The Ramblings of Octavo

Recently I’ve been wondering about people management and how to be a successful manager - I’m by no stretch of the imagination a manager, have never had any real management experience and so of course I have 20/20 vision on the matter and am thus supremely qualified to comment on the foibles of managersHumour warning: This sentence may contain wit and should be treated as such. So from now on, a new topic for my posts will be hypothetical work-place situations and how to handle them (badly).

Imagine a situation where you, as a qualified professional, get called upon in your personal capacity by your boss to perform (free of charge) your services for his own personal benefit.

Now, my personal reaction to such a situation would be to politely tell my boss to look in the yellow pages for a freelance specialist who would be able to help - either that or invoice him for my time. Of course, such an action would be of serious detriment to one’s future career at that company. And so you are left with a dilemma. Now, let’s back up a few steps here. Who put you in this dilemma? Your boss. So, is your boss’s behaviour acceptable?

In some situations, maybe it is - if you have a close relationship with your boss and you regularly do things for each other in non-work time perhaps. In almost all other situations though I’d say that it’s completely unacceptable. Your boss should never exploit his position of power to influence you to give up your personal time to engage in work for his personal benefit.

Your thoughts? 

A recent article in New Scientist had me chuckling with laughter! As it turns out, prayer has absolutely no effect on patients in recovery and in fact, may even be harmful to them! Apparently god gets pissed if you have the temerity to plead for someone’s life!

So stop praying for your friends, you could be killing them and not even know it!

I’ve been playing a bit of the original The Sims this last week and I must say I’ve become hooked. I think I’ll have to buy The Sims 2.

I’m not sure why the game is so addictive. On its surface it should actually be annoying - I mean, having to carefully map out the actions of your family to keep them happy and clean and earning a decent living. It’s not though - it’s oddly satisfying when your simulated man gets promoted and comes home to a simulated dinner served by his simulated wife who during the day is secretly in love with her simulated neighbour. I suppose it’s fun because the possibilities are endless, but the consequences are minor.

Take for instance what happened yesterday. My simulated couple were quite happy and after a bit of kissing the game asked if I wanted a child. I thought “why the heck not?” and let them have their kid. The brat took ages to grow up and when she finally did, she was a complete hassle to take care of. Eventually I kept her away from school and made her do all the house and gardenwork and after a couple of days, she was shipped off to military school - never to be seen or heard from again. What a relief

The game is so playable because there are so many aspects to work on. I’m currently concentrating on one family and trying to get the husband to the top of his career track, but it’s pretty tough…What’s his career track you ask? Why, he’s a hacker of course

Due to vast quantities of comment spam suddenly showing up all over my blog, I’ve upped the game slightly. I’ve added a list of words that will automatically move your comment into the moderation q (the usual suspect words) and I’ve also made it so that if you’ve never commented before, your first comment will go straight to the moderation q - only after it’s approved will you be able to post comments without them being moderated first. Sorry about the inconvienence, but that’s the price we pay for the spam pirates doing their dirty work.

 In other news, as you probably know, I’m down and out at home at the moment dealing with a rather nasty virus that I seem to have picked up. Towards the end of last month there was a heck of a lot going on and I was working my butt off as well - I suspect that as soon as everything came to a head and got neatly tied up on Friday, my body decided it had had enough and promptly invited a stomach virus to tea. Anyway, I saw a doc on Monday and am currently doing my level best to eat at least 2 meals a day and keep them inside me long enough to derive some sustenance from them.

Later man…

Ahh yes, my long awaited phone upgrade! It was finally due this morning and so it was that Ibis and I headed off to Canal Walk to get it done.

We walked into the Cell C shop there and asked to upgrade to the D600, expecting the usual prompt and helpful service. Well, I suppose the service was still good, but Cell C has discontinued offering the D600. So if you want it, you have to buy it from them. Of course, there’s nothing worse than getting excited about something and then being told you can’t have it. The sales rep patiently showed me all the other phones they had available and for a while I almost got an LG, but it was pretty bulky. Eventually I decided it was better if I did a bit more research on these phones since I couldn’t have the one I had decided on. And so we walked out.

A few dejected minutes after leaving the store Ibis and I decided that the D600 was what I wanted and so we might as well do our best to get it, even if that meant moving my contract. To cut a long story short, we eventually found that Game was willing to offer the D600 as an upgrade option on my Cell C contract, so I did get it in the end.

Now the actual review of the phone: It’s fucking awesome. Seriously. Fucking. Awesome. I was worried about several aspects of the phone, but so far everything is great. The picture quality is amazing, the LCD is probably it’s greatest pro - it’s crystal clear, sharp and very bright. The other features are awesome and pretty much blow any Nokia I’ve seen out of the water. You can take video and than assign that video to a caller as the caller ID. The USB data connection is a tad slow, but works without any hassle and allowed me to sort out my phone bookwhich always gets messed up when you move phones painlessly and quickly. The phone OS is very well done and easy to use depite what you might hear about Nokia having the “easiest to use interface”.

Yay!