Andrew Garrett’s Outboard Brain

This post, by the CEO of Homestead.com (Maybe you should fire that customer?) has caused a bit of a furor.  Partly in comments, many of them from Homestead customers, partly around the rest of the ‘net.

The problem, as I see it, isn’t what he says.  It’s how he says it.

“Firing” a customer is a negative.  The whole concept is negative.  It’s bad, it’s rejection, it’s just plain nasty.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it sometimes – but you can be nice about it. But before you do that, you can see if you can maintain the relationship while declining the business. 

I’ve got some sort of metaphor floating around in my head, where I compare a business relationship to a romantic one.  In either case, you’ve done stuff together, it’s worked, you’ve decided to carry on doing stuff together.  One partner suggests or requests something the other doesn’t want to do (for some perfectly valid reason.  Let’s say, kinky BDSM, or a trip to Alaska. The other declines, gracefully.  It doesn’t have to mean the end of the relationship.   

If you have good reasons for not wanting to do something (“BDSM just doesn’t work for me, I don’t enjoy it.”, or “I hate the cold”), you can suggest an alternate (“how do you feel about hersheys and feathers?” or “What about Tahiti?”).

Of course, if a relationship isn’t working, if the partners want too many different things, then it may be time to move on.  But let’s call it a break up.  A moving on.  A growing apart.  Let’s tinge it with regret, rather than anger.  Let’s consider it carefully, be rational about it, and share the reasons. 

We’re not working together now, but let’s still be friends.  Hey, what about that friend of yours from out of town?  Is she looking for someone to….

…  you can fill in the blanks there, I’m sure.

[via Instigator Blog - thanks Ben!]

Uncategorized Business

So, after over two years of getting by with the hand-me-down laptop I was given when I first went on call, I finally got upgraded to a more modern machine – an IBM thinkpad T42.  Not astounding, not 100% new, but it boots and runs stuff faster. 

Of course, at $employer, nothing ever goes smoothly.  For years, I’ve worked with  dual monitors – since mid ‘99 if I recall.  I surprised people at $employer by managing to hook up an old 21″ CRT that was lying around to the laptop, and got it working in  dual-head mode – 14″ laptop screen next to 21″ CRT.  Both at 1024 x 768, so it wasn’t elegant, but it worked.  Most importantly, it doubled my screen real-estate.

My employer outsources management of the desktop environment to a third party.  For valid business reasons, they’ve made the call to lock down the desktop and laptop machines, unless there’s a good reason not to.

My new(ish) T42, understandably uses different drivers to the ones in my old R31.  This means no dual-head.  Getting dual head working requires an application to be installed.  Which can’t be installed on the locked down workstations, without $1200 worth of work being done by the third party.  Which isn’t going to happen.

So, what comes up in my RSS aggregator today? 

Are those three Dell 2405 monitors on BillG’s desk? – The Jason Calacanis Weblog:

“Large monitors make wisdom workers (fka knowledge workers) about 100% more effective. I’m standardizing our entire staff on 24″ monitors over the next six months for this reason… ”

Incidentally, I’m looking for a new job (and have been for a month or so now).  Not because of this shit, but the attitude behind it is a contributing factor.  If you want a high end Linux admin, who can code, architect, consult, speak english (translated from deep geek) to all levels of people, network, secure, do database stuff, research, work remotely to anywhere in the world, work locally (Wellington, NZ), mentor, manage, or otherwise do cool stuff, let me know and I can flick you a CV.

Related previous posts:

In the ghetto

Ready for a 20″ laptop?

Triple head laptop?

Power Tools – Dual-headed workstations

Uncategorized Geek, Personal

Ok, for various reasons, my former ‘get up early and get stuff done’ regime rather fell to one side for a couple of months – and I was starting to find that I didn’t have enough time to do the stuff i wanted to.

While I was still heading to bed reasonably early, I just wasn’t getting up – instead, after Marie got up, I’d doze for another couple of hours, then haul my carcass out of bed to start the day.  Those couple of hours of dozing didn’t really help my sleep patterns much, not did they do much for my start-the-day state of mind.

Today, I’ve made the first step back towards changing that – out of bed at about 5:30, a morning of reading, and weblogging (reminder – I write On Storage and Digital Shot), and listening to moderate emo rock (Death Cab for Cutie, , which is fitting my current musical sensibilities quite well – I figured out that Emo is to Indie what Goth was to Punk – and since I’m liking Indie stuff these days, it fits fairly well.  As a side note, I’m looking for recommendations of new music.  Please comment :) )

I’ve come to the realisation that I need to boost traffic to the two aforementioned weblogs – and the best way to do that, is more quality content for them, which means more focus on writing for them.  That’ll be a bit of a stretch, but good practice I think.  It almost feels like I’ve been ‘phoning in’ weblogging for the last couple of months, not giving it the focus I should.  Not good.  Must change.

I also need to get back onto the time management kick thing, and not let $dayjob eating my brain be an excuse for being disorganised outside of that.  Cleaner lines of separation between work and home lives.  My day job may be turning to shit, but that doesn’t have to impact on my personal stuff – not unless I let it. 

So now, at about 7:30, it’s about the time I’d normally be reluctantly entering the world.  I’ve done some good reading, had a bit of an early play with Ruby on Rails, written 4 weblog posts (not including this one), answered a bunch of email, had breakfast and a coffee and done some half-way decent thinking on a few things.

There are worse ways to start the day, really.  Getting up and having to frantically get ready for the rest of the day is one of them.

References:

How to become an Early Riser and Part II of the same

Uncategorized Personal

I don’t imagine that my browsing habits are unusual – I tend to open up a bunch of pages, then move onto the actual reading stage.  I’m a chronic task switcher, and tend to have a bunch of windows open at a time.  One thing I’ve noticed on some sites – StartupJournal in particular (probably because they have some really great content, so I tend to read at least something there most days) – is that they have a refresh process going on.

On StartupJournal it’s set to 480 seconds – 8 minutes, then the page reloads itself.  Because of my browsing habits, this often happens when I’m in the middle of reading it.

I can’t think  of a good reason to do this, unless your advertisers pay per impression, and you’re trying to increase that number.  But, for some reason, i rather struggle with the concept of a Wall Street Journal publication being quite that lacking in ethics.

Can anyone suggest an alternate reason?

Uncategorized Geek

Russell Beattie Notebook – Special

I don’t buy a product because I like your company, I buy because I like ME and I want something special for ME. Give me a reason to believe your thing is exactly that.

General General

Not in that order.

Yesterday:

• First Kyudo session.  Struggled, both physically and mentally.  Enjoyed it.
• First raid with new WoW guild.  Got stuff I can’t use yet.  Enjoyed it.

Today:

• Worked.  Increasing feelings of antipathy.  It’s time I moved on.  Disliked it.
• Visited seriously injured cat in hospital.  Comes home tomorrow. Experienced strange feelings of guilt, despite not being able to prevent said injury Disliked it.

Conclusion:

• I like Sunday events a lot more than Monday events.

Uncategorized Personal

eBay: Bubbletwo.com – Web 2.0 Instant Blogging Site (item 7597881036 end time Mar-14-06 16:27:12 PST)

Build to flip at web 2.0 speeds and scale. Released last week, for sale now. Will be interesting to watch this one…

Uncategorized Blogging, Geek

OK, so Stabbing Westward broke up.  Apparently, Chris Hall didn’t like the direction the band was going in their last album (which is definitely the most accessible/poppy of their collection), describing it somewhat disparagingly as “South Beach California Rock”.

Personally, I just thought he’d stopped fucking up his romantic entanglements, and was thus unable to generate enough angst to write what I’d come to regard as ‘true’ Stabbing Westward.  He just sounded too happy, too content.  I’d manufactured a scenario in my head, where he found this wonderful girl, who, unlike all the former girls in his life, hadn’t fucked him over, and while he wanted to keep writing/being Stabbing Westward,  was just too smiley to do so.

If that was the case, then he’s back on the breakup train.

The Dreaming comes across as classic Stabbing Westward – Anthemic Angst Rock* at its finest.  On the first listen through, you already feel you could be singing along with the choruses, at a gig, with all the other angsty teens.  Which is an impressive way to feel, for a 34 year old.

If you’re a fan of Stabbing Westward (as I remain, despite not angsting quite the same as I was a few years ago), then I think you owe it to yourself to track down some of his new stuff, and give it a listen.

According to the Stabbing Westward site, this is The Dreaming website – at the moment, for me, it’s redirecting to my local machine, which is slightly odd, but still – it might be back, or it might be wrong completely.  There’s also this, which is your stereotypical annoying-to-navigate band website, and  the myspace profile which has a few tracks on it for your listening pleasure.

‘How you gonna drive the last nail home, for your solo crucifixion?”

Mmmm, angsty-goodness.

* Anthemic Angst Rock is how I’ve mentally classified SW/The Dreaming.  My beloved, of course, insists on calling it Catchy Suicide Rock.

Uncategorized Reviews

Today, after aikido, ran down (well drove) to Te Papa to see a bunch of Martial Arts demonstrations.

These are just my notes, for posterity.

In no particular order (since I can’t really remember what order I saw them in).

Judo:  Missed the demo, but did it years ago.  Not for me, not sad to miss it.

Aikido:  Riai aikido seems very…  robust.  A lot more physical than the way we train.  Not to say that we don’t work up a sweat, but they seem to be using force to, in part, substitute for technique.  Yes, my biases are showing.

Karate: seemed very sloppy, full of tension.  Interesting to watch where kata go bad – a kata that’s supposed to end with a punch  to the head (as a finishing move) has the punch instead flailing somewhere around the elbow.

Iaido: Interesting.  Something I’d be interested in looking at more at some point.  More a meditative art – the technique and/as ritual is everything.  Something, along with jodo that I could see myself training in at some point in the future.  On the down side, nowhere to train in it in Wellington.  Boo.

Kendo:  Not for me.  All that bellowing.  So uncouth.  Also: competition.  Blech.

Kyudo (Archery).  Very interesting.  Very ritualistic, similar to Iaido.  Could see it being very fulfilling, as a meditative art.  Also: Local!  In Lower Hutt!.  Will investigate, but probably not be able to justify in the short term.  Then again, it is only 2 hours a week, and on Sundays.  Will find contact details, and see what follows.

Uncategorized Opinion, Personal

M*A*S*H N*O*T*E*S

Ken Levine’s a writer – has written for a bunch of shows you’ll recognise.

In a way, the actors in a show are the writers clients. This is an interesting way to manage them – although probably not particularly advisable in a business sense. Unless you can be subtle.

General General