TLP Operating Principles

As part of setting up my 2011 Life Project, I’ve come up with what I’m calling operating principles. These are personal guidelines that I need to keep in mind while carrying out the tasks that feed into my resolutions. They include:

It takes work. Every resolution, every task—it’s all effort. Exercise four times a week? Work. Job interview? Work. Meditate? Yep, you got it. I can’t expect any of this to drop into my lap, certainly not at the outset. Maybe after a few weeks, when I’ve developed some of these behaviors into habits, it won’t seem like such a burden; but when I’m in the stage where I have to think about something, think about why I’m doing it & think about what the benefit is, it’s work. I can’t let myself get discouraged by that.

Pay attention. This is a major component of my resolution to be mindful, but I’ve found that so much of my life has been kind of inattentive; & that I most always get into trouble when I’m not paying attention (to both internal & external conditions). On a molecular level, I have to resist the urge to check my smartphone for emails while at some of the stoplights (around here, you can be at a red for more than two minutes). On the higher end of the scale, I want to be a lot more aware of & responsive to the world around me. “Pay attention” is germane to everything I do—be in that moment, focus on the action, the feelings, the environment, the people.

Make mistakes & move on. This is very, very hard for me—I hate making mistakes, & when I do I spend waaay too much time on feeling like hell about it. In theory I understand that there are very few mistakes you can make that will actually kill you. However, it’s been my experience that there are plenty that can make you wish you were dead. I need to pay more attention to the former & downplay the latter. If I can get this one, it’ll be major progress.

What does that look like? This reminds me to not only pay attention, but to define what it is I’m paying attention to. Airy-fairy goals are impossible to realize. I need to be really clear about what it is I want, why I want it. How is it going to change things? What will it look like when I achieve it? Is it a picture I really like? If not, what do I have to do to get one I like?

¿Ist daß positive oder negative? (One of my favorite WWII movies is Battleground, about the Battle of the Bulge. Not so much because of its intrinsic dramatic integrity, but because it’s a good indicator of how Americans viewed WWII in the early 50s. Anyhow—there’s a line from one of the Germans tasked with taking the surrender of the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne. When instead given General McAuliffe’s reply, “Nuts!”, one of the Germans asks “¿Ist daß positive oder negative?”) I have a tendency to put a negative slant on a lot of things; if I want to change my life for the better, I need to change that attitude. This applies to everything from getting stuck at a red light to dealing with difficult personalities at work.

Keep it clean. I grew up in an incredibly cluttered house. We used to alternate eating dinner at the kitchen & dining tables, depending on which one had more stuff piled on it. I realized some time ago that I hate clutter, it depresses me & makes me feel disorganized & uncomfortable. However, it’s also extremely hard for me to keep things ship-shape & Bristol-fashion, because it sneaks up on me & takes work to beat back into submission. Then clean-up becomes a huge project, & that really takes work. So I need to develop the habit of keeping it tidy in increments. This may seem patently obvious to all you who automatically maintain a neat environment; but it’s work to me & I need to pay attention to it.

See how these things are all fitting together?

Recruiters (sort of)

I was going to say that this isn’t strictly part of my current experience; then I realized I’d be lying. At one time or another within the past three years I’ve been asked all these inane questions at interviews…and more.

Well, the “where do you see yourself in five years” one has evidently gone out of fashion, since it has to be patently obvious to even the most fatuous interviewers that a five-year outlook with reference to a particular employer is in the realm of fiction.

&, while they’re all ridiculous & clear evidence of an organization in which someone has Taken A Course on interviewing, you know that anyone who asks about your greatest weakness is sadly behind the times. They really need to check out the latest edition of the handbook from the public library.

As for the hypothetical brain teaser questions: they’re huge in the largest software companies. I once spent an hour being asked a series of these by a guy sporting a pudding bowl haircut sitting on a balance ball in his office.

I can’t believe I still accepted the job offer.

Another day in paradise

It hardly seems fair, given the weather that's visited most of the nation over the past week, but it hit 76 degrees Fahrenheit in the Silicon Valley Sunday under a cloudless sky.

I had my windows open, took a walk in short sleeves & drank iced tea.

In February.

New year redux

Wishing you a very happy new year. Year of the Rabbit, that is.

Apparently this will be a year for rest & recuperation after the Year of the Tiger, which we’ve just passed through. There’s danger of indulgence & stagnation if you let yourself go rabbit-wild. Also, on the international front, greater insularity & national protectionism, or so I hear.

(According to Punxsutawney Phil, we're getting an early spring; but that's a rodent of a different disposition entirely.)

Still—I’m in the mood for something new & for something to celebrate. So, dunno about you, but I’ve cleaned my house & paid my bills & I’m going to have some spicy Chinese food to mark the changeover.

Gung hay fat choi.

Corporate fish tail

The WSJ reports that a medievalist at Yale has debunked the official Starbucks corporate “history” of the origin of their mermaid logo. ’Bucks’ leadership claims to have both “pored” and “poured” over various (undefined) “marine books” before finding inspiration in a 16th-century “old Norse woodcut”.

According to the Yale blogger, the whole idea of 16th-century Norse woodcuts is on the crocky side,and the source was more likely some version of a book called The Dictionary of Symbols, which was originally published in the 15th century, but isn’t marine related.

Here are my thoughts on the matter:

1. Who cares?
2. Is anyone really surprised that any corporation would fetch up a load of old cobbers about any part of their operation?
3. Who cares?

However, I pass it on to you in the interests of intellectual inquiry.

Rooms at the inns

Dunno whether you were contemplating a trip to Pigeon Forge, Tenn., or Daytona Beach, Fla., but if so you may wish to consult Trip Advisor’s list of the Ten Dirtiest Hotels in the US beforehand.

If you’re headed out to Europe, Asia or India (don’t know whether Trip Advisor doesn’t know or doesn’t care that India is part of Asia), there are the ten dirtiest in each of those locations, too. (Actually, two of the Asian names-of-shame are in India, so perhaps there’s something wrong with TA’s algorithm & they can’t afford human editors.)

What surprises me about the Asian list is that two of the top three are in Singapore. Evidently that country’s government focus on societal niceties like shaggy hair & spitting on the sidewalks doesn’t apply to cleanliness in tourist accommodation.

Recruiters 14

Here’s another Tale from the Recruiter Side: I received an email from one for a contract “Jr. Technical User Documentation Writer”. The fact that I have nothing in any online profile that would support the idea that I’d be a junior writer isn’t what’s noteworthy. Nor is the job location being in a suburb of Sacramento the rather odd part.

No, it’s the recruiter’s email address, which was linda@XXXrecruit.com. But the actual email had a signature block indicating that his/her name is “Suresh. B”, with an email address that doesn’t include “Linda”.

Now, for years when I’ve called various tech support lines & got reps in Bangalore I’ve noticed that they often have noms de phone, such as Ted or Tiffany. Like that’s going to disguise the fact that your accent is straight out of Bollywood. But this is a first—do they think that you’ll be more likely to open an email if it has a Valley Girl name in the email address? Or that it’ll make any phone conversations more intelligible?

Got health?

Here’s something that came my way that takes my mind off the Dalí painting that dealing with recruiters constitutes. It’s a four-minute video presentation of how the world has changed in the areas of health and wealth over the past 200 years.

A couple of things that are interesting to me: the cataclysm of the 1914-1918 war and the influenza pandemic of 1917-1919 causes a visible dip in the global health-wealth continuum. This is the conflagration that 97% of Americans are unaware of.

The second is the (again) obvious effect of colonialism: you’ll notice that the nations of Africa and much of Asia don’t move into the healthy-wealthy quadrant until about 20 years after being cut loose from their imperial masters.

Overall, it’s an example of graphics, for once, being used to actually aid the transfer of information instead of substitute for it.

Recruiters 13

Further to my experience last week with the two recruiters offering the same four-line “opportunity” for me to sign up to, you’ll recall I sent them both a request for more information, which I needed to be able to evaluate the prospect.

Shruti, who sent me the same email twice, never bothered to reply. Santy did respond…but I’m none the wiser. Viz.:

“Hi [Bas Bleu],
“I don’t have much job description from the client . they need a Front line product manager - owns a particular product line, but doesn't necessarily set strategyMust have: Experience with Enterprise and SaaS software product offerings is requiredFamiliarity with Energy domain a major plus

“Warm Regards,
“Santy”

So, the exact same 34 words that s/he sent me on Friday, formatted marginally differently.

I replied that, since this is what s/he had given me originally I still can’t evaluate whether I’m a fit. I did say that if more information (= an actual, you know, JD) comes in, I’d be interested in seeing it. But I know I’ve just flown off the Santy radar screen, the way I did for Shruti’s on Friday.

I understand that when I tell them I need information to make an informed decision about whether I’m a match for a job I’m not speaking any language they understand. For them, there is no “match” or “mismatch”; there’s only a score or no-score. Theirs is strictly a game of quantity, not quality; & that model obviously works for them.

But not for me. So it’s a good thing that I’m not counting on anyone with “recruiter” in his/her title to do anything useful.

The 411 on 911

In case you’ve ever wondered about the emergency communications system, there’s a web site that collates items about it. It’s called 911 Wackos.

Some folks call 911 for strange reasons.
Some folks get into trouble after a 911 call.
Sometimes the 911 operators get into trouble.

The incidents aren’t all in the US, but of the ones that are, it seems a lot of them take place in Florida.

Dunno what to make of that.