mindspill

Inbox - Honest dress code?

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:56:40 GMT

"sorry for abusing you .. but I know you're very compassionate." [translated]

"... hope you still remember me, if not I'm the guy who gave you the strange ski game"

"i like to see my b/f in action :D from the professional side :D" (thanks for clarifying just in case my imagination started running wild)

Mail Nr. 1: "This leg was missing from our source."
Mail Nr. 2: "446 is what was given by the system and it is correct in the sense that there was no misreading or corruption of data from source to report." (mmmm so explain this to me, if the data is wrong but it's the same as the source it's ok to have the wrong data?)

"This is an automated reply. I am out of office today till Friday" (phew thank go, no nagging for the rest of this week at least)

"i had to borrow a shirt cause I wasn't so honestly dressed" [translated] (i like the honesty relationship with dress)

The first and the last

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 19:21:39 GMT

Old readers of the blog might remember me complaining about my old job – actually the blog started out from an old job misfortune – and might be wondering what I'm up to at work. I've now got a new job which after the first month I can claim to be satisfied with. Now that I'm working in a private company with less bureaucracy to get sacked my work related blog entries will be sparse and far in between, probably non-existent. I just wanted to make a personal note for my own future benefit to remind myself that I'm happy at the job, it's challenging and I feel respected by my peers.

Today is not my day, therefore I resign

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 03:46:03 GMT

No matter how unsociable you can try to be, in a company of 2000 people you're likely to meet some nice people you dare call friends. I've spent the last few days at work telling this very elite group of people (and some managers) that I was leaving the company and country. Very few took it as a surprise and all of them were happy for me (what friends would they be otherwise). The rest of the people will learn through word of mouth (better known as gossip) and I know the news is spreading like wildfire. Strange feeling saying bye.

Day update

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 20:53:56 GMT

10.20: Browse mindspill for replies
10.22: Replied to mail about possible work trip to Athens or Larnaca in January
10.23: Drink 2nd mug of coffee
10.30: Attended meeting addressed by the outsourcing company on outsourcing
12:20: Discussion of meeting with my ex office mate
12.42: Personal in depth meeting analysis and plan of action
12.58: Support crises management
13.00: Continue plan of action development
14.35: Drink 3rd mug of coffee
14.39: Played a fun game called "Guess who will remain in this shithole?"
14.47: Went to aiport to buy lotto tickets, bank and buy the new Linux Format
15.30: Visited the returned ex pal who got reallocated and caught up with life
16.42: Drink 4th mug of coffee and update day log

The punchline of the day - I think the company was right my department is actually useless because it can sacrifice a day not getting anything done. But on the other hand it might be the case that I don't deal with day to day issues all that much, which means ... am I out of outsourcing scope?

Self organised work to rule day

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 14:21:20 GMT

I know this isn't going to help my prospective employment opportunities if it gets read but I feel the need to write. Today I've self declared the day as a "work to rule" day. For those not familiar with the term today I will only do the most urgent bare minimum amount of work possible.

You might be asking why should this good man so devout to his current employment go on such drastic action - well today my ex buddy and department colleague returned back from a 1 year unpaid leave and human resources reallocated him to another department depriving me of any workload share we could have enjoyed together. I am now the only person left from a section of 4 colleagues (1 left and 2 reallocated). My thought of the day - if they don't care about my section why should I care about work.

To make this day memorable, even though there's no reason why it should be, I'm going to log my activities as time goes by:-
7.00 : Alarm triggered, pet and fed my lovable black demons
7.15 : Left to get my better half as her car is at the mechanic
8.10 : Arrived at work in the rain
8.10 - 10.00 (Now) : Reading Java It's so Nineties - BWT, Firefox hacks you must have, Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot, Best of 2005
9.10 : Inserted 4 new users in the Crises Management Application
10.13 : Finished first blog post

Procrastination is good

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 12:32:07 GMT

Since I clicked on LifeHacks I developed another habit, avoiding work by browsing productivity websites. It feels strange knowing that you're procrastinating by learning how you not to. This is exactly what John Perry suggests in his multilinked essay Structured Procrastination.

Management Anti-patterns

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 03:01:15 GMT

Now that I've long lost hope that I might learn any proper management skills from work I thought I might benefit something from learning what I shouldn't do should I ever become a manager. I'm still at the infancy stages of considering management positions but I think some of these points might be practical even in real life.

Find time for staff - I can still remember how I felt the first time that I heard the "I haven't got time for you phrase" and a few minutes later saw the boss spending half an hour with our maid. If you are a manager you are supposed to manage people and when managing people you must find time for the people. If your schedule is so busy try to learn some new time management skills but do find the time. Unless you're a super boss staff don't usually like to be in front of you, consider this as soon as somebody comes over to talk without being asked to.

Listen to your staff and believe in them - I feel mostly motivated when I know that the person for whom I'm working believes in me and wants me to achieve my goal. Listening to somebody is one of the ways you can show that you care about the opinions of your staff. Listening means actively listening, not just acknowledging words and then loose track of what was said the minute the person is out of sight.

Treat everyone on the same level - This is very tricky but keeping a good open communication with the workforce might be the best tool to achieve this goal.

People are not dumb and they have feelings - No matter how stupid somebody may look he still has feelings so you must always pay attention not to hurt his feelings. I think it's more beneficial to treat people as though they were intelligent animals rather than dumb ones.

Treat staff as people not as numbers - It's true that the companies interest are the most important factor in any equation but the people are what make or break the company. People feel dejected, unmotivated and are unproductive as soon as they start feeling that they can be used instead of oranges in kindergarten classes when children are learning addition.

Continue meeting with clients and customers and don't close yourself in an ivory tower - Most things boil down to communication so it should be kept alive as much as possible. Meeting with people face to face is usually more fruitful then sending an e-mail or picking the phone. When you talk with customers you can understand their requirements better.

PDA Resources

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 04:21:33 GMT

These are a couple of links I need to check out for my new toy.

Software
TCPMP - Free media player

Acrobat Reader - Acrobat Reader for Palm OS

PdaNet - Drive your Treo smartphone as a Wireless Modem for your PC

Lightwav - Ring tone manager (inc. mp3)

SoundRec - Free sound recorder

Personal Audio Recorder - Sound recorder

Palmgear - PDA software site

Pdassi - Another one

Books
Memoware - Free e-book titles for you PDA

Information
Brighthand - Good PDA related site, has got forums

1src - Huge Palm related forum site

Articles
Keen PDA - Has got a great article called "Time Management with PDA's"

Software Test and Performance Conference

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 03:43:14 GMT

At last some motivation to remain at work till November; they are sending me to NEW YORK for a conference. I've been pestering the boss for over a month to let me attend the Software Test and Performance Conference and on the closing date of the Extreme Early Birder Registration she gave me the go ahead to attend. Testing and performance you said, but you never mentioned anything about testing in the blog. Yes, its true but this is a new interest of mine stemming from the great demand and need for software quality, as well as the great job opportunities this branch of computing offers. Now in the next few weeks I have to learn as much as possible about the subject so that I'll get the maximum benefit from the conference, and not seem a complete idiot.

Convincing the boss to let me go to the conference was not easy and it involved all the tact, resourcefulness and tactical aptitude I could muster. For somebody who doesn't know that open source exists it was difficult to convince her that testing and quality management are not only practiced by the developer a day before launching the product. She told me that with the imminent outsourcing of the department my software development tasks aren't guaranteed, so she was hesitant to send me to the conference. On the other hand this is precisely why I want to go, to widen my horizons on a potential new job career.

The bi-product of the conference is that I'll be visiting the US specifically New York for the first time. Visiting New York is one of my life long desires therefore I'm even more enthusiastic about all this. The conference is going to be held at the Roosevelt Hotel, Madison at 45th, wherever that might be. I'm trying to do some research about the area using Google Earth and one thing is certain, I'm not going to starve as the whole place is brimming with dining shops.

The biggest challenge in planning this trip will be finding a decent hotel in the vicinity that's not prohibitively expensive. The standard rooms per night in the area range between $200 - $300 per night, and there's no way my company is going to pay such lodging fees for me. I think, or at least hope, that the hotel are expensive because of their location so maybe a hotel in a different area will cost a bit less. At least researching about New York shouldn't be as difficult as planning the trip to Ecuador so I'm positive I'll manage to fix something.

What have I done wrong to deserve this?

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 01:54:27 GMT

Did you know that our newly appointed IT boss doesn't know what open source is? We're talking about open source, probably one of the biggest buzzwords of these last few years, open source ... aaaaaa ... I feel like turning on my back start shaking my hands and legs and weep weep and weep at my forthcoming fate ... open source ...

Week in review

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 12:05:58 GMT

Read any blog and in some post you're going to find a version of - 'I couldn't blog this week cause I was so busy'. My version for this week is ... it so damn hot in here that the only place I could blog was on the roof at midnight with my dad's laptop which only arrived last Friday. Everything around here is so unliveable but anyway

For the next month I've got the opportunity to play being a manager after last Monday three student workers came to work with our department and we were assigned one of them. Actually my better half should take care of the newbie but since she was sick these last three days I had to take over. As stupid as it may seem it quite a nice feeling having someone you can take care of (aka command). Now I'm trying my best not to be an asshole and do everything that my boss doesn't do, such as:

- Give credit to her for everything she does and insist that she tags everything with her name. This isn't always as easy as it may sound because sometimes it seems that I'm being stupid quoting her reference out of context.
- Assign some interesting tasks so that she can learn something useful in her brief stay.
- Be helpful and transfer knowledge when required (this is easy)
- Try to guard her from the outside world. This isn't probably listed in one of the manager textbooks but when I see the way I'm changing my impression of the ideal because of work it makes me pity her.
- Make her eat something fatty till the end of the month. I know this has nothing to do with being a good manager but this goal will be very hard to achieve as she's scared of food.

Leaving work apart, I think we have decided that we're going to Ecuador. The weather shouldn't be a problem and there are loads of animals. Unlike New Zealand and Patagonia we have managed to stay focused on a reasonable number of things to do in 3 weeks. This is the plan after week 1;

Galapagos (8 days)
Mindo (Cloud Forest)
Surroundings of Tena or Coca for Amazon
Latacunga, Cotopaxi NP (maybe stay at Black Sheep Inn)
Quito
Otavalo day trip
Devils nose train ride

The fad of the week was algorithm programming. I came across the Google Code Jam challenge and in an attempt to check out my potential for entering the competition I tried some sample programs from Top Coder. The samples were ok but coming to think of it, the Google Code Jam will take place at around 3am around here and with all this heat I'd barely be able to login go figure program anything.

A good programming challenge was the one on Linux Format that required the implementation of a Sudoku Solver and Puzzle Generator. Last Friday I managed to hack up a quick version while drinking the morning coffee which was able to solve Level 1,2,3 puzzles from my Little Book of Sudoku but it's getting stuck on the more difficult Puzzles. Out of curiosity I went to sourceforge to check out whether there were solvers there and there were a couple which I made the mistake to download. As soon as I read a couple of them my motivation flew out of the window and I'm about to abandon the program. I'm still trying to understand the reasoning behind my abrupt lack of interest. In the mean time I found a great Sudoku Forum and after reading some post I realised that not all Sudoku are created equal. I also came across Sudoku Assistant, a wonderful solver implemented in DHTML and Javascript.

I want to leave

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 19:12:30 GMT

I'm officially looking for a job anywhere in the world preferably not in Europe and especially not in my country. My web search history is littered with Sabre Holdings and Monster.com