I like to think of myself as computer literate and I like to believe that I am capable when it comes to the computing end of technology. Therefore, I really wish I knew why every now and then, a computer will just stop working or cease to function in the way that it has for months or years before. I’m not saying this happens to me on a daily basis, but it’s got to the point that I’m never too sure what to expect when I press the on switch.
I’ve probably used a computer every day of my life since I was about 8 for one reason or another. I was introduced to them much earlier than that, but from about that age onwards, we had a trusty IBM 286 sat in the office that would whir and clunk along quite happily as I wrote “epic novels” or played Lemmings. To cut it short, I would say I know a fair amount about computers. Whereas I’m not a programmer, despite my half hearted attempts, I can perform basic technical support and probably know more about computers than the average bear.
With years of computing experience behind me, I therefore know that a computer won’t do anything that you haven’t asked it to do. Of course, this isn’t strictly true in reality, but that is by and large only because you sometimes ask your computer to do something without realizing it. Not reading something through and clicking “Next” a little bit too quickly on a random installation of something relatively minor could request something to be put on to your computer that will set in motion a serious problem later on in your computer’s life cycle, but almost nobody can see these things coming. My own computer has recently started doing some interesting things in that it is slowing down, whirring a little too loudly, and just occasionally freezing up completely. It is admittedly a lot better now that I’ve blown an air duster into it and extracted most of the dust from inside the case, but all the same, I’m dreading what will happen next because last time it got sick like this, it actually caught fire before telling me what the problem was.
Computers are unavoidably part of our everyday life. I know that I for one go to work, sit in front of a computer all day and then come home to sit in front of a computer all evening. It’s not quite as tragic as that, but it’s getting there. Therefore, I want to fully understand the ins and outs, the workings and intricacies and the functioning of the guts and innards of computers. I feel that programming is the modern day equivalent of magic, and I know that if magic existed, I would quickly become a keen student of the subject so I’m never too sure why I’ve never really thrown myself into it with the enthusiasm I clearly have. The only answer to coping with computers has to be to absorb as much information about them as you possibly can. I’m not suggesting that everyone should train to be a software engineer, but with just a little more awareness, you could become much more efficient and it might even serve to bring your blood pressure down a couple of notches if you know why your computer is vomiting digitally.
Additional Notes
Whenever I think back to something that happened when I was a child, I always assume it was around the age of 8, 12, or 16. I don’t know why I’ve chosen those ages, but I always use them when someone asks me how long I’ve been doing something that I’ve been doing for a long time. Maybe I just like multiples of 4. Perhaps this means that 24 is a good age for me to be. Maybe in years to come, I can say “yeah, I’ve been running this blog since I was 24” and be accurate about it…
I recently uncovered a disk with some of my early writing projects on. Considering how young I was when I wrote them, I'm actually incredibly proud of them. Maybe I'll post a few at some point, but I'm sure if I did, I'd instantly regret it. Once you're on the internet, it's incredibly difficult to get yourself off again.
Dust doesn’t really do justice to what was inside my computer case. It looked more like fur. I’m sure I saw the graphics card breathing…
My computer honestly did catch fire at one point. Luckily, I only really needed to replace the motherboard, and it was about due for an overhaul anyway. It was also entirely my fault: I’d put the power pack in upside down (it was the only way it would fit) and this meant that the thing couldn’t ventilate properly. I think I was also trying to over-clock the processor, which can’t have helped. The flame looked like a tiny orange LED from the side. It was only when I saw smoke that I knew something was probably wrong.
Just to offer a quick link, the site Lifehacker has all sorts of useful little tips, downloads and suggestions for getting functionality and efficiency out of your computer. If nothing else, it makes for some fascinating reading as you realize just how versatile a computer can be.
Showing posts with label Stress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stress. Show all posts
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Tackling Absurdity in the Workplace
No amount of natural intelligence or education will ever prepare you for the absurdity one will face in the world of work.
My theory is that on paper, a lot of things work incredibly well but they often fail in practice due to small over-looked details. If you magnify this way of thinking, that is what you get in the workplace.
Our own office is currently suffering from a constant bombardment of incompetence and small oversights that is reducing our ability to work efficiently. My fellow administration dragons and I recently moved from the Camden call centre office over to new premises in Kentish town. Although a few glitches are going to be unavoidable in a moving process, there were immediately issues with the way in which the office was set up. First of all, there was about half as much storage for twice as much letter headed paper. Secondly, the network and computers were so locked down that it wouldn’t recognize USB devices or CDs, which are occasionally required for the smooth running of transferring data. Thirdly, the internet was not set up as it was assumed we wouldn’t need it and finally, in the initial move, royal mail hadn’t been informed of our departure from Camden, and a large quantity of our post ended up sitting around in a sorting office. For all we know, it might still be there (wherever there might be).
In trying to analyze the reasons behind each of these small-by-themselves blunders, it’s clear to see the intentions were good or the excuses reasonable. The storage might not have been an issue had we not just started dealing with a very large group of new clients, the network was locked so as to prevent sensitive data such as bank details being taken off site, the internet wasn’t set up due to a gross underestimation of what we actually do in admin, and the post wasn’t set up because two people thought that the other had already done it.
The absurdity creeps in when for example you don’t have the storage, yet you’re told that the boxes of paper are in the way of walkways for health and safety reasons, and might fall on someone if they’re stacked too high. There’s also the absurdity of locking the computers down so tightly that you can’t move data off site, or access it completely, or actually perform basic tasks that you are so used to performing, especially considering that if I really wanted to steal bank details, I could jot them down on a piece of paper. Equally, taking our internet away from us and expecting us to still have that mysterious encyclopedic knowledge of medical conditions required for processing the applications has elements of inconsistency as does not setting up a delivery address and wondering why we don’t get any post.
The people I work with are not stupid. As it is a small company, almost everyone here ends up doing things they haven’t done before, aren’t suited to and don’t really want to do. For example, I wouldn’t chose to carry a trees worth of paper up and down several flights of stairs most days, but when the deliveries turn up, we all have to chip in. As a result of this, things can be rushed, done badly due to a lack of experience, or things can just be overlooked. Most often however, things just aren't thought throught properly. A recent conversation that our IT manager had with the builders with regards to how much to enlarge the server room by in our office means that the walls are now closing in, as our IT manager is apparently not good with dimensions and instead appears to have thought of a random number between 1 and 100, leaning towards a larger number just to be on the safe side.
The current issue is that our space is rapidly disappearing, and the rest of the staff from Camden are going to be moving to an office next door to the new premises we’ve moved to, and they want to use our office for storage. Short of suspending them from the ceiling, I can’t see where new filing cabinets will go and I can’t help feeling this is another example of someone in charge not really thinking things through. To put it in more literal terms, imagine your bedroom and whatever you have in it. Now imagine your partner, friend, parents or whoever you may live with comes up to you and says “guess what, I ordered two new wardrobes, a side table and a grand piano for your room! Isn’t that great?” I am sure that unless you are disgustingly lucky with the amount of space that you have in your bedroom that you would have a few choice words for your partner, friend, parents or whoever you may live with.
The more I work in this place, the less I find situational or even surreal comedy funny. A lot of the time, it’s just things that have happened to the writer retold slightly out of context. King Arthur being asked to cut down the mightiest oak in the forest with a herring by the knights who say “Nee!” whilst participating in Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail is significantly less funny when you realize that you’ve been asked to do things of similar impossibility or absurdity (even if it is without the herring).
In any office, the right hand will never know what the left hand is doing and invariably they will both be telling you to do slightly different things like a miniature angel and devil sat on your shoulders debating about whether or not to burn the whole place down and be done with it, but the real terror comes when the two hands start working towards a common goal, with all the apptitude of an easily distracted cage of chimps.
Additional Notes:
“The people I work with are not stupid.” Let me clarify that: Most of the people I work with are not stupid. Another thing that university will never prepare you for is the diversity of intellect found in the workplace. Sometimes that diversity and wide range of intellect can be found in just one person.
In terms of things that I used to find well executed, creative and devastatingly funny, I’ve also come to realize that “Dilbert” is probably not in fact a comic strip, but a daily journal in picture form.
When I used to work on the river as an assistant lock keeper for the Environment Agency, I was amazed at how all the staff up and down the river could effectively mesh together and work as a well oiled and slick machine in their single minded purpose. The only problem was that there were still frequent absurdities and contradictions being thrown around, largely due to the fact that their single minded purpose was to annoy and frustrate head office.
My theory is that on paper, a lot of things work incredibly well but they often fail in practice due to small over-looked details. If you magnify this way of thinking, that is what you get in the workplace.
Our own office is currently suffering from a constant bombardment of incompetence and small oversights that is reducing our ability to work efficiently. My fellow administration dragons and I recently moved from the Camden call centre office over to new premises in Kentish town. Although a few glitches are going to be unavoidable in a moving process, there were immediately issues with the way in which the office was set up. First of all, there was about half as much storage for twice as much letter headed paper. Secondly, the network and computers were so locked down that it wouldn’t recognize USB devices or CDs, which are occasionally required for the smooth running of transferring data. Thirdly, the internet was not set up as it was assumed we wouldn’t need it and finally, in the initial move, royal mail hadn’t been informed of our departure from Camden, and a large quantity of our post ended up sitting around in a sorting office. For all we know, it might still be there (wherever there might be).
In trying to analyze the reasons behind each of these small-by-themselves blunders, it’s clear to see the intentions were good or the excuses reasonable. The storage might not have been an issue had we not just started dealing with a very large group of new clients, the network was locked so as to prevent sensitive data such as bank details being taken off site, the internet wasn’t set up due to a gross underestimation of what we actually do in admin, and the post wasn’t set up because two people thought that the other had already done it.
The absurdity creeps in when for example you don’t have the storage, yet you’re told that the boxes of paper are in the way of walkways for health and safety reasons, and might fall on someone if they’re stacked too high. There’s also the absurdity of locking the computers down so tightly that you can’t move data off site, or access it completely, or actually perform basic tasks that you are so used to performing, especially considering that if I really wanted to steal bank details, I could jot them down on a piece of paper. Equally, taking our internet away from us and expecting us to still have that mysterious encyclopedic knowledge of medical conditions required for processing the applications has elements of inconsistency as does not setting up a delivery address and wondering why we don’t get any post.
The people I work with are not stupid. As it is a small company, almost everyone here ends up doing things they haven’t done before, aren’t suited to and don’t really want to do. For example, I wouldn’t chose to carry a trees worth of paper up and down several flights of stairs most days, but when the deliveries turn up, we all have to chip in. As a result of this, things can be rushed, done badly due to a lack of experience, or things can just be overlooked. Most often however, things just aren't thought throught properly. A recent conversation that our IT manager had with the builders with regards to how much to enlarge the server room by in our office means that the walls are now closing in, as our IT manager is apparently not good with dimensions and instead appears to have thought of a random number between 1 and 100, leaning towards a larger number just to be on the safe side.
The current issue is that our space is rapidly disappearing, and the rest of the staff from Camden are going to be moving to an office next door to the new premises we’ve moved to, and they want to use our office for storage. Short of suspending them from the ceiling, I can’t see where new filing cabinets will go and I can’t help feeling this is another example of someone in charge not really thinking things through. To put it in more literal terms, imagine your bedroom and whatever you have in it. Now imagine your partner, friend, parents or whoever you may live with comes up to you and says “guess what, I ordered two new wardrobes, a side table and a grand piano for your room! Isn’t that great?” I am sure that unless you are disgustingly lucky with the amount of space that you have in your bedroom that you would have a few choice words for your partner, friend, parents or whoever you may live with.
The more I work in this place, the less I find situational or even surreal comedy funny. A lot of the time, it’s just things that have happened to the writer retold slightly out of context. King Arthur being asked to cut down the mightiest oak in the forest with a herring by the knights who say “Nee!” whilst participating in Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail is significantly less funny when you realize that you’ve been asked to do things of similar impossibility or absurdity (even if it is without the herring).
In any office, the right hand will never know what the left hand is doing and invariably they will both be telling you to do slightly different things like a miniature angel and devil sat on your shoulders debating about whether or not to burn the whole place down and be done with it, but the real terror comes when the two hands start working towards a common goal, with all the apptitude of an easily distracted cage of chimps.
Additional Notes:
“The people I work with are not stupid.” Let me clarify that: Most of the people I work with are not stupid. Another thing that university will never prepare you for is the diversity of intellect found in the workplace. Sometimes that diversity and wide range of intellect can be found in just one person.
In terms of things that I used to find well executed, creative and devastatingly funny, I’ve also come to realize that “Dilbert” is probably not in fact a comic strip, but a daily journal in picture form.
When I used to work on the river as an assistant lock keeper for the Environment Agency, I was amazed at how all the staff up and down the river could effectively mesh together and work as a well oiled and slick machine in their single minded purpose. The only problem was that there were still frequent absurdities and contradictions being thrown around, largely due to the fact that their single minded purpose was to annoy and frustrate head office.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
One thing at a time
Over the last few days, I’ve had one of those strange illnesses that sometimes strikes you. It was the type that you realize is not overly serious and that you could sit at your desk feeling like you are slowly melting into a puddle of exhaustion without too much effort, but that still knocks you out anyway. In the end, I took the cowards way out and made the critical error of taking a couple of days off work and some time away from my course, meaning I now have a few more things on my plate to work through in order to keep my head above water.
It is incredibly easy to let small chores and big chores alike pile up, like so many dirty dishes attempting to discover the next penicillin, and for the most part I am perfectly capable of working through them slowly. This time however, I think I let it go too far. When thinking about the things that I still had to do, I would feel a little dizzy and get that rising panic that one gets as the sound of multiple deadlines start their deafening roar as they close in for the kill.
I’m never comfortable with dealing out advice, but I have to share this because it’s so simple that it’s probably going to be pretty insulting to anyone reading this. If things get too much, just take it One Thing At A Time.
My particular methodology involved me going to the local stationary shop and buying a notepad (I prefer the reporter style, binding at the top, jotter pad) and sitting down to make a list of all the things that I had outstanding. I then if necessary made a separate page for some of the more complicated or vague tasks (such as “complete law conversion course” or “sort out documents”) and finally titled the notebook as my “Quest log”, because I figured that might just trick my brain into thinking it’s a game with a list of achievements that I need to earn.
Depressingly enough, calling it the “Quest Log” seems to have worked to a tremendous effect. I absolutely love crossing things off the list, feeling a creeping inane grin crawling across my face every time I find myself coming close to finishing a task, happy in the knowledge that I’ll be able to get a pen and strike a line through the offending chore.
The interesting thing that I found was how organically my “To Do” list grew and what sort of things were clearly on my mind. The first few items were course related, such as my “Independent Research Ess*y” and my “Statute Analysis Test”, but then shortly after that came personal projects that have been indefinitely shelved, such as my poor neglect-ridden comics, and my creative writing that has been languishing for almost a year. Other small things popped up as I was thinking of more things to add, such as sorting out the official documents one accumulates and that I had been stuffing into my bookshelf near my desk, treating it as forbidden in tray since I moved into the flat.
Once the list was at a healthy length, I was truly amazed at how fired up I was to get on with clearing it. I must confess, I am nowhere near completely removing items from the list yet, but I was able to cross off a few of the smaller entries on the item specific pages, which cleared my mind no end.
The One Thing At A Time approach is not a new thing to me. It’s what I used to do all the time whilst at university in order to survive; you think of all the things you have to do and then do the one that is the most urgent. The only addition to this approach that I’ve had to take now is writing everything down, because my life upon graduation has become significantly busier and the time with which to do things has become significantly shorter and I know that the free time I do have is frequently used poorly. If you have a lot to do and not much time to do it in, then I can not stress the merits of this approach enough.
Additional Notes
Who knows, next time on The Graduate, maybe I’ll explain how this approach didn’t work and I had a nervous breakdown anyway. I really do feel uncomfortable giving advice. I recently gave some advice to someone who had just graduated and was struggling to find a job. I essentially told him that he has to keep looking, not give up, submit hundreds of applications and not to rely on the internet completely. I also recommended temping agencies and recruitment agencies. All of this is great advice. All of this is also the advice that I was given and advice that was subsequently ignored when I was in the same position. Maybe that puts me in a better position to reiterate it, but it just makes me feel like a bit of a fraud.
One of the things on my Quest Log is to write a post for this blog, which explains that slow creeping grin that’s starting as I type this sentence.
It is incredibly easy to let small chores and big chores alike pile up, like so many dirty dishes attempting to discover the next penicillin, and for the most part I am perfectly capable of working through them slowly. This time however, I think I let it go too far. When thinking about the things that I still had to do, I would feel a little dizzy and get that rising panic that one gets as the sound of multiple deadlines start their deafening roar as they close in for the kill.
I’m never comfortable with dealing out advice, but I have to share this because it’s so simple that it’s probably going to be pretty insulting to anyone reading this. If things get too much, just take it One Thing At A Time.
My particular methodology involved me going to the local stationary shop and buying a notepad (I prefer the reporter style, binding at the top, jotter pad) and sitting down to make a list of all the things that I had outstanding. I then if necessary made a separate page for some of the more complicated or vague tasks (such as “complete law conversion course” or “sort out documents”) and finally titled the notebook as my “Quest log”, because I figured that might just trick my brain into thinking it’s a game with a list of achievements that I need to earn.
Depressingly enough, calling it the “Quest Log” seems to have worked to a tremendous effect. I absolutely love crossing things off the list, feeling a creeping inane grin crawling across my face every time I find myself coming close to finishing a task, happy in the knowledge that I’ll be able to get a pen and strike a line through the offending chore.
The interesting thing that I found was how organically my “To Do” list grew and what sort of things were clearly on my mind. The first few items were course related, such as my “Independent Research Ess*y” and my “Statute Analysis Test”, but then shortly after that came personal projects that have been indefinitely shelved, such as my poor neglect-ridden comics, and my creative writing that has been languishing for almost a year. Other small things popped up as I was thinking of more things to add, such as sorting out the official documents one accumulates and that I had been stuffing into my bookshelf near my desk, treating it as forbidden in tray since I moved into the flat.
Once the list was at a healthy length, I was truly amazed at how fired up I was to get on with clearing it. I must confess, I am nowhere near completely removing items from the list yet, but I was able to cross off a few of the smaller entries on the item specific pages, which cleared my mind no end.
The One Thing At A Time approach is not a new thing to me. It’s what I used to do all the time whilst at university in order to survive; you think of all the things you have to do and then do the one that is the most urgent. The only addition to this approach that I’ve had to take now is writing everything down, because my life upon graduation has become significantly busier and the time with which to do things has become significantly shorter and I know that the free time I do have is frequently used poorly. If you have a lot to do and not much time to do it in, then I can not stress the merits of this approach enough.
Additional Notes
Who knows, next time on The Graduate, maybe I’ll explain how this approach didn’t work and I had a nervous breakdown anyway. I really do feel uncomfortable giving advice. I recently gave some advice to someone who had just graduated and was struggling to find a job. I essentially told him that he has to keep looking, not give up, submit hundreds of applications and not to rely on the internet completely. I also recommended temping agencies and recruitment agencies. All of this is great advice. All of this is also the advice that I was given and advice that was subsequently ignored when I was in the same position. Maybe that puts me in a better position to reiterate it, but it just makes me feel like a bit of a fraud.
One of the things on my Quest Log is to write a post for this blog, which explains that slow creeping grin that’s starting as I type this sentence.
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