Manners maketh the lout

I've been unemployed ^h^h^h^h resting for most of this year, save for a month at a disastrous cluster-fsck anarcho-software-as-a-m*sturbation-aid house where the CEO felt that you couldn't possibly have any use unless you had read at least two self help books and three "feel the fear and then finger-bang your cat" type books a month - but that is for another post, I feel.

I've been doing the rounds of the agencies on a daily basis and one thing I have noticed that appears to have gone by the wayside is good manners. I've been a contractor for so long I can't recall the last time I was a permanent employee, so getting a new job every so often is second nature to me, but there appears to be a new creature at employment agencies, and he/she has a rather disturbing attitude. This is the mannerless lout who feels that they are qualified to tell you that, despite the advert that suggests that they are looking for someone with recent experience in x, you aren't right for the role. Dare to protest and they get very aggressive, very quickly about why they are right in an overly confrontational way. I don't know what such rudeness does for these people, and short of calling them labial (think about it) and hanging up, I don't know how to cope with it, but maybe that it precisely the reaction they are trying to elicit.

Compare this with other, established agents who may tell you that you're perfect for the role and "give me five minutes with the client and I'll get you an interview" and never call back. They are both as bad as each other, sure, but the former are becoming more prevalent. Again, no manners...

I'm wondering, is it that I am of a "certain age" and therefore intimidate these people in some way? Ageism aside, is there a niche market in employment agencies for placing "oldies" that agents haven't worked out yet? [*]

So as a bit of fun, if you were running an agency for the placement of mature IT people, what questions would you use to test whether a potential 'wrinklie' might be right for the role? Navigation commands in wordstar? Describe the difference between config.sys and autoexec.bat? How do you reveal codes in DisplayWrite 4?

There will be a job at some point, I've no doubt, and it will be enjoyable and fun. But why should I have to put up with the gamut of bad manners on the way there?

[*] Can I ask any more rhetorical questions? Do I sound like Sarah Jessica Parker in SATC? Eeek, do I look like her?

The TV License

I watch very little TV.  I don't have a license, for a start [1], so I tend to use iPlayer and  - heavens - torrents, which works quite well, I find.  So, I'll watch 'Lost' on the day that it is aired in Canada, and 'The Mentalist' before the new series has even been begun in the UK. 

The upshot of this is that I have so much more time available to me now - I choose what I want to watch and when to watch it (I don't get the 7.03pm "I'm going to miss The Archers" twitch if I'm nowhere near a radio any more) and this is a Good Thing (TM) - I read more, research more and generally put my newfound time to good use. 

It has downsides.  If someone wants to engage me in a conversation about why Susan Boyle's choice of song is so awful, I have to endure watching it on youtube before I can offer an opinion - and let me tell you, awful doesn't even begin to describe that - but in the main, I find that this is all a positive.  TV has become like going to the cinema - the choice is now mine to make, rather than just have the entire evening's programming thrust down my throat as I attempt to teach my liver about regeneration again.  

Why then, with the possible sea change in the public's viewing habits - iPlayer, 4OD and the like, has our venerable and lovable Mr Sugar not come up with a new TV that has no receiver in it; instead, why not kit it out with a wifi connection and a simple interface that lets you navigate iPlayer and 4OD?  

No license fee needed.....

[1] After months of very threatening letters, they sent a gorilla around. I invited him in to look around, and he declined, saying "I can tell you don't have a tv from your reaction to me...."

Saas

Ever since I was introduced to computers and computing in nineteen-something, it seemed that the natural scheme of things was to do things in a proprietary way and to pitch your products against a competitor's.  DEC and IBM, Unix and DOS, Atari and Amiga....the list goes on - I'm sure you can add Wordperfect and Displaywrite 4 to the list if you were a pedant. (And yes, I know that is an IBM System/36 above, before you start. I wonder if the plant had an RPG II device name?).

Today though, there doesn't seem to be the polarisation that I have always come to expect from the market. OK, I use OS X (why do Mac users always feel the need to tell everyone in their posts?), but that doesn't mean I use one for any other reason than I want to. I've found that there is very little I need Windows for (domino designer springs to mind, but that is a dying art) - rather, I can achieve the same levels of productivity on anything nowadays as long as it has a standards compliant browser.  And so where is that fight nowadays? It isn't hardware - that has been commoditised to the point where you can pick up a laptop with your shopping at Tesco - it isn't OS based, or even software based - no one cares if you use office 2007 or openoffice any more.  No, I think it is in the SaaS (Software as a Service) arena - a phenomenal growth area.  But there are two very obvious omissions - no Apple or Microsoft offerings appear in this marketplace....the behemoths appear to have been wrong-footed again. 

 

In my current role at #insert_current_employer I was looking for a decent document repository that wasn't box.net based. I needed something similar to the old domino teamroom style of 'project spaces'.  I happened across www.glasscubes.com and i was quite blown away with the elegant simplicity of it.  It has a three user free trial, and it does seem to be robust and elegant and I like that. And it is SaaS based and you pay per bum-on-seat and, and, and,well - I am quite excited by it. Give it a go, and then tell the owner what you like and don't like about it. SaaS is quite the place to be at the moment, and I can hear another 1999/2000 dotcom bubble being inflated as armies of VCs eye up the revenue streams geneated by these startups.  Lest you think it is an advert for glasscubes, I am also taken with liquidplanner.com/ - this is another corker. Well worth a look and has an interesting pedigree. 

 

Er, I thought I was supposed to be a tired cynical old IT hack? I almost sounded enthusiastic about something for a minute there....

Krakow

I went to Krakow at the end of last month, and now that the liver-shock of free-flowing vodka and pickles has subsided, I feel I can write about it. I am constantly surprised by experiences I have when I am an accidental tourist (I was supposedly there for a "blue-skying brainstorming thingy" that frankly let me shivering. That may have been excessive vodka consumption or the cliche, I'm not sure) but especially when I look up rather than down at the pavement. Which brings me to the reason for this sounding off - why have I got this far in my life without learning the vocabulary of architecture?  "I love those twiddly bits on the top of those columns", versus "wow,aren't those volutes at the top of that doric column divine"...

 

Now I know you might think that qualifies me for an annual pass into Pseuds' Corner (tm) but really - my trip to Krakow actually exposed my utter lack of knowledge about architecture.  This is a concern fo me, because lately I've been admiring structures and wanting to discuss them.  Anyhow, the attached picture shows the town square by night.  Breathtaking. And if you are stuck for a destination for a weekend break, you could do worse. No stag parties that I saw, the hotels are quite reasonable and you can do proper tourist stuff too - there is a brilliant tour of a local salt mine too.  But that is a post for another time,I think...

 

So the upshot of this ignorance is to recommend a book - Rice's Architectural Primer. It is written in a Tim Hunkin style and is unputdownable.  I am immersed in Spandrels and Mullions, and plan to be for some time while I investigate my home town, my new guide in hand....