Driving Ability

Since starting work with the current company back in June last year, I’ve been able to look out over a junction that – it seems – causes utter confusion to drivers. It looks (very roughly) like this…

In effect, it’s part of a one-way system, and all traffic (except buses) should turn left. However, the buses can go straight on, and this is part of what seems to cause the confusion. Drivers see the road going straight on, and just follow it. They don’t look at the signs saying “no entry” and “you must go left”, because the road goes straight on, so that must be the way they go.

I reckon I see at least five to ten cars per day make this mistake.

Going the other way, cars can go straight on, but aren’t allowed to turn right. However, again I see at least ten cars per day turning right where they’re not supposed to, and across the flow of traffic.

Of course, there’s also the huge number of pedestrians who are either blind, handicapped, or just don’t look for traffic at all, expecting that they have some kind of right-of-way across busy roads full of fuckwits who don’t notice road-signs, let alone people. The sheer number of times I see cars having to pull up to let people cross the road is just astonishing.

I don’t know if Wokingham is just a moron-magnet, or whether this is indicative of the way people drive, but either way it a) makes for scary viewing, but b) is great for the comedy when people fuck up and get yelled at by all and sundry…

Evil Spamming Bastards

Our company has a community site with a forum, where people can post comments and the like. Over the last few days it’s been beaten to its (metaphorical) knees by a set of spam attacks – roughly 2,000 spam postings, and because of the way the system *cough* “works”, we have to delete them individually, in order to keep the database stable and the system working properly without losing its way and having a bit of a breakdown.

The reason that the spammers are hitting the site so hard is because the person in charge of the website, in his infinite global wisdom, has decided that we must allow unregistered guest users the ability to post comments. Apparently, we don’t want to risk losing users by forcing them to register before they can make comments. So the site’s wide open to spam attack, and that doesn’t matter, according to this fucking genius.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I would think that anyone who wants to make a post and say something is going to be OK with registering. And if you want to be in a community, then you would rather register with that community and see it spam-free instead of having an open community that’s smothered in “nude Paris Hilton” adverts…

Implosion

With the way work’s been over the last couple of weeks, I’m seriously debating writing a page on my “business” site that details the way things have gone, and continue to go.

As things stand, it looks like we’ll have work through ’til August/September, but currently no-one’s letting on what’ll happen. I just don’t want to get to that time, start looking for other jobs, and have to keep on explaining why it’s all gone tits-up. Of course, I could be entirely wrong, things could improve again and go back to the original optimistic plan. But for now, well, I’m certainly considering the best ways to back up what I do, what I’ve done, and how to sort out the future prospects.

Title-wise, well, at the moment there’s so much politics and bullshit going on behind the scenes, I think I’d have to call the page “The implosion of a business”.

We’ll see.

Cold Day in Hell

Blimey, work’s dead stimulating today. Not.

OK, so we’ve finally been able to sort out the problems that plagued the set-up this morning – something to do with one of our American contingent rebooting servers, and getting it wrong, forgetting about some NTFS/Samba file shares that should’ve been unmounted before rebooting the servers, and then remounting them afterwards. Or something. I kind of know what he’s banging on about, but at the end of the day I don’t really care, and it could all be summed up by “So, what you’re saying is that you fucked it up, yes?“.

But since then, and since I’ve updated all the stuff I’d done over the last three days, getting it to work against Simon’s fuck-ups and failing-to-be-bothered-to-do-what-I-asked, it’s been fark-boring again.

So boring and dull, in fact, that I’ve even tidied up my desk, and got rid of a load of now-useless stuff from last year.

No, it doesn’t make me look any more efficient, or anything, but it was another of those “I really should do that at some point” jobs that days like today are made for.

Building Enthusiasm

At the moment I’m just trying to build up the enthusiasm to actually work. My mind’s not really on it at all today, and so I seem to be more furkling about with other stuff that’s not really related, and just generally footling along a bit.

It’s bad, because I know that we have a deadline of Friday for some development stuff, and while I’m a good 95% of the way there, the remaining 5% is actually quite important. It’s just that today I’m not in the mood for doing it, which really isn’t at all good. It should be, but it isn’t. Ah well.

I’m sure I’ll get there – but for now, well, procrastination appears to be king.

CEOs and the like

Work’s been interesting today. Over the last few months two of the founders have been at each other’s throats for various reasons, and it’s all come to a head. So one leaves tomorrow, which we already knew was happening, and the other, the company’s CEO told us this morning that he was leaving today. Which is, to say the least, quite a development.

We already had a new guy coming in as Chairman of the company, but he’s now also taking the role of CEO. I think it’ll be good for the business, but all the same it was quite a surprising development first thing this morning!

What occurred to me later is that now all three of the people who interviewed me for this job have now left. In fact, I’m probably about the fourth or fifth longest-running member of the team now. Which is kind of scary, seeing as I’ve only been here since July…

Sack of Shit

I know, why don’t we create a piece of software that can be installed on a website, and has a “config” folder where all the configuration files are kept.

Then, when we’ve done the documentation etc., why don’t we change the location of one of those configuration files, so that users have to figure out what the fuck is going on for themselves, and even the documentation won’t be of any use at all. How cool would that be?

Bastards.

Is It Me?

Every so often, particularly when it comes to work-related stuff, I find I have a bit of a confidence crisis. Primarily it’s to do with working in a team – I can work OK with other people who are doing different stuff to me, but when I’m working in a team of people doing something it all starts to go a bit tits-up.

This week has, to a degree, been one of those times.

As most people know, I’m working for a company doing web design/programming work, and we also have one American in charge of other sites, and another web programmer. The American and I get on OK-ish, but we can also clash like cat’n’dog (and I’m talking here about Psycho Cat and Hound) although normally we realise we’re talking about the same things from opposing sides.

With Simon, the other web programmer, we just have conflicting styles. I’m capable of doing most stuff when it comes to websites, including basic design, layout, appearance, useability, blah, blah, blah. Simon purely does web programming. Anything else is “someone else’s job”. Guess who “someone else” normally turns out to be. The other problem is that really he doesn’t seem to be conscious of things like deadlines, or whatever. So much stuff that he’d been asked to do by Christmas has still not been done – or, more often, has ended up being done by me instead.

I find I get frustrated by this kind of thing – I can’t deny, I’m better suited to being independent, to being the only person doing this stuff. That way I only have to rely on myself, instead of relying on others who normally don’t do what they’re supposed to. It’s not an ideal way to be – it makes team-work particularly trying, it has to be said. But I do continue to try dealing with it all.

Anyway, sometimes it gets to a point where I have to take a step back, and when that happens I also find myself wondering whether actually it’s me that’s the problem, rather than other people. I find it easy to find fault with others, or to see that they’re not living up to my standards.

So is it that actually my standards are too high? Should I just work to the lower common denominator, and not get annoyed when people only live up to that, instead of getting the work done when promised?

Home based

This week I’ve been lucky enough to be working from home. It’s one of the cool things about working with web-based companies – you don’t actually need to be in the office, so long as you have the necessary gubbins at home. As for the “lucky enough to be working” bit, well, the company decided that they would acknowledge the people who worked between Christmas and New Year (as it was more of a voluntary thing – we don’t have to work, it’s our choice) by paying us extra for the days we work. Sounds good to me.

So yeah, I could’ve taken the time completely off, but well, I’ve got a fair amount to be getting on with, so it makes sense to do it and get paid extra rather than busting a gut on Jan 2.

Anyway, I digress. While working at home I’ve actually been a lot more productive than I am at work. I managed to sort out the entire company website yesterday, for example – from scratch to completed in less than a day.

I think I’m going to try and organise it with work that I can work from home one day a week in 2006. It makes a lot of sense in general, especially if my productivity continues to be so significantly improved…