Angus Gossip
The Angus Association has been experiencing quite a bit of turmoil. Many of their employees are eligible to retire now. As predicted, they are leaving in droves. In the past four months, four employees and a CEO have retired. These are expected. What was surprising and unexpected, is the announcement from the Director of Junior Activities.
CEO's company-wide e-mail
James Fisher, after putting his heart and soul into the Juniors’ organization, has resigned-effective immediately. I am sad to see him bereft of his position. I know he loved his job and the kids he worked with. I know he was good at his job. I also know he would never willingly leave, with the exception of retirement.
Want to know the truth? He was forced out of his position, thanks to a vindictive and conniving [expletive deleted] exerting her influence on the new CEO. Aside from sharing my disgust at watching office politics move into the extreme, I have one last thought to part with:
The Juniors will not be pleased.
HTML Tidbits
Just out of curiosity, I reviewed some of the HTML training on Lynda.com. I believed I had decent HTML chops and wanted to see how they approached learning HTML, from a beginner’s standpoint. I noticed they used “not recommended practices” in the beginning videos (no doctype declaration, font tag soup, etc.), but if you watch all the videos, they slowly add more “best practices” into the mix. And, I picked up a few tidbits I didn’t know.
Did you know…?
- The HTML 4.01 Transitional docType doesn’t require the ending <p> tag.
- The strict docTypes (especially XHTML 1) will often ignore your CSS directives.
- UTF-8 charset is the “ideal” definition according to the W3C, but ISO 8859-1 is the best in practice.
The second one I have experienced for myself. I’m not an advanced-level CSS coder yet, and XHTML (strict) practically requires it. I kept getting balked with my layout work, so I switched back to HTML 4.01 Transitional. Until I can do advanced CSS techniques, XHTML (with the strict docType) is not going to work for me.
The Photo Department Revisited
The Good
I did not realize part of the Photo department’s problem was multiple versions of the same photo. All I saw half a million photos listed on a single server, with a count close to 750,000 photos in total on all the servers. It didn’t occur to me that the most basic file management solution was not used. So what’s the good news? With the new hardware and software, it taught the ladies in the Photo department to think differently about how they organize and manage their photos. Since they knew it would only be a short amount of time before they would max out their new computer and software capabilities, they looked at their work and asked themselves, How can we make the best use of our new stuff? How can we make it last?
Their first answer was learning to let go of the old and outdated photos. The breeders shouldn’t be allowed to use photos (of a cow) that are six years out of date anyway. It throws the idea of ethics and honest representation out the window! After they quashed the outdated photos, they moved on to keeping only a single, working copy of an animal. Yes, there was only the most recent picture of that cow, but in the past it came in six different flavors: a black and white version, a color version, the original version that was sent to them, the new version with the ugly fence PhotoShopped out of the background…you get the idea. Now they hold only the final version.
The results? 500,000 animal photos have been condensed to a slimming 57,700 and counting. (They are still in the process of adding the new animals from this past breeding season).
The Bad
If they had given up storing outdated photos long ago, they would not have needed a dedicated search machine. Now they have a very expensive dedicated search machine that sits and gathers dust, because the finder window works just fine (again). I wish I could have caught the larger problem in the first place, but I wonder how much good that would have done. (And I am not sure the Photo Manager would have gracefully accepted the idea that a peon was pointing out a flaw in their work.)
The Ugly
If our company leaders were tuned in to their employees needs, this problem would not have happened at all. At the risk of sounding like the insubordinate brat that I am, upper management deserved the extra cost for the dedicated search machine simply because they were not paying attention to their duties. Had they been aware of the photo department’s issues in the first place, they could have found alternate and less costly solutions. Really, though, I think it turned out for the best. The heavy price tag was an excellent catalyst to motivate the photo department into thinking forward.
The mid-season slumps
I feel like an uninspired SOB. I can’t tell you the last time I worked on something fun, new or intriguing. I have been plodding away at updates and cleaning up web sites, day after day, for so long I can’t remember the last intellectually stimulating project I had.
Most of the time, I can look at my stats and it’s enough to motivate me back to work. I have deleted x number of files from website ABC or migrated n number of sites from GoLive to Dreamweaver. I have rebuilt x number of sites from tables into css-based layouts. Much of this goes unnoticed by our customers, since it’s code improvements (not design improvements).
In the past, there were a number of small projects that were interesting enough to engage me and break me out of the routine. I experienced just enough variety in work so that I would be capable of returning to the mundane and unsexy project of cleaning up the sites we have. The trouble is, I haven’t had a break from the boring work and the end is nowhere in sight.
Covering the National Junior Angus Show simply made me more morose. I thought it would be a break from the routine. I was wrong. I observed a mass of disorganized activity on behalf of the Association and the Journal’s crew. Perhaps it’s just a part of my nature, but I can’t help it: I refuse to create something (a solution, like software or a website, etc.) if the basic approach to solving the problem is wrong to begin with. Software cannot solve the problem, cannot save the day, if the basic solution is doomed to begin with! Am I the only one who sees this? Is it because I am an outsider, looking in?
Take for example, the check-in process. A Junior member wants to check-in a single animal they wish to show. That Junior member must visit three different locations to check in. Let’s forget for a moment that their entry form was filled out and submitted months ago. Let’s forget that the information is plugged into a computer. They have to verify and resubmit information on paper. WTF?! That was just the beginning. I don’t have time to give a detailed account, but I’m sure you get the impression.
I realize that putting on a show is a complex affair. I am not looking to ‘Save the [Angus] World,’ but a semblance of sanity in their processes would be reassuring. Are all organizations this big of a joke when it comes to actually being organized?
Morale is low, partly exacerbated by a lack of professionalism by my boss. The rest is attributed to the usual: upper management has no idea what we do back here. Usually, this is a good thing; right now, it’s a slap in the face. Many red flags have been set off recently. Before this, everyone in our department was making every effort to go above and beyond expectations and perform at the highest level. Now, no one is motivated that much any more. The intrinsic rewards have been removed. Should I just to the minimum required, so I have more free time for professional development (like learning JavaScript and PHP)?
What good is it, to clean up these sites, to make things better, to put forward a high level of performance, if no one recognizes the effort?
10 Signs Your Girl is a Geek
1. She’s fragged more n00bs on Halo than you.
2. She laughs at your t-shirt
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3. She nods sympathetically when you rant about someone in the Usenet group who refused to RTFM.
4. Her bit torrent is neatly sorted into TV shows, Movies & Music.
5. She mourned the death of Gary Gygax.
6. She can sing The Ballad of Serenity.
7. Her library sports any number of these illustrious authors: Gary Gygax, Douglas Adams, Ayn Rand, George Orwell or J.R.R. Tolkien
8. She quotes Office Space on a bad day.
9. She’s wished you Happy Towel Day.
10. Her d20 dice is not just for D&D, it’s a fashion statement.
