We’ve recently acquired a rather useless kettle in our office; it replaced the differently useless one that took around 15 minutes to heat enough water for one cup of tea…

The new kettle is a much faster boiler (I no longer have time for a loo break while waiting for my tea), but suffers from a strange design failure.  For some reason, as the kettle gets hotter, it shifts slightly on the cordless base, losing the power connection long before the water is fully boiled.  It’s easy to get round this though – you just hold the back of the kettle in place for a few seconds until the thermal cut-out kicks in as the water finally boils.

However, I think this kettle would be an ideal interview tool for new developers.  Here’s how it would work: halfway through the interview, you ask the interviewee if he (or she) would mind making a couple of cups of tea while you just answer a call…  Points are then allocated based on how they handle the kettle:

0 points – if he doesn’t even notice that it disconnected rather than cutting out properly.

1 point – for noticing it failed to boil, but just giving up

2 points – if he holds down the “on” switch to get it to boil

3 points – for realising that it’s nothing to do with the switch, and just holds the handle in place (allowing the thermal cut-out to work)

4 points – for figuring out that you can just put a paper towel under the front of the kettle, and then you don’t even need to hold it

5 points – for spotting the paper towel that was already there in place, and realising it has a purpose, so not moving it to start with!

My bet is that most of the people currently in my office would get 3 points at best.

There’s a sign just gone up in my office building advertising a chocolate sale. It looks like this:

CHOCOHOLICS

Come and try free samples and buy gifts for friends and family, 12pm-2pm today.

Now… imagine the outrage if that had read “Alcoholics” instead… Why are chocolate addicts treated so badly that we don’t care about this kind of insensitive taking of advantage?

Programmers are good at writing step by step instructions. After all, that’s all a computer program ever is – a set of very simple step by step instructions. Of course, modern programming languages try and make it more complicated, by adding objects and events, but in the end, everything comes down to a set of instructions.

That said – you should never ask a programmer to give you a step by step guide. He’s used to dealing with very literal devices, so the odds are that a step by step guide to making a cup of tea would take a week to complete, and fill 3 narrow spaced pages of A4. Of course, that’s a stereotype – a bad programmer would get it short and wrong (take cup, add tea), and a really good programmer would recognise the actual needs of the situation, and get it right.

Still, in general, we’re good at the step by step instructions thing. We’re also good at following said instructions; okay, sometimes we’re arrogant and think we know better, and can skip a step, but generally, put a programmer in front of a set of instructions, and we’ll follow it accurately and to the letter.

The trouble is, that’s what we assume everyone else will do too, so that’s how we write our instructions. Real people have a strange (to programmers) tendency to wander off from the written guide, and try to do their own thing.
Programmers don’t expect this, so we don’t guard against it. For example, I had this conversation at work today:
Me: So what did you do next?
User: I closed the window.
Me (thinking something is up): How did you do that?
User: I clicked the X in the corner
Me: Why did you do that? The instructions say “Click Accept”
User: Oh, but clicking the X is faster… it takes a couple of seconds when you click “Accept”
Me: Sigh… yes… that’s the program running to do the work you asked for… Clicking “X” cancels it.
User: Oh, well why didn’t the instructions say that?

In the end I changed the program, so clicking the “X” did the same thing as clicking “Accept”… and no amount of arguing will convince either the user that the instructions were right, or me that they were wrong.

I have a very nice Vodafone v1615 mobile which runs the Windows Mobile 6 (WM6) operating system. On Saturday, I lent it to my wonderful Fiancée while she was in the shops and I had to run back to the flat to solve a crisis at work. I’d like to say that ever since then it’s been running slowly; but the truth is it was giving me grief even before that… I just noticed it more after using her sleek, shiny (but tragically pink) Samsung Tocco.

At any rate, Monday, my alarm clock signalled that the problems were coming to a head – but that was all it signalled, since it decided that playing music was beyond it. Oddly, I actually woke up just after 6:30 anyway, and was earlier to work than I’ve been in a while. During the day, the phone played up a bit, so I took another backup, and decided to see how it behaved.

Tuesday… the same problem. Despite co-operating all Monday evening, my phone was definitely not happy. It seems most unhappy when it was woken up after being in stand-by for more than a few minutes – particularly overnight, but it also threw a fit when coerced into receiving calls after being neglected for more than a few minutes. I decided that enough was enough, and a reset would be required.
However, just after I reached that decision, I discovered that my Window Sideshow Preview (there’s a new version released now) had just expired, and perhaps that was the cause. One un-install later, and my phone has the benefit of the doubt for a while…

On Wednesday – as if knowing that it was walking on very thin ice – my phone managed to play my 6:30 alarm by 6:35… sadly though, only the first chord of my 7am alarm was forthcoming. By 9am, I had decided enough was enough, and a Hard Reset would be required. I had a recent back-up, so hopefully I’d only be out for an hour or so…

Or not…

Typically, I’d misjudged. Instead of clearing all the data and rebooting with a clean install, my phone (by now generally referred to as “You useless piece of shit”) decided to sit at the WM6.1 boot screen with the message “The device is clearing the storage. Please wait” for a very long time. In fact, it hung there all day; several soft resets, hard resets, powered, un-powered… whatever I did, nothing worked.

On the plus side, less calls to answer all day.

I’d actually known this might happen. It happened last time I did a hard reset, and came back just as I was packing it up to send back to Vodafone (at about 1am). I naively assumed it had got this little tantrum out of its system by now…

Eventually, after much searching, I found someone else who’d had the same problem. He eventually solved it by re-flashing the original WM6.1 ROM from Vodafone. Sadly though, I’m running Vista x64, so I had no expectations of this working at all… Still, I downloaded the file from Vodafone, on the off chance it might work…

While I waited for the file to download, I searched a bit on performing ROM upgrades on Vista. It looked like my best bet was going to be to use a Virtual Machine running Windows XP, connect the device to that, and flash from there. I had all that ready… but decided, on the off chance, to give it a go from Vista. From what I’d read, the worst that could happen was that the device would not be detected.

It worked.

Not only that, it fixed my original problem. The phone rebooted, and worked normally. Sadly, I left my backups in work, so I’ll have to complete the restore tomorrow… but at least now I know how to get a recalcitrant phone to perform a hard reset properly.

I’m going to write up the full details of how to do this as a page on this site – hopefully, later tonight – but to be honest, it’s not needed.

I’m sick of the negative media. For months I’ve been convinced that if, instead of going for sensational headlines of doom, the press were just a little more optimistic – balanced even – then the financial markets would probably sort themselves out. Even though that’s probably a bit too optimistic, having spoken to a wide range of business analysts in the last few months on the subject, I’m firmly convinced that even if reporting good news wouldn’t help, reporting all this exaggerated bad news is certainly making things worse.

Sadly, it’s not just the news-hounds who hate people having a good attitude. Baroness Shriti Vadera has been publicly shamed today for daring to voice optimism in this current economic climate. According to the Tories (who I supposedly support), saying “I am seeing a few green shoots” demonstrates how out of touch and insensitive she is…

The trouble is, no-one wants to admit the question that this was in response to. According to Sky News, the question asked was when would we be seeing green shoots – so the words themselves were put in her mouth by the reporter. No-one seems to want to discuss that…

Not only that, but it’s true. As I was driving home today, Radio 2 was talking about the thousands of new jobs – a little research finds that both Tesco and Sainbury’s are looking to expand into new stores, creating over 10,000 new jobs between them. That’s surely a green shoot?

The best comment about it I’ve heard was that Norman Lamont said this “at the height of the last depression”. So… that’d be just as it was turning around then?

The latest beta of Windows came out last weekend… and I don’t care. Yes, I downloaded it as soon as I could. Yes, I’ve installed it on a virtual machine. Yes, Microsoft has declared “Beta Keys for Everyone”, so the world should be running on Windows 7 Beta – but no, I just don’t care.

The Washington Post has a nice, well balanced review of Windows 7. I advise you to read it, since it’s taken a fairly mature approach of looking at how the average user will feel about the upgrade. Instead of looking at one particular feature and either screaming abuse or singing its praises, David Murphy has tried to cover the breadth of changes and how they really impact him.

Part of the problem is that I’ve just got used to Vista. I’m now comfortable with the sidebar taking up a valuable two inches of my screen real-estate, and I haven’t had an un-expected UAC prompt in months (yes, it is still enabled; but I’m used to – nay, demand – the extra confirmation when I perform a proper administrative task).

I’d still like to see what Windows 7 would look like fully powered on my machine – having only run it in a VM situation so far, I haven’t had a chance to play with the proper shiny effects – but it’s not my number one priority. Sorry Microsoft!

In vino veritas is a well-known Latin phrase. It means “in wine [there is the] truth”.

I’ve had a lot to drink tonight – perhaps (though I hope the spell checker will help with this) you will be able to tell this from my typing.  It’s an odd conundrum – although it is thought that alcohol is supposed to bring out the truth, I find myself quite an acomplished liar after drinking.

The trick to a good lie is two parts truth to one part lie.  The secret to drunken lies is to let slip the first “truth” while you’re still sober enough to remember what you’ve said… once that’s done, you only need to remember to tell the lie – the other truth will come out by itself.

So remember, all of you – Just because a person is drunk, doesn’t mean all he says is the truth!

Last November, my cheapo USB mouse I use to replace the stupid nubbin on my work laptop started playing up. For some reason, it would stop registering normal mouse clicks every now and then. Fortunately, this could usually be resolved by good old percussive maintenance (i.e. smack it against the desk a few times) – but around December I realised that my mouse clicking finger was beginning to feel the (repetitive) strain, and it was time to buy a new mouse.

The trouble is, I wanted the new mouse fairly soon – while I had indeed gone  for two months without replacing it, once I’d made up my mind to buy the thing, I didn’t want to wait 3 days for the delivery service.  So, I decided to brave the PC World sale.  PC World – at least, around here – is an odd beast.  They can’t seem to decide if they’re going to sell computers or “Home Entertainment”, so we end up with a poor selection of TVs, computers and peripherals – but no real depth in any department.

Nowhere in the store is this more apparent than in the input accessories area.  The shelves are all nicely marked up – Laptop Mice, Wireless Mice, Wired Mice – but instead, all we have is half a dozen Microsoft models, a few Logitech ones and a generic wired optical.  Sadly, it seems that the main target is laptop users, so the spit is about 50/50 between tiny little laptop mice, and “cutting edge” (i.e. really expensive) desktop ones.  I don’t want to spend a huge amount of money – after all, it’s going to get battered enough in my laptop bag – but I can’t get on with “mini” laptop mice; my hands aren’t huge, but I’ve got so use to the massive Logitech MX Revolution that even a normal mouse feels puny in my hands.

In the end, I settle on a fairly cheap Logitech with a laser diode.  Unfortunately, it’s wireless – but it promises 6 months battery life on standard AAs.  I’d rather have a wire – simply because then I can’t lose the dongle in my laptop bag – but the only options available were either a cheap and nasty un-branded one (which, from experience, won’t track well on my office desk), or a garish “Gamers” mouse that would just look plain ridiculous.

Having shelled out £40 to replace my mouse at work… the one at home starts going crazy!  Instead of tracking smoothly across the screen, it’s bouncing in fits and starts.

There’s three possible causes for this one – I’ve seen it before:

1. The battery on the wireless mouse is going flat
2. The surface it’s on is too shiny to track well
3. Some conflict between the USB device and a busy hard-drive
4. Some other device on the same wireless frequency is interfering with my mouse

Option one is quickly discounted – the “charge” indicator shows 3 of 4 bars, which is normally fine.  Trying different surfaces eliminates option 2, so we’re looking at either a hardware conflict (or just a performance problem on my PC).  Normally, I’d just plug in a spare mouse to eliminate the performance – if the spare mouse works, it’s clearly a problem with just the wireless one – but now, I suddenly discover that I don’t have any normal, wired mice!

In the end, the only option was to test using my other wireless – which worked fine.  The problem? A cat hair on the optical lens!

I work in a so-called “Managed Office”. This is where my company leases a number of rooms in a large office building, and gets use of the communal spaces, reception, car-park etc. – the idea is to get all the facilities of a large corporate office without the overhead.  I say so-called, becaues I’ve never actually seen these people manage the place at all!

There are some huge disadvantages to working in a place like this.  One of them is dress codes – some companies in the building may have a different code than others, which can sometimes look unprofessional when you have visitors…

Another disadvantage is that you’re sharing the communal areas – kitchen, break room, post room etc. – with maybe 100 people over whom you have absolutely no authority.  In fact, you don’t even have a way to raise issues.  Without futher ado, here are the 10 worst abuses of the communal areas in my office…

10 – Cooking Smelly Food

This is one of the traditional ones, even in normal offices.  You can’t complain about it, since the person cooking the food clearly likes it – and probably thinks your dinner stunk even worse!

To be honest, I don’t really care about the smells.  Yes, it’s annoying to go in to the kitchen to make some tea, and discover it smells of curry – but it’s better than some of the terrible flavour air fresheners that the facility likes to use!

9 – Listening to Loud Music

I’ve never understood this one at all.  There’s a company in the same office building that’s hired a number of fairly junior staff members – they can’t be much older than 18, if that – and they seem to love spending their lunch breaks playing the loudest music they can find on their iPod speakers.

This time though, it’s not the volume of the music that affects me – it only takes a couple of minutes to make a cuppa, and my eardrums can handle it.  No, instead it’s the choice of music – can anyone stand “Never Miss a Beat” by the Kaiser Chiefs – the scary thing is that I suspect these kids actually subscribe to the philosophy!

8 – Hiding from your Boss

Hiding from your boss is really the best way to avoid getting too much work on your plate – after all, if he can’t find you, he can’t give you more work to do.  Similarly, if he knows you weren’t in the office, he won’t expect you to have read the emails either.  I can’t fault that – but why hide in the break room?  It’s the first place to look!

7 – Building a Fort

Why would you build a fort in the office break room?  I’ve never seen it happen yet, but I’m sure it’s not far away…  I did once find twice the number of chairs, and a few spare tables, but I was too busy (making my tea) to have time to rearrange them appropriately.

6 – Growing Cannabis

Again, it hasn’t happened yet – but there were two completely random poinsettias there over Christmas.  I’m quite a fan of pleasant decoration in an office, but the most frustrating thing is that the so-called office managers didn’t think to organise any kind of care or maintenance for them – so when we came back in January one was dead and the other very sad looking.

5 – Doing your Laundry

Actually, this one’s my fault… I managed to spill coffee all down my shirt, and ended up standing in the kitchen wearing nothing but my coat and trousers, washing my shirt in the sink.

I know, it’s totally anti-social, but in my defence it was still 6:45am, so I was unlikely to be interrupted, and I really didn’t want to go to my important-ish customer meeting with a stained shirt.

4 – Storing Dirty Dishes

This one gets my goat.  It only takes 30 seconds to wash a plate, but some people refuse to do their own.  Luckily, I’ve never spotted the culprits bringing the dishes into the room or leaving them in the sink… I suspect they’re too embarrassed to walk off and leave them when someone else is there to see it.

The most frustrating thing about it is when the sink’s so full you can’t even wash up your own plate.

3 – Meeting with Customers

In a normal office, any room – even a break-room – can be reserved for one-off use for a meeting with customers.  You can email around the company, and let everyone know that a Microsoft representative will be coming – and not to disturb anyone for a particular period.

In a building like ours though, booking a meeting room costs extra, and you can’t ever book the communal areas for exclusive use.  So having a meeting with an important customer or supplier is the worst kind of foolhardiness – you’ve got no idea who might walk in at any time; it could even be one of the Know Nothing Crew!

2 – Shooting a Publicity Video

Marketing departments love to organise publicity stunts – brochures, videos, webcasts – but never seem to like to think about reality.  Let’s face it, a film showing a room that’s a complete mess and full of dirty dishes is never going to make a good impression.  Somehow though, the marketting department always wants to show scenes from the break room, not just from the offices where we really work.

1 – Holding a One-to-One Meeting

Top of the list – the worst thing that people seem to use our communal areas for.  Almost every week, I walk in on yet another one-to-one, or appraisal – whether it’s one of the Know Nothing Crew getting assessed for their performance, or lack thereof – or someone getting corrective training on making sales calls.

I know why they do it.  Booking a meeting room costs money, and it seems a waste to do that for just two people to have a meeting.  You can’t just stay in your normal office, because there’s always people there that will know everyone being discussed, and you can’t have an honest appraisal in that atmosphere.

However, in the end, it works out badly for everyone.  The person getting the appraisal is continually interrupted by strangers walking in to make cups of tea and coffee.  People from the same company as the person being appraised know about the meeting, so they can’t get any hot drinks while the meeting is going on.  Finally, people from other companies like your truly feel embarassed to go into the room for a drink – and often end up hearing un-necessary details about other people’s working lives.

So come on people – leave the communal areas alone, and plan your meetings properly!

Tom Kyte is a world renowned Oracle expert – just look through his “Ask Tom” site for confirmation (half the questions seem to come from India). Despite his fame, I once changed his mind on an interesting topic – the best substitute for a Boolean data-type in Oracle -Ask Tom “Boolean Datatype”.  Okay, so it was a moment of crowning glory for me – but hey, I’m a geek – recognition from a famous geek (even fleeting) is worth a lot to me!

This particular page though brings to mind a huge rant – pointless questions, and trolls.

If you read through the linked page from the top, there’s a recurring theme of “Why doesn’t Oracle have this feature – it should, because I want it!”  Reading between the lines, I’m sure that all the people asking this question know full well two facts:

1. Tom can’t add the feature to Oracle
2. There’s 101 different work-arounds available, that all offer the functionality that is require

So, the truth is, these people just want to have the satisfaction of trying to get the famous Tom Kyte to admit that Oracle isn’t perfect.  Which is true – but Tom will never admit it.

Now, this isn’t just about the “Ask Tom” website.  The truth of the matter is that this is a hugely prevalent attitude of “This is how it should be” and “This is how it used to be” that’s based on no evidence that the other way is by any measure better – except, of course, the fact that that’s the way it used to be.

A personal example, first… Back at the beginning of the year, the marketing department decided that our slightly ramshackle office wasn’t “pretty” enough for display to customers, and reorganised.  For at least two weeks, I hated the new layout – saw all kinds of problems – until I got used to it enough that I didn’t care that it was all different, at which point I realised that it was far better, and I did quite like it.

It’s the same with a lot of people, I think.  We all have a tendency to reject change out of hand – at least at first – just because it is different.  Whether it’s the “New Recipe” cola, or being forced to change to a new school, or a new version of Microsoft Office – we all hate being forced to change.

The most entertaining thing about it all is the fact that changes we control – new cars, new houses, all kinds of new toys – always get an extra shiny veneer while they’re still new.  We love new things that we’ve chosen to have – even if it turns out they’re not actually better than the old one.

There’s probably a moral about that… but I can’t quite figure it out right now!