gf-tech.com

I was browsing a tech site a while back and noticed that their site was littered with ads. Not only that, but their ad server was not working all that well. Nine Copies of the same ad on one web page? That seems a little extreme. I'm thinking Intel wasn't getting their money's worth on that deal

Google recently updated their interface to contacts. Normally I like their updates, but this one sucks. The actual editing of a contact is now more difficult and involves more pointing and clicking than before. Tabbing between the fields results in a horrible flickering and adding a new phone number is clunky. After clicking add, you then have to select the type of phone number.

One other thing that is awful is the phone number display when the number isn't formatted perfectly. I have a large number of contacts with parentheses around the area code. When viewing a contact like this, the last couple digits of the phone number don't get displayed. I actually wish they could revert some of their improvements.

But after years I reckoned developers do not need to be motitvated, they are motivated when they start working – otherwise you wouldn’t have hired them, would you? They are actively demotivated. Companies need to stop demotivating them.

This quote was something that really struck home. I read the article titled "Developer Motivation and Satisfaction" while working at Kodak and during a time when was very unhappy in my position. Changes the company was making were causing enough strife within me to make me consider leaving.

My favorite quote is:

They don’t have to motivate their employees. They have to stop demotivating them.

This hit the nail on the head. I still loved what I was doing for Kodak, and I still loved working with my peers at Kodak. I just hated working for Kodak. Being forced to work in a certain manner and having certain tools and restrictions dictated to me without any explanation really rubbed me the wrong way.

The prime example was email. Everyone in the Kodak Victoria office read their email then filed it away in case it was needed later. We did a lot of design, documentaion, and customer bug investigation via email so it was a treasure trove to us. The IT department mandated that we could no longer store email more than 30 days, unless it was special then we could file it in a certain bucket that allowed it to live for 2 years. Oh, and we were also being restricted to 1GB of storage and no external PST file support.

Because of this I had to drastically change how I handled email putting a much greater emphasis on thinking about an email before filing it. This caused a larger amount of my day to be dedicated to email and this was something I did not like.

Soon after the article above, I read "Unchain the Office Computers!" on Slate.com.

It explained why these new restrictions were hurting my morale.

Here's why: The restrictions infantilize workers—they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively.

Another quote:

This jibes with Pink's argument that it's a sense of autonomy—rather than money—that drive employees to work hard. People work best, he argues, when they feel they're being left alone to do their jobs. But it's hard to feel that way if your computer is constantly throwing up roadblocks in your path.

Because of upcoming restrictions, many people in the office actively researched ways around them. That killed productivity for a while, but also made us hate departments within the company. This again is a morale killer.

As a tech worker who has suffered under these conditions I now feel free. I will no longer work for a large company with these crazy restrictions. I have seen the light. To all managers out there I say this: you have attracted some excellent motivated talent; don't screw it up by demotivating them.

With my recent job search, I've noticed something about companies that I feel compelled to write about.

Most companies care what their business partners think about them, most companies care what their customers think about them, and most companies care what their employees think about them. These companies are responsive to those individuals needs and do what they can to keep them informed and up to date.

Companies certainly don't want to get a bad reputation.

My recent experiences have given me a bad taste with a few companies. This all stems from the HR level too. Human Resources. The department that is supposed to deal with people.

I've had HR reps completely ignore my emails and questions. I've had reps ignore my voicemails. If you are working for a company and trying to recruit new employees, why would you give them the impression of an unresponsive, uncaring company? Why would I want to work for a company like that?

Perhaps it stems from the HR person not wanting to give bad news. The flip side is that if I don't hear anything from a company, I spend some time and effort following up with that company. I would rather hear the bad news earlier so that I can move on, and so can the HR person. If it isn't going to work out between myself and a potential job, I want to know as soon as possible.

So what should be done? Keep potential recruits in the loop. If you need more time to make a decision, tell me. If it isn't going to work, tell me. I'm more likely to recommend your company to others if you treat me fairly and respectfully. This is your job as an HR person.

A couple weeks ago I learned that I am going to be having a lot of free time soon. Everyone in the office I work in is being layed off.

This of course has its ups and downs. I have the whole month of December off which is great. Downside is I don't have a paycheck for very long.

One of the things I have wanted to do for a while is a little programming on a mobile OS. The hot one these days is the iPhone, but there are a few problems with that. One, I don't have a Mac, and two, there are lots of know issues getting your software into the app store.

One platform that seems interesting, and I can develop for is Android. From wikipedia:

Android is a mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel. It was initially developed by Android Inc., a firm later purchased by Google, and lately by the Open Handset Alliance.[3] It allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries.

I started reading up on how to write apps for Android, their basic architecture, and the development environement, then promptly fell asleep. I needed to get hands on now, so I started setting up a development environment following the instructions on DataSprings site.

One issue I encountered is a bit of an oddball. I set up my virtual device properly, but every time I tried to run it, the emulator claimed I had not created any virtual devices. I tracked down the problem to a non standard computer setup. The setting for My Documents is "D:\My Documents" and the virtual device was created there. Unfortunately the emulator doesn't correctly look up the My Documents directory. It was looking in "C:\Documents and Settings\gfox\My Documents".

I fixed this first by copying the virtual devices to the C drive, but then I undid that and used junction to link the C drive device directory to the actual directory.

So far the craplet I have written has a single button that launches a second "form" when it is clicked. Not bad for a couple days investigation.

I have a couple ideas for applications, so when I am actually not working any more and have some real time to devote, I hope to make some progress.

One hurdle I might face with this project is that I have never done any Java programming. So far the code I have written is very, very similar to C#, so no big deals there. I have a suspicion that I will be referring to Google lots on this.

Over the years I have had temporary issues with tendonitis. I've seen my doctor a couple times, but it never amounted to anything. For a few days I take some ibuprofen, adjust my workplace ergonomics slightly and the issue goes away.

A couple years ago I was having a bout of tendonitis, and I decided to mouse goofy. That is to say I switched my mouse to the left side of my keyboard. The first few days were very awkward, but I got used to it.

I also read this article on Lifehacker on why it is a good idea to mouse with the non-dominant hand.

The linked article on Lifehacker posits that doing this stimulate neural connections between the brain hemispheres. I don't know if I would go that far, but I haven't had a single flare up of tendonitis since I switched.

I find it fascinating that when I sit at my computer at home I immediately reach for the mouse with my right hand, and when I am at work I reach with my left. For me mousing with my left hand seems to put me in work mode.

Another Lifehacker article claims that you can boost your willpower and increse your stamina for focusing on tasks by brushing your teeth with your non dominant hand. I think I might try this some time just to do something different.

All on my own I came up with another non-dominant hand mind trick. Whenever I am warming up to play Ultimate, I catch with my left hand. Over the years I have gotten pretty comfortable catching with either hand. I started doing this since I found that there are times in a game where you can only catch with one hand.

Pain.NET aggravates me. I don't use it very often (which is the problem), but when I do, the pre-release version that I have installed has inevitably expired. Their decision to prevent me from using the app until I upgrade is frustrating and angering. All I want to do is resize an image. I don't want to have to upgrade a perfectly fine piece of software for this.

I know that they really want me to upgrade, but forcing me to upgrade is horrible. Since this has happened to me before I think I am going to go ahead an uninstall it. My time is worth more than this. A long time ago I installed the GIMP. I might have to give that a whirl again.

A couple weeks back the office I work in lost the network connection. Technically we had a network, but DNS was slow to resolve, and we definitely couldn't get to the Internet.

I had a bit of an epiphany about how I work during this outage. I could still work slowly, but I certainly wasn't effective. I decided that I subconsciously solve problems.

My habits are to work for a while, but when I hit a stumbling block in what I was trying to accomplish, I would change contexts entirely and hit a blog, Twitter, or some other site for a couple minutes.

During this break from my work, my subconscious would solve the problem, or at least get me refocussed and when I resumed my task I would pick up and continue right where I left off.

Not having the Internet actually slowed my work down considerably (and not because I couldn't Google the answer).

Several productivity sites I frequent all suggest that the Internet is a distraction and it must be blocked to allow yourself to realize your full productivity. I don't fit that mould.

The iPhone was certainly a game changer in the cell phone industry. I don't even have one, yet I can feel the effects.

When I know someone has an iPhone, I immediately expect that they are going to be more connected and hence more apt to respond to email.

I recognize that this is an unreasonable expectation, but it is still true. I know I would have to set boundaries on when and where I managed email if I had an iPhone. I am sure that other people who are iPhone owners must do that as well.

Hotmail shows ads, and always has as far as I can remember. This is fine with me since I don't pay for using it, and I don't user Hotmail that often. What gets me is that both Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger don't seem to show context sensitive ads. I expect that functionality in this internet era.

Half the ads served to me are for singles dating sites. I don't care about these sites and would rather not see ads from them. My Hotmail profile shows me as married, yet these ads continue. I doubt I am the only one seeing this.