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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Thoughts

  • Technical Versus Management Problems

    While searching for a way to make MediaMonkey write “now playing” data into Lync 2010’s “What’s happening today” note field (clearly, this is critical work-related tinkering) I ran across a link to an argument with someone trying to solve a problem the wrong way. To illustrate, I’d like to tell a short story about one of my proudest moments in my previous job. It wasn’t a particularly cunning software or hardware implementation, but rather it was finding common ground with management regarding a problem user.

    One of the sales managers at Entercom came to me one day and asked me to find a solution to the problem of a new account rep hire who spent all day on ESPN’s website, among others, checking box scores when he should’ve been writing proposals and making calls. We discussed firewall settings, the pros and cons of various “nanny” software packages, and at the end I politely pointed out that what we were trying to do was to use technology to solve a management problem. The loose nut behind the keyboard was the actual problem, and all I’d be doing is giving him hurdles to jump over on his way toward continuing to goof off.

    The manager thought about that for a minute, then agreed that he’d first try direct conversation with the hire, followed by disciplinary action if needed, then come to me for the “firewall fix” only if the other steps failed.

    Within a few weeks the new hire was a new fire.

    I feel good about this story, not because I avoided any technical heavy lifting but because I was able to communicate effectively with someone from a whole other world (sales) about the limitations and relevance of technology as applied to personnel issues. As a side-benefit, my working relationship with that particular sales manager improved considerably because I was able to give him the tools to solve a problem even though I didn’t actually deploy any software or hardware. We were on the same page, and that’s what mattered.

  • One Saw Weak

    And this makes once a week every week in January of Twenty-thirteen that I’ve managed to crank out a post of some sort.

    I’ve set myself a few small goals and limitations for the time being. One, I need to get something posted here once per week, more if I can manage it, but no less barring catastrophe. Two, I’m allowed only one breakfast and one lunch “out” on working days per week to cut back on the huge monetary outlay that I’m sure the fast food places near my work are now sorry to be deprived of. And three, I only need to produce four more months’ worth of the webcomic before completing its official run at the end of May. (I might later do some one-off comics, events, that sort of thing… but twice-per-week-like-clockwork will be over.)

    Mind you, I don’t know what I’ll do for a creative outlet afterward. I’ll need to do something or I’ll go nuts.

    Okay, nuts-er.

    One idea I’m tossing around is that of a radio-play type thing, get a few people together to record dialog, insert some sound effects, something along those lines. If I do this, I’ll start small with a one-off half-hour episode and get a feel for whether I can make a story work and whether I can handle the workload involved.

    Anything’s possible, yes?

  • Dervish D.

    If I keep this up, January 2013 will see more posts here than any two months in 2012 put together…

    At any rate. The last song to come up in Poweramp on my tablet last night (why pay for a separate MP3 player when I have LG Tone headphones and a nice big tablet?) was… this:

    [audio:Vangelis-DervishD.mp3]

    And that got me thinking about how my musical tastes went from mostly-classic-rock to include so much electronica like Pet Shop Boys and BT. I have my great-granddad to thank, in this case.

    Great-Grandpa George was a tinkerer, a packrat, a storyteller, and a very strange sort of audiophile. Like many such folk in the early 1980s he believed that the LP was far superior to any new-fangled digital compact disc nonsense. Unlike anyone else I’ve ever met, however, he believed that cassette tapes were also superior to CDs. (He was also an Edgar Cayce fan. Ah, well.) Either way, he had multiple turntables and racks of tape decks and several open-reel rigs in the house, most of them in the upstairs living space of the house.

    Luckily, when I had to sleep over at their place, I got to sleep upstairs with all the cool toys. (This explains so much, doesn’t it…?)

    This being the early 80s, and me being around 10 years old, my musical knowledge was limited to Top 40 radio, whatever my parents listened to, and… Grandpa’s tape and record collection. Not much of his available material stuck with me for very long, but man, I loved the Vangelis tapes like “Opera Sauvage,” “Mask,” and especially “Spiral,” from which the above track is pulled. Much like the Genesis stuff I’d get into a few years later, this was rich and complex imagination fuel for my little brain, and I ate it up.

    My father remains unamused by Vangelis, by the way: The notion of one man looping instruments and samples in a studio is what he describes as “musical masturbation.” I see his point, but I also sort of don’t care. (Love you, Dad!)

    There’s a direct, if unusual, path from that Dervish D song to the Jan Hammer and Tony Banks and Pet Shop Boys and KOTOKO and BT and Venus Hum pieces which form one of the pillars of my musical collection today. So, thank you, Grandpa George, for all those tapes we made all those years ago.

  • I’m the only one who’ll notice.

    When building the comic, sometimes I fret about the fact that I don’t have a set style guide for things like (let’s say) the struts that connect word balloons within a comic panel. They tend to come out in varying widths and not always aligned perfectly. Shouldn’t I set some rules, make sure everything is uniform and neat and tidy?

    Then I remember that this is just a silly webcomic read by maybe thirty people around the world (on a good day) and I should just relax…

  • What Do You Do?

    Among the things I expected when I awoke this morning, such as “oh crap I don’t want to deal with Monday” and “I hate the onset of summer weather,” I didn’t count a strong bout of “but what do you bring to the table, really?”

    Especially when I’m not sure I bring anything to the table. Ever feel like you’re just a space filler?

    I need my camera back so I can get cracking on more comics. At least then I’ll be making something.

  • A Silly Sentence

    Such are the thoughts which cross my mind at random times of day or night:

    You know, “The Heir of the Air may err” is a perfectly valid sentence but without context it’d be difficult to understand when spoken.

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