Posted: Wed 29 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, General, Green, Thoughts |
Travelling behind a Sky TV van (sorry, their proper name is BSkyB, but who remembers that?) I noticed that they’re now saying that Sky is “Carbon Neutral”, according to the Carbon Neutral Trust.
And that’s just left me incredulous. Thankfully, I’m not the only one – as can be seen here, among other places. From that story, the following :
Sky’s carbon footprint has been calculated by measuring the CO2 equivalent emissions from its premises, company owned vehicles, business travel and waste to landfill. It claims to have lowered its site-related operational emissions by 47 per cent in the last 18 months and has also negotiated discounts for staff wanting to buy low emission hybrid cars
© Tech Digest 2008
So it’s not actually taking into account all the Sky boxes that are left on Standby overnight, let alone the Sky+ boxes etc. – and until it does, I for one would dispute the true “Carbon Neutral” status of Sky.
Posted: Tue 28 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Work-related |
It must be half-term – there are a couple of people in the office who have obviously not been able to sort out child-care, so they’ve brought them in to the office instead.
Which, it has to be said, is really fucking annoying.
I’m not anti-child (well, not too much, anyway) but having kids blethering away in the background does not make for a decent un-disturbed atmosphere. Sorry, but it just doesn’t.
Posted: Mon 27 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism |
Just what the world needs – yet more proof that Russell Brand is a talentless – and unfunny – cock.
Seriously, just what is the point of the bell-end? About as funny as syphilis, in my opinion.
Although in fairness, I’d laugh if the fucker got syphilis…
Posted: Mon 27 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky, Work-related |
One of my biggest bug-bears in development is having to come up with arbitrary methods of scoring.
For instance, I’ve got to work on an assessment system where there are three levels of skills based on roles, and three skill levels for the relevant tasks. For example, a question such as “I can touch-type” would have three levels, such as “Can’t at all”, “can but not properly” and “Fully qualified touch-typist”, but touch-typing itself would be a skill level of 2 (don’t ask me, I don’t know where the levels came from). Once the tests have been done, I’ve got to come up with some completely arbitrary method of taking the scores from those role-based skill levels, and from the skill level in each role of the user, and saying “User [x] is at skill level [y] and thus needs/doesn’t need extra training”.
But the actual formula for working out the points is being left to me – no-one else can get their head round it, so it’s been left to the techie. And I think I’ve got something that works, and weights things properly in favour of the higher skills, but I don’t really know. Even worse, I suspect we won’t really know whether I’ve got it right until the entire system has been fully tested and used – by which time it will (in theory at least) be far too late to do anything about it.
It’s enough to drive me crackers.
Posted: Mon 27 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky |
So – did you remember to put your clocks back?
As always, we’ve changed pretty much all ours now. The heating system only got changed this morning, because I forgot it last night, but other than that I think we’re pretty much sorted.
Mind you, I still think that the best thing when it comes to the time changes are the radio-controlled clocks that tune in to the Time Signal, and just change themselves. That, so far as I’m concerned, is just grand – and it makes me wonder why more things don’t do it. Even “just” the essential services (heating system, for example) would be nice, but having one’s cooker (another prime example) being auto-updated would make life a lot easier…
Posted: Fri 24 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Work-related |
Bloody fucking Barclays Bank, their internet banking service, and their unique ‘Membership Number’.
I don’t mind unique reference numbers – I really don’t. But I do wish companies – and today, particularly banks – would make them easier to remember. After all, it’s not rocket-science really.
My main bank, Royal Bank of Scotland use your date-of-birth, followed by a small, memorable unique number. I’ve never yet forgotten it, or had an issue with recalling it. It’s useful to both RBS and the customer. That’s how it should be done. It’s u
Barclays, on the other hand, have a 12 or 16 digit number, which starts off with either 2010 or 2020, and it has no fucking relevance to anything. In short, it’s an ID that is useful to Barclays, but not to the customer. And that’s just frustrating every time you come to need to use it.
In an absolutely ideal world, you let the customer choose their memorable number – it could be date of birth (although that’s easy to find) or something surreal like ‘Numberplate of first car owned’. Check that chosen ID, and if it’s in the system already for whatever reason, add a small number to it. No more than three digits. Simple, and memorable. It’s still unique in your own system (i.e. the bank’s database) so there’s no issues with replication or non-unique-ness, but it’s memorable for the customer too.
Except of course that banks in general still don’t operate on the principle that they should be a convenience for their customers (Note : not a public convenience, although God knows I’d like to piss all over them sometimes), rather than that their customers are there as a convenience to the bank. And I can’t see that concept changing any time soon, unfortunately.
Posted: Wed 22 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related |
I’ve just realised that my new employer has made a significant error with my contract.
I’m (as some of you may have noticed along the way) a web developer. Normally, a web developer’s contract will include stuff about Intellectual Property (IP) so that anything the developer creates for Company X still belongs to Company X when the developer leaves – and thus the developer can’t sell that same product to other companies.
Guess what my Company X has forgotten to do?
Yep – no IP clauses at all.
I’m not complaining – the main thing I’ll be writing for the next few months is something that is exceptionally saleable, and I can already see a fair old market for it outside the company. So, that might make life a bit more interesting over time…