So, the elevator in the building where I work sucks - when you get in on the ground floor and hit the button for your floor, it takes about 30 seconds before the elevator doors shut. I know that's not a long time, but it feels like an eternity when you're standing there waiting for the doors to close.
So, I noticed that when one elevator car is in this process, and another elevator car brings people to the ground floor, the second elevator car will close its doors almost immediately after the folks get out. So, I figured, the programming for the elevator designates the first car as "waiting for folks to get on", and the other cars as "free to roam". This situation actually comes up quite often.
So, after noticing that, the next time the opportunity pops up I jump into the second elevator car right after everyone gets out. Someone else jumps in with me. We both hit our buttons as the doors are closing, and the elevator immediately resets - the doors open, all the lit buttons become un-lit, and then 30 seconds later we're off. Definitely not an improvement.
So, the next time it comes up and I'm alone, I jump in at the last second, wait until the doors close and the elevator starts to move, then hit my button. Success!
I know it sounds stupid to be going through all this trouble just to figure out how to save 30 seconds once in a while, but it's more the challenge of it and the idea of "is there a way to make this experience better / faster / more efficient?". That's how I think all the time, about everything. My wife, thankfully, finds it quirky and charming, but give her a few more years with me and she may change her mind about that.
For you non-geeky people, this is how geeks think about everything - I don't know if it's on account of my work or if this trait makes me suited for tech work, but it seems to be a trait common to most techies. If you can't stand someone like that, don't get involved with a techie...
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Tech things everyone should know
OK, so the other day I'm talking with someone at work about a problem w/ some systems. Basically we have a couple of PCs with very large Dell monitors, which for some reason aren't hooked up. I talked more multiple people and the response I kept getting was that the computers didn't have enough power for the monitors, to which my response was always "huh?"
After finally taking a look at the systems themselves, I realized that they only had VGA ports, and the monitors only had DVI inputs. You would not believe how long it took to explain to people about what a video card is, and how we just needed another type of video card to connect to the monitors. The simple concept of a video card seemed to be too much for most of the people I talked to.
In my extensive time working in tech, I've discovered that there's a lot of things that people don't seem to know, and that I have to keep reminding myself is not common knowledge. So, here's a quick list of things that you ought to know if you work with computers in any capacity (not "If you fix computers for a living" - just "if you work with a computer in the course of your regular job, particularly if you work for a tech company").
1) What is an IP address. I'm shocked at how often I'm trying to explain something to somebody and the whole concept is so foreign. An IP address is a unique number that identifies your computer on a network, like a phone number identifies your phone. Is that so hard to memorize or understand?
Extra credit 1: The concept of private vs. public IP addresses, even more credit for knowing the private subnets (at least the popular two).
Extra credit 2: How to determine your IP address on your computer
2) The concept of network storage. Again, if I had a nickel for every time someone told me they put something on their "M drive" with no idea whatsoever of what that means...well, I'd have a lot of nickels. I could understand it back in the mid-90's, but c'mon! The concept has not changed at all since it was introduced a loooong time ago.
3) Viruses and spyware are bad, even if they're not messing up your life too badly. Again, in the "if I had a nickel" department, folks who's computers are just completely infested with crap, so badly that I'm scared to plug my laptop into their network. When I ask them "how long have these porn pop-ups been appearing?" the answer is usually in terms of weeks or months. The fact that you didn't seek help until your system was unusable indicates an underestimation on your part of the seriousness of the infections. Funny how people don't do this with anything else: "Well, the car has been getting slower and slower, now it won't go more than 25mph, but since I can get anywhere I need to by city streets, I'm not really concerned about what might be wrong. Maybe I'll contact a mechanic when it starts topping out at 10mph". And most of this experience is from when I was the I.T. guy at work (i.e. it didn't even cost them anything).
4) You don't have to double-click everything. Yeah, maybe it's obvious to you, but you would be amazed at how often I see people still double-clicking everything, be it a folder, a link in a web browser, or whatever. Lots of times this can really screw things up (for example double-clicking the Submit button in a web form will make it run twice).
5) Know what to look for in a new computer. This one comes up a lot - someone calls me up, since I supposedly know a lot about "computers" and tells me they're thinking about buying a new one - there's an ad in the paper for a computer for $499, and it has a 100GB hard drive - that's a good deal, right? Of course, there are a lot of nuances regarding pricing, but the main things you should be concerned with are CPU type/speed and RAM. Of course, the rankings of "adequate / better / more than you need" are constantly changing, but everyone's got someone they can call and ask about that. And, the most important thing to know is that HARD DRIVES ARE CHEAP! A computer with a 200GB HD is not worth twice as much as one with a 100GB HD. Seems obvious to you? Believe me, it's not to most people. Oh yeah, and one other thing people don't seem to get: in terms of bang for your buck, laptops are a hell of a lot more expensive to buy, prone to break, and expensive to fix, so don't get one unless you really need the mobility.
6) Applications cannot be transfered by copying files. This one doesn't necessarily qualify, since you need to have some basic understanding of files etc. to make this mistake, but a lot of people mistakenly believe that when they buy a new computer, they should be able to just copy their applications from the old computer onto the new one. Unfortunately this almost never works - I don't expect people to understand the registry (least of all because then they'll probably also discover the regedit command and that's game over), but people really ought to know that you can't just copy an application from one machine to another. I do have a lot of forgiveness for this one, though, since the assumption seems pretty logical on the surface, and I don't expect the layman to know about the registry.
I have, of course, left out a lot of other stuff that seems basic to me but I understand is foreign to people who don't work with this stuff on a regular basis. I mean, I get that most people don't want to know any more about their computer than they need to in order to get the job done, but seriously - these are just really basic things that everyone ought to know.
After finally taking a look at the systems themselves, I realized that they only had VGA ports, and the monitors only had DVI inputs. You would not believe how long it took to explain to people about what a video card is, and how we just needed another type of video card to connect to the monitors. The simple concept of a video card seemed to be too much for most of the people I talked to.
In my extensive time working in tech, I've discovered that there's a lot of things that people don't seem to know, and that I have to keep reminding myself is not common knowledge. So, here's a quick list of things that you ought to know if you work with computers in any capacity (not "If you fix computers for a living" - just "if you work with a computer in the course of your regular job, particularly if you work for a tech company").
1) What is an IP address. I'm shocked at how often I'm trying to explain something to somebody and the whole concept is so foreign. An IP address is a unique number that identifies your computer on a network, like a phone number identifies your phone. Is that so hard to memorize or understand?
Extra credit 1: The concept of private vs. public IP addresses, even more credit for knowing the private subnets (at least the popular two).
Extra credit 2: How to determine your IP address on your computer
2) The concept of network storage. Again, if I had a nickel for every time someone told me they put something on their "M drive" with no idea whatsoever of what that means...well, I'd have a lot of nickels. I could understand it back in the mid-90's, but c'mon! The concept has not changed at all since it was introduced a loooong time ago.
3) Viruses and spyware are bad, even if they're not messing up your life too badly. Again, in the "if I had a nickel" department, folks who's computers are just completely infested with crap, so badly that I'm scared to plug my laptop into their network. When I ask them "how long have these porn pop-ups been appearing?" the answer is usually in terms of weeks or months. The fact that you didn't seek help until your system was unusable indicates an underestimation on your part of the seriousness of the infections. Funny how people don't do this with anything else: "Well, the car has been getting slower and slower, now it won't go more than 25mph, but since I can get anywhere I need to by city streets, I'm not really concerned about what might be wrong. Maybe I'll contact a mechanic when it starts topping out at 10mph". And most of this experience is from when I was the I.T. guy at work (i.e. it didn't even cost them anything).
4) You don't have to double-click everything. Yeah, maybe it's obvious to you, but you would be amazed at how often I see people still double-clicking everything, be it a folder, a link in a web browser, or whatever. Lots of times this can really screw things up (for example double-clicking the Submit button in a web form will make it run twice).
5) Know what to look for in a new computer. This one comes up a lot - someone calls me up, since I supposedly know a lot about "computers" and tells me they're thinking about buying a new one - there's an ad in the paper for a computer for $499, and it has a 100GB hard drive - that's a good deal, right? Of course, there are a lot of nuances regarding pricing, but the main things you should be concerned with are CPU type/speed and RAM. Of course, the rankings of "adequate / better / more than you need" are constantly changing, but everyone's got someone they can call and ask about that. And, the most important thing to know is that HARD DRIVES ARE CHEAP! A computer with a 200GB HD is not worth twice as much as one with a 100GB HD. Seems obvious to you? Believe me, it's not to most people. Oh yeah, and one other thing people don't seem to get: in terms of bang for your buck, laptops are a hell of a lot more expensive to buy, prone to break, and expensive to fix, so don't get one unless you really need the mobility.
6) Applications cannot be transfered by copying files. This one doesn't necessarily qualify, since you need to have some basic understanding of files etc. to make this mistake, but a lot of people mistakenly believe that when they buy a new computer, they should be able to just copy their applications from the old computer onto the new one. Unfortunately this almost never works - I don't expect people to understand the registry (least of all because then they'll probably also discover the regedit command and that's game over), but people really ought to know that you can't just copy an application from one machine to another. I do have a lot of forgiveness for this one, though, since the assumption seems pretty logical on the surface, and I don't expect the layman to know about the registry.
I have, of course, left out a lot of other stuff that seems basic to me but I understand is foreign to people who don't work with this stuff on a regular basis. I mean, I get that most people don't want to know any more about their computer than they need to in order to get the job done, but seriously - these are just really basic things that everyone ought to know.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
For love or money
I've noticed that I'm not very good at being a "company man". I have my own life and generally I expect a good work/life balance from my job. When a crunch comes, I expect that I'll be working some long days (or weeks), and I'm OK with that. When I have a situation in my personal life, I expect it the company to be able to bend the other way and allow me the extra time I need to get it dealt with. When the two come at the same time, I expect the company to respect that - I suppose that the compromise would be to work normal hours with maybe a tiny bit extra thrown in where possible.
So, I'm in a situation where I have stuff going on at home - I had my family's annual Xmas party last weekend, and my little brother is visiting me for a week here; he's really stepped up and improved his grades, and when asked what he might like for a reward, the only thing he wanted was to come visit me in NYC. On the work side, I've been handed some very high-profile projects that were already ridiculously late with the task of saving them and getting them out the door by the end of the year. As a result, I've been working until midnight most nights, and needless to say I haven't gotten a lot of time with my brother. I also got a big ration of shit for taking off at 3pm on Friday to make the plane, and for not being around on the weekend. And the thing that amazes me about this is that nobody seems to care.
Which got me thinking - I'm not getting anything out of all this overtime. I'm not going to get a big bonus, I'm not going to get a raise, I'm not up for a promotion - so why am I doing it? Which made me wonder, why is everyone else doing it? I can only guess that my managers have some sort of monetary incentive if everything goes out on time, whereas I'm just told to work longer and harder. Many of my coworkers are working crazy hours and don't seem to be complaining, but I think they're "company men", whereas I'm really not. I fancy myself as more of a mercenary: I do it for the plunder, and I do it well. If you want to really piss me off, make me work a lot more for no extra benefit. For bonus angry points, wait until around the holidays when I (just like everyone else) have a bunch of shit going on; family, shopping, vacation, etc. There's nothing like that combo to make an employee start calling headhunters.
I guess it comes down to (for me, at least) a simple reciprocal relationship: as my employer, if you treat me with respect, then I'll do the same. If you treat me like a "resource" (a word that, when used as a euphemism for "person", never fails to grate on my nerves), then that's how I'll act. At the very least my boss could offer me something, but I know he won't, because there's nothing in it for him.
Personally, I think that treating your employees that way is bad in the long run, because it eliminates all sense of loyalty. A lot of people stick around in their jobs because they worry that the company will suffer without them (even though they're usually mistaken about that), or out of some sense of loyalty. When the company makes it clear that they don't care about the employees, the employees usually go somewhere else.
This wasn't written very well, mostly because I wanted to post something and I wanted to write about this in particular, but for the reasons mentioned above I don't have much time to do it. But, hopefully, I got my message out.
So, I'm in a situation where I have stuff going on at home - I had my family's annual Xmas party last weekend, and my little brother is visiting me for a week here; he's really stepped up and improved his grades, and when asked what he might like for a reward, the only thing he wanted was to come visit me in NYC. On the work side, I've been handed some very high-profile projects that were already ridiculously late with the task of saving them and getting them out the door by the end of the year. As a result, I've been working until midnight most nights, and needless to say I haven't gotten a lot of time with my brother. I also got a big ration of shit for taking off at 3pm on Friday to make the plane, and for not being around on the weekend. And the thing that amazes me about this is that nobody seems to care.
Which got me thinking - I'm not getting anything out of all this overtime. I'm not going to get a big bonus, I'm not going to get a raise, I'm not up for a promotion - so why am I doing it? Which made me wonder, why is everyone else doing it? I can only guess that my managers have some sort of monetary incentive if everything goes out on time, whereas I'm just told to work longer and harder. Many of my coworkers are working crazy hours and don't seem to be complaining, but I think they're "company men", whereas I'm really not. I fancy myself as more of a mercenary: I do it for the plunder, and I do it well. If you want to really piss me off, make me work a lot more for no extra benefit. For bonus angry points, wait until around the holidays when I (just like everyone else) have a bunch of shit going on; family, shopping, vacation, etc. There's nothing like that combo to make an employee start calling headhunters.
I guess it comes down to (for me, at least) a simple reciprocal relationship: as my employer, if you treat me with respect, then I'll do the same. If you treat me like a "resource" (a word that, when used as a euphemism for "person", never fails to grate on my nerves), then that's how I'll act. At the very least my boss could offer me something, but I know he won't, because there's nothing in it for him.
Personally, I think that treating your employees that way is bad in the long run, because it eliminates all sense of loyalty. A lot of people stick around in their jobs because they worry that the company will suffer without them (even though they're usually mistaken about that), or out of some sense of loyalty. When the company makes it clear that they don't care about the employees, the employees usually go somewhere else.
This wasn't written very well, mostly because I wanted to post something and I wanted to write about this in particular, but for the reasons mentioned above I don't have much time to do it. But, hopefully, I got my message out.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Company_A Happenings
I guess that in some other posts I've been saying "there's lots happening at Company_A and I'll write about it soon", but I haven't really updated. So, let's get into it:
1) Company_A has been working on a very large project. I don't want to get into what it is (not sure if I can legally get into it), but suffice it to say that it involves some very expensive products, a large team of consultants, and just about everybody in the tech area of the organization from both sides of the house (consumer-oriented and professional-oriented). The consumer side of the house has taken a serious beating for the last six months or so, with a few people having absolutely lost any hope they might have had of a life outside of work. Fortunately, this doesn't include me at the moment, but my day in the barrel is coming.
2) Two people from my group have left - this is out of a group that's only made up of seven people. I can guarantee that at least one more will be leaving within a month.
3) Most of the senior developers have left.
Right now I wouldn't call it a sinking ship - I'd more call it a revolving door. There's people coming and going at a high rate, and for every person that leaves, there's another one coming in before the first fellow's seat has gone cold.
As a result of the people in my group leaving, I now have many more projects than before. Naturally, I have to play catch-up with all of them, since I'm going into mostly unfamiliar territory with most of them. I will probably be very unhappy with the workload in a few weeks, but to be honest it feels good to just be doing something in the Linux world; I've spent the last few months focusing on a video project that's all Windows-based, and mostly it's been pretty dull with a lot of drudgery. I had one good opportunity to learn some Windows scripting, but it came at a bad time (I didn't really have any time to commit to it), so I cheated and installed Cygwin, then wrote a bash script to deal with it.
I could write a long list of gripes about Company_A (you know I could do that, since I'm such a big fan of gripe lists), but suffice it to say that I'm not happy and I don't see that changing in the future. Actually, it's more like the relationship I had before I met Clau - I liked her, there was nothing wrong with her per se, and I could see myself being with her for another five years, but I knew she wasn't right for me. It broke my heart to break up with her, but I knew it was the right thing to do. I'm not unhappy with Company_A, but it's not (and never was) the right place for me, and it's time to do the right thing. Two days ago I bit the bullet and called my recruiter. I spent yesterday fixing up my resume - from what I wrote about it, you would think I've been having a blast at Company_A; my list of completed projects looks varied and impressive. For the next gig, I'm going to either go with "big fish in a little pond" or "little fish in a big pond". There are benefits to both - big fish allows me to move my skills in some different directions, whereas little fish allows me to hone my craft and eventually work towards "big fish in a big pond".
So, those are the big developments in my working life. Personal life is basically the same as it was - the big news is that Clau and I are going to the Bay Area for our annual visit and my grandmother's famous Xmas party - Clau's brother is also in the Bay Area, so now we have even more folks that we have to divide our attentions among. I'm very much looking forward to finally meeting my little sister, and I'm also going to get to see Adrian that weekend (who I haven't seen since last Thanksgiving in Missouri). After that, we're taking the redeye on Sunday night back to NY, and Neil is coming with us and staying for the week - we really have to look up some stuff for him to do (and make sure he brings appropriate clothing - it's getting really cold).
Hopefully I'll have another update before the holidays...
1) Company_A has been working on a very large project. I don't want to get into what it is (not sure if I can legally get into it), but suffice it to say that it involves some very expensive products, a large team of consultants, and just about everybody in the tech area of the organization from both sides of the house (consumer-oriented and professional-oriented). The consumer side of the house has taken a serious beating for the last six months or so, with a few people having absolutely lost any hope they might have had of a life outside of work. Fortunately, this doesn't include me at the moment, but my day in the barrel is coming.
2) Two people from my group have left - this is out of a group that's only made up of seven people. I can guarantee that at least one more will be leaving within a month.
3) Most of the senior developers have left.
Right now I wouldn't call it a sinking ship - I'd more call it a revolving door. There's people coming and going at a high rate, and for every person that leaves, there's another one coming in before the first fellow's seat has gone cold.
As a result of the people in my group leaving, I now have many more projects than before. Naturally, I have to play catch-up with all of them, since I'm going into mostly unfamiliar territory with most of them. I will probably be very unhappy with the workload in a few weeks, but to be honest it feels good to just be doing something in the Linux world; I've spent the last few months focusing on a video project that's all Windows-based, and mostly it's been pretty dull with a lot of drudgery. I had one good opportunity to learn some Windows scripting, but it came at a bad time (I didn't really have any time to commit to it), so I cheated and installed Cygwin, then wrote a bash script to deal with it.
I could write a long list of gripes about Company_A (you know I could do that, since I'm such a big fan of gripe lists), but suffice it to say that I'm not happy and I don't see that changing in the future. Actually, it's more like the relationship I had before I met Clau - I liked her, there was nothing wrong with her per se, and I could see myself being with her for another five years, but I knew she wasn't right for me. It broke my heart to break up with her, but I knew it was the right thing to do. I'm not unhappy with Company_A, but it's not (and never was) the right place for me, and it's time to do the right thing. Two days ago I bit the bullet and called my recruiter. I spent yesterday fixing up my resume - from what I wrote about it, you would think I've been having a blast at Company_A; my list of completed projects looks varied and impressive. For the next gig, I'm going to either go with "big fish in a little pond" or "little fish in a big pond". There are benefits to both - big fish allows me to move my skills in some different directions, whereas little fish allows me to hone my craft and eventually work towards "big fish in a big pond".
So, those are the big developments in my working life. Personal life is basically the same as it was - the big news is that Clau and I are going to the Bay Area for our annual visit and my grandmother's famous Xmas party - Clau's brother is also in the Bay Area, so now we have even more folks that we have to divide our attentions among. I'm very much looking forward to finally meeting my little sister, and I'm also going to get to see Adrian that weekend (who I haven't seen since last Thanksgiving in Missouri). After that, we're taking the redeye on Sunday night back to NY, and Neil is coming with us and staying for the week - we really have to look up some stuff for him to do (and make sure he brings appropriate clothing - it's getting really cold).
Hopefully I'll have another update before the holidays...
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