oxfordhacker

As I mentioned (albeit obliquely) previously, I got a new job. Of course, it's not so new any more, but I'm still enjoying it. Of course, my summary of it as 'curing cancer with SQL', is something of an over-simplification. For a start, I use other languages too. Also, we're not curing cancer, so much as all premature death and disease. Don't believe me? Check out the plaque on our wall (click for a more readable version):


And that is one of things I like about by new job: the six foot wide bronzed plaque on the wall commemorating a famous graph (Richard Doll demonstrating exactly how bad smoking is for you) and spitting in death's eye. It genuinely is a heartening thing to see every day.

( Here are a few more of my favorite things )

I have to learn the statistics package SAS for my new job. After a week of intensive daily study, I even find myself dreaming about it. I know, not a promising topic for a post, but in this dream I roamed my new workplace while the disembodied voice of a serial killer taunted me with my inability to arrange his dismembered victims into data sets consisting of one corpse per row, and tricked me into making syntax errors that overwrote vital evidence. Cheers, subconscious...

I'm a procrastinator with a low boredom threshold, which is why the only job I've ever been any good at is technical support. The constant stream of crises make procrastinating difficult, and there's always something else that I can usefully do if I lose interest in any given task. That said, I'm always on the look-out for extra activities to keep me from stagnating. I've added training, query writing and a bit of documentation to my role, but I've recently been pro-active in expanding it still further:

Efficiency consultant
I used my powers of procrastination and ad hoc justification to help others! I convinced two very stressed developers that it wasn't worth wasting time finding out which clients would be inconvenienced by their latest change. Simpler by far to build an automatic check into the upgrade, and have it tell the customers to tell us if there was a problem. They visibly relaxed as I improvised plausible reasons why this was the soundest approach, and as they departed, one sighed, "My headache's gone away now." If there's a difference between laziness and efficiency, I don't care.

Health and safety officer
My boss: "I'm exhausted. I wish I hadn't agreed to go out tonight. Oh well, I should enjoy myself, I suppose. I might get hit by a bus tomorrow."
Me: "Especially if you're tired from going out tonight."

Internal support
If there's one thing better than solving someone's problems in short order, it's solving someone's problems in short order and then being entitled to gloat about it openly in front of them.

If you can suggest any other roles I might usefully adopt to improve my career prospects or job satisfaction, I'm open to suggestions.

I had a meeting today in which we were discussing why our bug logging procedures weren't being followed consistently. One of the company's directors suggested that we should be 'more like the Nazis.' I was so inspired by this suggestion that I have produced some posters with which to share it:

( Brace for motivation... )

My workplace is perhaps a little strange. One of my favourite colleagues has recently put a hand-written sign next to her monitor saying 'Remember: You are surrounded by IT people'. I've yet to discover what exactly prompted this, but it is perfectly true. They're a bunch of geeks, and, as I have seen in such groups elsewhere, there seems to a rather more diversity in human interaction than amongst people who are, for the want of a better term, normal. For example, some seem to talk to colleagues continuously, some almost never, and others just talk to themselves.

Now, I'm cool with this. As a decent liberal chap, I'm happy for people to act as they wish if it doesn't harm anyone. As a geek with geeky friends, I'm used to people with a social foible or two. And, as a jaded misanthrope, how these people behave is of no concern of mine because (with a couple of honourable exceptions) I don't really give much of a shit about any of them.

My only real concern regarding this workplace culture is that it might lack the exemplars and feedback to keep my own behaviour within, shall we say, societal norms. This is a particular danger given my aforementioned 'cognitive dissonance' approach to work, where I think of my work-self as, well, a work-self, a useful but limited subset of Me. Said subset has been behaving oddly recently, but I'm hoping that examining these oddities might prove useful for recalibration purposes.

Oddity: Vivid mental images of beating colleagues who sniff, cough or have annoying ring tones.
Diagnosis: Little cause for alarm. I'm pretty sure many people have these thoughts, I don't think it actually shows too often, and I can always drown everyone out with my iPod when I'm in a particularly bad mood.

Oddity: A bug has resulted in some people getting pop-up reminders for everyone's calendars, not just their own. With this in mind, I have so far set reminders to 'Complete phase 1 of master plan', 'Warn past self' and 'Kill again'.
Diagnosis: Not too bad. I'm sure the affected people have worked out what's going on, might find it amusing, and will quite possibly guess that I am the culprit.

Oddity: Worrying that my lunch is being analysed in crude pop-Freudian terms by my colleagues. I often lunch at my desk, and I sometimes wonder what people think as I wander past them from the kitchen holding a plate containing just a bagel and a banana. I mean, the symbolism is pretty crass, right?
Diagnosis: Harmless. I think this is really just a mental in-joke, or possibly my brain trying to tell me that my diet's boring. And, anyway, even if people are analysing my lunch, surely al it implies is that I'm thinking about heterosexual sex, and that's something that I convey using actual words on a fairly regular basis, even at work.

Oddity: In the kitchen there is sometimes a giant catering tub of biscuits. It's odd because it's exactly like a normal biscuit tub, but twice the size in every dimension, including all the text on it. At times, seeing it makes me momentarily vertiginous, like it's much nearer than I think, or that I'm suddenly smaller. This is a vivid reminder of lying in bed as a child suddenly convinced, in my semi-sensorially-deprived state, that I have shrunk or grown, and without moving I can't tell whether I have.
Diagnosis: Probably nothing, though it might imply I spend too long staring at a screen, and my eyes just get over-excited when confronted with a depth of focus. The childhood memories are just that, not flashbacks or anything, and they're more bizarre than actively unpleasant.

Oddity: Genuinely considering my work-self to be a distinct persona; performing mental check-ups on said persona; and attempting to do this in the form of light-hearted blog post.
Diagnosis: This is not a great sign, to be honest. While I'm sure everyone acts differently at work to a greater or lesser extent, my dissociation seems as if it might not be very healthy. It was, I think, a mechanism for dealing with previous, shittier, jobs and, in retrospect, was probably of questionable benefit even then. In my current role, which is pretty varied, demanding and engaging, it may have out-lived its usefulness.
On the other hand, it's not as if work demands or rewards a full spectrum of emotional response. It would be like wearing my normal clothes to work: I could, but it would feel like a waste. Is it better to embrace work whole-heartedly, or to regard it as a necessary chore, grudgingly performed? Perhaps some experimentation is in order...

I know I was bitching about my job earlier, but even then I was forced to concede that it had some excellent aspects. Paramount amongst these is my boss. She's charming, and cheerfully perky at a level that fluctuates between 'refreshing' and 'disturbing'. She is also young, blonde, curvaceous, and very pretty. Even better, she's a fantastic manager, always willing to deflect a little flak, to raise an issue that needs raising, or to boost the morale of a flagging office. Morale-boosts come in various forms: a sweet, perhaps, or an aphorism from her hilariously dispiriting 'improving quote a day' calendar. Sometimes, however, the malaise is deeper, and she will be left with no choice but to declare an 'Angelina Jolie Half-Hour'. The notice board that shows our unclosed support calls is reversed, revealing her lovingly-chosen selection of photos (including our favorite) with some token pictures of Brad Pitt and George Clooney for the other ladies in the office. This is not a tradition in any other place I've worked, and they were all the poorer for it.

Anther thing I like about her is her phobia. These are, of course, always fascinating to the non-sufferer, and the odder the better. I know I'm not the only one who immediately begins to ask questions exploring boundary conditions in an attempt to discover exactly where the scary bit lies, despite the instrisic futility of such an exercise. Uniquely, in my experience, my boss was able to describe the nature of her fear so vividly that I felt a shadow of what it must be like. Her fear is pigeons (not doves, nor sea gulls, just pigeons), and her explanation: they're like robots sent by God. Dwell on that one next time you're in a city alone...