Lies, damned lies

I’m spending a little too much time ‘task switching’ as opposed to ‘task doing’, but I suppose it’s better to be too busy. I like busy. Being able to see the value in your work helps, but it's not that way for everyone.

I have a developer friend who was once tasked with consulting and updating reports for another department of his company. It was all for a good cause, to determine their internal efficiency. Unfortunately it turned out the department had been taking the term ‘internal’ all too literally and, as if unaware of the outside world, managed to cut the customer out of the equation. Imagine your job is to take data from a customer, manually process the data and then hand it back. Not surprisingly the company want to know how efficient that process is. But the department doesn’t have the tools to record the time taken for data coming in, processed and returned to the customer on the same day; it does however have a tool that records the amount of data waiting to be processed that came in on a specified day.

Oh dear. The department reasoned there was no cost to queuing data coming in and queuing data going out, no internal cost anyway. Hence there was no need to ask for any engineering resource. When the company asked how long it took to process an item they may have meant ‘how long until the customer gets their data back’, but what they got was an answer to an entirely different question. How many customers did they lose? We’ll never know; my friend doesn’t work there any more. Very few people do.

There’s no place like 127.0.0.1

For the past fortnight I’ve been intermittently without a home to go to. Indeed home became so unreliable that yesterday I dropped any references and set about messing with the DNS, or to be more accurate trying to undo the mess that I created. There’s nothing more annoying than heading for home when the outcome is uncertain; and there’s nothing more anal than periodically clicking Home to check the result.

It’s only a temporary residence too. Google Sites has its purpose but mine was to build a website. I’m a little hazy as to why I wanted to do that but I’m sure given time I’ll come up with a reason. Not surprisingly, I have a random approach to establishing a web presence. I start blogging and only later grasp on the idea of addressing it with my own domain. And I’m determined to use a ‘blog’ sub-domain. And if you’ve got a ‘blog’ sub-domain then you need to have a ‘www’ sub-domain too. Don’t ask me why, you just do. Google Sites was an accident but it serves a purpose in acting as a placeholder. For a while my blog distracted me with a little HTML play, and then I remembered how I’d wanted to understand the various pieces.

Ah yes, maybe that was the reason. So now I look to the ‘Build your own website for people who ought to already know’ books and hope that I really can. Maybe email a few former colleagues for advice. Maybe I’ll use a few technologies along the way... and maybe I’ll even learn something.

All of this has happened before

So the hurricane came and went leaving a trail of devastation in its wake... completely untrue but I rather like the way that sounds. It was nothing personal; it was business though it still hurts. The axe fell in an unexpected quarter, the sales department... as you’d expect, I’m devastated. I’d almost convinced myself that this time, this one time, it really was going to be a ‘state of play’ visit; you’d think by now I’d know better.

Some cynics may suggest the loss of a sales department is no big deal, it’s karma for a lack of investment in product, but one thing is definite; if you don’t have sales people then you don’t have anything to sell. I figured that one out myself. The other clue was when the boss said “we’re not selling that anymore”.

It’s safe to say the patient is on life support and with no hope of recovery. We think he stands a chance of making it into the New Year but the prognosis beyond then is certain. Meanwhile I’ve entered a bizarre alternate reality in which I genuinely like the sales people who survive. Me and sales; who’d have thought it possible?

Since I’m old enough to have seen it all before and wise enough (don’t laugh) to not take it personally, I get on with what work there is; though having said that, due to staff shortages I’m making very little progress. I’ll probably get fired for that. I blame it on my friend and ex-colleague, the artist wannabe, who up and quit work the other week to pursue something worthwhile, rather than wallow in a collective doom and see it through to our inevitable and bitter end. Fucking writers, eh?

Sign o’ the times

We had a fire drill on Thursday. The last one I remember, a year or so ago, resulted in approximately 30 employees crowding into a car park whilst waiting to be counted. Yesterday we numbered seven. Still, at least we all got out safe… and our boss is visiting us next week.

Also in the news; I read a book and I’m thinking of reading another. The one I read was Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I can see why its polarised opinion and those not liking the book make some valid points, but they also point to the reason I liked it so much. I’ve missed reading; I should do more, much more. So I bought another but starting will be the key. I need a few clear hours to open with and then some regular time to invest… now there’s the trick... and our boss is visiting us next week.

Equality to equals and unequal alike

Plato, through Socrates, described it thus;

...a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.

Or as I once remarked to a friend;

The thing with democracy is that ultimately it’s about allowing morons to vote.

Plato’s ideal system, an aristocracy led by wise men that are (crucially) reluctant to lead, seems inherently dangerous given our understanding on the ability of power to warp the best of intentions - not to mention the scarcity of wise men. So unless we subscribe to this utopian vision or perhaps the benefits of a benign autocracy (and I’m surprised to find there are many that do) we are, for all its perceived limitations, left with democracy; though are these limitations really a weakness?

One might think so since the BBC have invited Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP and a holocaust denier, to appear on Question Time; their most prominent platform for political debate. However such people are a fact of life whatever the system; brushing repulsive individuals under the carpet not only disenfranchises, it’s counterproductive. Who can be persuaded the error of their ways by being denied the right to speak?

I can think of few people who deserve to be ridiculed more but a more constructive act might be to engage them in debate or, to use language his party would understand, debate the sh*t out of them. There are undoubtedly dangers; putting Griffin in a civilised environment may result in some believing the participant himself to be civilised. In addition I would hope the other panellists can avoid indulging in a game of “who hates the racist the most”; it’s a trap the BNP would be delighted to spring.

Yet despite these risks we must engage in debate; not necessarily because we hope to change minds, though occasionally we may, but because this is how a society grows. If unwilling to face up to its more unpleasant members then how can it be worth fighting for? An unchallenged society is doomed to failure.

Pay peanuts...

Hypocrisy; there’s a lot of it about. I’ll bet there are a large number of people receiving benefits in kind that are completely unrelated to their job. Whether it’s a subsidised canteen or gym membership, being able to claim for a television is no different - it’s just a little more expensive.

The current MPs’ expenses scandal has rightly provoked anger on the issue of "flipped" homes and the dubious methods for avoiding capital gains tax. However this fury has impaired the critical faculties of many to the point that any unusual payment is seen as suspect. If televisions and furniture are part of your remuneration then you have every right to make a claim; whilst unusual, they are an inevitable result of paying our elected representatives such a comparatively low wage.

The basic salary for an MP is £64,766, if we allow for a ‘London weighting’ this equates to a little over £56,000 outside the capital. It’s a lot of money but is it enough? This is the salary of a middle ranking bank manager, not one for a person who represents the interests of over 68,000 people; someone responsible for policy that affects every part of our lives and those of our children.

The UK has a first-past-the-post electoral system. Technically we vote for the individual we wish to represent us, not the political party to which they may belong. A Member of Parliament however is still subject to two often competing forces; those of the electorate and those of his or her party. This situation is aggravated by the large number of junior ministerial positions available that naturally carry an additional salary.

If we want people who truly represent us then we should be prepared to pay enough such that politics is more than a vocational choice for the well off. If we want people who think of their electorate first then we should pay enough such that any threat to withdraw party privileges has relatively little financial impact. If we want a simple and more transparent expenses system then we should be prepared to pay the going rate.

But if we’re only prepared to pay peanuts, we shouldn’t be surprised at the result.

Failure is your friend

I remember driving in to work one weekend to try and catch up, but on arriving hitting problem after problem; the result being that five hours later I appeared to have gotten nowhere. In reality of course I’d made progress since, come Monday and with all those failures in the past, I could move forward. I’m trying to use this as I wrestle, not always valiantly, with a VB script problem in Excel. I’m not a big fan of Excel, or rather VB script; it’s like being told to play with stickle bricks instead of Meccano. Why do the other kids get the cool toys?

This isn’t what I meant to write about, at least not directly. I guess I was reminded of these challenges on reading a terrific blog on the spirit of scrum. I can’t say I know much about agile software development, let alone the scrum method, and in passing I wonder where or even if, rapid application development fits on the evolutionary path. Scrum would appear to exist beyond the confines of a software development methodology, though this is only part of its attraction. I suspect I should read more of Tobias’ blog, Agile Anarchy, before passing comment, but I will venture to say that what appeals is its... humanity. I could be way off the mark but I’ve read enough to want for more.

I will doubtless be plagued by the cynical voice that warns I’ll never experience it in practice. Perhaps not, but a good idea is a good idea and anyway, just this once I think I’ll aim high.