Bored at Work

[Darren Dirt]

* Tom is still stuck in TvTropes

TVTropes is like that

I hate you. I hate you a lot.

I know, right? I warned you all earlier in this thread...  (as did Tonnica, last year) -- at the present time I have maybe 37* tabs open in Chrome, almost all TVTropes pages -- and I just skim the "Film" and "Live TV" sections, it STILL takes me forever to "finish" with a page! (it's like re-living the fun, simple times in my past... and us Old Farts have to do that a lot, anything we can do to reduce our Curmudgeon Level...)







*I'm not old

[Tom]

* Tom is still stuck in TvTropes

TVTropes is like that

I hate you. I hate you a lot.

I know, right? I warned you all earlier in this thread...   (as did Tonnica, last year) -- at the present time I have maybe 37* tabs open in Chrome, almost all TVTropes pages -- and I just skim the "Film" and "Live TV" sections, it STILL takes me forever to "finish" with a page! (it's like re-living the fun, simple times in my past... and us Old Farts have to do that a lot, anything we can do to reduce our Curmudgeon Level...)







*I'm not old

Nearly 12 hours of tropeing.. Now why does that sound like I'm on something?

I've actually spent most of the time looking at anime related things. Go figure Though the tropes I look at aren't specific to anime, I tend to only really be interested in the anime section of examples.

Just finished off the long long page on "Screwed by the Network", and the various links that lead from that. Now I only have 4 topes tabs open. It was over 10-20 at one point.

[Darren Dirt]

Now I only have 4 topes tabs open. It was over 10-20 at one point.

amateur. I'd KILL for getting mine down to 10-20

[Tom]

Now I only have 4 topes tabs open. It was over 10-20 at one point.

amateur. I'd KILL for getting mine down to 10-20

I tried quite hard not to go too overboard actually. I pretty much only bothered following REALLY interesting links, and read the anime examples. If I tried to read everything, I'd be spending the next week tropesing around on that site.

[Darren Dirt]

I suddenly have great sympathy for Hollywood marketing drones...
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BetterThanItSoundsFilm
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BetterThanItSoundsLiveActionTV



http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BetterThanItSounds
^ some "normal life" stuff is quite funny.

For example: "The constant repetition of an act that intakes a deadly and addictive poison on principle, can cause internal bleeding and hemmhorage if done improperly, and significantly increases the carbon footprint of every person who does it. Any attempt to stop results in painful and invariably fatal withdrawal."

= "Breathing."

[Thorin]

A coworker of mine sent me a link to How To Deal With Distractions in the Web Worker's World.  It's a great little article, but what really caught my attention was the idea of keeping a Daily Accomplishments log.

One of the complaints I have about where I work now is that there is no recognition when you've accomplished something (see XKCD's Academia vs Business), so keeping track of personal accomplishments has a surprisingly positive effect on my morale.  Maybe that'll keep me from being so bored.

[Mr. Analog]

I have found that you have to do the job for self gratification. I've written numerous core pieces now that have all just worked and not heard a word about it from our clients. Our team and project lead recognize the work which is very much appreciated (and it sounds like what might be lacking from where you are?) but every time we hear from the clients it's always complaints about software no one on the team was responsible for creating...

[Thorin]

Yeah, it's recognition from peers and immediate managers that's sorely lacking here.  We're all silos, so we don't even know what the other people are working on.  We used to do a daily stand-up, but that's gone by the wayside and no one else seems to miss it.  Silos.

[Mr. Analog]

Yeah, it's recognition from peers and immediate managers that's sorely lacking here.  We're all silos, so we don't even know what the other people are working on.  We used to do a daily stand-up, but that's gone by the wayside and no one else seems to miss it.  Silos.

Well, hopefully other opportunities present themselves. Sadly there are those out there who just want to bury themselves into a nice, dead, rut.

[Darren Dirt]

I have found that you have to do the job for self gratification. I've written numerous core pieces now that have all just worked and not heard a word about it from our clients. Our team and project lead recognize the work which is very much appreciated (and it sounds like what might be lacking from where you are?) but every time we hear from the clients it's always complaints about software no one on the team was responsible for creating...

I personally like emailing myself (to my personal gmail) a code snippet that I'm especially proud of, and type a comment within the email body along the lines of "I rule" or something, seriously... when it's something that I know was tough "win", or just came through perfectly and I know came from being in the "Zone" for a long period of time, or was accomplished after some really tough bug eluded me for a while.

Also I'll sometimes put something self-congratulating in the comments of that code snippet, so months or years later when I'm maintaining something around it, I'll see that and smile, and remember how good it felt to gitrdun.

Seriously, I do this stuff. I never thought it was weird or abnormal. One of the few places I don't seem to see reality skewed and distorted by overwhelming, suffocating self-doubt. That and when a certain poker session just goes exactly perfectly my way and again I want to capture that feeling of awesomeness and self-pride. Life can be a downer without the occasional reminder of times in the past when our personal, direct efforts made things go right and everything just "clicked".




PS:

(see XKCD's Academia vs Business)

fyi: "0x5f375a86" = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root

[Tom]

I started using trac for a couple of my projects. It has helped a lot with productivity and self satisfaction. Every time I tick off something big it gives me goose bumps And I can look at the various different views of all the "issues", or the time line to see just what I've been doing.

Its a boost for morale if you can actually see your progress. Specially if you're working on some large component that won't be "finished" for months.

[Darren Dirt]

edit: wow, amazing/sad that there's a need for a site like this one: http://www.explainxkcd.com/ (the majority of the COMMENTS are clearly provided by smart folks though -- heck, half of them go over my head )

http://www.explainxkcd.com/2009/11/18/academia-vs-business/ is of course there.

Wish there were more CS/programming comics; see http://www.explainxkcd.com/category/computer-science/ and http://www.explainxkcd.com/category/programming/.

PS: thx to one of the comments, found out that Google can haz sense of humour: http://www.google.com/search?q=recursion

[Mr. Analog]

Hah! I e-mail myself code snippets all the time. Sometimes I post them (sans context). In fact one of my favorite storage facilities for a Javascript quicksort I wrote a while back is right here.