"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)

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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"

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.

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 ...

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'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

Tomorrow we are going to be asked to describe our job and role at the company in view of the imminent outsourcing of the department. For this reason I created a knowledge ABC list to help me brainstorm and remember all the different hats we have to wear at work. These lists really work.

A – Automation (Administrative Tasks) / Analysis (System)
B – Beta Testing
C – Configuration Management / Crisis Management System
D – Database administration / Data distribution medium
E – Enterprise Java Beans / ETL Manager
F – Free open source tools / Focus (the lack of)
G – Goal oriented
H – Helpdesk support (2nd level) / Helpdesk application
I – Integration / IntelliJ / Information Systems
J – Java
K – KPI
L – Leave Management System / Linux
M – Maintenance / Management Information System
N – Negative vibe
O – Object orientation
P – Prototyping / Patterns
Q – Quality
R – Revenue Management
S – Standards / Software Engineering / Scalability
T – Testing / Team
U – Usability / Understaffed
V – Visual Diagramming Tools / Visio
W – Web Server / Web analytics / Workflow system
X – Xtreme programming
Y – Young and talented
Z –

Today I learned an important lesson when taking interviews; if somebody asks you what made you apply for the job do not answer with, because I'm fed up with my current job. The logical reasoning in the mind of your interviewer will be 'so this guy doesn't want this job because he thinks he likes it or is good for it...'. What I could have told him instead was '...cause you know I'm so fed up with my manager that any other manager will be a godsend instead of her ...'

I think I screwed up this interview but at least I got to know something about IS Internal Audit and I think it doesn't really apply for me. I'm still fascinated with designing and programming stuff so I don't imagine myself playing the police on the work of others, I prefer doing the work myself. The good part of the job will be that you'd have a great deal of authority to control things and define what must be done, something only imaginable in the best of dreams in my current position. You also get to define standards and practices as well as having the opportunity to improve things concretely but anyway, the company is still the same so this is only very nice in theory.

Tomorrow by this time I'd either be in heaven or swearing like a madman – there's the final of the Champions League between Milan and Liverpool.

• Granted I haven't been working my whole life but this is the first time that I heard that a manager is granted permission to manage from home instead of coming to work. Yes I know that there something called teleworking, but isn't a manager supposed to manage people. That's exactly what our manager is not doing, and she's only in charge of 2 people by the way. The best part is this, the reason she's working from home is that she's got lots of work to do … go figure!
• Tomorrow I've got my first bachelors party preceding my friends wedding. The plans are for a nasty boy's out (or rather in a farmhouse). I'd try to capture the best of it on video if I'd manage to keep the camera intact.
• Today my better half coined a great expression to describe a speech made by someone at her council meeting. "In his speech he talked like a bad politician, he was vague and didn’t please anyone with what he said."
• Today while reading Fox's blog I saw a link to this picture which was drawn with MS Paint, can you believe it? It took 500 hours to complete.

Do you want to find flaws in a process in it in your organisation? The solution to this problem is simple – try to computerise the system. When you are computerising a system you have to study the current system in such detail and depth that very few other studies can hope to achieve. This week we started the rollout of the Leave Management Information system we've implemented in the last couple of months and we're facing the baffled users of the system who don't know what hit them.

At face value the system serves as a mere paper reducer because it replaces the old leave application forms, however at a deeper level it is being used to enforce the streamlining of a leave process in the organisation. Throughout all these years the leave application and authorisation process has been moulded into dozens of different formats with different rules applied to different departments without any control and rational. Now the system is being used to find out and eliminate the exceptions and loopholes in the process which have now become the norm.

There are several benefits you can gain from introducing an information system, but one which is not commonly acknowledged and adequately quantified is; how much savings does a system bring with by reducing abuses to the old system. Despite the fact that the system was implemented for all the wrong reasons, we're now recognizing some of the more subtle yet more beneficial advantages the system will bring. This is also the first information system that is going to be used throughout the whole company for about 2000 personnel. I'm pleased with the achievement we've obtained as it was no easy task for only two people to undertake in such a short time.

Last Friday I received this e-mail from a customer support helpdesk. I think our helpdesk might consider adopting it maybe clients get charmed by our words and don’t grumble anymore.