“Can you explain why you haven’t put [the data] I haven’t given you yet on the updated webpage?”
Ummm, because Matt Smith is using the time machine just now?
Ummm, because you’re wearing that stupid helmet of Erik’s so I can’t go all Professor X on you?
Ummm, because you’ve had emailing me privileges revoked until you can make sense?
I got an email from my Manager today – as ever, just as I was packing up to head out the door – asking if I could run some historical statistical reports and provide some analysis to go along with it as to the whys? hows? and reallys?! No problem, I think, it’s not my everyday job but it’s not outside the realms of my knowledge. There was only one thing bugging me about it: the size of the scrollbar slider – it was tiny; the kind of tiny you only get in a really long document. Curiosity got the better of me and I scrolled down.
The email chain started with the institution’s CFO asking my Director for the data by Monday; the Director then passed it to my Manager – to be done by Friday; my Manager passes to me to be done by Thursday. I could easily then pass it down to one of my own team to do for Wednesday but that would be unreasonable and erring on the side of batshit crazy.
I responded to my Manager asking if instead of me having to drop everything and have my team pick up the slack would it be possible for me just to send it to the CFO for the Monday he’s requested? After all, both my Manager and Direct had explicitly said in the email chain that they didn’t even need to see it and doing a little each day would ease the burden I’d have to place on my – already overworked – team.
I was told no.
Why? Because the new Director was asked to do it and he doesn’t want to be seen passing it on. From what I see can only this can only be for one of three reasons:
(1) It’s sensitive data which only those high up can be trusted with (it’s not)
(2) He doesn’t want to delegate (although that’s the sign of a bad manager)
(3) It’s work that he should be able to do but can’t
Reason (3) seems the most likely after all this is only his second week in the job, he might not have been brought up to speed with the institutions bespoke database; but this Director – he was my Manager-equivalent at my last job – doesn’t know a thing about spreadsheets, pivot tables might as well be marshmallows for all the useful information he can get out of them. In the olden days when we last worked together he passed off a few of my ideas and projects as his in – at that time citing the reason being that because they were new ideas which needed to be approved by his higher-ups, they wouldn’t listen to little ol’ me. [Full disclosure: these previous ideas were creative pro-active projects and not responses to requests from on high. Does that make a difference? It may well do.]
Of course I will do the data analysis and I will do it well. My Manager will send me a one word thank you email; my Director won’t acknowledge my part in it and the CFO will carry on not even knowing I exist.
In the bigger scheme of things, this is a perfect example of how the public sector is bloated with top-heavy management structures [which I have no doubt cost the honest (and not so honest) British taxpayer a a pretty penny or six]. And would us public sector workers ever complain about it? Of course not, we’re all just content to know that we have something resembling the notion of job security in this economic disaster zone.
It’s the very nature of inflation that prices rise; over time we have to pay more for things. This is not a new concept, it’s been happening for years. I thought – apparently somewhat foolishly – that we all knew about inflation, but apparently this is a dirty, foreign alien concept to bus passengers. Continue reading
If you’ve paid any attention to anything in the news recently that doesn’t include rioting or bombing the bejeezus* out of anyone who riots a bit too much, you’ll have noticed that the UK Higher Education Sector has been royally screwed over by those elected to hold the purse strings.
(*Although it some cases I’m sure it’s their very lack of bejeezus which is stoking the invasion-happy international armies.) Continue reading
Today at work we discovered that it was possible to send print to any printer on the in any room on the campus through the internal network.
The clowns are gonna get ya
A good portion of the morning may have been spent sending random messages to random printers.
This is not a test
And by “may have been” I do – of course – mean was.
… did it.
Whoops. Apparently forcing myself to write doesn’t actually mean that I will write. Instead it means I’ll do a few, miss one and instead of catching up I ostrich away*. Proof if proof be needed to back up reason #257 I couldn’t be a professional writer.
[Zoologically incorrect fact, ostriches don't bury their heads in the sand, they simply put their heads down on the sand. You'd think humans - with their brains bigger than their eyes would have seen this...]
Fiction is a wonderful thing; letters form words form sentences form paragraphs form chapters form worlds. Pick up a book and if it’s good it will suck you in; if it’s first person you become the protagonist; third person you’re the voyeur watching their world, hearing their thoughts and no matter how hard you try you can’t get them to listen to you and do as you wish.
Fiction gives us fully formed worlds, and it gives each reader his or her own fully formed world. No matter how specific the writer has been each and every one of us sees something slightly differently, gives the characters slightly different accents, makes them taller, shorter, fatter, thinner, sparklier than the writer imagined, than the person next to you read.
A fictional book isn’t just something to while away the time on the morning commute for me, it’s something more. It’s an experience from beginning to end.
It starts in the bricks-and-mortar bookshop browsing through the shelves – trying desperately to not to judge the tomes by the pattern of their binding – and failing. Something needs to be the first thing to draw you to a book. You may have gone into the shop with unbiased intentions, but they won’t last. You find yourself drawn either to the realm of your favourite author/genre or the big display in the middle of the store where each employee has picked out their own favourite book and their recommending it in their tiny, scrawly handwriting.
How can you pick out a book without a little prejudice? Are you going to pick up every single novel from every single shelf and read the blurb on the back? No, you’re going to be drawn to the covers of books you recognise and associate with; be they black and sparkly with a hit of otherworldliness about them, or be they pastel-hued with shoes, lipsticks and loopy fonts.
Next the title, does it sound like something you’d read? Does it make you want to read more? Does it tell you everything you need to know? There are those book titles which are too vague to hold any interest, but they are far preferential (for me at least) to the overly elaborate. The way I see it, if your book title need punctuation it’s not a title.
You’ve found a something aesthetically pleasing, but what of its cerebral effects? To the back page! The blurb should capture your interest and make you want to read the book, it shoudl tell your enough, but not too much…just enough to make me want to read the first page.
Once I’ve cracked open the first page, you’re a almost guaranteed to have me hook line and sinker. The only way to lose me now is for everything that’s happened so far – the cover, the title, the blurb – to have diddly-squat to do with the first page. To be honest, I don’t have any recollection of that ever happening, but it’s a good caveat to have in place – just in case.
We’ll take the exchange of cash / library card / asking to borrow as read and now! I have a book to read. If we’re being factually accurate about this, now it would go to the bottom of my To Read pile and be rediscovered in a few calendar turns, but lets skip over my lackadaisical book turnover times and we’re now at the point where I’m reading the fictional book. So shhh! Can’t you see I’m reading? Amuse yourself and come back when I’ve reached the end of the chapter.
I’m not going to lie, penguins are pretty awsum. As birds go they are, without a doubt, the coolest. The only other one which even comes close is the kakapo [which is essentially a parrot that got too fat to fly so it just waddles about looking a bit dopey and getting eaten].
To your right is a penguin, a Gentoo penguin to be precise. He lives at Edinburgh zoo and was more than pleased to pose like the tuxedo clad starlet that he is for the papperazzi tourists. Normally he would be found living somewhere in the Antarctic, so Edinburgh is positively tropical for him.
Penguins are often the joke of the bird world; they can’t fly, they just waddle, slide on their stomachs and occasionally fall over. I think, however, this is just part of their ploy. If I’ve learned anything for spy movies it’s that some of the best spies are the ones you can’t help but miss; they’re the ones in the middle of the room bumping into things, knocking things over and generally being the quintessential buffoon. This is the penguin.
Behind the flapping and falling they are up to something, of course they are. Why else have they set-up shop miles from civilisation? If you had the choice you wouldn’t pick to stay at the South Pole, would you? Unless, of course, you needed a lot of uninhabited space to get up to your neferious deeds without anyone snooping around. They’ve already let they ninja-swimming skills slip out; whatever penguin did that first must’ve got nothing but stick from the rest of his penguin mates: “Jeff, what are you playing at, they know about the swimming thing now. You better not tell them about the laser eyes or we’re feeding you to the Timmy the killer whale”.
I don’t know what they’re up to, but I when the revolution comes I’m taking their side.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
- The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, Douglas Adams
Ask me my favourite band and it will change from one second to the next; the same with my favourite album. I don’t even think I could have a consistant favourite genre, but there’s no chopping and changing when it comes to my favourite song. There’s only ever been two which have ever had any chance of coming out on top – and it was a close run race. Alas, Steve Harley won’t be Coming Up To See anyone, nor will he be Making anyone Smile because he got pipped to the prestigous number one spot [although the plinky-plinky opening will always make me smile].
This, however, is my favourite song:
It’s 80s, it’s synth, it’s dark, it’s New Wave, it was lightened up a teeny tiny bit for a John-Hughes-Molly-Ringwald film; it is, of course, Psychedelic Furs’ Pretty In Pink.
It doesn’t bother me that the song only shot to prominance in a film which can only be described as vaguely related to the lyrics [In the song Caroline is easy, a bit naïve and used by men; in the film Andie doesn't take shit, sticks to her guns and isn't going to do anything just to be one of the "cool kids". Both girls, however, look - as their titles suggest - Pretty In Pink.]
I could listen to this song on repeat forever. One year I bought the original 7″ single for my birthday – to me, from me [along with Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen In Love and The Undertones' Teenage Kicks]. It’s one of the songs I dance around my bedroom to. It excites me, it makes me stop and listen every single time I hear it and I love it.
