November 2008 Archives

Crap shuffling

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My employer just announced tens of thousands more redundancies. In the announcement, the CEO referred to 'getting fit', that is, to streamlining the company.

As I write I'm attending a meeting. It's an 'introductory' meeting about a process. There are eleven people on the call, and none of them are doing any actual work.

Here's a hint, folks. If a process needs a separate introductory meeting, it's too fucking complicated.

We're 25 minutes in. At the moment, the speaker (who barely speaks English, I only mention it to provide some atmosphere) is walking us through an Excel spreadsheet. He's reading out a list of numbers from the spreadsheet in a robotic voice.

Hint: If your English is barely good enough to order a meal at a restaurant, and is limited to a halting monotone, don't give presentations to English speakers, as they might start losing the will to live.

I'm one of the least senior people in this meeting, at Vice President level. Some of the other attendees are two or three levels above me. We're all listening to a shitty (and late-starting) walkthrough of something that really should have written documentation.

We're not achieving anything, we're all just holding jobs and having dinner. Our company is haemorraging money, and here we all are, spending shareholder's money on sweet motherfucking nothing.

Another day in the office.

Mobile broadband goodness

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I got my T-Mobile web n' walk dongle today. Installed it first in Windows, which worked fine. Then installed it in Ubuntu 8.10 'Intrepid'. To my utter astonishment, a wizard guided me through the completely flawless installation process.

Some background: My friend Lee, a very competent chap indeed, had a miserable time getting his T-Mobile dongle working in Ubuntu. A couple of releases later, it's all automated. Gotta love that open source zeal.

Better yet, when it first started up on Linux I was underwhelmed with the speed. Obviously, it hadn't found its 3G legs yet. After a few minutes, though, the little light on the dongle went from green to blue, and whoosh! Instantly fast. Suddenly, remote terminal sessions were quite usable. Web browsing was slick.

I'm absolutely loving it. Suddenly, my laptop is useful. Without 'net access it's just a paperweight.

Good luck, America

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America votes. It feels like the campaign has been running forever. At last it's here.

Good luck, friends. Pick a good one; we're counting on you.

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This page is an archive of entries from November 2008 listed from newest to oldest.

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