The Online Rant

The problem some of us have when it comes to leaving work at the office.

I read an article the other day on Scott Adam’s blog titled The Other Scott Adams” In case you don’t know, Scott Adams is the creator of the Dilbert comic. A comic that helps all of us office workers keep a little sanity. And ever since I found his blog, I’ve been enjoying his daily(ish) comments on society and current events.

So anyway, back to the article. The gist of it was that in this day and age, if you have a common name, your reputation ends up closely tied to the actions of the “other” you(s) that are out there. This isn’t really a new thing. Throughout the history you can watch the popularity of names rise and fall based on the actions of prominent people. After all, no one wants to be named after a mass murderer or even have themselves associated with one via their name. What makes today’s name associations different from those of the past, is the ease with which those associations can be found.

In the past, it was unlikely that someone(with the same name) else’s actions would ever be noticed by your friends, coworkers, and relatives unless they became famous/infamous for them. These days those other you’s are a simple Google search away. And as people search engines(which I mentioned in a previous post) become more common and better at finding details about individuals, those other people with your name are going to be noticed by you and your friends even more.

So try it. Google your name and see how many other you’s there are in the first two or three pages that come back. Unless you post a lot online under your own name, you will probably be surprised at how many other you’s there are in the first three pages. Now ask yourself, is it likely that people who don’t know you very well or are potential employers likely to be able to tell which of those “you’s” that come back are really you?

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work on my house in preparation for my soon to be wife. Basically I’m trying to fix it it up and make it special for her. To that end, I’m doing a lot of repainting and even some remodeling.

One of the things I did, was combine two bedrooms into one to make a master bedroom. Now, initially I wasn’t all that excited about the project. Mainly because it was going to be a lot of work. I had to rip out the wall between the two bedrooms, put in a new door to the bathroom that would be accessible from the bedroom, and build a new wall for the closet. All a rather large quantity of work. And on top of that, I also was replacing all the trim in the rooms. So I had to put up new crown molding, new baseboard, and a chair rail.

Furthermore, that work had to be done after my normal work day in the evenings. That meant I was working late into the night. And I was also using up my weekends on this project. I’m sure that for a professional the whole project would have been done in just a few weekends, but for me a few weekends wasn’t enough time. Hence the long hours.

But now that I’m finally done with the remodeling (still some other projects I want to do before July), I am actually pretty satisfied with the result. And even though the remodeling wasn’t something I was very excited about doing initially, I am very happy I did it now.

The following is a gallery of pictures of the new room. Now you can see what I’ve been doing for the past few months and see why I haven’t been posting here as much.

I know I’ve been a bit remiss in my posting lately, but I have a good reason. Apart from being engaged(which takes up a lot of my free time. lol), I’ve also recently changed my place of employment again.

Yes, I know it wasn’t all that long ago that I changed jobs, but this job is a bit more suited to me than the last job.

In the first place, it doesn’t involve any travel. Which will be a good thing when it comes to getting married. Travel is fine when you are single, but not so great when you are married.

Second, it gets me back into programming full time. Which is something I really missed at my last job. Don’t get me wrong, my last job was pretty exciting. Doing avionics work on aircraft was pretty cool. The only problem was that I wasn’t really trained for that type of work. Plus, I really like programming.

So as of last Monday(the 10th of November), I started a new job working at Columbia Southern University.

Well, I’m finally back home and happy to be here. The above pic is what I look like after three months of traveling. The whole time I was overseas I didn’t bother to shave or cut my hair. Now that I’m home, I’m shaving it all off.

At my current job, I work with a pretty good group of guys. Most of them are easy to get along with, and all of them work pretty hard. One guy in particular is an extremely hard worker. He does his job without being told, and will even go out of his way to find work to do when his normal duties are completed.

You’re probably thinking that this guy sounds like a model employee. Someone who works without supervision. An employee that goes above and beyond what is required. The thing is that he has one big glaring fault. A fault that negates most of the good qualities I mentioned above. He literally can’t work with anyone.

The reason he can’t work with anyone is that he always assumes the worst about his fellow employees. By that, I don’t mean that he thinks all of his fellow employees are evil. What I mean is that whenever something comes up (good or bad), he assumes the worst possible motives of those involved.

So advice or critiques of his work (which is actually pretty good) is taken as a personal attack by the person giving the advice. And praise for his work is taken as an attempt to suck up to him for some future gain. If one of us is falling behind, he automatically assumes that the person falling behind was slacking off and not working. Any mistakes other employees make are taken as evidence that that person is stupid or doesn’t listen to instructions. Even in normal conversation, he assumes attacks on him whenever something is said that offends him.

With an attitude like that, you can understand why he can’t work with anyone. He claims that everyone he has ever worked with has “stabbed him in the back” at some time. If you always assume the worst of everyone around you, then it has to seem that way. You end up angry at everyone around you all the time. Which can’t be fun or even healthy.

The thing is, that most of the time he is completely wrong about people’s motives. But because he always assumes the worst, he always feels let down. Wouldn’t it be better to assume the best of someone? At least until the person has proved you wrong several times.

There are plenty of bad people in the world, who do have bad motives for what they do. But there are plenty of people out there who are just normal and don’t have an ulterior motive. If you just give them the benefit of the doubt sometimes, you will be surprised at how often you are right. And in the end you’ll be a lot happier and have more friends.

Well, yesterday was my last day at Silver Bullet Technology. I would have posted this yesterday, but I was so busy trying to wrap things up on my projects, that I just didn’t have time. I ended up working pretty late Friday trying to leave projects in a state where other programmers can pick them up, and writing emails to those same coworkers describing last minute things that I had forgotten to tell them.

When you work for a small company for any length of time, you end up becoming the expert at way too many different systems and projects. So when you leave, it becomes a huge effort to pass on that knowledge to others. Especially if you don’t have a replacement to train. So my last two weeks at Silver Bullet involved a lot of documentation and process writing, as well as a lot of coding to wrap up projects.

I’m sorry to go, but it really was time for a change in my life. So I’m moving on. I still stay in contact with everyone at Silver Bullet, and I’ll still be available to them all via email or phone. But they won’t see me already there early in the morning, with the coffee already brewed. And I’ll miss having those first of the day discussions with each of my coworkers as they walk past my office.

The above picture is one of my favorite demotivators. Mainly because it’s so true. We put off hard work that will lead to better things, in order to get immediate gratification.

I’ve been reading a book by John Maxwell called, Becoming a person of influence. The first chapter is on the importance of integrity. And one of the points in the chapter was that being reliable was an important aspect of integrity. And that’s something I’ve always worked towards. Having people count on me and know that I will do what I said I would, is really important to me.

But the book had an interesting quote that really struck me. It went like this, “Each day, do what you should do before what you want to do.” That is don’t procrastinate on your responsibilities. Finish what you need to do before playing.

Now being a person who cares a lot about accomplishing my responsibilities, I do put a lot of effort into making sure that I do things on time. If I told someone I was going to do something by a certain time or date, I do my best to have it done. But I have to say that procrastination is a serious problem with me. If I think I can put off working on something I don’t want to work on, I will. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still get it done on time, but I will wait until the last minute to do it.

And until reading that chapter, I never connected that tendency to procrastinate with integrity. But it really does fit. How can I be honest with myself about my responsibilities when I know I’m not working on them and should be? I’m only putting them off because I know I can get away with it. I know that no one will know that I didn’t work on the job until the last minute.

So my conclusion is that I’m going to put a lot more effort into finishing my responsibilities before the last minute. I’m going to try to not put things off that I know I can get away with doing just before they are required. I’m going to work on them when I should be.

I said last week that I was dealing with some changes. The changes are actually a shift in jobs.
I currently work for a company that writes banking software for check scanners. Mostly for remote deposit applications. My job consists of programming interfaces for the many different scanners on the market.
I’ve been doing it for almost three years, and I’ve really enjoyed working for the company and I’ve enjoyed the relationships that I’ve established with my coworkers and with the clients I deal with. But it’s time for a change.
So starting the 10th of March, I’ll be working for a new company. I can’t say a lot about the new job yet, but I can say it will involve a lot of travel and a lot less programming. So it will be a nice change from what I currently do.

I’ve been reading a programmers blog called Coding Horror recently. It can get pretty technical in some of it’s articles, so if you aren’t into programming I wouldn’t recommend it. If you are into programming, it really is a great blog and one you should start reading. Despite the programming focus, the latest article I think is one that applies to a lot of different industries. Not just IT based ones. So I thought I would post about it here.

The article is called, No Matter What They Tell You, It’s a People Problem. The gist of the article is that the main reason why software projects fail is a lack of a cohesive team. It’s not the only reason, but it is a big one. And it’s a reason that is hardly ever looked at or considered. No one wants to think that the reason their project isn’t going well, is because they don’t like or can’t get along with their coworkers.

Here is a quick excerpt from the article that I thought was really telling.

“Do you like the company of your teammates on a personal level? Do you respect your teammates professionally? If you were starting at another company, would you invite your coworkers along? Do you have spirited team discussions or knock-down, drag-out, last man standing filibuster team arguments? Are there any people on your team you’d ‘vote off the island’ if you could?”

So who would you vote off the team in your office?