There are times when I wonder if I really still like music or if it's just a habit. Do I like stuff because I think I should? Given my recent immersion in the symphonic works of Bruckner, Prokofiev and Shostakovich for educational purposes, you can see how I might have that doubt.
So I was having my pass-the-time-between-work-and-a-movie coffee and cake in the Milkbar on Bateman Street, where they play a steady stream of what seem to be New Zealand bands at a volume so you can't ignore it or hear the conversation at the next table. I was tapping away on my Asus and started to think "that's a good guitar sound"... tap, tap, stare, think, tap, tap "that's a really good guitar sound", tap, tap, think, tap "what is this?" So I asked the guys at the counter, who told me it was an New Zealand band called High Dependency Unit and the album was called Metamathics. Which is not on amazon.co.uk, but two others are and I've downloaded both onto my Sony Ericsson C510. When that happens, I know I still really like music and my ear hasn't gone soft.
One of those tracks - Masd - is one of the most beautiful sounds I've heard all year. Sadly it's not available on You Tube, but this is, and you should give it a listen.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Monday, 11 October 2010
The Pursuit of Happiness - Or What The Founding Fathers Really Meant
As every schoolboy knows, the Declaration of Independence says amongst other things that "we hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".
As every schoolboy has been told by his tutors and millions of subsequent mavens, "the pursuit of happiness" is a siren calling to wreck the soul on the rocks of futility, an impossible dream and an occupation as futile as finding the end of the rainbow. Happiness, in the Western World, is to be pursued, surely, but is unattainable. Except for the simple-minded, simple-souled or through some adjustments of the soul that would tax the virtue of a Tibetan monk.
Unless you're one of the Founding Fathers. For them the word "pursuit" did not commonly mean '"chase after" but rather "occupation", "work", "calling" or at worst "pastime". They didn't mean "pursuit of happiness" as in the chase after it, but the actual practice, work, occupation or vocation of happiness: doing stuff that you like to do and not wanting to be doing something else at the same time.
Happiness wasn't a state of mind for them, but a mode of engaging in activities. The right they had in mind was not to some kind of chemical or spiritual high or snatched moments of contentment and bliss, but to work and live in a manner that was such that you want to live like that and aren't always haunted by the idea that you could live better. That's what happiness is, and that's what the occupation, work or "pursuit" of it would be. Not to be blissed-out, not to be vacantly un-discontent, but to be actively engaged in the world in a manner that was satisfying to you. And not to be haunted by nightmares of better.
That's an idea of happiness that only a rich man could have, or a philosopher. The rest of the world in 1776, ground down by poverty and bad weather, saw happiness as the absence of misery, hunger, ruined crops, taxes and anything else that made their lives harder. Poor men conceive of happiness as the absence of everything that makes their live hard. Happiness is to be achieved by the acquisition of tools and goods that make life easier or more productive, that shelter from the storm, ease the pain or bring a moment of release and gladness. And that's the stuff that gets chased after, because you can chase after highs and try to cheat the lows for ever and never succeed. The Founding Fathers were not creating a right of existence for John Deere Corp (agricultural machinery) or for Jack Daniels (easing the pain). They were creating a right for you to pass your life productively and in accordance with your best skills and nature.
Just like they did.
As every schoolboy has been told by his tutors and millions of subsequent mavens, "the pursuit of happiness" is a siren calling to wreck the soul on the rocks of futility, an impossible dream and an occupation as futile as finding the end of the rainbow. Happiness, in the Western World, is to be pursued, surely, but is unattainable. Except for the simple-minded, simple-souled or through some adjustments of the soul that would tax the virtue of a Tibetan monk.
Unless you're one of the Founding Fathers. For them the word "pursuit" did not commonly mean '"chase after" but rather "occupation", "work", "calling" or at worst "pastime". They didn't mean "pursuit of happiness" as in the chase after it, but the actual practice, work, occupation or vocation of happiness: doing stuff that you like to do and not wanting to be doing something else at the same time.
Happiness wasn't a state of mind for them, but a mode of engaging in activities. The right they had in mind was not to some kind of chemical or spiritual high or snatched moments of contentment and bliss, but to work and live in a manner that was such that you want to live like that and aren't always haunted by the idea that you could live better. That's what happiness is, and that's what the occupation, work or "pursuit" of it would be. Not to be blissed-out, not to be vacantly un-discontent, but to be actively engaged in the world in a manner that was satisfying to you. And not to be haunted by nightmares of better.
That's an idea of happiness that only a rich man could have, or a philosopher. The rest of the world in 1776, ground down by poverty and bad weather, saw happiness as the absence of misery, hunger, ruined crops, taxes and anything else that made their lives harder. Poor men conceive of happiness as the absence of everything that makes their live hard. Happiness is to be achieved by the acquisition of tools and goods that make life easier or more productive, that shelter from the storm, ease the pain or bring a moment of release and gladness. And that's the stuff that gets chased after, because you can chase after highs and try to cheat the lows for ever and never succeed. The Founding Fathers were not creating a right of existence for John Deere Corp (agricultural machinery) or for Jack Daniels (easing the pain). They were creating a right for you to pass your life productively and in accordance with your best skills and nature.
Just like they did.
Labels:
philosophy
Friday, 8 October 2010
The 2010 A/ W Job Hunt
I spent the first two years at The Bank looking for a way out, but a desirable one came there none (maintenance stock analyst near Heathrow?). At the start of 2009 a number of the agents I trust advised me to hunker down and ride out the recession. I did and they were right: my phone barely rang many of the stories I heard involved people taking new jobs that vanished two months later in a re-organisation.
My phone started to ring a month or so ago and it seems the market has picked up. So after the un-necessarily emotional couple of weeks I've hinted at, I wrote an update mail, assembled the "Agents" mailing list and hit Send. Within minutes the "Undeliverable" messages came back, and a day later the "Postmaster has given up trying to send" messages came. You use those to clean up your contact list.
I was thinking of applying for the supervisory role I've mentioned before. Right up to the point where the new manager told Jack he wasn't going to be considered for the grade two job (Jack's a grade one) , which in everyone else's eyes would be a deserved promotion for Jack, who is an all round Good Guy and knows both sides of the data-world we live in. He also said that if Jack wanted to apply for other jobs in The Bank, he would give Jack his full support - not that he was trying to get rid of him... This is the kind of manager who uses performance gradings to communicate his personal approval of your behaviour and what you'ver done for him lately. I am not going to justify his decisions to my staff when I don't agree. ("Fred felt that your behaviours / performance wasn't quite..."). I couldn't work as a line manager for the guy. That decision just made itself. And starting the job hunt has given me a sense of options that I haven't had for a long while. I feel so much calmer now.
Job hunts are different for different professions and people: a pricing analyst / manager has a very different experience from a credit control assistant. Above two-levels-below-the-Boardroom, you don't really go looking for jobs as mere mortals do. The headhunters call you. If you call them, they will be pleasant and put you on file, but until they get an assignment that matches you, there is nothing they can do. Senior guys and gals can spend a long time waiting for an opening. Many specialists turn out to have a simple plan. A friend of mine is a technical writer: the first time he was laid off in a re-organisation, his manager told him to register with agencies X, Y and Z, as they were the specialists in technical writers. Don't bother with the others, she said. He did what she suggested and it worked out pretty well. Sadly, there are no specialist agencies for pricing guys.
My phone started to ring a month or so ago and it seems the market has picked up. So after the un-necessarily emotional couple of weeks I've hinted at, I wrote an update mail, assembled the "Agents" mailing list and hit Send. Within minutes the "Undeliverable" messages came back, and a day later the "Postmaster has given up trying to send" messages came. You use those to clean up your contact list.
I was thinking of applying for the supervisory role I've mentioned before. Right up to the point where the new manager told Jack he wasn't going to be considered for the grade two job (Jack's a grade one) , which in everyone else's eyes would be a deserved promotion for Jack, who is an all round Good Guy and knows both sides of the data-world we live in. He also said that if Jack wanted to apply for other jobs in The Bank, he would give Jack his full support - not that he was trying to get rid of him... This is the kind of manager who uses performance gradings to communicate his personal approval of your behaviour and what you'ver done for him lately. I am not going to justify his decisions to my staff when I don't agree. ("Fred felt that your behaviours / performance wasn't quite..."). I couldn't work as a line manager for the guy. That decision just made itself. And starting the job hunt has given me a sense of options that I haven't had for a long while. I feel so much calmer now.
Job hunts are different for different professions and people: a pricing analyst / manager has a very different experience from a credit control assistant. Above two-levels-below-the-Boardroom, you don't really go looking for jobs as mere mortals do. The headhunters call you. If you call them, they will be pleasant and put you on file, but until they get an assignment that matches you, there is nothing they can do. Senior guys and gals can spend a long time waiting for an opening. Many specialists turn out to have a simple plan. A friend of mine is a technical writer: the first time he was laid off in a re-organisation, his manager told him to register with agencies X, Y and Z, as they were the specialists in technical writers. Don't bother with the others, she said. He did what she suggested and it worked out pretty well. Sadly, there are no specialist agencies for pricing guys.
Labels:
Day Job
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Make Tools, Not Quick-Fixes
Faced with a new task and an eight-hour deadline, do you: a) spend seven and a half hours building a tool to do the job and thirty minutes using it to deliver the result, or b) spend all eight hours working up something that does the trick but can't be re-used?
If you answered a) you are probably an engineer at heart, whereas b) is what everyone else does.
I once spent four days automating a large spreadsheet we used for a weekly report: it had twenty sheets and thirty pivot tables fed from separate SQL queries on a mainframe database. Most of the time was spent on the Query and Pivot Table object models, where the lack of a decent manual had me going round in circles. The report took me about forty-fifty minutes each week to do manually. Over fifty weeks, that's about the same number of hours I spent on the automation. Why bother? Because I learned a lot of new stuff and got practice on the Excel object model (I'm an Access whiz); anyone else could do the report when I was on holiday; I could produce the report faster and more accurately each week, which was what the boss wanted.
One way people make progress is by making tools so they can do in an hour what used to take all day. That way, they have the rest of the day to do something else. And a "tool" is anything that helps you do the job: it might be a piece of software, but it might be a report, your mobile phone, or indeed something you buy in the hardware or kitchen store.
A good tool should be: intuitively obvious to the person who might use it; robust; easy to maintain and modify; and let people do the job in less time and with less effort than they it did before.
Never use IT departments and outside contractors to develop tools for you: what they produce will fail all those tests. And it will cost a fortune.
Labels:
Day Job
Monday, 4 October 2010
Little-Known London Institutions: Goodenough College
I was passing a few moments before going to see Winter's Bone at the Renoir cinema the other Tuesday and wandered round the area to the east of the Brunswick Centre - not something I do very often as east of the Kingsway is still marked "Here be dragons" on my psychic map of London. Passing by Coram's Fields with its social-services paranoia sign...
and found myself passing somewhere that looks like this....
... and is called Goodenough College. Which is not a college in the sense that they do lectures and exams, but a hall of residence / hotel for postgraduate students registered on a full-time course in London. Rent is £143 a week for a single room and £238 a week for a 1-bed flat. Which for the somewhere on the doorstep of most of the University of London and within walking distance of anywhere you might want to go except Chelsea and Kensington, is pretty fair. It looks like they have a selection process that skews towards the cool and pretty, but then, wouldn't you? Until that day I had never heard of the place.
Nor had I ever heard of or passed through St George's Gardens, but it looks pretty enough...
... even of you do approach it through some raised coffins.
and found myself passing somewhere that looks like this....
... and is called Goodenough College. Which is not a college in the sense that they do lectures and exams, but a hall of residence / hotel for postgraduate students registered on a full-time course in London. Rent is £143 a week for a single room and £238 a week for a 1-bed flat. Which for the somewhere on the doorstep of most of the University of London and within walking distance of anywhere you might want to go except Chelsea and Kensington, is pretty fair. It looks like they have a selection process that skews towards the cool and pretty, but then, wouldn't you? Until that day I had never heard of the place.
Nor had I ever heard of or passed through St George's Gardens, but it looks pretty enough...
... even of you do approach it through some raised coffins.
Labels:
London,
photographs
Friday, 1 October 2010
Crossing A Bridge In Amsterdam
I had the first one-to-one with the new manager last week. Over the next three months he'd like me to train the FNGs, and in the next nine months, work on the integration project. I could hear myself reacting: "nine months! No way nine more months of this s..t." I didn't say that out loud. When we talked about my grade issue - I'm in a lower-graded job and my salary protection runs out in another eighteen months - he said "oh eighteen months is long enough to position you for a Grade Four". There was something automatic about the way he said it that I didn't like: it came across as "Oh eighteen months, great, I don't have to think about it now". We talked a role that's opened up because my supervisor has just put her notice in - with nowhere to go. (So that's job to apply for - it's so easy the current incumbent couldn't take a year.) I've been thinking about whether I'd want that job - it's why I've been going on the courses. He said he'd be happy if I applied, but I would need to be "more corporate".
What's my as yet un-communicated decision? Well, here's a clue. Remember me? The ACoA? Guaranteed to get involved with the wrong people the wrong way? I can't get involved with managing people and I don't want to be involved with solving organisational dysfunctions or people's professional and career problems. It's as bad for me as a bag of Minstrels or a double whiskey. And running a group of junior analysts, half of whom will be new and half have too much history with a string of botched re-organisations, would not be fun. Especially as I know one wants to leave, taking a ton of knowledge with him. I can't do their kind of corporate. I don't want to work The Bank's dysfunctional freaking bureaucracy. And I don't want to supervise a bunch of people who are just producing regular reports until they get so bored they leave after at most two years. (That was the plan, but in this market they might be stuck there a lot longer.)
No. I'm better off personally if I stay working with data and computers and learning stuff. So maybe I can get back into pricing or maybe I stay in MI - SAS / SQL bashing - but with added value. To justify the salary. I'm at whatever they call this stage of my life - the bit where you're not at the top and you're in your fifties. I'm not looking for a career - I'm looking for an income.
A couple of years ago, I was walking through Amsterdam with my friend. We were crossing one of the canal bridges and an open boat passed underneath, with half-a-dozen medical students celebrating. I felt a wave of relief at the sight: it wasn't my world anymore. It was theirs. I'm not responsible for how the world turns out now - they are. My responsibility is to stay employed and build up some savings for when I can't work anymore. That's not a trivial task in today's world. And that's where I am.
I keep forgetting that moment. And I need to remember it.
What's my as yet un-communicated decision? Well, here's a clue. Remember me? The ACoA? Guaranteed to get involved with the wrong people the wrong way? I can't get involved with managing people and I don't want to be involved with solving organisational dysfunctions or people's professional and career problems. It's as bad for me as a bag of Minstrels or a double whiskey. And running a group of junior analysts, half of whom will be new and half have too much history with a string of botched re-organisations, would not be fun. Especially as I know one wants to leave, taking a ton of knowledge with him. I can't do their kind of corporate. I don't want to work The Bank's dysfunctional freaking bureaucracy. And I don't want to supervise a bunch of people who are just producing regular reports until they get so bored they leave after at most two years. (That was the plan, but in this market they might be stuck there a lot longer.)
No. I'm better off personally if I stay working with data and computers and learning stuff. So maybe I can get back into pricing or maybe I stay in MI - SAS / SQL bashing - but with added value. To justify the salary. I'm at whatever they call this stage of my life - the bit where you're not at the top and you're in your fifties. I'm not looking for a career - I'm looking for an income.
I keep forgetting that moment. And I need to remember it.
Labels:
Diary
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Paramedics and Pretty Women
A week last Saturday I had a nasty case of food poisoning. It wasn't what I thought was happening when I was drenched in sweat, panicking, barely able to think and thought I'd passed out for a short moment. I called the emergency services and then my sister. I was hyperventilating, sweating, trying bawl my eyes out and doubling over in agony. The quick response paramedic was round in what felt like a shot - they very often park within a mile of where I live. He started to calm down my breathing and took a pulse. The ambulance arrived fairly shortly afterwards. They hooked me up to a machine that didn't quite go 'ping', took pulse, blood sugar and blood pressure and then I went upstairs and threw up, which I do very noisily. After which I started to calm down. Quite properly they decided it was food poisoning. I'm not so sure. I know what happens when I get food poisoning: it's not pleasant, it lasts for twelve hours or more and takes me a couple of days to recover from. This wasn't like that. One of the paramedics suggested a "panic attack" - which felt a little more like it to me. I'm fifty-six years old - when I dialled 999, I thought it was a heart attack. My sister arrived, was tremendously calm and after the paramedics had packed up, we went to the Heart of Hounslow walk-in centre, where the paramedics had made an appointment for me (you can't but they can). The doctor looked at the charts from the paramedics machines, prodded my stomach and pronounced me healthy if shaken. That's the catch: I have the resting blood pressure and pulse of someone about half my age. I always give good pulse and pressure.
I had a ticket for Alvin Ailey and I decided that sitting around at home "resting" would probably make me feel worse, so I went up to Sadlers Wells straight from the walk-in centre. I knew I was recovering when I had an inner message saying "fries with lots of salt and a Coke at the Mediterranean Canteen": you actually need salt and sugar to help stabilise after a food poisoning episode. And if I'd felt any better, I would have asked the very attractive woman who sat two seats to my left, and with whom I had a conversation on the 391 back to Waterloo (that's right, she chose to sit next to me), for her a date. She had trained with the Ballet Rambert, wanted to dance classical but was told she "should try contemporary", took pictures of the gargoyles on the walls of the Royal Courts of Justice, lives near Hampton Court, had an MBA, no wedding band and was thinking about working in something environmental. Did I mention the bit where she had great legs and a really attractive, sexy face? Okay, I just did. But I wasn't feeling at my best, and she had a headache from the aircon in the theatre. Damn. The one mistake I made was not to offer my name mid-way through the conversation. I'm not good at that.
The attack wasn't about food. Maybe one of the eggs was dodgy, but I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it was about the whole work situation. I know what I need to concentrate on, which is finding another job in the West End that lets me see movies in Russell Square at six in the evening. As I'm about to do now. I need to concentrate on getting one of my plays produced. And if I can get a date with someone as attractive as the lady from Sadlers Wells Saturday, that would be good as well. I can't let myself get involved with the "stuff" at work - especially with other people's emotions and dramas. It's not good for me.
I had a ticket for Alvin Ailey and I decided that sitting around at home "resting" would probably make me feel worse, so I went up to Sadlers Wells straight from the walk-in centre. I knew I was recovering when I had an inner message saying "fries with lots of salt and a Coke at the Mediterranean Canteen": you actually need salt and sugar to help stabilise after a food poisoning episode. And if I'd felt any better, I would have asked the very attractive woman who sat two seats to my left, and with whom I had a conversation on the 391 back to Waterloo (that's right, she chose to sit next to me), for her a date. She had trained with the Ballet Rambert, wanted to dance classical but was told she "should try contemporary", took pictures of the gargoyles on the walls of the Royal Courts of Justice, lives near Hampton Court, had an MBA, no wedding band and was thinking about working in something environmental. Did I mention the bit where she had great legs and a really attractive, sexy face? Okay, I just did. But I wasn't feeling at my best, and she had a headache from the aircon in the theatre. Damn. The one mistake I made was not to offer my name mid-way through the conversation. I'm not good at that.
The attack wasn't about food. Maybe one of the eggs was dodgy, but I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it was about the whole work situation. I know what I need to concentrate on, which is finding another job in the West End that lets me see movies in Russell Square at six in the evening. As I'm about to do now. I need to concentrate on getting one of my plays produced. And if I can get a date with someone as attractive as the lady from Sadlers Wells Saturday, that would be good as well. I can't let myself get involved with the "stuff" at work - especially with other people's emotions and dramas. It's not good for me.
Labels:
Diary
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