dell salesperson has been removed as a) she had a good explanation and didn't deserve the original bashing even half as much as I thought - i won't remove it - i'd rather just explain it, and of course b) The fate of my new laptop is at least partly in her hands.
I haven't managed to pay for it yet as my credit card was declined. First time i'd used it in ages and a reasonable amount triggers fraud protection. Inconvenient and delayed things by a day, but It's very comforting to know that if this thing had fallen into the wrong hands it wouldn't have been much use.
If you're keeping score, Dell just got one and HSBC did too.
Right, on to the next post.
On the phone to a company it's vital to be understood. The frustration comes from not being understood. I don't mind if I don't understand, because i'll insist on labouring the point until I do.
I have just had a ten minute conversation with Priyanka of Dell, originally calling to query how delivery worked, but eventually agreeing to a quote. which i'll get to briefly at the end.
When I gave my address, I explained that it was Flat 1, House 36 Oxford Street. I wouldn't normally be so explicit, but I wanted to be SURE I HAD BEEN UNDERSTOOD.
A little later in the call it was quoted back to me as "Flat 1 3 6". Ambiguous. She could have meant "Flat 1, 36", or she could have meant "Flat 136". To clarify, I restated, "Flat 1, House 36". I was given an "ok" as if to communicate understanding.
After the call ends, my quote arrives. The line in question reads:
"flat1 oxford street"
The problem is, now this issue has been exposed, all confidence is shattered. I simply can't trust this person to handle my business in any way. The irony is she insisted that it would be a personal experience. One person, beginning to end. This is a risky promise to make until you're sure somebody respects your abilities.
The mistake is too fundamental, and the most troubling element of the miscommunication is the false expression of understanding. "House 36" was obviously heard twice by Priyanka, but she somehow chose to discard it entirely, as if any part of an address a person is giving could possibly be irrelevant!
The Quote
I was talked into this quote because if I order over the phone I can allegedly specify that I require a call 24 hours before delivery to ensure I can be home. If I order online, this is not possible. I find this almost impossible to believe. One against Dell.
The quote itself was for exactly the same price, down to the last penny, of the online quotation system. I was given some bullshit that seemed to suggest the customer service element over the phone might be worth a little extra money. After this, at least that turned out to be false. One for Dell, but not really.
I was also told in this phone call that Dell 10% discount coupons appear once in a blue moon. This is the first time I haven't been able to find a valid one, and the last one that could have knocked my £730 down to £640 expired just 4 days ago. I can see other coupons from early April, March and Feb. I'll take that as a lie. One against Dell.
One more thing. The estimated delivery date if I order TODAY is 30 days from today. I had heard Dell was having speed issues these days but that's a long wait. A friend managed to get a new Inspiron in 3 days in the recent past. I want an XPS. Perhaps if you want to pay more for the better machine you're not a priority because you must already be hooked. How very Apple of Dell.
Wrapping Up
- Flat 1, 36 Oxford Street is not my real address dummy. I wouldn't post that. Priyanka knows the truth, but I think she'd be risking her job posting it here, and hey, I'm still not convinced I have any readers.
- Talking to Dell on a Sunday was a polite but ultimately fruitless experience. I really want an XPS M1530, but I don't think I can stomach a months wait and having to deal with this company. This is pretty much what i'll tell Priyanka when she calls me back tomorrow afternoon to aggressively close the deal.
Unwrapping to Rewrap
I could retain dignity by not amending this post, but I'd really rather not. The address issue was actually explainable, and I managed to get a requote showing my correct address. Although I am terrified that I may have an even more negative Dell story to tell in the near future, I just really wanted this laptop. I'm going to hope for a painless transaction. Just in case it isn't clear by now, I was talked into it. My change of heart was partly how well the phone call this evening went and partly looking at the piles of dreggy non-competitively priced alternatives at John Lewis in Solihull this lunchtime. I walked past the Apple store. I'm not ready for that just yet. Maybe in 5 years.
Side bar on the Macbook Air - total victim of it's own hype. If you haven't actually physically picked one up yet I urge you to do so. The first thing you'll think is how much heavier it is than you expected. The second is that it's not as thin as it looked in pictures. Photoshop?
NOTE: The full name of the Dell salesperson has been removed as a) she had a good explanation and didn't deserve the original bashing even half as much as I thought - i won't remove it - i'd rather just explain it, and of course b) The fate of my new laptop is at least partly in her hands.
I haven't managed to pay for it yet as my credit card was declined. First time i'd used it in ages and a reasonable amount triggers fraud protection. Inconvenient and delayed things by a day, but It's very comforting to know that if this thing had fallen into the wrong hands it wouldn't have been much use.
If you're keeping score, Dell just got one and HSBC did too.
Right, on to the next post.
Friday, April 18, 2008
BLOCKBUSTER.CO.UK - Even in Parting you FAIL!
Today I initiated the cancellation process with Blockbuster as I have been threatening to do for a while. They naturally ask you three times if you really wish to cancel before actually accepting it, but they also ask for a 2000 character maximum feedback on why.
By the time I was ready to post it, the session had expired and I was unable to. I was actually entirely expecting this to happen, and waiting to jump on it and call them on one last failure.
To Blockbuster: When I can predict how you will screw up, your problems are a lot worse than you are capable of understanding. It is widely expected that you will go under in the next few years, lock stock, and I will be right there cheering when you do.
To anybody else thinking about using this service, I'm not saying don't. I'm saying, be prepared to look forward to seeing films you have asked for that they will never deliver.
Here is my cancellation feedback:
I didn't manage to put a very good cap on it as I ran out of characters and didn't really want to remove anything i'd already said.
Anyway, thats £15 a month to re-purpose for a while until such a time as I once again find myself nodding along to people discussing films. Whatever I do, Blockbuster won't see another penny. To illustrate i'm true to my word, please note that I haven't been inside PC World since that Nokia N800 fiasco last year. Then again who am I kidding. Why would I ever have gone near that place anyway? Blockbuster - same applies. Huge goodbye fuck you.
By the time I was ready to post it, the session had expired and I was unable to. I was actually entirely expecting this to happen, and waiting to jump on it and call them on one last failure.
To Blockbuster: When I can predict how you will screw up, your problems are a lot worse than you are capable of understanding. It is widely expected that you will go under in the next few years, lock stock, and I will be right there cheering when you do.
To anybody else thinking about using this service, I'm not saying don't. I'm saying, be prepared to look forward to seeing films you have asked for that they will never deliver.
Here is my cancellation feedback:
One of two things have happened recently:
1. You have ignored my complaints - this would obviously be inexcusable.
2. Your help system doesn't work properly. Each question listed lets me send you a message. You have previously ignored (said you never received - not my problem) messages I sent to you relating to the question along the lines of "Where are my Discs", but eventually responded to a "How do I Cancel" related message. My two most recent complaints were again posted related to the former question. If you didn't get them, you have only yourself to blame for maintaining your system so poorly as to allow customer service to be this severely degraded.
I was VERY clear about my intention to cancel in response to my recent complaints, centered on having a list of what I consider enough titles alongside your inability to send me any of them.
Ironically after admittedly bleeding you a little dry early on I have lately become the kind of customer you'd probably like to retain, unable to manage watching as many films as I previously have, but still liking the option to do so as and when I please. Unfortunately you have an issue you are unwilling to even acknowledge much less resolve whereby certain titles you seemingly have zero copies of are listed in your catalogue. If you're curious which, look at the 10 or more items left in my list.
Over the 2+ years I can't say it's been an entirely bad experience, but in the 4-5 times i've needed to contact you, usually on this same issue, the experience has ALWAYS been awful. This is the main reason I am cancelling, and you have most certainly lost a customer that you would have otherwise retained to one of your competitors.
I will be taking my own payment holiday for a while and then I'll have a look at Amazon, which I was yesterday surprised to learn has a much larger market share in this space than you do, even before buying what I'd think would be the third best known competitor over the last few days.
I didn't manage to put a very good cap on it as I ran out of characters and didn't really want to remove anything i'd already said.
Anyway, thats £15 a month to re-purpose for a while until such a time as I once again find myself nodding along to people discussing films. Whatever I do, Blockbuster won't see another penny. To illustrate i'm true to my word, please note that I haven't been inside PC World since that Nokia N800 fiasco last year. Then again who am I kidding. Why would I ever have gone near that place anyway? Blockbuster - same applies. Huge goodbye fuck you.
Monday, April 14, 2008
2008 #16 - Bullets
- WHAT'S SO GREAT about the prime minister stating his sole focus is the economy? Aren't you supposed to be focusing on everything?
- I REALLY HOPE the line the Virgin Media (NTL) CEO came out with yesterday has consequences for the individual. If you don't know what i'm talking about, it's a shame. Search Google for Virgin and "load of bollocks". I wish I had some faith in DSL. Any real competition this would be more than enough to make me switch.
- I HAVE UNSUBSCRIBED from a few RSS feeds over the last week. Anything I read from Scobie (not interested in vanity searchs this time) now will have to be good enough to hit TechMeme (he'll like that). MediaGuardian also gone. Way too much, nowhere near enough good. My Slashdot click through must now be in the region of 1 story a week, but I can't bring myself to kill it. It was where it all began for me. What it is I have no idea.
- HERE ARE A FEW thoughts on my easy goal list.
1. Slight food slip this week. More wrongly past their best salad items discarded in favour of Revels. Odd to discover that the peanuts have been replaced by raisins. Guess someone must have died from an allergic reaction. I also seem to have gained a bit of weight, which is a shame since I didn't gain any when I was doing no exercise. I think it's pasta related. Gonna keep this in check. I cannot be a fat guy. I refuse.
3. Chances are i'll miss my film quota for April due to my dispute with Blockbuster. I'm no longer convinced that they receive the mails I send through the route I take, but if that is the case, thats just one of several final nails anyway. I am definitely cancelling the account just before the next payment (they won't refund any days, naturally). Trying to milk a few more likely to show up discs in before then. I'll try to find an alternative source to top up a bit. I need 6 more to hit the target.
- NOW FOR A LOOK at the harder part of the list.
1. Song writing is to be firmed up in the latter half of this week as I take a well deserved break from work. No definite idea to work on, but plenty to evolve.
2. Wasting hours on end at work this week trying to build a file of evidence to prove that I am corely competent, even though chances are the two people that will ultimately decide have already decided. Nevermind. It's your money (until it's my money), and raking up positive experiences isn't such a bad thing.
3. Maybe the solution is to knock someone up and have to support a child? Perhaps then i'd be able to derive some meaning from working hard on a job that I feel no passion for in a company that I find questionable. Or, perhaps i'd start hating life rather than just not liking my job. Probably not a great idea. If I throw out a thought a week about career maybe one of them will make some sense.
4. Still swimming. Other swimmers annoy the crap out of me. I must be hands down the slowest front crawler ever. Breast stroke swimmers are faster than me. I can and do ignore them and their occasional "you're in my way" looks, but truth be told I wish just once I could have a lane to myself for an hour. I do seem to swim for longer and with fewer breaks (actually, no breaks anymore), which gives me a slight feeling of superiority. Another crappy weather week has kept me off my bike, but I have managed another brisk walk. These walks make me like Leicester more.
MY REASON FOR STAYING in Leicester however, is almost certainly misguided. I wish I could figure out how i'd feel about staying around with a conclusion on the reason. How suddenly something that wasn't really anything for over 2 years, and still isn't, suddenly needs concluding is also beyond my comprehension. I'm gonna go listen to that Hoobastank song. Hey, he's not a perfect person either!
- I REALLY HOPE the line the Virgin Media (NTL) CEO came out with yesterday has consequences for the individual. If you don't know what i'm talking about, it's a shame. Search Google for Virgin and "load of bollocks". I wish I had some faith in DSL. Any real competition this would be more than enough to make me switch.
- I HAVE UNSUBSCRIBED from a few RSS feeds over the last week. Anything I read from Scobie (not interested in vanity searchs this time) now will have to be good enough to hit TechMeme (he'll like that). MediaGuardian also gone. Way too much, nowhere near enough good. My Slashdot click through must now be in the region of 1 story a week, but I can't bring myself to kill it. It was where it all began for me. What it is I have no idea.
- HERE ARE A FEW thoughts on my easy goal list.
1. Slight food slip this week. More wrongly past their best salad items discarded in favour of Revels. Odd to discover that the peanuts have been replaced by raisins. Guess someone must have died from an allergic reaction. I also seem to have gained a bit of weight, which is a shame since I didn't gain any when I was doing no exercise. I think it's pasta related. Gonna keep this in check. I cannot be a fat guy. I refuse.
3. Chances are i'll miss my film quota for April due to my dispute with Blockbuster. I'm no longer convinced that they receive the mails I send through the route I take, but if that is the case, thats just one of several final nails anyway. I am definitely cancelling the account just before the next payment (they won't refund any days, naturally). Trying to milk a few more likely to show up discs in before then. I'll try to find an alternative source to top up a bit. I need 6 more to hit the target.
- NOW FOR A LOOK at the harder part of the list.
1. Song writing is to be firmed up in the latter half of this week as I take a well deserved break from work. No definite idea to work on, but plenty to evolve.
2. Wasting hours on end at work this week trying to build a file of evidence to prove that I am corely competent, even though chances are the two people that will ultimately decide have already decided. Nevermind. It's your money (until it's my money), and raking up positive experiences isn't such a bad thing.
3. Maybe the solution is to knock someone up and have to support a child? Perhaps then i'd be able to derive some meaning from working hard on a job that I feel no passion for in a company that I find questionable. Or, perhaps i'd start hating life rather than just not liking my job. Probably not a great idea. If I throw out a thought a week about career maybe one of them will make some sense.
4. Still swimming. Other swimmers annoy the crap out of me. I must be hands down the slowest front crawler ever. Breast stroke swimmers are faster than me. I can and do ignore them and their occasional "you're in my way" looks, but truth be told I wish just once I could have a lane to myself for an hour. I do seem to swim for longer and with fewer breaks (actually, no breaks anymore), which gives me a slight feeling of superiority. Another crappy weather week has kept me off my bike, but I have managed another brisk walk. These walks make me like Leicester more.
MY REASON FOR STAYING in Leicester however, is almost certainly misguided. I wish I could figure out how i'd feel about staying around with a conclusion on the reason. How suddenly something that wasn't really anything for over 2 years, and still isn't, suddenly needs concluding is also beyond my comprehension. I'm gonna go listen to that Hoobastank song. Hey, he's not a perfect person either!
Monday, April 07, 2008
2008 #15 - Resonation: A type of vibration.
It's great to go back, read an old post and have it resonate. I don't get that feeling on Facebook. Often my writing feels too formal to be on a Facebook wall. Most of the posts I write here and Twitter I'll like now and later.
I actually Blame Facebook for the formality. This week I tried to explain to a friend what Twitter was in reasonably short form, and ended up with an advert pasted on to the bottom for Twitter. I could have turned it off, but I only realised this later. Many wouldn't even notice it was being posted.
From this I take away one thing: People aren't going to be comfortable advertising products simply because they're endorsing them to friends. Telling my friend about Twitter was a positive gesture. She may one day join. Having this positive gesture turned into an advert makes me feel like a tool of someone or something. Could be the advertising medium, or it could be the advertiser. Either way, it left a bad vibe. Didn't resonate. No sir.
Easy Street
3. This weeks films - nothing from Blockbuster. I finally saw Something About Mary on Sky One last night. Quite enjoyed it. Nothing wrong with a RomCom every now and again. Blockbuster are now ignoring my complaints. I strongly suspect this is now my final month with this bullshit terrible company - please feel free to quote me on it.
5. Had a great Saturday night of down and desperate UK binge drinking. Serious problem. Must be stopped. Who are we to decide what's good for us and what we enjoy? Please listen to Free Talk Live. Did I just list binge drinking as success in one of my goals? No, the point was there were people around and that was good. Been a lonely March round here.
Hard Boulevard
1. Having great times with my new acoustic. This thing sounds fantastic. Some ideas for an April song are forming. Maybe the March song will cross the line late too. Check back.
2. Procrastinating on finding all the evidence to back up my claim that I am corely competent, so to speak. Give me a date for my review and i'm sure i'll get it done. Still confident, but uninterested.
3. I've noticed lately that many of the paths I've always liked the look of are really long shots. Love music, lack talent, want to engineer? Recorded music may be dying. Like radio? Want to engineer? Radio doesn't hire anymore - it fires. This is the excuse based whining you've come to know. It's not about quitting a job and earning less. It's far more about not quitting a job because of being scared you could end up earning nothing, and eventually end up back at the bottom of the same ladder you spent.. x years climbing. I may have just described a lot of people and their feelings, and again it fits the dice metaphor mentioned recently, but where is the wisdom that makes this problem go away? The successful are convinced things just work out with hard work. I wish I could find something I really felt the drive to work hard at, but even if I did, I wouldn't be immediately convinced i'd solved the problem. As you can see, goal met here.
4. Better week for the body. Swimming continued with a cramp free fairly continuous mile, and a luke-warm evening cycle down to and around the Abbey area was fairly enjoyable. Hopefully do something similar this week too.
Ready for a break from work. I missed the fact that it's been 3 months since my time off at Christmas. Ready for another trip to the south coast. Wondering if this style of writing is irritating. Will decide when I read it back in RSS reader later. Later.
I actually Blame Facebook for the formality. This week I tried to explain to a friend what Twitter was in reasonably short form, and ended up with an advert pasted on to the bottom for Twitter. I could have turned it off, but I only realised this later. Many wouldn't even notice it was being posted.
From this I take away one thing: People aren't going to be comfortable advertising products simply because they're endorsing them to friends. Telling my friend about Twitter was a positive gesture. She may one day join. Having this positive gesture turned into an advert makes me feel like a tool of someone or something. Could be the advertising medium, or it could be the advertiser. Either way, it left a bad vibe. Didn't resonate. No sir.
Easy Street
3. This weeks films - nothing from Blockbuster. I finally saw Something About Mary on Sky One last night. Quite enjoyed it. Nothing wrong with a RomCom every now and again. Blockbuster are now ignoring my complaints. I strongly suspect this is now my final month with this bullshit terrible company - please feel free to quote me on it.
5. Had a great Saturday night of down and desperate UK binge drinking. Serious problem. Must be stopped. Who are we to decide what's good for us and what we enjoy? Please listen to Free Talk Live. Did I just list binge drinking as success in one of my goals? No, the point was there were people around and that was good. Been a lonely March round here.
Hard Boulevard
1. Having great times with my new acoustic. This thing sounds fantastic. Some ideas for an April song are forming. Maybe the March song will cross the line late too. Check back.
2. Procrastinating on finding all the evidence to back up my claim that I am corely competent, so to speak. Give me a date for my review and i'm sure i'll get it done. Still confident, but uninterested.
3. I've noticed lately that many of the paths I've always liked the look of are really long shots. Love music, lack talent, want to engineer? Recorded music may be dying. Like radio? Want to engineer? Radio doesn't hire anymore - it fires. This is the excuse based whining you've come to know. It's not about quitting a job and earning less. It's far more about not quitting a job because of being scared you could end up earning nothing, and eventually end up back at the bottom of the same ladder you spent.. x years climbing. I may have just described a lot of people and their feelings, and again it fits the dice metaphor mentioned recently, but where is the wisdom that makes this problem go away? The successful are convinced things just work out with hard work. I wish I could find something I really felt the drive to work hard at, but even if I did, I wouldn't be immediately convinced i'd solved the problem. As you can see, goal met here.
4. Better week for the body. Swimming continued with a cramp free fairly continuous mile, and a luke-warm evening cycle down to and around the Abbey area was fairly enjoyable. Hopefully do something similar this week too.
Ready for a break from work. I missed the fact that it's been 3 months since my time off at Christmas. Ready for another trip to the south coast. Wondering if this style of writing is irritating. Will decide when I read it back in RSS reader later. Later.
Monday, March 31, 2008
2008 #14 - Theorising
EDIT: This was listed as #13 for the entire week. Fool.
I'm half way through a post about a theory that explains my current state of mind but at some point I got confused and stopped making sense. I'm still convinced that the underlying theory is sound, so i'll get back to that later. For now, i'm going to run through my list.
Easy - 1, 2, 4 and 5 as before.
3. Ended up exceeding March in old and new terms. A new month of 8+ begins tomorrow. Blockbuster can't seem to send me anything now.
Harder
1. I have failed to write a song for March. The month end quick song would have been a good idea if I didn't feel so uninspired at this precise moment. This failure must be mitigated - I will get back on track. I do have a new acoustic guitar which is just beautiful, and sounds fantastic.
2. Reviewed work goals one last time before the real review coming up. Fairly certain I have nothing to worry about.
3. Took a test to discover all kinds of aspects of myself in relation to career. Was disappointed to see the scam like method used to convince me to buy a package after answering 70 questions. How about I start typing a sentence and just as it gets interesting it turns to dashes so I have to pay to see wh-- ----- -- ----. I didn't buy it. If they'd offered me the test for £5-6 up front (which is all it cost), I might have. Don't trick customers. We don't like it.
4. I tried to swim my 64 lengths without a rest last week. At 58 lengths my foot cramped up worse than i've ever experienced before. This left lasting muscle pain for much of the last week, and i'm apprehensive about tomorrow, but i'm still going. I sometimes realise i'm not sure which lap i'm on and punish my stupidity by assuming the lower number. This happened at least 3 times last week, so my hope is that I actually did reach 64 before it all went wrong. Had a big portion of salt on Sunday. That's supposed to help.
I also went for a walk this evening. This was more to clear my head but it has to beat sitting in a chair all evening, so i'll count it.
Not a bad week considering i'm feeling.. actually a little unstable. Hopefully being able to realise that means it can only hurt me so much.
Back soon.
I'm half way through a post about a theory that explains my current state of mind but at some point I got confused and stopped making sense. I'm still convinced that the underlying theory is sound, so i'll get back to that later. For now, i'm going to run through my list.
Easy - 1, 2, 4 and 5 as before.
3. Ended up exceeding March in old and new terms. A new month of 8+ begins tomorrow. Blockbuster can't seem to send me anything now.
Harder
1. I have failed to write a song for March. The month end quick song would have been a good idea if I didn't feel so uninspired at this precise moment. This failure must be mitigated - I will get back on track. I do have a new acoustic guitar which is just beautiful, and sounds fantastic.
2. Reviewed work goals one last time before the real review coming up. Fairly certain I have nothing to worry about.
3. Took a test to discover all kinds of aspects of myself in relation to career. Was disappointed to see the scam like method used to convince me to buy a package after answering 70 questions. How about I start typing a sentence and just as it gets interesting it turns to dashes so I have to pay to see wh-- ----- -- ----. I didn't buy it. If they'd offered me the test for £5-6 up front (which is all it cost), I might have. Don't trick customers. We don't like it.
4. I tried to swim my 64 lengths without a rest last week. At 58 lengths my foot cramped up worse than i've ever experienced before. This left lasting muscle pain for much of the last week, and i'm apprehensive about tomorrow, but i'm still going. I sometimes realise i'm not sure which lap i'm on and punish my stupidity by assuming the lower number. This happened at least 3 times last week, so my hope is that I actually did reach 64 before it all went wrong. Had a big portion of salt on Sunday. That's supposed to help.
I also went for a walk this evening. This was more to clear my head but it has to beat sitting in a chair all evening, so i'll count it.
Not a bad week considering i'm feeling.. actually a little unstable. Hopefully being able to realise that means it can only hurt me so much.
Back soon.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
From my usual post-early, pre-mainstream adopter standpoint, here are my thoughts on Twitter
1. The so called "A List" bloggers that never stop talking about it don't experience it in anything like the same way an everyday person does. On the inbound because they can't hope to see every update they might be interested in, and outbound because they can hit a far bigger audience.
2. Automated follow back. If I can feel the gesture of being followed wasn't human, I don't put any real stock in it, such as expecting my updates to be read. I'd almost rather these people didn't bother. The day any of them tweet back at something I say, my mind may change, but I doubt this will happen.
3. I would really love to use this service to communicate with my local and not so local non-Internet friends, but it's still way too early for them. If you're bored on Facebook, try clicking the "Friends" button at the top. As long as you have some friends, it's one of the most interesting things to do on there, and it's essentially a last item only version of Twitter.
4. Mobile updating is great. Mobile updates may as well be removed from the service. The Facebook application that updates my status with my latest tweet is simple and perfect. Maybe soon someone will ask me what "is twittering" means and i'll be able to get them on board.
Nothing new there, but hell, at least you know where I stand. That's why you read this, right? Hey did I just write a post without 2008 in the title? Impressive.
1. The so called "A List" bloggers that never stop talking about it don't experience it in anything like the same way an everyday person does. On the inbound because they can't hope to see every update they might be interested in, and outbound because they can hit a far bigger audience.
2. Automated follow back. If I can feel the gesture of being followed wasn't human, I don't put any real stock in it, such as expecting my updates to be read. I'd almost rather these people didn't bother. The day any of them tweet back at something I say, my mind may change, but I doubt this will happen.
3. I would really love to use this service to communicate with my local and not so local non-Internet friends, but it's still way too early for them. If you're bored on Facebook, try clicking the "Friends" button at the top. As long as you have some friends, it's one of the most interesting things to do on there, and it's essentially a last item only version of Twitter.
4. Mobile updating is great. Mobile updates may as well be removed from the service. The Facebook application that updates my status with my latest tweet is simple and perfect. Maybe soon someone will ask me what "is twittering" means and i'll be able to get them on board.
Nothing new there, but hell, at least you know where I stand. That's why you read this, right? Hey did I just write a post without 2008 in the title? Impressive.
Monday, March 24, 2008
2008 #13 - Easter
At the start of the four day weekend I decided to be productive. I'd say i've maybe been about as productive as i'd like to be in a normal weekend in this double-length weekend. At least it's somewhat productive...
A proper look at all points in the manifesto this week, as 13 is a significant number. 13 x 4 = 52. In financial terms, it's the end of the fourth quarter. In other terms, it's the end of the first. Thats right.. I think.
The Wasted Space
1. I do sometimes still write about checking the list whilst checking the list. Not enough that it's a problem though.
2. Duplicating detail. I've pretty much stopped that.
The Easy
1. Food and Drink ethic is overall on target. I've reintroduced the meal of breakfast into my life at the expense of ten minutes in bed. Vending machines at work remain off-limits and my lunch remains tuna salad. I decided against the mixing in a pasta alternative, as it's just nowhere near the healthy equivalent. I've found I can keep the tuna tasting better by not draining quite as much of the sunflower oil. I suspect a slight health trade-off there, but if it keeps me eating the healthy lunch it's worthwhile.
2. Fake poker. To some, my choice to continue spending time on this might be seen as ill advised, but really, this is a game I enjoy pretty much above all others, and I'd like to continue to improve. I'm still losing a lot, and it's not always unavoidable. It's a learning experience, and the leisure time limit I've placed on it serves well and ensure it's no addiction. This limit I have stuck to 100% since I set it.
3. Watching films. Time to revise. I spend £15 a month on this service and I do this for enjoyment, not as a chore. Many films require the right mood, and this will sometimes inevitably mean holding on to one until ready to watch it. A weekly target of 2 is over the top, although I've largely kept to it. This week yet again I can't figure out if i've seen one or two, but i'm going to watch one before the day is out either way so it's 2-3 and on target. I'm going to now hold myself to watching 8 films a month, bringing each film in at under £2 - still worth the money. This will hopefully allow me to space things out better, and have heavier and lighter weeks. Note I will hit the target of 8 for March today. I will also soon take what they call a "payment holiday" and work on seeing what is now more than 10 films Blockbuster cannot seem to send me. An absurd list including The Big Lebowski, Buffalo 66, Glengarry Glen Ross, Network, Dogma, Jerry Maguire, and even Reservoir Dogs. This goal will have to change again soon unless I come across another batch of films I need to see and haven't - my list beyond these lost titles is now very short.
4. My easy Camera goal has been the least met over the past 3 months. I don't spend much time outside in the winter. It's cold. I'm keeping this goal and hoping as the weather gets warmer (which I assume is still going to happen) I will venture out with the thing. I might need to update it soon, as it has now been overtaken in spec by high end phones such as the N95. Actually i'd quite like an N95. I'd like a lot of high end phones, but I'm just not a contract man. I don't talk on the phone. Are we getting any nearer to a point that a contract based mainly on data and texts is available for a reasonable price, not penalising the gentleman that doesn't much like to use the actual phone? I admit I haven't really checked.
5. Moving away. I don't know anymore. My mind changes every day. My interest in living in various places grows and dwindles. The realisation that forever more a night out will mean sleeping on somebody's couch or in a hotel hit me this weekend. I don't think I've fully appreciated the importance of the social aspect of living in Leicester. I have little expectation of carving out a new social circle, nor would I want to. I've gone from saying that I want to move away regardless of whether I change jobs, to saying that I want to stay put, in spite of the commute my current job requires. In summary, this is not currently an issue for my goal list. The goal existed when I had a plan. The plan is now uncertain, therefore the goal is off the table for now. It'd be pretty stupid to aim for something I don't want.
6. Keeping in touch. An easy goal that I've stuck to meticulously over the past 3 months. This goal will remain to make sure I don't forget that I need to keep doing it. No doubt this point is driving the previous one to an extent, but I don't see that as a bad thing.
On to the hard...
1. I have 7 days to write my song for March and having spent a huge amount of the month working on the dead band song very successfully, i'm in danger of missing this goal. This week my mini-goal is to not miss this goal. Simple, no? In 3 month summary, I will point out that this is probably my favorite goal. Music is pretty much providing all my drive right now.
2. My work goals will be reviewed within the next month. The measure of success here will be whether the powers that be deem me worthy of a step up to what they like to call "core" competency. They shouldn't bring my performance into it, but they will, because they refuse to follow their own message. They're unfortunately come up with a scheme that rewards people fairly for being good at a job, which is rarely where advancement originates in business. Frankly I think I've had a sufficiently progressive year to warrant "core", although my interest in the work itself is flat-lining. In the screwy corporate personal development scheme we have competency, performance and key deliverables. Competency was introduced to be the only indicator towards grade, and has been almost entirely abused and misused since it arrived. My actual competency in the actual job I do is top notch. Several of the things i'll be asked to provide evidence on don't relate in any way to my job, so in fact, i'll be wasting time next week desperately trying to meet these goals rather than using the time productively on my real work. Do you see why i'm sick of not just working for this big company, but of the prospect of working for any big company.
3. My career rethink, as I'm sure anybody following will agree, isn't making any real progress. I'm less "coastal campervan" this week; back in my wanting to create something but having no idea what. I'm beginning to think my answer might be to start creating all kinds of crap and see if anything sticks.
4. Exercise. In setting myself a high bar I've failed dismally against I've actually managed to get myself consistently swimming weekly for 3 months barring two weeks of sickness. I have to remind myself that it's only 1 hour a week to get past the sheer boredom of it. I will continue to swim. What i'd also like to do is get back to the weights, if only I had room for my bench here. Theres a big catch 22 forming in my head involving proximity to work, proximity to friends and renting a bigger place. I can afford £500 a month rent if I kill the 500 mile commute, but I really can't afford to do both. £500 a month is proven to be the rent required to have space beyond a living room and a bedroom.. outside the city centre that is. Cycling will begin again. It remains all about weather.
Summary of 3 Months
I'd sum it up by saying that it could have gone better, but it could have gone worse. As exemplified by the exercise point, setting up something like this and doing it half-arsed is still going to achieve a lot more than doing nothing, however this is not the attitude to take, as it will likely lead to complacency. My hope is that when I write "2008 #26" I'll have made more progress in all areas. When I sit down to write "2008 #52" I'll certainly feel a sense of achievement almost regardless of the outcome. That said, I think the last one of 2008 may actually be #51 since the one from Jan 1st didn't have a number, it was just called "2008". Does that mean my 3 month wrap up is too late? Does it matter? No!
The Updated Manifesto:
The Easy Stuff
1. I will stick to my weekday food and drink ethic as set out previously.
2. I will stick to wasting less weekday time playing fake poker.
3. I will watch 8 or more films each month.
4. I will take my camera with me whenever I go, or feel i'm likely to go, somewhere i've never been before.
5. I will stay in touch with my friends weekly.
The Challenging Stuff
1. I will continue to write a song each month.
2. I will continue to work towards my set work goals.
3. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly.
4. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule.
A proper look at all points in the manifesto this week, as 13 is a significant number. 13 x 4 = 52. In financial terms, it's the end of the fourth quarter. In other terms, it's the end of the first. Thats right.. I think.
The Wasted Space
1. I do sometimes still write about checking the list whilst checking the list. Not enough that it's a problem though.
2. Duplicating detail. I've pretty much stopped that.
The Easy
1. Food and Drink ethic is overall on target. I've reintroduced the meal of breakfast into my life at the expense of ten minutes in bed. Vending machines at work remain off-limits and my lunch remains tuna salad. I decided against the mixing in a pasta alternative, as it's just nowhere near the healthy equivalent. I've found I can keep the tuna tasting better by not draining quite as much of the sunflower oil. I suspect a slight health trade-off there, but if it keeps me eating the healthy lunch it's worthwhile.
2. Fake poker. To some, my choice to continue spending time on this might be seen as ill advised, but really, this is a game I enjoy pretty much above all others, and I'd like to continue to improve. I'm still losing a lot, and it's not always unavoidable. It's a learning experience, and the leisure time limit I've placed on it serves well and ensure it's no addiction. This limit I have stuck to 100% since I set it.
3. Watching films. Time to revise. I spend £15 a month on this service and I do this for enjoyment, not as a chore. Many films require the right mood, and this will sometimes inevitably mean holding on to one until ready to watch it. A weekly target of 2 is over the top, although I've largely kept to it. This week yet again I can't figure out if i've seen one or two, but i'm going to watch one before the day is out either way so it's 2-3 and on target. I'm going to now hold myself to watching 8 films a month, bringing each film in at under £2 - still worth the money. This will hopefully allow me to space things out better, and have heavier and lighter weeks. Note I will hit the target of 8 for March today. I will also soon take what they call a "payment holiday" and work on seeing what is now more than 10 films Blockbuster cannot seem to send me. An absurd list including The Big Lebowski, Buffalo 66, Glengarry Glen Ross, Network, Dogma, Jerry Maguire, and even Reservoir Dogs. This goal will have to change again soon unless I come across another batch of films I need to see and haven't - my list beyond these lost titles is now very short.
4. My easy Camera goal has been the least met over the past 3 months. I don't spend much time outside in the winter. It's cold. I'm keeping this goal and hoping as the weather gets warmer (which I assume is still going to happen) I will venture out with the thing. I might need to update it soon, as it has now been overtaken in spec by high end phones such as the N95. Actually i'd quite like an N95. I'd like a lot of high end phones, but I'm just not a contract man. I don't talk on the phone. Are we getting any nearer to a point that a contract based mainly on data and texts is available for a reasonable price, not penalising the gentleman that doesn't much like to use the actual phone? I admit I haven't really checked.
5. Moving away. I don't know anymore. My mind changes every day. My interest in living in various places grows and dwindles. The realisation that forever more a night out will mean sleeping on somebody's couch or in a hotel hit me this weekend. I don't think I've fully appreciated the importance of the social aspect of living in Leicester. I have little expectation of carving out a new social circle, nor would I want to. I've gone from saying that I want to move away regardless of whether I change jobs, to saying that I want to stay put, in spite of the commute my current job requires. In summary, this is not currently an issue for my goal list. The goal existed when I had a plan. The plan is now uncertain, therefore the goal is off the table for now. It'd be pretty stupid to aim for something I don't want.
6. Keeping in touch. An easy goal that I've stuck to meticulously over the past 3 months. This goal will remain to make sure I don't forget that I need to keep doing it. No doubt this point is driving the previous one to an extent, but I don't see that as a bad thing.
On to the hard...
1. I have 7 days to write my song for March and having spent a huge amount of the month working on the dead band song very successfully, i'm in danger of missing this goal. This week my mini-goal is to not miss this goal. Simple, no? In 3 month summary, I will point out that this is probably my favorite goal. Music is pretty much providing all my drive right now.
2. My work goals will be reviewed within the next month. The measure of success here will be whether the powers that be deem me worthy of a step up to what they like to call "core" competency. They shouldn't bring my performance into it, but they will, because they refuse to follow their own message. They're unfortunately come up with a scheme that rewards people fairly for being good at a job, which is rarely where advancement originates in business. Frankly I think I've had a sufficiently progressive year to warrant "core", although my interest in the work itself is flat-lining. In the screwy corporate personal development scheme we have competency, performance and key deliverables. Competency was introduced to be the only indicator towards grade, and has been almost entirely abused and misused since it arrived. My actual competency in the actual job I do is top notch. Several of the things i'll be asked to provide evidence on don't relate in any way to my job, so in fact, i'll be wasting time next week desperately trying to meet these goals rather than using the time productively on my real work. Do you see why i'm sick of not just working for this big company, but of the prospect of working for any big company.
3. My career rethink, as I'm sure anybody following will agree, isn't making any real progress. I'm less "coastal campervan" this week; back in my wanting to create something but having no idea what. I'm beginning to think my answer might be to start creating all kinds of crap and see if anything sticks.
4. Exercise. In setting myself a high bar I've failed dismally against I've actually managed to get myself consistently swimming weekly for 3 months barring two weeks of sickness. I have to remind myself that it's only 1 hour a week to get past the sheer boredom of it. I will continue to swim. What i'd also like to do is get back to the weights, if only I had room for my bench here. Theres a big catch 22 forming in my head involving proximity to work, proximity to friends and renting a bigger place. I can afford £500 a month rent if I kill the 500 mile commute, but I really can't afford to do both. £500 a month is proven to be the rent required to have space beyond a living room and a bedroom.. outside the city centre that is. Cycling will begin again. It remains all about weather.
Summary of 3 Months
I'd sum it up by saying that it could have gone better, but it could have gone worse. As exemplified by the exercise point, setting up something like this and doing it half-arsed is still going to achieve a lot more than doing nothing, however this is not the attitude to take, as it will likely lead to complacency. My hope is that when I write "2008 #26" I'll have made more progress in all areas. When I sit down to write "2008 #52" I'll certainly feel a sense of achievement almost regardless of the outcome. That said, I think the last one of 2008 may actually be #51 since the one from Jan 1st didn't have a number, it was just called "2008". Does that mean my 3 month wrap up is too late? Does it matter? No!
The Updated Manifesto:
The Easy Stuff
1. I will stick to my weekday food and drink ethic as set out previously.
2. I will stick to wasting less weekday time playing fake poker.
3. I will watch 8 or more films each month.
4. I will take my camera with me whenever I go, or feel i'm likely to go, somewhere i've never been before.
5. I will stay in touch with my friends weekly.
The Challenging Stuff
1. I will continue to write a song each month.
2. I will continue to work towards my set work goals.
3. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly.
4. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule.
Monday, March 17, 2008
2008 #12 - Music Spurred by Peer Pressure
In the band that died (thats the second one) I brought one song to the table. It seemed to gain a reputation as a song that many enjoyed playing the most. It's been half recorded for months. On Saturday morning, one former bandmate asked where it was. This was followed by another.
Why did it take this to finally get me to sit up and get on with it? Peer pressure I guess. Working on this consumed much of my weekend, but it was very enjoyable and for once i'm pretty happy with the result..
Note i said pretty happy. I have about 4 notes to self in my head, and I must figure out why I can't get my backing vocals to sound any good because I know from live practices that my voice can be reasonable. As for the lead vocals they're great but I can't help feeling I could do them a bit more justice if I understood compression slightly better. All this is killing my March song, which still doesn't exist. Maybe i'll try a quick short one - set myself a time challenge.
This week in barely considering personal goals, on the easy side:
1. Food and drink wagon is fine now.
2. Poker - I've lost pretty much all of it now. 1 a day remains.
3. Another fine week of films including American Gangster - good stuff.
4. Not been anywhere amazing that would require the camera.
5. I bought yet another work shirt. I can now do a full week in respectable clothes.
6. Tried to get an apartment viewing. Didn't call me back. If I can find one, JUST ONE FUCKING business of ANY KIND, ANYWHERE in the WORLD that calls me back when they say they will.. Excuse me, but pretty much nothing makes me want to stab and kill clueless Chief Execs more than this.
Side note - a few weeks ago at work I mentioned that i'd like to create a business that interfaces between the average joe and any third party, removing the pain of not being called back, involving as much of a technical solution as possible (I recall saying "hold for the president style"). Not 24 hours later I was informed by a podcast (might have been TWIT, Gillmor Gang - can't remember, everyone's appearing on each others shows the last few weeks) that Kevin Rose and friends had just had a brainstorming session yielding what sounded to me like the same kind of idea. I quite like the idea that i'm capable of at least conceiving a similar idea to that guy. If he's not made his money yet, pay day can't be far away, and what's more he seems to enjoy what he's doing either way.. Not that I'd claim to know him or anything.
Okay the red mist of customer service once again threw me off. Back now to the other stuff. 7 - still staying in touch. Being very sociable lately. Problem with that would be the side-effects. I can't handle drinking like I used to so why do people suddenly insist on encouraging me? If recording consumed most of my weekend, it was at least partially due to the shortened nature of that weekend.
The harder stuff:
1. We talked about the song. I'm still weirdly optimistic.
2. Work goals still fine. Thanks for asking. 1 or 2 to still meet in the next 2 wks.
3. Rethinking.. I'm just happy that i've managed to go this many weeks without saying that I no longer wish to change jobs, happier to settle. I must really want the change. Rethinking continues. I'm not sure i'm ever really meeting this goal week on week. This, yet again, is why managers like SMART goals.
4. Still swimming, still waiting for some sun to cycle in, after which I will complain about the heat. Still looking for a third activity.
My keyboard is doing a weird repeat thing on some keys....... like dot.... FF for Linux does have a few quirks.......
As you can see, i've managed to shake my funny, demotivated mood. Still kinda aimless, but motivation returned..... Just realised that my singing voice sounds a bit stronger with a fake American accent, but is that a good thing or not?
I'll leave you to ponder that one......
Why did it take this to finally get me to sit up and get on with it? Peer pressure I guess. Working on this consumed much of my weekend, but it was very enjoyable and for once i'm pretty happy with the result..
Note i said pretty happy. I have about 4 notes to self in my head, and I must figure out why I can't get my backing vocals to sound any good because I know from live practices that my voice can be reasonable. As for the lead vocals they're great but I can't help feeling I could do them a bit more justice if I understood compression slightly better. All this is killing my March song, which still doesn't exist. Maybe i'll try a quick short one - set myself a time challenge.
This week in barely considering personal goals, on the easy side:
1. Food and drink wagon is fine now.
2. Poker - I've lost pretty much all of it now. 1 a day remains.
3. Another fine week of films including American Gangster - good stuff.
4. Not been anywhere amazing that would require the camera.
5. I bought yet another work shirt. I can now do a full week in respectable clothes.
6. Tried to get an apartment viewing. Didn't call me back. If I can find one, JUST ONE FUCKING business of ANY KIND, ANYWHERE in the WORLD that calls me back when they say they will.. Excuse me, but pretty much nothing makes me want to stab and kill clueless Chief Execs more than this.
Side note - a few weeks ago at work I mentioned that i'd like to create a business that interfaces between the average joe and any third party, removing the pain of not being called back, involving as much of a technical solution as possible (I recall saying "hold for the president style"). Not 24 hours later I was informed by a podcast (might have been TWIT, Gillmor Gang - can't remember, everyone's appearing on each others shows the last few weeks) that Kevin Rose and friends had just had a brainstorming session yielding what sounded to me like the same kind of idea. I quite like the idea that i'm capable of at least conceiving a similar idea to that guy. If he's not made his money yet, pay day can't be far away, and what's more he seems to enjoy what he's doing either way.. Not that I'd claim to know him or anything.
Okay the red mist of customer service once again threw me off. Back now to the other stuff. 7 - still staying in touch. Being very sociable lately. Problem with that would be the side-effects. I can't handle drinking like I used to so why do people suddenly insist on encouraging me? If recording consumed most of my weekend, it was at least partially due to the shortened nature of that weekend.
The harder stuff:
1. We talked about the song. I'm still weirdly optimistic.
2. Work goals still fine. Thanks for asking. 1 or 2 to still meet in the next 2 wks.
3. Rethinking.. I'm just happy that i've managed to go this many weeks without saying that I no longer wish to change jobs, happier to settle. I must really want the change. Rethinking continues. I'm not sure i'm ever really meeting this goal week on week. This, yet again, is why managers like SMART goals.
4. Still swimming, still waiting for some sun to cycle in, after which I will complain about the heat. Still looking for a third activity.
My keyboard is doing a weird repeat thing on some keys....... like dot.... FF for Linux does have a few quirks.......
As you can see, i've managed to shake my funny, demotivated mood. Still kinda aimless, but motivation returned..... Just realised that my singing voice sounds a bit stronger with a fake American accent, but is that a good thing or not?
I'll leave you to ponder that one......
Monday, March 10, 2008
2008 #11 - Off the Wagon
Not a good week on the manifesto. I'm in a funny, demotivated mood. I woke up fine today, and by 9:30 I was in an angry impatient mood which hasn't gone away. Also feeling a little run down. Not ill though.
Easy
1. I ate too much during the week, I drank too much coffee during the week, and I ate too much during the weekend and drank too much on Friday and Saturday night. The weekend is exempt for no reason, as you are aware. My weekday transgressions occurred due to 2 days in training at work with, yes, free food and drink.
2. Facebook Poker finally created some bigger tables to play on, bringing a new element of enjoyment to something that was getting old. Nonetheless, this rule I do stick to. 1 a day, max, during the week. Weekend is exempt, for no reason.
3. I'm losing track of time. Can't remember when I watched films. In fact I have, no joke, just spent about 20 minutes agonising over this pointlessly, and it doesn't fit unless I accidentally lied last week. Sliding Doors just isn't fresh enough in my memory to have been watched during the previous week, and there's no day I could have watched it. This is the kind of distraction that makes me wonder if my mind is quite right. Anyway, yes, I watched two this week. One was The Pursuit of Happiness. Liked it. The other was Notting Hill.. just to see. Liked that too.
4. Took my camera out a few times, but didn't find inspiration to use it.
5. (formerly 6) No real progress on the move. Still looking.
6. Staying in touch continues to be fine. Seeing everyone lately.
Hard
1. It's the 10th today, and I don't have a new song idea yet. I will be working on this during the week though. I was hoping to have an acoustic guitar by now to take a slightly different approach, but it's taking ages to reach the damn shop let alone into my hands.
2. Positive steps on work goals today and throughout last week. Brushed up on presentation skills and processes. Presentation Skils course was actually very good.
3. This is the mindset I call "Coastal Campervan". It is my version of "Nothing Matters". Whilst these thoughts drive some people to despair it drives me to want to buy a VW van and live on and around the coastline. This is really not something I would enjoy for more than a few days once I did it, but it has a certain romanticism. In this mindset, however, there is little chance that I will say anything meaningful about my career. It's the "why can't we just quit" mentality. Listen to "Walking Barefoot" by Ash. One of my favorite songs that I never hear anymore.
4. Exercise remains once a week. Last week's mini-goal failed dismally, but come on, have you seen the weather in the UK this week? No excuse for it.
5. We got rid of this one last week.
Enough. More next week.
Easy
1. I ate too much during the week, I drank too much coffee during the week, and I ate too much during the weekend and drank too much on Friday and Saturday night. The weekend is exempt for no reason, as you are aware. My weekday transgressions occurred due to 2 days in training at work with, yes, free food and drink.
2. Facebook Poker finally created some bigger tables to play on, bringing a new element of enjoyment to something that was getting old. Nonetheless, this rule I do stick to. 1 a day, max, during the week. Weekend is exempt, for no reason.
3. I'm losing track of time. Can't remember when I watched films. In fact I have, no joke, just spent about 20 minutes agonising over this pointlessly, and it doesn't fit unless I accidentally lied last week. Sliding Doors just isn't fresh enough in my memory to have been watched during the previous week, and there's no day I could have watched it. This is the kind of distraction that makes me wonder if my mind is quite right. Anyway, yes, I watched two this week. One was The Pursuit of Happiness. Liked it. The other was Notting Hill.. just to see. Liked that too.
4. Took my camera out a few times, but didn't find inspiration to use it.
5. (formerly 6) No real progress on the move. Still looking.
6. Staying in touch continues to be fine. Seeing everyone lately.
Hard
1. It's the 10th today, and I don't have a new song idea yet. I will be working on this during the week though. I was hoping to have an acoustic guitar by now to take a slightly different approach, but it's taking ages to reach the damn shop let alone into my hands.
2. Positive steps on work goals today and throughout last week. Brushed up on presentation skills and processes. Presentation Skils course was actually very good.
3. This is the mindset I call "Coastal Campervan". It is my version of "Nothing Matters". Whilst these thoughts drive some people to despair it drives me to want to buy a VW van and live on and around the coastline. This is really not something I would enjoy for more than a few days once I did it, but it has a certain romanticism. In this mindset, however, there is little chance that I will say anything meaningful about my career. It's the "why can't we just quit" mentality. Listen to "Walking Barefoot" by Ash. One of my favorite songs that I never hear anymore.
4. Exercise remains once a week. Last week's mini-goal failed dismally, but come on, have you seen the weather in the UK this week? No excuse for it.
5. We got rid of this one last week.
Enough. More next week.
Monday, March 03, 2008
2008 #10 - Confused Flat Hunting
Seems I can't manage to maintain an idea of where I want to live. At first the flip-flopping was monthly, deciding against Solihull after being initially taken with the idea. Then it became weekly, not being sure whether to look in the city or between the city and Solihull. Now it's changing daily. I can be almost completely entranced by any set of pictures of a decent looking flat with reasonable rent.
Tried the test-run of Solihull to city centre today to see just how long it really took. It took 30 minutes to cover about 8 miles. That's hard to swallow, given that my current commute is 60 minutes, 40 miles. It also tells me that it's not going to be a kind commute on my car. I am convinced that I can better this time by 5-10 minutes with a little rat running, which i'd try tomorrow, but i'm not due back in the area now for almost 3 weeks due to working elsewhere. It feels busy, and it technically is, but i'm still running on empty.
At least i've managed to keep my new years resolutions going (sort of) for 10 weeks..
In the easy column:
Food and drink was destroyed last week by some terrible salad from ASDA. Every now and then they really surprise me with quality this poor. It didn't last into it's 2nd day open. Consequently I did visit vending machines twice to make up for the shortfall. I am aware that chocolate and salad aren't equivalent. Call it a minor slip. Still keeping the workday caffeine intake down, although i'm really not sure what good its doing me. It's probably slightly healthier not taking in so much fake powdered milk.
Poker losing streak is back, but i'm sticking hard and fast to the weekday rule, which is good for not wasting trying to "win it all back".
Great week of films. Watched Sliding Doors, which isn't half bad for a romantic comedy, and Ratatouille, which is about 3 times better than I ever imagined it could be. Event Horizon (which was technically last week) didn't really leave an impression. It's a freaky film, but the premise is a little weak. If the ship had some kind of consciousness in the first place i'd have been far more inclined to buy into it. It didn't though, did it? You don't care. It's a really old film.
I'm looking far more seriously at the move now that the 5 day a week Leicester to Solihull commute is looming just 4-5 weeks away. Regardless of what I said last week, I will try to book some viewings and figure out a way to keep them.
Managed to catch two gigs with a few of my less frequently seen friends this week, which was a change! The first was Ginger of the Wildhearts in Leicester, acoustic, which was pretty cool even though I know very little of the material. The latter was Editors at the Birmingham NIA. I stood baffled for an hour and half trying to understand why these people i'm with so into music find this indie so appealing. Had I paid for a ticket i'd have been annoyed. Fortunately I managed to stand behind the one guy in what turned out to be the wrong line who gave me a ticket he didn't need. That was greatly appreciated, because I got to stick with the group, even if I didn't like the band much.
Anyway, I digress.. The hard column:
It's March and I need to start writing a new song. I recorded an idea on the 1st. In a few days i'll have a listen and see if it was any good. Early days.
No real work goal progress this week. I missed an opportunity to further one today, for which I feel quite stupid now I realise how long it will be until I next have that opportunity. Must try harder, as this one was going well to date.
Career thinking continues, yielding no answers and many brick walls.
Swimming continues, getting slightly easier each week, making it slightly duller each week. The overall goal continues to fail due to this being all i'm doing. I must cycle before I write the next one of these. That's a mini-goal.
I've changed my mind about budgeting. It's just not something I want to do, as much as experts want to convince me it's a great idea. I'm not looking for ways to squeeze every last penny. I've never been a big money waster anyway. I'm killing this goal for now. Even if I can't perfectly articulate how much money I have, there is a complex mess in my head that can spit out a "sink" or "swim", and i'm pretty confident that my plans for the next few months will return a "swim".
Awful post. Really long and barely readable. Sometimes it's just the way it has to be.
Tried the test-run of Solihull to city centre today to see just how long it really took. It took 30 minutes to cover about 8 miles. That's hard to swallow, given that my current commute is 60 minutes, 40 miles. It also tells me that it's not going to be a kind commute on my car. I am convinced that I can better this time by 5-10 minutes with a little rat running, which i'd try tomorrow, but i'm not due back in the area now for almost 3 weeks due to working elsewhere. It feels busy, and it technically is, but i'm still running on empty.
At least i've managed to keep my new years resolutions going (sort of) for 10 weeks..
In the easy column:
Food and drink was destroyed last week by some terrible salad from ASDA. Every now and then they really surprise me with quality this poor. It didn't last into it's 2nd day open. Consequently I did visit vending machines twice to make up for the shortfall. I am aware that chocolate and salad aren't equivalent. Call it a minor slip. Still keeping the workday caffeine intake down, although i'm really not sure what good its doing me. It's probably slightly healthier not taking in so much fake powdered milk.
Poker losing streak is back, but i'm sticking hard and fast to the weekday rule, which is good for not wasting trying to "win it all back".
Great week of films. Watched Sliding Doors, which isn't half bad for a romantic comedy, and Ratatouille, which is about 3 times better than I ever imagined it could be. Event Horizon (which was technically last week) didn't really leave an impression. It's a freaky film, but the premise is a little weak. If the ship had some kind of consciousness in the first place i'd have been far more inclined to buy into it. It didn't though, did it? You don't care. It's a really old film.
I'm looking far more seriously at the move now that the 5 day a week Leicester to Solihull commute is looming just 4-5 weeks away. Regardless of what I said last week, I will try to book some viewings and figure out a way to keep them.
Managed to catch two gigs with a few of my less frequently seen friends this week, which was a change! The first was Ginger of the Wildhearts in Leicester, acoustic, which was pretty cool even though I know very little of the material. The latter was Editors at the Birmingham NIA. I stood baffled for an hour and half trying to understand why these people i'm with so into music find this indie so appealing. Had I paid for a ticket i'd have been annoyed. Fortunately I managed to stand behind the one guy in what turned out to be the wrong line who gave me a ticket he didn't need. That was greatly appreciated, because I got to stick with the group, even if I didn't like the band much.
Anyway, I digress.. The hard column:
It's March and I need to start writing a new song. I recorded an idea on the 1st. In a few days i'll have a listen and see if it was any good. Early days.
No real work goal progress this week. I missed an opportunity to further one today, for which I feel quite stupid now I realise how long it will be until I next have that opportunity. Must try harder, as this one was going well to date.
Career thinking continues, yielding no answers and many brick walls.
Swimming continues, getting slightly easier each week, making it slightly duller each week. The overall goal continues to fail due to this being all i'm doing. I must cycle before I write the next one of these. That's a mini-goal.
I've changed my mind about budgeting. It's just not something I want to do, as much as experts want to convince me it's a great idea. I'm not looking for ways to squeeze every last penny. I've never been a big money waster anyway. I'm killing this goal for now. Even if I can't perfectly articulate how much money I have, there is a complex mess in my head that can spit out a "sink" or "swim", and i'm pretty confident that my plans for the next few months will return a "swim".
Awful post. Really long and barely readable. Sometimes it's just the way it has to be.
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