He told a story about moving to Dubai & finding out just before he moved that his live-in girlfriend of some four years had been sleeping with the tennis coach. He was not best pleased by all this and spent the first couple of months in Dubai licking his wounds & being non-productive: turning up at his desk but achieving very little. Then word came that there was an audit or review and so the things he had been neglecting for months had to get done and sharpish. He stayed in all night one night before the presentation and then was just leaving at some unreasonable hour the next morning when he ran into one of the high chiefs coming to work. They spotted him, asked him what he was doing and he said he’d been there all night working on The Thing. This, not the months of neglect and being useless, got noticed, this made his reputation and all of a sudden he was “good at his job”.

The point is – most of the time “good at your job” is just being mediocre at your job – “good enough” – except when the bad news has really hit the fan and if you can pull something useful then, thats what counts. Most of the rest of the time its just be at your desk in case they need you and do what is needed to avoid the worst of problems.

This chimed with some experiences I’ve witnessed – busting ass to get things done only to find the criteria have changed, interest has been lost, etc. The wonders of Presenteeism is this in a nutshell – as long as you are seen at your desk at wierd hours, good enough. The whole “work smarter, not longer/harder” notion seems not to have gotten traction like it should have.

I love the Zone: when you can just lock in on something useful, doing the thing that people seem to be willing to pay a fortune for, move heaven and earth to put you in a place to do and in deed have other people on the payroll dedicated just to making sure you can do this thing. This is nothing to do with hours worked, or when. For me, I tend to zone on arrival at my desk with fresh hot data ready to be looked at, so with breakfast coffee but before morning coffee. Then the day starts, chaos ensues and the Zone is lost. It may or may not be regained sometime after lunch, maybe around four, maybe later.

The Zone is the antithesis of Good Enough. Just hanging about is not being in the zone, just hanging around is boring as paint – or worse, stressful junk-work making slides in a different colour because someone objects to the original colours. I like going to work in the morning, I’ve worked jobs that I hated, its not worth it. Its Most Of Your Life. I realise that many people have little to no option, its work a job they dislike or starve, but I’ve been freed from that by the grace of fate. I want a job where I can Zone.

The final point my friend made was “make your boss look good, thats what they want” – which I guess gels onto the point I try to live by which is “don’t provide problems, provide solutions” – it you are going to go bug someone with “Its Fucked!” run the conversation in your head – its probably going to go ‘damn, why? how do we fix it?’ Have answers to both of those questions before you go anywhere – don’t just pull back the bosses rug to reveal a pit full of scorpions, hand them an industrial DDT sprayer to fix the problem. That point I could live with.

So to go back -clock-punching is a step up from just waiting to die, for sure, but if you can actually turn that time in your life into something you enjoy, you have clawed back most of your waking hours from the Machine. You have Won a vast fraction of your time on this earth back from the millstones of society. Thats worth trying, enjoy yourself *and* get paid for it.

Last year, 2011, had a strong theme to it, starting off with a lot of faffing about, falling off my culture shock curve into a little too much warcraft – much of that poorly timed during bouts of insomnia to achieve maximum inconvenience for not so much progress in the game. I scrubbed that for a while and ventured out to the beach, tried this whole outdoors thing. It proved somewhat agreeable so I’m trying a bit more of it. Or rather, when I started looking around the region here the tide of things to do just swamped me so for 2012 I’ve got three objectives: learn to ski (winter), build more scuba hours (summer) and get my French up to scratch (full year). If I can get all that done, it’ll have been a reasonable productive year.

The book has been mothballed until I sort out my social life. I’ll most certainly have another fine opportunity to be a shut-in on the corporations dollar in the near-to-mid future so I may as well get out and about while I can.

Oh – and tip to anyone coming to France; carry a lighter even if you don’t smoke, its how people ‘introduce themselves’ to strangers. After that talking about skiing is *the* icebreaker. I’m not saying 100% but between the two of those you’re good for quite a lot of social situations. Provided you’ve got some French; no French, no dice. But since almost every French person who’d care to talk to strangers knows more English than we do French, you just need to make them feel comfortable enough to use it by demonstrating how terrible your French is, then you’ll switch into Franglais and go from there.

2012, who’d've thunk it? Its like the future snuck up.

Listening to: Downlink – Gamma Ray Burst

I try to get out for a ‘big’ trip every Mayday and Hallowe’en, pull Christmas at home and … well that usually eats all my time. This year, I had the idea to sit still for the summer and see… then offers impossible to refuse seem to sprout like weeds in my inbox and all of a sudden things like ‘a normal sunday at home’ become unusual times. This is far from a problem, I’m just shocked at how my year suddenly snapped into focus in the past month. This is that effect of ‘time passing more quickly as you get older’ right? I guess like sliding down an inverse parabola, its a barely noticeable slope… then all of a sudden you’re staring straight down and the bottom is flying up to you.

I’ve taken on an ambitious project, one that I’m not quite sure I’m up to – scepticism has been expressed – but I think its worth trying; the worst consequence of failure is just the lost time, success could be glorious… Fortune Favours the Bold and all that. I realise now that the culture shock of the past half year had knocked me into a defensive crouch and I need to shake that off and just get moving again – because to do nothing is to just let the time fall though my fingers – ending up in the same place as to try and fail but without the chance of success.

Let me take a moment to apologise for the inherent cryptic… rambly… nature of all this. Speak ye not aloud on the internets and all that but my point from all this is:
1. decision trees – they’re a great tool to sort out things :)
2. keeping a fairly detailed six/eight month look ahead has saved my bacon repeatedly in the past, I recommend it.

Its eating my life. I’ve ground a Tauren Warrior up to L38, ten levels of that are thanks to two dungeon dives lead by the Wanderer butchering everything with his l85 Orc as myself & Mr. E trailed behind frantically trousering loot and trying not to attract any attention. The big things thats struck me is how much more painful this all would have been if I hadn’t had the rest of the gang to a) hand me a pile of gold and b) a stack of big bags on day one. Slot juggling all the loot and bits from mining, fishing and engineering would have been such a pain in the ass without all those bags. Also, I’ve run down my gold stash by about 70gps, the majority of which was blown on a pile of Moss Agates for engineering and a recipe for mudfish so I could actually level my cooking with fishing.

I’m not loving it the same way as I *love* Civilization, Homeworld, Mass Effect, etc but its got me hooked. I’m putting in four hour stretches traipsing about hills punching gorillas to mine iron because thats all I can level on. If someones going to tell me that there are spiderboots that let you climb steep slopes, I’m going to be pissed. Right now once I get to a flying mount then that’ll be it, all these people looking for help can kiss my ass, I’ll be HALOing in to grab their ores and dissappearing. Also; I’m getting to the point of hating the Alliance, ganking bastards. Iron zones tend to be hazardous, but I’ve my engineering up until I need magecloth and mithril materials now, so looks like I’m going to have to start sneaking into high level zones to loot metals again. This was what I was doing at the start in the Stranglethorn Cape – happily with a Kodo you can outrun a pirate on foot no matter what level he is.

I like some of the little quests; I find I wander about off course a lot trying to find my way up hills to that bloody node thats just out of reach. Fishing is another one that drags you off into wierd places, and one i liked was finding Princess Poobah off on Jaguero Isle. I could just see this battered tauren prospector listening to this tauren princess wittering on about needing her shoes back from King Kong down the coast and thinking “if you weren’t standing on that gold lode, no chance”. Also, now that I’ve found theres a point I’m shooting every random critter I can find – beaches and crabs are fairly efficient.

Certainly solves the ‘what will I do til Mass Effect 3′ question.

A picture of Snow near Lincoln Gate

Winter hit Ireland like a bomb again this year. I’m definitely in the camp of those who think it’s pretty for about six hours, but then would really rather get back to the things that need to be done. It’s probably principally a result of living in the city centre, where pure white carpets become projectiles and/or brown muddy slush far too quickly.

One immediate problem with snow around Christmas is that it can make deliveries extremely unreliable. That can be a major hindrance when you, like me, prefer to do all your holiday shopping in one intense burst on Amazon and related sites.

It’s a complete mystery as to how these things get resolved. Amazon.us continues to be the most reliable, getting stuff to Ireland faster than Amazon.co.uk, admittedly for a higher cost. I was relying on two other services for a new PC which I have ordered. The first was a fairly small parcel service, and the second was the far-better-known company.

In both cases, the services decided that they couldn’t reach the delivery site to hand over the boxes, which was infuriating because the second company had just dropped a box off in the worst of the blizzard without a complaint. I ended up driving out the the depot in Sandyford. That proved fruitful, they were very helpful in getting my parcel, but it was somewhat treacherous escaping deep snow in the Industrial Estate.

Far more annoying is the issue with the second service. It always annoys me when customer support people use an avalanche of jargon-filled text to try and put off complaints. I don’t feel satisfied by that sort of stock response, and it doesn’t solve my problem. It’s also an irritation to discover that they not only haven’t got any idea when your parcel is ready, but that they have also closed the depot to customer pick-ups.

“Not only have we failed to fulfill our service to you, but you can’t take matters into your own hands to resolve it. Double inconvenience.”

Here’s hoping that the tracking system will update over the next few days to say that it’s done, but with New Year’s Day in the middle, it doesn’t seem likely.

Despite its many shortcomings, IKEA holds a special place in my heart. It may be like one’s first girlfriend or first car, simply that it was first furniture store in my way when I needed to furnish a space. It could be because it was the cheapest place in town to get breakfast while I was a destitute postgrad. But I think it was because I really enjoy putting things together, making IKEA the drug pusher to my inner crack whore. After putting together my own stuff during postgrad, I pounced on any opportunity to put my friends’ stuff together whenever they furnished a new space. With each bookshelf, bed, chair, or stereo cabinet I pieced together, I noticed a pattern emerging.

It wasn’t that the directions were unclear, or all that difficult to follow. One doesn’t even need to be literate to make it through a set of IKEA directions. But with every piece save the three-piece wonders that one doesn’t need directions for, I noticed there was a point in every assembly process where I got stuck. It’s when I’m more than halfway but less than two-thirds done. It’s where the wheels come off. (Sometimes literally, in the case of a particularly sticky chest of drawers.) It’s the point when I look at the sad little man in the front of the directions and think that I, like the little man, might be able to solve all my problems by ringing IKEA and confessing that I have no idea how to proceed.

I call this the IKEA Point. I have gotten past it every time without having to ring IKEA, though it has sometimes required that I leave the room and have a cup of tea. Oddly enough, I have reached the IKEA Point in other sections of my life, and thanks to IKEA I have some confidence that I can get past it. I had a series of scares while working on my thesis and research proposals, for example, where I was convinced I would have to give up on LaTeX and retype everything in Microsoft Word. I got past it.

Lots of stuff in life doesn’t come with instructions, but some stuff does. Often those instructions are confusing, but it’s possible to get past it. Not a bad thing to remember, when facing down a room full of pine and you’re armed with only an allen wrench.

I usually like Christmas. A lot. This year a series of mildly irritating circumstances in the immediate runup to the holiday reminded me of all the stuff I really despise about Christmas.

I’m lucky that although I am technically a part of the retail phenomenon that is the problem, neither I nor anyone else in the shop feel the need to force Christmas down anyone’s throat. In general? I blame retailers for everything I hate about Christmas. Starting as soon as they possibly can, sometimes before Halloween, we are whipped into a frenzy of spending and preparing and stressing to create the perfect day, which nearly always falls flat because we are all of us human. After months of preparation, Christmas leaves people exhausted. This is perfectly timed, as people are thrust into contact with their extended families with whom they may not get along even on the best of days.

We are told to shop for everyone, regardless of whether they want anything or can use the token you’ve procured for them. We either abstain from shopping for ourselves, or we buy stuff anyway and feel guilty. And then we still binge shop the day after Christmas. There are even sales for facilitating this.

Meanwhile, as Dublin is hit with weather we’re not equipped to handle, some people are left stranded and unable to travel wherever they’d planned on spending their Christmas. It throws things into sharp perspective, when you’re out shopping at the last minute for someone you may not get to see after all. You remember that what you (and they) really want is just to be home for Christmas.

I am lucky in that I usually get what I want for Christmas, which is to be home. After the frenzy dies down and everyone is enjoying the results of their frantic shopping, I can enjoy being home. It’s a lot easier these days than it used to be, but I don’t appreciate it any less.

I hope you’re enjoying your Christmas, wherever you are, whoever you’re with, and whatever you’re doing.

Civ turned up after that and its ebbed and flowed over time but I’ve logged thirteen hour days empire building on every version, every expansion pack since Civ 1.

The first one that worried me myself was Buffy, where you could for a time shuffle across channels – Sky, BBC, Channel 4 – such that you watched four or five hours on a Friday (I think) in a row. The false memories of conversations with these people who did not exist was when I decided it was time to ease up.

Harry Potter briefly – mostly the worrying thing there was the fanfic. Buffy/Harry crossover fanfic. Reams of it.

Mass Effect is getting there for me now, but I have discovered the counter! Revert back to earlier fandoms; short out those neurons wherever they are. Thus for the past fortnight I have been rereading the Potter series, going to the movie and digging out the old Drop in the Ocean crossover fanfics. Which oddly, lead me back to Spoils of Vanity, which I must say was actually rather good in its good bits – and has inspired me to get back to writing again on Book Two (own original stuff).

Which is a good result so I’m going to chalk up this fight fandom with fandom strategem as a success. Goodnight, internet.

I’ve paid the Twilight series little mind, given that everything I’ve heard about it has been crap, but I, xaosseed, heartily approve the above-linked. Sic ‘em, Buffy, stake him right through his weepy heart…

Death To The World

Death May Die