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Showing posts with label Tales and Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tales and Stories. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Proper Project Planning

There are many guides to handle a project properly and efficiently. Most of the contain fancy graphics and tables which, when it comes down to real life usage, most precisely fail to be of any use.
It's not only the graphical depiction of the processes you're supposed to apply that are wrong, but also the whole processes seem to be terribly inaccurate if you look back on a finished project.

That's also something that's suggested by those guides so you can learn from your mistakes. However, I recommend not to do so, because most of the time you'll end up so depressed about all the things you did wrong or didn't do at all that you need a really stiff drink afterwards.
I'd propose you just skip the looking back part and go out for a drink immediately after having handed out the project report.
Most people already do that, but they disguise it by calling it an "end of project celebration", which is basically the euphemistic equivalent to a nice and hefty booze-up.

Here's how projects are really handled, regardless of any advice.

Person A comes up with solution F, Person B has the idea for solution G, C knows how the solution H works and Persons D and E are arguing about the report layout.
While A tries to convince everyone that F is the best, B and C try to win D and E for their course. The next day A says that solutions G and H are equally good, B now says that F is perfectly fine, D can't decide which of F, G and H she hates the most and E has lost track of everything. C has called out sick that day.
The following day E has finally caught up to the rest and has many issues about each solution, A is discussing with C the happenings of the previous day, B is violently trying to get F to be the final solution, C keeps unsuccessfully insisting on a democratic selection and D is nagging about the lousy teamwork and how the project is failing.
After the more or less worst solution has been found, everyone agrees on going on with it so they can finally have their cup of coffee (except D, she hates coffee, she's just lazy). After everything is thorougly calculated and estimated and the deadline is drawing closer, E finds out that the solution is not working after all and that A,B and D are lousy jerks nobody can possibly work with.
The following quarrels and lengthy nightshifts result in a completely reworked report, which is all but correct or even useful.


Despite all these problems, the projects are usually a striking success and nobody really knows why (and nobody actually wants to know).


So long
Tim


Friday, January 19, 2007

Surviving death

I went through a painful week.
I had to deal with this really annoying customer. He was trying to get a refund for his broken leg, because it failed to serve as a crowbar. I tried to explain to him that we don't have any spare legs in stock, since our branch hospital isn't that big, so he should address to our Head Hospital. He didn't like that and started yelling at me more or less, but rather more than less, incoherently.
I hung up because I was needed in the operation garage to explain to another customer that it is not possible to replace his heart with a green 12 cylinder diesel engine.
We ran out of the green ones yesterday. He then also started yelling at me more or less, but rather more than less, incoherently.

Many people always get off their initial topic when getting angry about something. Some scientist say this is due to the limited mental abilities (and the lack of any knowlegde about platinum based nanocells for semi-purposeless use in quantum medicine) of normal humans, but most of those scientists are elitist smart-asses.

Despite their hateful attitude, they still have a point there. If you have ever watched someone being really furious (best enjoyed at a safe distance of at least a bit more than armlength, so you won't get involved in severe fist-to-face complications), you surely noticed the tremendous amout of energy the person is wasting on pointless tasks like smashing furniture or learning French.

Of course, all this energy has to come from somewhere; in most cases it's sanity that has to bear the reduced power supply. The worst thing you could do at this stage is pointing at the raging person and laugh.
There are, however, three things you can do in order to survive the rampage.
Sit-and-Care, Sit-and-Bear and Sit-and-Stare.
The last one is the easiest, because it's almost effortless to sit still and create an air of mostly unoffending indifference. Just sit and stare at a random point anywhere nowhere near the person and their surroundings.

Sit-and-Bear is for all the masochist out there, who love to get a nice beat up from time to time (This method may become Lie-unconsciousely-on-the-floor-and-Bear at some stage, but you'll have managed the worst part by then, so don't worry about that)

Sit-and-Care is hard to do, but can have astoundingly positive results. The general idea behind it is to pretend you'd care about the persons feelings and thus try to confirm them in their temporarily distorted opinions. Eventually, you will have to stand up and smash some precious porcelain to assert your point in a physically convincing way. If you do well, you'll have finally found someone who helps you to move into that nice new flat.

Cheers
Tim

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Lies, untruths and other unimportances

I've just overheard...errrm I mean overread this conversation between person A, B, C and D on a forum. It started all after Person B posted a picture of his desktop on which you could see Firefox running in 3 different windows.

A: What kind of Firefox user are you? Tabs, man, TABS.

B: What you don't realize is that each of those windows contains about 57 tabs each.

C: Fifty seven tabs you say?
Triangle Fellow... I am going to accuse you of spewing untruths.

B: Hey, there's a lot of pretty girls posting pics of themselves on the internet these days.

C: Lies.
Most of them are men.

B: No.

D: Correction. Lots of them used to be men

Of course, such conversations happen every day in the Net, but you just can't possibly get them all. Unless you are some kind of super being that sees and hears everything, like that guy...what was his name again? Something with a G and an O i think...damn my memory for names.

Oh, yes, now I remember, Gordon. Really cool guy, you know, but not the brightest. He once said that although he knew almost everything about anything there was something to know about, he had never figured out why exactly the chicken crossed the street. I told him it crossed it in order to get to the other side, whereupon he seemed to think about it for a bit and then told me what a unconceivably dimwitted answer that was and ran off crying and laughing at the same time.

I've never met him ever since, but I heard he had snapped completely because of me and after spending 4 years in the Happy People Adjustment Asylum he decided to shorten his name and to found his own relgion. (The nurses told me, that, the day before he left, he came to them and asked if it was ok for them if he escaped now)

I'd really love to know what has happened in all this time...

So long
Tim

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Death is imminent

I was supposed to get up at 6 this morning and leave at 7, but I didn't, because I had some very serious and important things to do in bed, most of them involved a lot of lying around and snoring. Luckily, attendance was totally voluntary, so I didn't cause any problems for someone else (which would also have somehow been fun to do). Of course I was fully aware of that when my alarm clock rang, I always instantly know what I need to know after waking up. I'm not of that sort of people who suffer from overnight-oblivion. As most illnesses, an annoying and absolutely useless one. If you want to know wheter you are infected or not go through the following check list (it's the only way to find out, believe me):

1. Before you go to bed, put your cat, your parrot, your guinea pig and your mouse in your wardrobe.
2. Try memorizing which animal you put on which spot and go to bed.
3. Sleep
4. Wake up.....I said: WAKE UP!......there we go
5. At this point, if you get off to the kitchen to get some tea for breakfast, you seem to be a very severe case of overnight-oblivion, because you didn't just forget your pets in the wardrobe, no, you also forgot that you hate tea. You are doomed and there's not point in making a fuss about it now, you'll eventually die sometime anyway.
If you happen to remember what you did last night, try to write down where exactly the pets are supposed to be.
6. Open the wardrobe.
Analysis
First case: Cat: occupying one random spot Parrot, mouse and guinea pig: more or less absent
Tough luck, buddy. You very probably didn't remember their positions correctly, did you? You have slight overnight-oblivion.
Second case: The animals are exactly where you put them. Congratulations, you successfully starved your pets to death without even noticing. Jubilate, this means you don't suffer from overnight-oblivion but from devasting stupidity.

Good luck

Tim

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Oh, the memories...

I was rather startled to meet that old school mate again this morning. It was in no way a positive surprise, like finding your long lost car key in your dog's droppings would be. No, it was more like the feeling you have just before you get the chance to analyse what your stomach has done to your breakfast. As you might be guessing now, I didn't really appreciate his presence. Hey, good guess! He used to be a real jerk and he somehow managed to maintain his very unpleasant state of mind over the past 5 years. The reason for my surprise was not really his inert character, it was more the fact that he was in no way supposed to be where I was this morning. I have moved several times since I had left that hicktown and I've taken only minor interest in what has been happening with it or its citizens. Specially not in that particular person and I think so did he.

So, I took a nice walk in the not so nice weather to the local bakery. The shortest way there led me across the railway station (a very small one, there are two directions you can choose: Either you go to a thriving city or you don't. Also, the station was once the scene of a ghastly accident, which some people still claim to be an "unghastly" crime, but that's another story). And there I met him. Stupidly, he noticed me first, so I didn't have the chance to avoid him. We were going through some painful small talk, just the usual stuff, when I suddenly remembered that lesson in phys.-ed, which made me burst out in laughter.

We were playing football (no, the real football. I refuse to use the "s" word) in the hall. As usual I was the goalkeeper, for I was good at it and not because, as it happens very often, being the small, fat boy who no one wants to play with. Then, all of a sudden, he was in front of me, attacking, and no defendants around, just him and me. I ran out to intercept the ball coming from high above. He ran forward to do a header. Very unfortunately for him, he came first.

Usually it's a good thing to be first on the ball, but not in this case. I can't really say how it exactly happened, but he must have rammed his head down towards my rapidly ascending head. The next thing I remember is me, lying about 3 meters next to ground zero, where a, for sports halls, unusually large amount of blood was covering the floor. Eventually I found out, that all this blood used to flow through my opponents veins, but obviousely it decided upon impact to take a look what being outside of his body was like. I think I was unconcious for longer than I thought at first, because he was just being carried out and everybody else seemed to be standing somewhere outstandingly different from where they stood just before I passed out. I guess I had been gone for at least 30 seconds. After answering all the Are-you-all-right questions coming from my immediate vicinity with a yes, I began to feel better and better. Not only because my body was recovering from the vast tremor (or the fact that most bystanders thought this carnage to be very entertaining and free time producing), but also because of my malicious joy of knowing to have unvoluntarily kicked some serious ass without the ill-effect of having to bear a punishment from a higher level of jurisdiction. Now, that's basically not a very nice thing to do, but in the end it actually was (and still is) funny, since he was an idiot and really needed it.
A lot of people seemed to agree on this point and were quite happy with the result of the event, which was a broken nose (not mine, obviousely).

What I got of my early sunday morning trip were four buns and two croissants for breakfast, a pair of wet sneakers, and an old schoolmates heartfelt hatred towards me.
What a nice day, isn't it?

Cheers
Tim