2017 is already fail: Let’s try a Chinese reboot At this stage of my life, I’m only good for quickies. So let’s make it quick, please, as I’m late for a meeting. Here’s me thinking all the shit would be blown away with the closure of 2016, giving me a fresh start in the optimistic new world that began at 00:01 on 1 January 2017. Oh no, not a chance. January has turned out …
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"do-si-do"
Noun: (in country dancing) a figure in which two dancers pass round each other back to back and return to their original positions.
60 years ago the class would do country dancing in the school playground to 78rpm records on a wind up gramophone. I always associate the tune of "The girl I left behind me" with being in the lead couple going through an arch of arms. Apparently not the "Gathering Peascods" as I misremembered.
At first I thought it was a reference to "Mairzy Doats".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mairzy_Doats
Many years ago some magazine [citation needed] ran a competition for messages to put in fortune cookies.
"Help! I'm a prisoner in a cookie factory" and "That wasn't chicken" rated highly, but the outright winner was ...
"Do not place your faith in fortune cookies."
"Coloured bars representing my booked-out periods slide randomly up and down the day, cross over, dozidoze their partners, nip round the back for a shag, then pop back into each others' places and mischievously send me noisy notifications at midnight for meetings held the previous day.
So, you use Outlook then you're saying?
There's also the joy of working for a multi national with offices all around the world.
The number of times I've received an invitation to a meeting that apparently occurred yesterday would make me think I should demand a TARDIS as a company car, or maybe a DeLorean given the last cookie...
I check my Today window when I get in and after lunch. It's still not enough because the envelope notification icon in the system tray mysteriously stops working after a few days and I have to turn it off then on again.
Do MS dogfood their own software? It doesn't look like it, in which case what software do they use and couldn't we just use that?
Ever noticed Greek and Roman statues of nude males?
In those days, if a man had a large todger, it was seen as a sign that he was ..... unsophisticated is the charitable way of putting it.
So, gentlemen ..... If you want to use my time machine, form an orderly queue!
My cat is insisting for first dibs on it, though; firstly for a trip into the future and a time when they have invented kitty-sized condoms, and then back into the past to just before his Operation. Sorry on his behalf in advance (or maybe in arrears; after all, the space-time continuum will already have been mucked about with by then), Veterinary Nurse Kate, for what is about already to have happened .....
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
"Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet."
- Bertrand Russell
Chop Suey IS American. It's based on the ACTUAL Chinese "tsap seui" and is most basically described as "leftovers". It was what the cooks whipped up out of the leftover cuts from their entrees.
Pizza, though, IS Italian in origin (at least, as we know it now) and spread by immigration. The flatbread idea, even the idea of topping it, seems to come from Greece, but it was Italians who hit on the sauce (because it was Italians—specifically Neapolitans—who first embraced the tomato en masse).
And I'll give you China and the pasta bit, as far as the idea of a noodle is concerned, though it should be noted Europeans probably got the idea from the Arabs, not the Chinese. I also wonder which was first to really go gung-ho on using wheat for pasta? BTW, did you know America's first industrial pasta factory was set up by a Frenchman?
It's the 'stuff sold like toasters' thing again, but this time it's the consequential assumptions, this app works lovely on my blingiphone, therefore it works perfectly on everyone else's blingiphone too, and instantly, and if I only need 5 minutes notice, then so does everyone else and more to the point, every message is instant and everyone is immediately notified of it.
TLDR: Smartphones make people stupid*.
The battery-eating app updates of extraordinarily high frequency are things you should be grateful for, all the immediately-uploaded minor tweaks are completely essential, how dare you question them!
.
* +/- 'some' as appropriate, obv., disclaimer needed due to 'u' and 'umption' always causing someone to take it personally.
There appears to be a trend for web pages to ignore the usefulness of a tabular calendar that can be quickly understood. It is a Tower of Babel.
Every week I spend a few hours trawling the web for upcoming events for 200+ choirs. I choose Monday night to do the trawl in the anticipation that by then they will have updated their calendars for the coming week. Every possible page a choir has - that is likely to mention a performance date - is monitored.
It is not unusual to find their different host pages contain different subsets with no apparent class differentiation. Often the only mention is in the narrative of a Facebook posting - or a custom web page that includes all the upcoming christenings, funerals, marriages, and Mothers' Union meetings.
What is happening quite regularly is that they will have announced a public performance for the previous weekend - on the day before it was happening. Major tours which have presumably been months in the planning - get announced as their plane takes off or as a review of each performance the following day. Places and dates - well "the USA" is not that big - is it?
One choir uses only a dedicated page on their custom web site. They add entries as the bookings arrive - so they are not in chronological order. They also omit any reference to a year. At least a chronological order can assume to have changed year as the month suddenly regresses.
Church choirs are fun. A repeating schedule will be "Only in term time" - which requires a guess at which local school's timetable is in play. A classical "Michaelmas term week 5" is another indirection problem to solve. An algorithm is currently being considered for "Last Thursday in every month".
Then there are the typos like the wrong year. The wrong day of the week can produce confusion when the algorithm uses it to try to generate a missing year field. Month names can have typos too - or unusual abbreviations.
As the choirs are international then their dates may take one of many, many formats. It can be quite educational. This week a neighbour clarified that Polish conjugates the names of the weekdays and the months - and there are apparently seven possible conjugations of each depending on the context. She added "Don't ask me to explain further".
"Make that on Monday so we can show it to the board."
The algorithm came to me suddenly as I was drifting off to sleep. From previous experience of such revelations I went downstairs and wrote it clearly on a notepad before going back to bed.
Seems to still make sense in the cold light of morning after my first coffee.
Here are all the steps for any "nth weekday in month". To get just the "last in month" you can prune the intermediate ones and test for the possibility of base+28 days before deciding if the answer should be base+21 days.
1. Find day of week for first day of the month and its Epoch time for 12 noon.
2. Calculate offset (0-6 days) for the required day of week. That date/Epoch time becomes the base "first of weekday in month"
3. Add 7 days to base for "second of weekday in month"
4. Add 14 days to base for "third of weekday in month"
5. Add 21 days to base for "fourth of weekday in month"
6. Add 28 days to base. Find month from its Epoch time or test directly for an invalid date
7. If month in step 6 is still the same (valid date) then that's the "last of weekday in month"
otherwise it is the date from step 5.
"At worst, seven checks and best served with a quick calculation..."
That is an alternative method. However it will become less efficient for the other "nth weekday in month" dates that people use for recurring events - as you don't know how many occurrences of that day of week may be in any month.. You will also still need to know the last valid date in any month and which day of the week it is - including leap years for February.
"Monday following the last Friday in the month"
Calculate "Last Friday in Month 12 noon"*** - possibly using Epoch time as above. Add 3 days and convert to date.
In VBA the date type "add" function will take care of both the addition and producing the correct date without having to explicitly handle Epoch time values.
***The use of 12:00 noon rather than the more obvious 00:00 midnight avoids errors down to daylight saving clock transitions skewing the day context.
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Media types seem to have trouble with schedules. Back in the days when telegrams were dying out - and in fact had morphed into messages read over the phone to you by a BT op - one journalist observed that their main use was to inform you of the cancellation of publicity events that you weren't going to attend anyway.
"Media types seem to have trouble with schedules."
Which is exactly why I dropped the local paper in the town I lived in years ago.
Every event was noted as "attendance down from last year", when they listed the program of the event... the week after.
Eventually, the town simply rented a billboard on the main highway to advertise events before they occurred. Attendance at events improved.
"Every event was noted as "attendance down from last year", when they listed the program of the event... the week after."
Our town's magazine is published every three months. They include local schools' requests for summer holiday maintenance volunteers - and the dates of their summer/xmas fairs. Unfortunately usually in the issue following the event.
"Every event was noted as "attendance down from last year", when they listed the program of the event... the week after."
That's one reason why I trawl and publish choirs' events. Supporters of choral music complained that often the first they knew of a choir's touring event was when a review appeared afterwards.
The collated events are published as a Google map.
It was realised that close geographic proximity can be across several state or country borders. What someone wants to know is "what is happening within my personal travelling range". The Google Map allows a personalised "geographic mask" filter that can be shaped to cover any contiguous area - thus allowing for difficulty/ease of travel in certain directions.
"Bookmarked right away!"
Thank you. I should point out that the choirs are only a specific subset. It is produced as a resource for the low traffic Yahoo Group "Voices of Angels".
The criteria are that a choir should contain a majority of boys in the treble section - or has separate performing sections for boy and girl trebles. Within the group there is also published a parallel trawl of new videos available from the choirs.
It does not cover some of the more obvious choirs. That is usually because they do not publish their events or media in a way that the trawl automaton can interrogate for changes.
"At least that seems more accurate than Faceache's continual stream of notifications wherein 'Friend X is going to an event near you today'."
The choirs' Google Map is a development of a previous tabular display where an event was indexed by city, state, and country. A posting still lists a summary of "tours" abstracted to just month/year and state or country.
When the Google Map was first plotted with live data it was realised that there were a significant number of venues that were in clusters. These clusters often overlapped adjacent state and country borders.
It makes sense that a culture that supports such choir performances will be down to a geographic population - rather than constrained to a particular country. For example the borders of France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain are very porous in this respect - reflecting more ancient divisions and political adjustments. Similarly the confluences of states in NE USA and SE Canada.
At first a simple circle of distance was used. Then it was realised that transport access would vary. What looks like a short hop could require a much longer tortuous journey. People may also want to plot an area covered by a travelling holiday route. Hence the current format and its user filters.
The only caveat is that it is sometimes tricky to set a latitude and longitude for a place. Event postings often assume local knowledge - especially when hopping across nearby borders. Place names are sometimes ambiguous even within the same country. Although some could be differentiated if their qualifier is present eg in Germany: Frankfurt am Rhein, and Frankfurt am Oder - in England: Newcastle upon Tyne and Newcastle under Lyme.
I went off the Time Warp after Tim slagged it off in Spaced for being a naff song to play at a party. Which reminds me, I must drag up a Spaced video for next week's column. For those unfamiliar with Spaced, here's a taster.
Though I am compelled to add that aspiring to closure for a year past when a year begins, as this one did, with Jan 20, may be the wrong order of operations.In this vein, I propose a Calendar solution that quite literally Trumps all the rest by offering the most motivatiing value-add--consequences. Let's call it The Reaper. It's operating premise is that "You reap what you sow" and, in action, it not only shows the melange of shite that is group-access calendaring and task mastering, but adds value by using sophisticated predictive AI to include what will happen to you if you don't make the meeting or complete the indicated task, or if, say, you vote for the wrong candidate (US) or initiative (UK) etc. The Pro version will automatically schedule time for Regret when predictively critical meetings are missed or tasks completed incorrectly.
Though I am compelled to add that aspiring to closure for a year past when a year begins, as this one did, with Jan 20, may be the wrong order of operations.In this vein, I propose a Calendar solution that quite literally Trumps all the rest by offering the most motivatiing value-add--consequences. Let's call it The Reaper. It's operating premise is that "You reap what you sow" and, in action, it not only shows the melange of shite that is group-access calendaring and task mastering, but adds value by using sophisticated predictive AI to include what will happen to you if you don't make the meeting or complete the indicated task, or if, say, you vote for the wrong candidate (US) or initiative (UK) etc. The Pro version will automatically schedule time for Regret when predictively critical meetings are missed or tasks completed incorrectly.
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They demand immediate attention from me, insisting on the urgency of the matter, then proceed to dither about or tinker with my work endlessly, as if those deadlines evaporated into air as thin as the stuff that fills their heads.
I don't really work well under pressure. But I'm relieved when I make a deadline. At least it's over, right?
But clients that do this demonstrate that they were dicking with me only to be jerks, and for no other reason. Nothing makes my blood boil faster.
They demand immediate attention from me, insisting on the urgency of the matter, then proceed to dither about or tinker with my work endlessly, as if those deadlines evaporated into air as thin as the stuff that fills their heads.
I don't really work well under pressure. But I'm relieved when I make a deadline. At least it's over, right? But clients that do this demonstrate that they were dicking with me only to be jerks, and for no other reason.
By dikking around, they're reiterating their hierarchical superiority. Also, there's a good chance they don't understand what you did, even though it's exactly what they asked for. Rodin needed tonnes of bronze to convey the impression of thought; they intend the same with a mere pause. Of. Appropriate. Duration. It's on page 157.
I'm with Spike - "Get it out with Optrex".
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A long time ago I realised that there are two modes of thinking and any individual almost certainly operates well in only one.
One is suited to complex tasks. It requires deep thinking. Getting into a problem takes time as there's a lot to be assimilated. Getting out can also take time; being yanked out of a deep problem is painful.
The other is suited to simple tasks. The tasks only require simple thought. They are quickly started and dealt with.
Both modes have their uses, one to deal with complex problems and the other to deal with a lot of small tasks because this mode enables one to pass rapidly from one task to the next.
The latter is, of course, the normal mode of thinking of the administrator. The downside of this is that they're unable to achieve the depth of thinking that would enable them to realise that the alternative mode exists, that it's often that used by the people they're administering and that the sorts of reporting schemes they come up with are deeply hostile to it. They'll be able to see the measurement of the time being spent on responding to their recording schemes and accept it as the expected cost of recording but they'll not be able to think deeply enough to see how disruptive it is to the main task nor even that the main task is the important one.
I had a similar boss. He loved to use Outlook to find times when the group was available to call frequent, last minute meetings. Simple solution: We all just went into our calendars and blocked out entire days for weeks in advance with "Working" entries.
In a job where we had to fill in time sheets (to 15 min granularity) different activities had their own codes. There were code for time spent filling in / collating data for time sheets, those entries could get quite large as everyone ensured those were accurate, just to make a point of time sheet futility.
Amen to that.
I have often been encumbered by excessive reporting structures - often in environments that are more administratively oriented than productive (meaning a small company doesn't have the time to waste on this shit, they want the result, not the report).
The gem in this collection was when I was consulting in a bank which had a guy working on a time reporting tool for the IT department developed in . . . Access. Between the multi-user issues and what I must suppose was either bad programming or a truckload of specification requirements, it took one hour every day to fill out the timesheet for the day. To the point that everyone was specifically filling a 1-hour slot with the title "Time Reporting".
Just starting the frakkin interface took 5 minutes.
Thankfully my contract ended shortly after this abomination was put in place.
People arrange meetings without telling me, wonder why I’m not there and – get this – scold me for not turning up on my own initiative, as if I were a fucking telepath.
Did you hear the one about the project manager who calls the one person on the team who is known to have email problems out of hours? Apparently the rest were at fault because the message didn't get passed on to them. Not his fault for not sending his own fucking email himself in the first place.
And then he wonders why the project's going off the rails.
...a calendar program that simply rejects updates that are less than X hours from now.
Think about it - my phone's calendar doesn't include an item creation time, so what's to stop a boss with a vendetta from adding meetings you were supposed to be at after they have occurred? The whole idea of a schedule that other people can add items to is horrendous...
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