So I've officially been down here for three months. Work is going really well. It's still kinda weird that I'm going to be here for years rather than months, but I think that is only an artifact of the time span in proportion to my life so far. I definitely get antsy when my boss makes comments about me being here for five years. I like my job and I plan on working here for a time, but I hesitate to put adjectives like long there or to be more specific. 5 years is quite a long time. Hell 3 years is a long time. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but I'm not sure I want to. Acceptance leads to apathy and stagnation and I have enough of that going on already.
I think the other issue is my position is still evolving as my managers become more comfortable with my abilities, expectations, and plans for growth. I know what I'm working on now, and what I'll be working on for the next two months, but after that it's a bit up in the air.
Speaking of work it's going well. I have some pretty major responsibilities right now that I'm soley in charge of. Also presented with the team (and my boss) to boss^2 and boss^3. It was pretty intense, but I think I did a good job. A few quotes from the second meeting.
Boss^3: Is this the kid it took forever to get?
Boss: Worth the wait.
(After the meeting) Boss^3: Does he have a brother we can hire?
I'm pretty satisfied with the project I've been working on, and only unhappy with the fluctuating workload. I'm underutilized at times right now; waiting on info from someone, done with all my work till the next meeting, normal stuff. But then again I don't want to start something new because I'll be slammed the next day or as soon as the person gets back to me.
It's just frustrating to have dead time. I do my best to fill it, but I can only make myself do some much made up work.
-Alex
ps. I'm going to be trying to write earlier in the day as apparently people don't read anything posted after 4pm.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Psych in the workplace
In a recent conversation with one of my co-workers, Myers - Briggs types came up, and psych has become something that I think about a lot again. The thing that came to my attention were certain coping mechanisms that my co-worker employs. I don't write this to be critical, merely stating observations.
First some back story. My co-worker hates giving presentations. We were discussing non-technical classes that I should take, and presentation skills was one that came up due to the benefit she got from it. Recently we had to give a presentation and before hand we set up some time to go over it.
During out practice a noticed a few major things. She changed her tone of voice and her diction to be more formal. Formality can be used to overcome nervousness, something she admitted to be experiencing. The other big thing I noticed was aberrant sentience structure during transitions. She phrased things differently than normal, but more specifically she used almost the exact same wording each time we practiced leading me to believe that these transitions were something she got from the class.
I find it interesting how someone can pick up skills they are lacking from a class and apply them so well, and how they act differently than normal is such situations.
-Alex
p.s. The presentation went really well
First some back story. My co-worker hates giving presentations. We were discussing non-technical classes that I should take, and presentation skills was one that came up due to the benefit she got from it. Recently we had to give a presentation and before hand we set up some time to go over it.
During out practice a noticed a few major things. She changed her tone of voice and her diction to be more formal. Formality can be used to overcome nervousness, something she admitted to be experiencing. The other big thing I noticed was aberrant sentience structure during transitions. She phrased things differently than normal, but more specifically she used almost the exact same wording each time we practiced leading me to believe that these transitions were something she got from the class.
I find it interesting how someone can pick up skills they are lacking from a class and apply them so well, and how they act differently than normal is such situations.
-Alex
p.s. The presentation went really well
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Deal of the day
Sadly this post isn't actually useful to you in a money saving manner. Sorry. This is to celebrate the sweet deal I got on some great headphones. About a week ago Amazon's deal of the day was a pair of hot earbuds: Klipsch Image X5.
You can still pick them up for $197 down from 250. However I got them for $150. Cause I'm awesome. It's amazing how it works out some time. My old workhorse Shure headphones were dying slowly, but that slow crawl to the grave would come to an abrupt stop very soon. Three days before their untimely end, I was notified about a sweet deal. A little research and I struck like a cobra albeit one that carefully plans and reads product reviews from multiple sources.
The very same day my old buds kicked the bucket, I received my new ones. The sound quality is phenomenal. Better than the Shures 110's I had been rocking and coming close to my Seinheisser Pro HD cans that I currently use as my definition of perfect (the bass isn't as good, but it's by far the best I've heard in buds)
So really this was half product review, half patting myself on the back for making such a great purchasing descion.
-Alex
ps. This is the 101st post on this blog. I'm wearing a party hat
You can still pick them up for $197 down from 250. However I got them for $150. Cause I'm awesome. It's amazing how it works out some time. My old workhorse Shure headphones were dying slowly, but that slow crawl to the grave would come to an abrupt stop very soon. Three days before their untimely end, I was notified about a sweet deal. A little research and I struck like a cobra albeit one that carefully plans and reads product reviews from multiple sources.
The very same day my old buds kicked the bucket, I received my new ones. The sound quality is phenomenal. Better than the Shures 110's I had been rocking and coming close to my Seinheisser Pro HD cans that I currently use as my definition of perfect (the bass isn't as good, but it's by far the best I've heard in buds)
So really this was half product review, half patting myself on the back for making such a great purchasing descion.
-Alex
ps. This is the 101st post on this blog. I'm wearing a party hat
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Is RSS dead?
Many people smarter and more well known than I have commented on this subject, but I'm going to throw in my two cents.
A number of people(I would say bloggers, but they argue that they aren't and blogs are dead) that are influential in tech circles have been saying RSS is dead since Ashton got on Twitter. They make a very good point: RSS is slow. RSS is much slower than other sources. If you pay close attention to twitter and facebook among other sources you can find out stuff a lot faster. And that's great for them.
I don't really care. I'm not a tech writer. That's where the difference is and I feel many of their readers are seeing the same disconnect. Someone catching up on some news during their lunch break doesn't care if the info is a day old or 2 hours. RSS readers are very useful to a ton of people, and more people I know are starting to use them all the time, especially people that aren't in the tech industry.
The other reason I find RSS readers useful is as a noise filter. Once again, I don't report on technology as my day job. I don't have time to read twitter for hours a day. I have a job to do and checking facebook status updates isn't it. In addition, people post a lot more non essential stuff to twitter and facebook. Which is fine, I use them to track my friends. I use RSS to get news.
I let smart people who get paid to do it filter my news for me. I don't want to, and I'm not going to.
-Alex
ps. I also really like the sharing in Greader. Lots of my friends have been finding me and I get to see a little bit of what they think is important. Hope they like getting lolcats from me.
A number of people(I would say bloggers, but they argue that they aren't and blogs are dead) that are influential in tech circles have been saying RSS is dead since Ashton got on Twitter. They make a very good point: RSS is slow. RSS is much slower than other sources. If you pay close attention to twitter and facebook among other sources you can find out stuff a lot faster. And that's great for them.
I don't really care. I'm not a tech writer. That's where the difference is and I feel many of their readers are seeing the same disconnect. Someone catching up on some news during their lunch break doesn't care if the info is a day old or 2 hours. RSS readers are very useful to a ton of people, and more people I know are starting to use them all the time, especially people that aren't in the tech industry.
The other reason I find RSS readers useful is as a noise filter. Once again, I don't report on technology as my day job. I don't have time to read twitter for hours a day. I have a job to do and checking facebook status updates isn't it. In addition, people post a lot more non essential stuff to twitter and facebook. Which is fine, I use them to track my friends. I use RSS to get news.
I let smart people who get paid to do it filter my news for me. I don't want to, and I'm not going to.
-Alex
ps. I also really like the sharing in Greader. Lots of my friends have been finding me and I get to see a little bit of what they think is important. Hope they like getting lolcats from me.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Nerd rage
You know what pisses me off? When I spend three hours configuring something to work the way I want it to so I can do my job, then two days later it decides that it's smarter than me and changes everything I set up.
Not awesome.
-Alex
Not awesome.
-Alex
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Is old school worth it?
At work I am faced with many machines that aren't actively running a gui. When it comes time to edit a document I'm faced with either copying it to my linux machine (windows adds characters to the file to mess it up of course. Shouldn't be using Unix in the first place ;) ) and using Gedit or firing up vi, trying to mash the right commands, ruining the doc, quitting and editing it on my linux machine.
Obviously I need to suck it up and learn vi, but it always bugs me when I'm learning to do something in a less efficient way.
Gasp! How could you call vi less efficient. It all keyboard shortcuts and command line minimalist beauty! Now I like keyboard shortcuts as much as the next guy, but it pains me to spend time learning how to do something less efficiently. Using keyboard shortcuts is actually slower than mousing when timed with a stopwatch. When you try to recall a shortcut, even one you use all the time, it takes a second or two. Interestingly, the user is unable to perceive this passage of time, and even experiences something similar to amnesia, forgetting the time it took to recall and press the right key combo.
In addition, you can continue thinking about the task at hand rather than having to think of some esoteric command combo a guy with 12 fingers originally thought was intuitive. The study shows that the only really productivity boost comes from two handed editing like copy and pasting using the keyboard for the commands and the mouse to select. I would think that the difference would also diminish when dealing with deeply nested menus, or a menu items you can't remember the location of.
For more on this check out this article by UI god Tog
-Alex
:x
update: Just in case anyone cared, I fixed my problem with ":%s/\\/\/
Obviously I need to suck it up and learn vi, but it always bugs me when I'm learning to do something in a less efficient way.
Gasp! How could you call vi less efficient. It all keyboard shortcuts and command line minimalist beauty! Now I like keyboard shortcuts as much as the next guy, but it pains me to spend time learning how to do something less efficiently. Using keyboard shortcuts is actually slower than mousing when timed with a stopwatch. When you try to recall a shortcut, even one you use all the time, it takes a second or two. Interestingly, the user is unable to perceive this passage of time, and even experiences something similar to amnesia, forgetting the time it took to recall and press the right key combo.
In addition, you can continue thinking about the task at hand rather than having to think of some esoteric command combo a guy with 12 fingers originally thought was intuitive. The study shows that the only really productivity boost comes from two handed editing like copy and pasting using the keyboard for the commands and the mouse to select. I would think that the difference would also diminish when dealing with deeply nested menus, or a menu items you can't remember the location of.
For more on this check out this article by UI god Tog
-Alex
:x
update: Just in case anyone cared, I fixed my problem with ":%s/\\/\/
Budkie's rules of UI design: Rule 1
User Interface is often seen as an afterthought. The program works, we say how to use it in the manual, what's the point of a UI. UI design makes a huge difference for people working on computers all day even if it's just saving you a few minutes everyday.
To me UI falls into three categories: Bad, Normal, and Magic
Bad: Ranges from tiny annoyances to massive failures that ruin your day.
Normal: It does what it's supposed to, but isn't very intuitive, and takes time to learn.
Magic: The UI is so good and intuitive that it's like it reads your mind. UI's this good are rare. Sometimes it's just a feature that works just like it should, but it's always a great moment.
Day to day I deal with software that could use some UI love no matter how well it functions. To try to keep from rage quiting, I'm working on making a list of UI rules that these programs violate.
Rule 1
Don't even take focus unless the user specifically asks you to. There are three programs I use on a daily basis that take focus at least once. The worst offender pops up a loading screen (This is acceptable. It's nice to know that you are doing something), then pops a login screen, pauses to log in, then pops the app screen and pauses to load content. The whole process takes around 2 minutes and takes focus three seperate times.
Wrong. If you want my attention, flash the button. There is no reason you should take focus. The only time this is acceptable at all is for the loader, since i did just launch the program, but if you don't load instantly, you get to hang out in the background while I work on something else then you ask for my attention. If you ask politely you might get my credentials. But if you interuppt me while I'm typing something else asking for stuff I'm gonna put you in timeout and banish you to the scrub monitor.
That's all for now.
-Alex
To me UI falls into three categories: Bad, Normal, and Magic
Bad: Ranges from tiny annoyances to massive failures that ruin your day.
Normal: It does what it's supposed to, but isn't very intuitive, and takes time to learn.
Magic: The UI is so good and intuitive that it's like it reads your mind. UI's this good are rare. Sometimes it's just a feature that works just like it should, but it's always a great moment.
Day to day I deal with software that could use some UI love no matter how well it functions. To try to keep from rage quiting, I'm working on making a list of UI rules that these programs violate.
Rule 1
Don't even take focus unless the user specifically asks you to. There are three programs I use on a daily basis that take focus at least once. The worst offender pops up a loading screen (This is acceptable. It's nice to know that you are doing something), then pops a login screen, pauses to log in, then pops the app screen and pauses to load content. The whole process takes around 2 minutes and takes focus three seperate times.
Wrong. If you want my attention, flash the button. There is no reason you should take focus. The only time this is acceptable at all is for the loader, since i did just launch the program, but if you don't load instantly, you get to hang out in the background while I work on something else then you ask for my attention. If you ask politely you might get my credentials. But if you interuppt me while I'm typing something else asking for stuff I'm gonna put you in timeout and banish you to the scrub monitor.
That's all for now.
-Alex
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