Growing up is optional

A while back I wrote about the up side of being a generalist. In fact I went as far as saying that I was a ‘Specialist Generalist’; specialising in knowing a bit about everything. Unfortunately I am falling into the generalist trap like Richard said: …because I’m a jack of all trades Generalist, too much of my time gets taken up doing menial Web things for business people – just because I can.

The end result of this is that I get bored. Which in turn creates its own problem: I become unmotivated.

The hard part is deciding what to do about it. There is no point blaming anyone other than myself for this; my situation is the result of my decisions. Nor is there any point in waiting for someone to get me out of it; the only person that can get me out of it is me.

The natural next step is to answer the following questions:

1. Where do I want to be x years from now?
2. What do I have to do to get there?
3. What am I going to do about it?

These may sound like trivial questions, but they’re not. The first two are particularly difficult. The answer to the third should become obvious once that first two are answered. However, answering it and doing something about it are two different things.

So I’ll start with a basic question: What do I like to do? More random thoughts may follow…

<rant>I hate wearing a tie, so I don’t unless I have to go to a meeting that requires one. Today I showed up at work in tidy jeans and a tidy shirt with a collar. I was told several times that this was ‘a bit casual’ by several female staff, to which I responded I’m no more casual than you.

Relative to other males in my workplace, I am dressed casually. But if you put what I was wearing, cut to shape of course, on a female it would not be considered ‘a bit casual’. In fact, they would all go around commenting on how much they liked so and so’s new shirt and that they would like one for themselves.

Maybe I need to find a job where I’m not so outnumbered by women.</rant>

I saw a guy break his leg on the soccer field in a tackle. Both tibia and fibula about eight inches above his ankle. Made me slightly reluctant to commit to a front-on tackle, especially when I’m playing guys that are mostly my size or bigger, and I’m big for a soccer player: same size as this guy, just not as hard.

It doesn’t matter how many viruses (yes that is the correct plural for virus) do the rounds on the internet: people are largely ignorant to how they work and constantly bombard me with messages telling me that I sent them a virus, or worse, that I somehow infected their computer.

I know most of my readers will understand this, but the more it’s written, the more pervasive it will be and therefore the more effect it will have (hopefully)

• Keep you virus scan up to date; do it daily. This will help stop you getting infected.
• Get a firewall. If you do get a virus, don’t let it talk to the rest of the world.
• If you do get something that looks like a virus, don’t open it. If it looks like dog shit, smells like dog shit…you get the picture.
• It wasn’t me that sent it; chances are that the virus spoofs the email address that it was sent from. It came from someone else who had both our email addresses. If you were planning to do damage would you tell the truth about where you were from? Blame someone else; don’t blacklist me.

<vent>The one thing I hate most at work is the whispering that goes on across cubical walls. It’s just rude. Fuck off and get a room if you don’t want others to hear.</vent>

(I work in an almost open-plan type office. I’m the only male in my group, one of two on the whole floor.)

I think it was Dale Carnegie that said the most important words to a person is their name. Here’s the proof: think about the first thing you look up when you new phone book is delivered each year.

I was thinking about the labels we put on forms on the web. As an anglophone I often assume that people’s names are in the format FirstName Surname. However, this is not always the case. In some languages and cultures surname (or family name) is the first name and given names are secondary. This can be further confused by different titles or honorifics which may be prepended or appended.

It is generally a bad idea to use the term ‘christian name’ when refering to someone’s given name. I recall a discussion about names and their origin a collegue and I were having with a visitor from Indonesia. My collegue continually referred to his given names as christian names. The visitor was quite offended and protested that his name was Hindi, not Christian.

From now on I will use where possible the labels ‘Given Name’ where I would have previously used first name and ‘Family Name’ where I would have used surname.

I’ve decided I consume too much caffeine. Mainly through the consumption of Coke. Because of this I am also contributing to many of my hard-earned dollars to lining the pockets of a company that is rich enough.

My tale of addiction I suspect is repeated many times over. A few years back I was overweight (not obese, just 10kg (22lbs) heavier than I wanted to be), mainly due to poor diet. Apart from eating better, I cut back my drinking; beer, full cream milk and softdrinks. This was good and helped me reach my weight target, but I was now hooked on diet softdrinks; in particular Diet Coke with Lemon.

Since Coke dropped the lemon flavour, and brought out lime, I switched. This wasn’t a problem, but the amount I drunk slowly crept higher, to the point that I was consuming a whole 1.5L bottle in a morning every morning. This is about the equivalent of six cups of coffee in caffeine.

So now to beat it, same some money and my kidneys. I’ve hunted around the net and everything I have read says not to go cold turkey. That’s going to be kind of hard for me. It’s how I approach most change, how I quit smoking. So this is how I’m going to do it:

1. Switch from coke to the crap office coffee
2. Reduce the coffee intake to near zero over 3 weeks

I’m doing it this way for a couple of reasons: It saves money – I don’t have to pay for office coffee, it tastes terrible – it won’t be hard to give up, I’m not a huge coffee drinker – I generally only have about one (proper coffee) a week.

Quick Update:

• We beat KCU 2nd team 7-3
• The first snow has hit Mount Kapakapanui. I can see it from my kitchen window. It’s cold.
• I want one of these