Oh look I’m doing it again
Sep/090
I’m about to write something about how much I procrastinate and then make a meta reference to this act of blogging which in itself is just more procrastination. OH the irony. I’ve done this before. I really should have a procrastination category… or just rename uncategorised to procrastination, they might be the same thing. If it’s not about something in particular, it’s likely to just be an avenue of distraction.
Currently having issues with motivation and delayed gratification and other things. Most of the time.
The problem is largely that I don’t have a ‘real’ job, in that I never have to go anywhere to work. I’m not currently an employee of anyone. I’m a partner, and a sole trader. I work from home, basically. Home is also where I play, and sleep, and drink, and eat, and generally do many things which are not work.
It might help if I studied at home, which would presumably create some association between being at home and effort. But I don’t study. Assignments are a pile of nonsense left to the last minute. Exams are for the exam period.
I’m typing this fairly quickly, at least. I’m very conscious of the work I need to do. I’m also conscious of tonight’s meeting – when I want to be there, and when I need to be there. It was the same with the PMP assignment – I wanted to get it out of the way before the last minute, so that the final day could involve less work and more play. That was successful… or at least, I achieved the aim. Did I reduce the integrity and quality of the work by trying to get it out of the way? Probably.
In terms of the work I’m doing, and aiming to complete quickly, is my motivation providing additional focus, or is it inspiring least-possible-effort and short cuts?
But the work won’t get done by blogging.
Done
Jul/090
ING Direct placement? Over.
I’m about two pages of writing away from completing my fifth semester.
I only have six. That’s scarily close to the end.
My last day was pretty good. My ‘goodbye’ email made people laugh. I got a decent crowd at the farewell lunch. Five o’clock was celebrated with foosball, then beer. My evaluation was filled out; I nearly succeeded in getting one section ticked without producing the document. Apparently my presentation was a little informal. Win.
The night finished off with a Bavarian dinner and a Belgian night cap. Always good, though I do agree with my friend’s sage advice that the Belgian is best as the first stop of the night, not the last.
I celebrated today as well, by doing nothing. Mind you, that’s usually an odds-on favourite on the weekend anyway. I did play some footyball, possibly because the Swans were so abysmal.
The rest of the night will be the Ashes and Le Tour. That probably also describes the next month pretty well.
Life is good.
Presentation
Jul/090
So this is pretty much going to be an ego-driven, self-congratulatory post about how awesome I am.
(Well, maybe. There’s a chance of that happening, and I thought I’d mention it right at the start.)
Today was the industry presentation day, mk 2. Mark 2 because it was going to be last Thursday, but the CIO and my immediate manager couldn’t make it at that time. I nearly went ahead with it anyway, but because ING is a new sponsor it was suggested that I might as well reschedule to make it as impressive as possible – i.e. have important people there to increase the chances of the course getting sponsored again.
I would’ve been quite happy to present it to no one, that’s almost what I did at Optus.
With the benefit of some extra preparation time, I decided that I may as well make it interesting. In the end, it featured
- subliminal messages (found to be hilarious),
- brutal slamming of the UTS mentor concept (less funny, but had to be done),
- honesty about what the whole experience had really been like (albeit, expressed diplomatically),
- gratuitous graphs and diagrams
- a take-home cryptic crossword companion to the entire presentation.
- full disclosure on the novelty applications I’ve made when I wasn’t being given real work to do
- me not getting completely nervous and terrified
This last point is kinda the important one. For the longest time, I hated any form of public speaking. Eventually I got over that to the point at which I could get through speeches without too many issues, but I was still pretty terrified.
I don’t know whether I was just comfortable in the environment, or so smugly self-satisfied with my presentation’s jokes that failure was incomprehensible, or even just confident in my self, but it actually felt like a relatively normal conversation. With 10 people. All of whom were silently judging me. In a moderately positive way.
Most people in the room actually came up later and said that it was a good presentation. One even said that he was going to steal my subliminal messages concept. (Which I stole from Red vs Blue anyway)
Also, I’m pretty sure I made everyone laugh. I’ve decided this is the most important thing in the world.
5 days
Jul/090
So, there are just five days of work left in this placement. I’m looking forward to the end, I guess. There’s a lot I’ll miss about the place, but most of it was not the work. The people are really nice. The ferry trip in the morning is fantastic. I love the crossword lunches, which also feature the ritual reading of the quiz (when those level nine bastards haven’t pinched it) and lately, foosball.
At the end of the day, what have I left? A monitoring tool which is apparently useful, a configuration database, some magic deployment tools and some silly applications I made to amuse my friends (a countdown timer, an XKCD mass downloader, a crossword tray application).
They’re all pretty cool things which do make people’s jobs easier (or make their procrastination more subtle…), but there’s not really five months’ worth of effort.
Because I didn’t put in five months’ worth of effort. They didn’t demand it, and I never pushed for it.
I don’t particularly want to be content with apathy, but I am good at it.
Five days to go, featuring a hopefully awesome presentation, some sort of party at the end, and maybe a few hours of work in the middle.
From five days in the future to a 5 day retrospective. Segue!
Pretty quiet week, actually, right up until the point at which it got very loud. Turns out, one of my friends does a real university course, and only just finished exams this week. Celebration was required; giant schnitzels were vanquished. The Bavarian is always fun, as is the Redoak.
At work, we finally got our (REDACTED), which is part of our big project to make (REDACTED). It didn’t work at (REDACTED) but I think it got fixed because it’s been fine since. It’s pretty cool that I’m one of the first people to have a (REDACTED).
It’s still secret, obviously.
To celebrate, they handed out some tshirts and caps. The tshirt says “I helped build (thing)” but is missing the footnote “And all I got was this crappy tshirt”. The cap is white and boring, but I wore it backwards to be ironic. I can do that, you know.
Last night was fun too. I went to the Pumphouse with Steve (not that Steve, the other Steve) and met his girlfriend (it now feels like the previous qualifier was unnecessary). Note to self : Redback Cristal is meh.
We’d planned to meet up with Ciaran and Mickey at Scubar, but decided that didn’t actually sound like something we were in a hurry to do, and had a curry instead. We met up with them at Bar Broadway instead, had a couple of drinks and then went to Purple Sneakers.
That was fun.
At midnight I went to find a friend on the dancefloor, and then didn’t see my other friends for the rest of the night. Whoops?
Sneakers is not what I would normally call my sort of place, neither was save FBi. I had a surprising amount of fun at both.
It’s nearly 1pm and my ears are still slightly ringing, 10 hours after I left. Loud music that almost completely prevents conversation isn’t actually the worst thing for someone who doesn’t talk all that much anyway.
Sleep is quite difficult to achieve after what must’ve been at least six jaeger bombs. It’s one of the few things that can get me dancing, though. (Actually, several things need to coincide for me to dance, possibly including a full moon. Seeing me dance is like seeing a yeti: rare. Also ungainly and with quite a lot of hair).
The taxi ride home cleaned me out. I literally poured everything out to pay the driver, but he was good enough to return my key. I needed that, and presumably it’s not a very good tip anyway.
The fare was reasonable, it’s just that I’d spent the rest on alcohol.
On the plus side, I’d withdrawn the exact right amount from the ATM earlier in the night.
On the negative side, I thought I’d withdrawn enough to cover several days.
I’ll admit to feeling a little bit hungover. I need food, and/or a stomach pump. Worth it, even though Red Bull tastes like oblivion.
I need to try and stand up now. I have a beer tasting to attend!
Hat-trick
Jun/094
So I’m 3/3. Or, from a more accurate perspective, 0/3.
It’s been a year since I was writing this. I remarked a few weeks ago to Steve that it would be pretty interesting to see a graph of post count over time, and how it related to what was happening in my life.
And holy shit, it is pretty revealing. Clearly I’m an angst blogger.
(an aside: I really love how Office 2007 makes graphs look acceptably presentable)
Also, since this blog is a year old, it has been given a theme (as promised in the first post) and upgraded to 2.8
I had an exceedingly interesting week. Some of it was recounted in the last post, so I’ll skip to Tuesday. I thought I’d have to go to Australia Post on work related secret business, but apparently not. It was a shame, as I had actually been looking forward to wandering up to Lane Cove in the middle of the day. It was one of the small joys I had in the second half of last year, in that semester of pain, penury and strife. It’s nice to have the freedom to walk about in the middle of the day, even if I allowed myself only the time required (35-40 minutes) to go directly to the sushi bar and return.
That actually makes it sound like I was exceedingly diligent in my time keeping and habits, which is such a massive whopper. Anyway…
I didn’t have to go to Australia Post, so I instead went straight to Bulga to ’study’ with James. We actually did pretty well, for about two hours. By that stage, however, we were entirely bored with the subject, and the remaining four hours before the exam were occupied with football, food and Xbox. On the whole, this struck me as an ideal balance.
Then the exam: harder than I had been lead to believe it would be. Such is the inevitable result of hubris. I still did fine, though. I was the last (of the three of us) to depart the exam. I’m blaming the invigilator, and my lack of a timepiece. I was sitting there for 20+ minutes, waiting for the time at which I would be permitted to leave. I was expecting it to be more like 45 minutes, so the difficulty was definitely a blessing.
After the exam, we went for one beer. That sentence accurately captures our intent, but is in fact as big a lie as the one suggesting I had a work ethic. We drank several beers, and then several schnapps, and then had about as much fun as you’re allowed to have at QVB Stand C. That evening was in no way a sensible idea, but it turned out to be a most enjoyable one.
Wednesday: interview/assessment day at Optiver. I was hungover. I have no idea how I did the initial programming quiz, and especially no idea how what I wrote convinced them that I should be interviewed.
Optiver has the coolest office I’ve ever been in, and the whole day was quite an experience. I was damned lucky that I’d chosen DS&A for my elective this semester. It’s the first step taken towards being the kind of programmer they actually want there. It is also the only step I’ve taken towards that path, and it’s not certain in my mind that I want that path. I still don’t know what I want from my career. I think it actually needs to be more rounded than just being a developer.
I’m getting sidetracked…
I thought it went well on the whole, but it was clearly going to come down to how much they wanted to trust in my potential. To skip ahead somewhat to Friday: not enough. They will not be offering me a position.
There was actually some interesting feedback along the lines that they didn’t think I was passionate enough, weren’t sure I truly wanted to be a developer, weren’t sure I wanted to work there. I guess they read me pretty well, better than I even knew myself. I had doubts about working there, and I didn’t bother to address them before the interview. I should perhaps have gone in with a plan, or at least a conscious effort to play the interview game.
What’s the point though? They interviewed me, a nearly completely honest version of me, with limited garnish. We weren’t a fit for each other. That’s fair enough, and possibly saved a lot of trouble later on.
Wednesday’s meeting was unremarkable, I guess. The chicken katsu afterwards was nice (when it arrived). The sang chow bow spring rolls were not quite as good as I’d hoped for.
Thursday was not a heap of fun. The question posed on Sunday was answered, in the negative. Over email, so I was trying to appear sufficiently busy at work whilst also retreating into my head and composing a reply. One day, someone will say something to my face. One day, it might even be an affirmative response. Being in a different city is a pretty good excuse for the former, though.
The usual suspects were suitably generous in their consolations.
Even more so than last time, I’ve surprised myself with the generally philsophical response I’ve had to the happenings. I think things generally work out. When I’ve got my ego up a bit, I usually extend this thought to ‘things generally work out to my benefit’.
It’s pretty weird, writing obliquely about someone whom I know reads this blog. (p.s. hi)
Then again, I’ve basically been doing that for a month. I wonder if you realised.
Yesterday (although it was still today when I started composing) was a better day, but mostly only at the very end. Three very cool things happened. One was getting out the SMH Friday cryptic crossword. Even if it took four other people and we spent nearly 90 minutes, it’s a pretty sweet achievement. DA (the Friday compiler) is an utterly devious bastard, and normally quite inscrutable.
The second thing was going out for a sneaky 2:45PM Friday beer at the Redoak. (ssh!).
I chased Optiver, and finally got the news they had promised would be delivered sooner. When you don’t hear something positive right away, it’s often fairly safe to assume the negative is on it’s way. (This was not the third cool thing, this is:)
I then chased my manager, who had been saying that he wanted to talk to me for over a week. He’d quite like me to keep working there, and said some rather ego boosting things. I definitely ended the week in a good way.
It’s funny, though. Without making any effort to curry favour at ING, or indeed trying very much at all, I’ve still managed to impress people. Yet another analogy for the benefits of just being yourself?
It’s a nice offer to have, but I have no desire to work full time next semester on anything which is not for Three Ring Solutions. I also consider that the offer from IBM has benefits that go beyond just a place to work. Assuming that offer is still on the table, it’s where I will be next year.
On the bus, on the way home, I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I really liked it, but I’m not sure whether it was the P&P or the &Z which was most entertaining.
I actually intended for this post to just be a couple of graphs, possibly with captions, and now I have in excess of 1200 words.
mostly to scale.
One outlier bucks the inevitable trend, vs the goal
Sample data available for one flow only.
Whoops, 2am.
I don’t have to write titles when I don’t feel like it
May/090
FLASHHEART: Iiiiiiiitttttttt’s me, hurray!
ALL: Huzzah!
So here we are again, at the blogosphere. Why? Why not. I’m feeling good.
I’m feeling pain too. The gym is not the most fun way to work up a sweat, but it is cheaper than alcohol if your goal is to feel unsteady on your feet. It is pretty unbeatable if you want to feel like you’re doing something healthy. It’s been a very long time since I last went, and most bits of my body are reminding me of that.
Worth it.
Work was actually good today, so much so that I was there for an extra hour. (I mean, I was about 15 minutes late and had 30 extra minutes for lunch, but that’s beside the point!) I’ve posted it here before, but I think the thing I hate more than anything else is feeling useless. I’m pretty sold on my own ability, and it’s nice to actually do stuff at work. Actual times of utilisation during the industry placements have been few and far between; contributing makes me happy.
Anyway, a few people were actually asking me to help them out by doing some work. One of them seemed relatively impressed – I suspect his expectations were low, but a win is a win. Hopefully that can only result in more work. Less weekends would be nice though.
Other things that happened at work: we got out both the crosswords. Admittedly, with the assistance of my lovely Google phone. But come on, knowing that usufruct is the legal right to use someone else’s property? That borage is a herb used in salads and medicine? Or that a small grebe is a dabchick? Crossword compilers are devious and twisted. I imagine we’d get along.
The other thing was that Atlassian called and told me that they would not, in fact, like to employ me next year. I’m really not disappointed – well, not surprised anyway. I wonder if I did less preparation than I needed to as a sort of defence mechanism against getting my hopes up. But what’s done is done.
@jamhos Thank you for the comment, but I have a feeling it’s been done before :)
That was, more or less, exactly the sort of thing I was going for. Blog Post in an Hour, maybe?
Or maybe I actually just crave adoration, and consume your comments like a vociferous wildebeest. (Band name!)
A brief coda: so far so good on staying out of my head. Small steps.
Employment
Sep/080
It’s blog time again… or to put it in a slightly more accurate way, I have things swirling around in my head which I would dearly like to sort out.
The question on the table is whether or not I want to keep working at Accenture. On the plus side is money and experience, on the minus side is time and sanity. The money is currently insufficient for my (large) ego. The experience is a mixed bag. If it was full time, I’d be learning quite a lot. The disjointed two days a week thing isn’t really working for me… yet I really don’t want to work more than probably three days. I’m just lazy like that.
On the flipside, I have an absurdly low amount of free time. I can’t believe that I’m even considering working. It comes back to the ego thing. There’s a part of me that craves adulation as some sort of semi-legendary figure – working, doing YAA, doing an extra subject, doing SDP, all with a grin and always with time for a beer. It’s ludicrous… and pretty tied in to the title of this blog. I have insecurities about my place in the world, and sometimes I do feel invisible. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don’t.
The second point against working was ’sanity’: reading what I’ve just written makes me question how much is left. It’s pretty linked in to the no free time/stress thing.
There is another factor that I didn’t realise was in play until I’d been at work for a few hours. In the office it’s all too easy to find a reminder of something distracting. It’s inescapable at university too. Even bloody John McCain is in on the act. My reactions each time would be pretty interesting to chart, I think. It started with a truly warm smile of hopefulness that sort of petered out over time into a wry grin that was an acceptance of the state of play. Since discovering that it wasn’t a two-player game, the gradient actually went up a bit. It’s been a sort of reflective smile, looking back on what’s been a pretty interesting time since about April.
It wasn’t coming as easily today. I hadn’t been at work since the revelation, and it just sort of struck me that I’d need to get used to the fact that I was there and she wasn’t.
It kind of feels like not working there any more would be admitting defeat.
At the moment, I’m leaning towards accepting what was offered today – more money (well, they apparently can’t increase the pay rate… but there are other benefits) and a slightly more flexible arrangement, with the understanding that I can stop until the end of the semester if I need to.
I’m not sure if this comes out as a coherent post, but I think it’s helped clear my head a little.