Author Topic: modern life is rubbish  (Read 20996 times)

ian

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #25 on: 22 June, 2018, 10:49:49 pm »
As the last living human on subdeck 13583599gh of the mothership, all questions eventually find their way to my inbox. Or people CC me because somehow they thing it's something that I should know. It's not and I was genuinely quite happy not knowing. Those huge dangling emails quoting everything that was ever said. And someone's email begat someone else email, and begat begat begat. I wouldn't mind, but do you know how this Tidy Haired Thought Leader™ answers the many questions that emailed to him? Sometimes I just Google the answer and respond. That, dear minions, is how I know the GDP of Burundi. Do they think I just memorized them? OK, evidently. Other times, when I'm feeling less charitable, I just make up the answer. I'm like Alexa, if you'd somehow managed to persuade her to open a spreadsheet containing the Darkhold function, and she turned a bit evil. She'd still be better than Siri. No Siri, I said Excel, not XXX. Close. Close. Close.

Which reminds me, I've written the first episode of The Emailer in my head.

T42

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #26 on: 23 June, 2018, 08:17:20 am »
The really rubbishness of email is that some people expect you to do nothing other than reply to their emails immediately with no regard for the fact that you do actually have a job to do apart from attending to their egomail

Likewise the godawfulness of Skype.  People would yak & yak & yak just because it was free. Bloke I knew in Oz would call in the Ozzie evening when he had SFA to do but waffle and I had SFA to do but work all morning.
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Mr Larrington

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #27 on: 23 June, 2018, 09:38:16 am »
Thought that was left foot braking . . .

Left-foot braking was introduced by BMC's Scandiwegians attempting to make Mini-Coopers go sideways, while heel-and-toe is intended to permit one to blip the throttle while braking and changing down, and is the preserve of MG owners in string-backed driving gloves, and Troy Queef.  Neither requires the simultaneous operation of all three pedals with the right foot.
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TheLurker

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #28 on: 23 June, 2018, 09:38:27 am »
Meetings.  At work. The never-ending absolutely bloody pointless chat-fests polluted with something that is almost entirely, but not quite, unlike the language spoken by normal human beings. And does anything come out of these "meetings" other than hot air and a feeling of alienation?  That last was rhetorical because everybody here already knows the answer.

Τα πιο όμορφα ταξίδια γίνονται με τις δικές μας δυνάμεις - Φίλοι του Ποδήλατου

Jaded

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #29 on: 23 June, 2018, 10:41:40 am »
Rules for meetings:

No agenda: no meeting.
Chair late: no meeting.
No briefing paper for agenda item: it's not on the agenda.
After the planned end time (1 hour, 2 hours...): meeting over.
Strong chair to cut the crap: "could you come to your point please, if you have one"

Simple...
It is simpler than it looks.

Torslanda

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #30 on: 23 June, 2018, 11:16:59 am »
You forgot one...

If it can be done with an email - no meeting required.

My fave.
VELOMANCER

Well that's the more blunt way of putting it but as usual he's dead right.

ian

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #31 on: 23 June, 2018, 12:14:08 pm »
Ah, meetings the things we do between email and opening spreadsheets. You know who really loves meetings? Americans. There's nothing my American colleagues can't have a meeting about. Let's get on a call, they'll announce if they're feeling really gung ho, to discuss that email. Otherwise, it's a future calendar bomb. There's some teams that practically MIRV my month. None of these meetings really achieve anything other than give people a platform to talk – and it's usually alpha-management types who just have to talk because they're alpha-management types and that's what alpha-management types do, the people that want to be alpha-management types (they always write MBA after their name, makes them easy to spot), and the wafflers. The wafflers, at least, may have a point. Or will have. Probably. The minimum unit of any meeting run by Americans in one hour, of which the first ten minutes will be spent waiting for Sherri to get coffee and bagels and then inevitable technical issues. Oh yeah, and when it finally gets going (I'm going to dial out and dial back in again!) for those on the phone, surround sound background chewing. You ever listen to twelve people eating bagels? It's like listening to a hungry hippopotamus masticate its way through a tyre yard.

The standard outcome for any meeting is another meeting. They self-perpetuate. I sat through a call the other about a product release where the delivery drone simply read everything from the screen. That's a search field. That's the login button. Click this for help. Someone needs fucking help. Honestly, this is stuff I could work out for myself in about five minutes. Or just write it down. A nice simple document that I can read in a few minutes. Job done. Hundreds of people have just saved 55 minutes. I've spent a good chunk of my working life in the US and they truly are the least productive people ever mostly because they simply can't say no to a meeting. I'm harsh when I have power – I expect an agenda, some explanation of why I need to attend, and what outcome we plan to achieve. I personally never book a meeting longer than 30 minutes, and often fifteen. That, at least, focuses attention.

I won't even start on the Town Hall. An event grimmer than a public execution. Of kittens. Do they really think there's any value in explaining the graph projected in front of us? I have a PhD, I can read a bar chart. And it's always delivered by the CFO or some such in a literally death-inducing monotone. The there's happy happy QA with über-leaders from the bridge because they really want to know our opinions. No, really. They don't and anyway, they just get suck-up questions from the wannabe alpha-management types, MBA.

I'm generally not allowed to ask questions, for obvious reasons. I'm not allowed near the bridge. Which is fine, they care about as much about what I think as I do about what they think. There's occasionally glints of entertainment, I was stuck in one of those interminable diversity things the other week (and I've no problem with diversity, but any lack thereof is systemic and not likely to be addressed by Powerpoint) where they were waffling on about 'strong female role models' in management because that's really it isn't it, women just needed to be told – anyway (I know, the irony of waffling) at the end someone raised her hand and asked very politely if a 'role model' could babysit her kids. Cue the most splendid moment of silence from our über boss.

I think our entire modern working life is rubbish.

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #32 on: 23 June, 2018, 03:13:40 pm »
You forgot one...

If it can be done with an email - no meeting required.

My fave.


Unfortunately my manager doesn't seem to realise this but repeatedly complains about having too many meetings...

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #33 on: 23 June, 2018, 03:25:33 pm »
My manager discourages emails and likes colleagues to go to me direct. So I get phone calls where the person on the other end witters at me distractingly while I try and look something up, or my personal lack-of-favourite hovers by my desk while I'm in the middle of something else, until I prioritise their answerable-if-they'd-only-use-the-database-properly query.

Modern life is only rubbish because 50% of people are of below average intelligence.

mattc

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #34 on: 23 June, 2018, 04:56:15 pm »
My office is effectively paperless as my toner cartridge ran out three years ago.

 ;D

(Why do I think you've been saving that joke for many many months ... )
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TheLurker

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #35 on: 23 June, 2018, 06:16:30 pm »
Quote from: ian
...my American colleagues...
Not just the septics I'm afraid.  I think that somewhere, possibly in a hollowed out extinct volcano, an evil genius is creating hundreds of identical companies with totally sclerotic business processes so that when the world grinds to an utter and irrevocable halt he (no woman could be so cold-bloodedly callous as to inflict current business practices on people) can step in with a handful of companies that actually work and achieve world domination and wealth beyond measure.  And all perfectly legal too.  No mucking about with knocked off nuclear weapons or hare-brained attempts to secure the world's gold reserves.  No mindless bloody henchmen forever cocking up even the simplest instruction.  Absolutely no risk whatsoever of some bloodthirsty, monosyllabic, alcoholic government goon tipping you into your own shark tank.  In fact no bloody sharks at all.  No, not even ones with lasers.

Quote from: ian
...The standard outcome for any meeting is another meeting... ...stuff I could work out for myself in about five minutes. Or just write it down. A nice simple document that I can read in a few minutes. Job done.
Hark I think I hear the cry of the lesser spotted, nay rarely spotted, Common-Sense Bird!  Quick!  Someone fetch me my 12 bore and game bag.  I haven't shot one of those in many a year!

Quote from: ian
Do they really think there's any value in explaining the graph projected in front of us? I have a PhD, I can read a bar
Hell I've only got CSE French and even I can read a bar chart.  Bigger bars generally mean better yeah?
Τα πιο όμορφα ταξίδια γίνονται με τις δικές μας δυνάμεις - Φίλοι του Ποδήλατου

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #36 on: 23 June, 2018, 07:28:57 pm »
my pet hates are the speaker who reads their slides.  If you only say what is on the slides then why did I give up my time to hear you waffle.

Secondly the comment "this slide is a bit busy and you won't be able to read it at the back but....".  This makes me wonder what you are hiding.


Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #37 on: 25 June, 2018, 03:35:43 pm »
I dislike like the person I shall call 'MrDictionary'. This is the person who, when you ask them how to spell a word, recites the entire dictionary.

Or, when in a meeting, you ask them "Does this process produce x or y?", they gabble the Cyrillic alphabet. You listen to them patiently (or impatiently) for 20 minutes - they are a sensitive soul, you dare not interrupt them - then you have to ask they question again. At this point they look offended, confused and say that they aren't sure.
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Torslanda

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #38 on: 25 June, 2018, 04:27:53 pm »
File under 'I've listened to you for 20 minutes and I'm none the wiser, merely better informed...'
VELOMANCER

Well that's the more blunt way of putting it but as usual he's dead right.

ian

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #39 on: 25 June, 2018, 04:34:35 pm »
There's also the dangerous documenters – cue the 70 page dense Word file explaining how to use a search field. Number of people who look at p2 of any given text document <=1, and that's the author who may or may not have managed to read that far.

ian

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #40 on: 11 September, 2019, 02:23:38 pm »
Power sockets. They're not keeping up with the demands of modern life. For reasons best left to himself, our fix-it-man has bought us a new wireless doorbell. He's not even charging us for it, he's apparently fed up with the sign on the front door that says 'the bell doesn't work' in a language that is apparently unintelligible to all couriers.

Now, tbh, I was happy without a doorbell because they're just another reason why modern life is rubbish. Who comes and knocks on your door in 2019? Couriers don't hang around long for you to get there, and even JWs don't bother. Anyway doing door-to-door looks up our steep street and thinks, nah.

So, I have two receivers. How many free power sockets do I have? Precisely nil. All the current ones are sprouting adaptors left, right, and centre, mad tendrils of wires inveigling their way under cabinets, feeding god knows what. None of it looks even vaguely safe, there are corners of my room that looks like developing world shantytowns. I wouldn't mind so much, but we had the place rewired five years ago and had extra sockets installed.

Back in the sixties when the Asbestos Palace was constructed it seemed the one socket per room was more than adequate.

Beardy

  • Shedist
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #41 on: 11 September, 2019, 02:38:22 pm »
I reworded my House when I moved in, and like you I’ve run out of sockets in many rooms. The one room that has spare sockets is,the Lou Gehrig, but that is because we’ve moved the TV and it’s associated boxes to a different location and now need to run that all from a single extension lead. Pah!
For every complex problem in the world, there is a simple and easily understood solution that’s wrong.

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #42 on: 11 September, 2019, 04:11:31 pm »
When my granddad rebuilt the bungalow that he and Nan moved into he knew exactly how he felt about sockets. One wall of the living room has eight double sockets alone and the rest of the place is similar.

He never ever did anything by halves.
Miles cycled 2014 = 3551.5 (Target 7300 :()
Miles cycled 2013 = 6141.4
Miles cycled 2012 = 4038.1

Kim

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #43 on: 11 September, 2019, 04:31:31 pm »
I have no qualms about daisy-chaining 4-ways and such, as long as the load is something sensible like computer equipment where it's unlikely to get within an order of magnitude of the fuse rating[1].  My electronics workbench has a 3-way (things under test) and a 4-way with a grelco in it (equipment I want to switch on and off in one go) plugged into an 8-way (other stuffthat stays on), eventually terminating at a plug-in RCD, because RCDs save lives and prevent embarrassment.  The biggest load is the soldering iron.

The server rack has slightly more organised power distribution (rackmount 10-ways!), but most of it's fed from the UPS, which can be trusted to trip out at the slightest hint of an overload, in the way that 13A plug fuses don't.  TBH, there's a lot less spaghetti in there than there was when we had an Electric Monk watching telly for us.  I've also been embracing Power-Over-Ethernet where appropriate[2], to prevent excessive breeding of wall-warts.

Anything that involves serious heating-type loads gets treated with the suspicion normally reserved for a village hall tea-urn, and gets its own socket with a known-good earth.


[1] Obviously this is a controlled environment where nobody's going to plug a hoover in somewhere stupid, because the person doing the hovering (on the odd occasion that hoovering gets done) is invariably me.
[2] This includes doorbells.

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #44 on: 11 September, 2019, 04:55:07 pm »
You can get 8-way extensions that stand vertically, saving space and untidiness, possibly with USB charging sockets too these days.

Mrs Pingu

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #45 on: 11 September, 2019, 04:56:17 pm »
I've also been embracing Power-Over-Ethernet where appropriate[2], to prevent excessive breeding of wall-warts.

Every day is a school day.
Do you need to install special cable to do that then? (I assume it's not just your bog std Cat5)
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

Mrs Pingu

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #46 on: 11 September, 2019, 04:56:58 pm »
I reworded my House when I moved in, and like you I’ve run out of sockets in many rooms. The one room that has spare sockets is,the Lou Gehrig, but that is because we’ve moved the TV and it’s associated boxes to a different location and now need to run that all from a single extension lead. Pah!

Chortling at your autocorrects :)
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

Beardy

  • Shedist
Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #47 on: 11 September, 2019, 05:00:22 pm »
I reworded my House when I moved in, and like you I’ve run out of sockets in many rooms. The one room that has spare sockets is,the Lou Gehrig, but that is because we’ve moved the TV and it’s associated boxes to a different location and now need to run that all from a single extension lead. Pah!

Chortling at your autocorrects :)
I’m not doing much better than yesterday am I?
For every complex problem in the world, there is a simple and easily understood solution that’s wrong.

Mrs Pingu

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Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #48 on: 11 September, 2019, 05:07:28 pm »
I reworded my House when I moved in, and like you I’ve run out of sockets in many rooms. The one room that has spare sockets is,the Lou Gehrig, but that is because we’ve moved the TV and it’s associated boxes to a different location and now need to run that all from a single extension lead. Pah!

Chortling at your autocorrects :)
I’m not doing much better than yesterday am I?
I like them!
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

ian

Re: modern life is rubbish
« Reply #49 on: 11 September, 2019, 05:27:32 pm »
You can get 8-way extensions that stand vertically, saving space and untidiness, possibly with USB charging sockets too these days.

My wife has one of those. Weirdly, computers seem to require less pluggery these days. iMac and laptop charger, desk lamp, and erm, that's it under mine.