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I felt kind of weird, I’m not used to having so much time off. The weeks leading up to holiday I was staying very busy trying to manage my time between 3 projects all belonging to different clients. When the holidays hit, the sudden change left me feeling sort of lost and with CES being this week too, I still don’t feel like things have really picked up yet either. I get the one or two emails trickle in, but things still don’t feel back to normal. Part of that is due to 2 of my 3 projects ending right before everyone went on vacation, but I also feel like the holiday has something to do with it. Probably because if I tried to get a hold of someone, they wouldn’t respond until they got back into the office.
Now all work and no play does make Jack a dull boy, so I guess some time off isn’t all a bad thing. It does give me some more time in other things I like to do like gaming, and my endless conquest to come up with the next Google
There are certain parts of the day where we are the most productive. I consider these times of the day for me as being “in the zone”. This time of day occurs around 2-3am, this is when I feel total zen and that I am “at one” with my work. At this time is when all distractions are tuned out and I wont stop until I finish what I am working on. Only my keyboard, 4 or 5 
putty windows, and a browser have my full attention.
I’m a firm believer in working in our natural flows and rhythms, aka being in “the zone” or basically just working when you feel like it. When you feel like working or accomplishing a certain task, this is not a forced choice, its something you want to do. And when we do things we want to do, it makes us happy. If you are happy about working, then 1) you are happy about your work, and 2) the end result of your work is of higher quality.
Everyone has their own rythms and times of the day where they are most productive. I strongly encourage you to find yours whatever it may be, at 7am, 2am, or maybe you work best when you are hungry. A happy engineer is a good engineer.
Today marks the last day at my fulltime job. This economy has hit everyone pretty hard. We have already had one set of layoffs in the end of 2008 and just had a second round of layoffs in the begining of Febuary of 09. To say the least, it sucks. The company downsized a significant amount of people and I had to see some great friends/co-workers/engineers go. Fortunately for me I was given the option to stay on for another month to help with a big release we have been trying to get out. This gave me some to figure out what I was goign to do, update my resume, pay off any bills I had etc.
A lot of people in my place I know would be freaking out right now and frantically trying to get a new job in this economy, but I’m not too upset. I have felt “stuck” in my position there for quite some time and I was doing everything I could to possibly find a better fit for me within the company. The work that was given to me was very boring and none of my day to day tasks really challeneged me or made me think and overall I was very unhappy.
For me, getting laid off right now is a blessing in disguise. On one hand I’ll have to watch my budget a lot closer, but on the other hand I get to focus more on what I enjoy doing and attempt to make a living out of it. I am really looking forward to my time off.
I just got this out of the vending machine at work…
90% of all meetings can usually resolved by just using email or any flavor of IM. I know there are situations where actually having to meet up with everybody face to face is just necessary, but unless I am the organizer or presenter I can be using my time actually being productive. Also in an effort to stay productive through out the day I always attempt to bring my laptop into any meeting, but that can be problematic at times depending on what kind of meeting it is and who is there. (Not everyone appreciates you tapping away at your keyboard and possibly at the same time completely zoned out from everything that is happening.)
Training sessions are probably the biggest hit to productivity usually because of hte length of time. The company I work for basically blocks out a month every year and flys in all the remote and over seas guys to give them training. That is a whole 160 of work time of a mass amount of information that probably only 5% is actually absorbed and the rest is just in one ear and out the other.
With all that said I think its kind of obvious I am a productivity freak, which I am. I take pride in being able to get things done quickly and efficiently without affecting the quality of what I produce. A lot of people are unlike me and enjoy meetings, mainly because it takes them away from their boring old desk and its a change of pace and my argument to that is that is what taking a break is for.
- You gotta know what BSG means or else you will be completely lost at lunch
- The pregnant one holds the door open for all the guys, so thoughtful.
- Playing magic on the G1
- Iphone sucks, needs to lrn2MMS
- Discussion on how much table space you need to play magic
- We are so nerdy it can be scary
- How many different magic cards are out there. ~20,000
- Everyone seems to be amazed about all of us having lunch inside
- Need a remote power switch so I don’t have to walk around the building 20 times a day to reboot a machine.
- What do marketing people talk about at lunch?
- Shannon whats her name movies
- You can get .net on android
- Live free or die hard sucks
- Steve jobs is a dick, that’s what is wrong with his health
- Light saber app on the G1
- LARPing is the nerdiest thing ever
- Laser tag with the G1
- Disc Golf with the G1
- New BSG tonight
- How did the final 5 become cylons?
- Cylons are religious
- Tweeting through sms
- Only 3 of us use twitter
- .90210 version numbers
- Retarded project version names
- Magic card release names
We always seem to have very nerdy and interesting dicussions eat day at lunch and I want to keep track of all the things we talk about.
- How to play magic without getting your cards greasy while eating
- Transcoding torrent downloads
- Why all ferengi’s dont have the clothes around their head
- What BSG characters are the hottest, six, boomer, starbuck, dee
- Hot girls of star trek
- Bajorans suck
- Odo is badass
- Apparently staring at boobs for 10 minutes a day lowers blood pressure
- Mardi gras is crazy. Prude chicks turn crazy.
- World at conflict
- Iphone sucks
- Blackberry storm
- Palm pre keyboard sucks
- Stargate universe looks stupid
- Everbody at work should use twitter.
- We find out you can upload yourself to youporn. Everyone immediately stop using that site.
- Why I am taking notes.
- DnD character stats
- Using the force
- Sudo is the best force
At work I basically have a whole rack of Solaris machine (V240/T2000’s) to myself. Some better than others, but I am getting really excited about this one V240 in peticular…
It’s uptime has almost reached 1 year!
root@qa--solaris-v240 # uptime 5:33pm up 323 day(s), 5:42, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.02, 0.02
I am kind of amazed that this machine has survived so long, and its not even plugged into a UPS. At this rate it will reach 365 days of uptime January 18th, 2009. Updates to come…
Yesterday, the company I work for laid off around 20% of its work force, but in this economy I guess it’s no surprise. 20% of this small company meant around 17-20 people who were actually let go. We had to let some really good people go that have even been here longer that I have and it was a shock when I heard that they got laid off. I just hope everyone got a nice severance and are able too find new work before the holidays. Two of those people being from my department, and we were understaffed as is. I have a feeling things are going to start to get like the good ol days where all the departments kinda meshed together and working a lot more hours.
Here’s a quick look on some other company’s layoffs.
- Real Networks: 7%
- ATT: 8%
- Viacom: 7%
- NBC: 3%
- Adobe: 8%
- Sun Microsystems: 15%
- Nokia Siemens Network: 750
- Virgin Media: 15%
- Dell: 10%
And thats a very small list.. [Source: TechCrunch]
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