May 2012

Stuck in Culture

First things first. I made a logo for this 15 minutes of blogging in the morning thing. It’s crappy but then again, I’m no artist. Pretty sure we can all agree on that. Shut up Jennifer. Nobody asked you. 🙂

Now, let’s get on to the thought of the day. What kind of a person are you? Do you concern yourself with your day to day life or do you generally tend to look at a bigger picture?

I just wonder about folks that are so out of touch with the modern business world in general that they don’t even know enough to know that they don’t know anything.

Imagine being stuck in a business culture for about 10 years. You really wouldn’t know anything else would you? Your expectations are going to be based on the things you know. For the last ten years, the company you work for is all you knew. I remember working for a company in the not so distant past where I was forced to schedule back hauls based on emails that I would get throughout the day. Another employee watched me go through the email process and pointed out that my methods were painfully old fashioned and that I needed to move into the current decade. His advice was valuable and helped me cope with a changing office culture. Doing backhauls the old fashioned way was all I knew and I had no idea that it could be done another way. Some people have called this type of thing “thinking outside the box” but sometimes we don’t even know another world of ideas or possibilities exist.

I would also suggest that I’ve had a bit of a culture problem with my production websites as well. I was used to running out of bandwidth and space and I accepted that I would have to make periodic adjustments along the way. It is the way it is…or so I thought. After getting frustrated enough with my current server hosts, I decided to shop around for something else. Not only did I end up finding something better but I found a place where bandwidth and space problems do not exist. I also ended up saving about $400.00 a year. Why didn’t I look for alternatives a long time ago?

Ok. I’ve been typing at this off and on all day long and the idea behind this is to write about what I am thinking about when I first get up.

I’m done now.

May 31, 2012 by 15 in the A.M.

15 in the AM for May 30, 2012

This could be the title of my latest book, “How to Neuter Your Computer.”

The idea behind using a computer to make you or your company more productive is to actually allow the computer to do most of the work. Some companies follow that philosophy and some don’t. I often look around and wonder why we still have so much paper floating around when computers were supposed to change that too. They did. People just haven’t caught on yet.

Human beings have a real problem with change. They will go ahead and write an article on their word processor but still need a “hard copy” to file away in a file cabinet somewhere…just in case. The paper copy is my backup. Huh? History really needs to get past people like you and quickly.

Processes at companies that should be relying on computers are deligated to a person to “watch” over a process to make sure it runs correctly. Huh? Instead of using a computer to filter results we manually task a human with that. I want such and such a certain way…and so forth rather than programming the computer to do so.

We don’t trust computers to do things correctly so we rely on the guy who can’t remember what he ate for lunch yesterday to do it. Fabulous.

Progress will happen if we just get out of our own way.

 

May 30, 2012 by 15 in the A.M.

15 in the AM for May 29, 2012

This is a new idea I came up with to force myself to post more on my own website. Take 15 minutes and write about what’s on my mind before I launch into the day.

Today, I find myself focusing on an audiobook I’m listening to called “Star Carrier: Book Two – Center of Gravity.” This book is set well into the future and the author paints a dark future for mankind where American government has fallen and global warming has destroyed costal cities. That is the great thing about science fiction in that..well, it’s fiction.

The government that author Ian Douglas speaks about in the book is of course, a world government with no party affiliations. Rule of law is drafted by consensus. All must agree or most must agree; you get the idea.

The aliens in this book are hostile. In fact, the alien species introduced in book two make Star Trek’s Borg look like infant children. In the first few chapters, the aliens are streaking towards Earth at incredible speeds and it seems that nothing can stop them.

At the last minute, the break up into parts and flee. Huh?

I get the feeling that these books were written by someone with little or no combat experience. The easiest way to write about a military you weren’t in is to invent your own system as Ian Douglas has here. A little digging into his biography at Harper Collins reveals that Ian was a Navy Corpsman. Point made.

It seems to me that the only way to get global warming to work, the only way to get a world government to work, the only way to get socialism to work, is to create it within a work of fiction.

We all know from experience that those things just don’t work in the real world.

May 29, 2012 by 15 in the A.M.

The Latest

Working on my podcast websites at the moment is leaving very little time to write anything on my own website.

Looking forward to a solid three days to get a bunch of programming, writing, and other things accomplished.

I’ll get back to writing regularly again sometime soon.

So much to do and very little time to do it in…

Laters.

May 24, 2012 by Drive By Blogging
Mike Williams
My name is Mike or in some cases Mick depending who you ask. I love programming, science fiction, audiobooks, cats, dogs, and writing. I do not filter on this website so you may see nudity, cursing, or other profanity as required. I apologize for none of it.

CaptainNukko on X

Post Calendar

May 2012
M T W T F S S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031