The older I get the more funerals I seem to attend. Relations, friends. Cancer rather than old age.
More each year.
I can’t remember the last wedding I went to. The young ones seem to be doing the registries rather than large expensive gatherings. Maybe they have their priorities right: plan for the future rather than celebrate today. Save for a house.
I own one suit: Black. With a white shirt and black tie. It comes out of dusty hibernation for funerals. I dislike wearing it as it reminds me that someone has passed. It’s starting to look worn yet I can’t bring myself to buy a new one as it signifies an expectancy of more funerals.
Thank you for your application
“Thank you for your application”.
I hate that statement. Especially when received in an email informing you that you haven’t got the job, one that you did not actively apply for.
The job market is pretty dire at present. There are few jobs in IT, even less if you specialise. Finding the real jobs among all the fakes is even harder. What with CV harvesters and the recruitment agency incentive schemes designed to fill their databases with candidate data by lure of a maybe role.
What annoys me however is where you are headhunted, go through several rounds of interviews and testing, only to receive an email saying “Thank you for your application but..” followed by anything from we have decided to go in a different direction / hire a candidate with more relevant experience / changed our minds due to the current economy / etc etc.
I don’t really care about the reason why as they are usually made up anyway and never constructive. The phrase thank you for your application just irks me somewhat because I did not apply, I was approached. I was actively sought for the role. I was told I was the only candidate they were considering and I had calls with the team and the CTO. All wanted me to start immediately, they were just waiting on the paperwork to go through HR / the board / the CEO.
Then pow! An email:
Thank you for your application..
Richard
I decided to pay a visit to an old friend that I hadn’t seen in a while. His son answered the door. Apparently he had fallen down the stairs some weeks back and is now in a home in the north of the county. He also has dementia.
On my very first day in my career as a professional tester I was given a tour of the offices by a lady who introduced me to Richard as someone who would act as my mentor. I was given a seat next to him and told that he would show me the ropes. She then left and I turned to Richard and asked “So what are we doing?”. “I haven’t a f’ing clue” was his response. We’ve been friends ever since.
Many years later after he retired we would meet up regularly for beers and chat about anything and everything. Others would join us over the years and invariably move on. Then around several years ago he would arrange beers and wouldn’t turn up. This happened several times. Each time he claimed to have just forgotten. Months later I saw him walking his dog. I said hi and he asked who I was. Then he appeared to recognise me and claimed to have been pulling my leg, but I wasn’t really sure.
We lost touch again and I was passing his house so figured I’d call in. I was saddened to hear that he was now in a home and that he had dementia, but in the back of my mind I had guessed what was happening. His son assured me though that I should visit and he was confident he would know who I was having known me for so long.
An hour later I pulled out my phone and looked up the home and decided to call. A lady confirmed he was there and said she’d put him on. I heard her mention my name to him and him replying “I can’t think who that is” in a frail voice. He came on the phone and after several references to past events he knew who I was and we were chatting like old friends. But every so often he would start to mumble and get distracted by something. He would then forget who he was talking to and I’d have to trigger some memories to bring him back, but briefly, he came and went throughout the conversation.
Afterwards I just sat and thought about how sad it was to lose yourself like that. It’s clear that the Richard I knew is slowly fading. I’m not even sure he’ll remember me if he saw me in person. I guess I’ll find out as I plan on paying him a visit soon.
Disposable culture
It’s mad that we have countries that can’t agree on how to tackle climate change and that we live in such a disposable culture. For example I have a device that I can’t charge because the charging cable is broken. I can’t fix it because the manufacturer has designed it as a disposable product in that it is completely sealed and tamper proof. I’ve searched on-line for a replacement charger and the cheapest I can find is 19.99 not including delivery. However, for 16.99 I can buy the device again with a charger.
Why would you pay more for less? I just want one part, not a whole new set! Yet somehow it is cheaper to buy a whole new set than the part you need to make what you have work again. It’s both frustrating and very sad.
Discretionary service charge
I ate in a fancy restaurant today where the service was slow but polite enough. When it came time for the bill there was an extra charge at the bottom labelled discretionary service charge. Cheeky I thought, but ok.
I indicated that I was ready to pay and the server brought over the wireless payment terminal and I watched out of the corner of my eye as he entered in the details nearby. A question popped up asking if I would like to accept the discretionary service charge with three buttons, Yes, No, Other. He selected Yes then handed the terminal to me.
Now he assumed that I had not seen all this but I had and I was now somewhat annoyed. In the UK a discretionary service charge is one where the choice belongs to the customer not the server to decide.
What would you do if this happened to you?
Overwhelmed
Ever get that feeling of just being overwhelmed?
There’s just too much to learn.
There’s too many jobs to do.
There’s too many people to fit into the schedule.
I can’t read everything by then.
We can’t fix everything.
There’s not enough time.
It can all be.. overwhelming.
Sometimes you just have to take a moment, think, get perspective, and work out what you can achieve in the time available. Then communicate that to whomever. Maybe yourself.
The world is full of things to learn, things to do, people to see, places to be. Time is precious; spend it wisely. Don’t get overloaded by the noise. Make wise choices and just do what you can. Choose quality over quantity, expertise over generalist, friend over networker.
Don’t let the noise drown your signal.
ADT
I learned that I was no good at sales around age 18. I was looking for work and was offered a sales job on commission with ADT, the alarm company, or at least an organisation performing door-to-door sales for them.
They started off by teaching me how to break into houses. It sounds strange but they actually did. For about 30-40 minutes in a cold hall with stale coffee we were informed about various techniques on how to break into houses. The thinking was that if we came up against stubborn home owners that said they didn’t need a home security system for whatever reason that we would be able to counter it with why they did because we knew how burglars think.
I was paired up with an older lady as my mentor. She was only a couple of years older than me and had been doing this for only a few weeks. Plus she had a car so she could drive us around to and from our sales area.
I wasn’t good at selling house alarms. My heart wasn’t in it. I figured this out fairly quickly. It all came to a head at the end of a long evening with no sign-ups when we arrived at a house with evidence of a recent break-in, namely a boarded up front door. My mentor said if we can’t sell to this home owner we should give up.
The home owner turned out to be a little old lady who had indeed been burgled recently. She had no money for an alarm. In fact she couldn’t even afford a contractor to fix her door. Her nephew had boarded up the door where a glass panel had been and had dropped off a new lock but had yet to return to fit it. Each night she would prop a dinning room chair up against the inside of the door for extra security as the door could not be locked. She would barely get any sleep each night from worrying.
Being a nice guy, she set about fixing us both a cup of tea while I got to work fitting the lock using a screwdriver set retrieved from under a sink. I left feeling good about helping someone, but with no money nor aptitude for sales, but with knowledge of how to break into houses.
Thanks ADT.
Using OSINT to locate old friends
As you get better at OSINT you start to wonder what else you can do with these skills. Like maybe locating old friends.
I’m not talking about stalking here, to be clear. I’m talking about seeing if you can use OSINT to research an old friend to see what they are up to and if they are ok. Maybe you worked with someone day in and day out twenty years ago and you haven’t heard from them in decades. Are they ok, what are they up to these days? Not to say hi but just to know that they are ok and doing well.
I’ve worked with many people for many years and on occasion I often wonder what they are up to and if they are well. Using OSINT you may just obtain the answer. Hopefully a positive one.
OSINT, reconnecting people.
Cyberpunk
I loved cyberpunk.
I would religiously read William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, and Rudy Rucker. But what happened? There’s been nothing really good since Neuromancer and Snow Crash in my opinion. Has the cyberpunk genre died?
Well there’s Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, which was made into two TV series. I highly recommend checking out series one and forgetting that there was a sequel. There’s the never-ending legacy that is Blade Runner. We had 2049 then Black Lotus with more on their way. PKD’s universe is here to stay with Spinners and Frank Lloyd Wright architecture blended with neon imprinted on our retinas.
But has there been any really good cyberpunk written since the aforementioned works? It’s as if the cyberpunk genre is no longer of interest as we live in a technological world. Or maybe consumers prefer to consume the genre in the form of video games, TV shows, and movies, rather than books. Paper is so.. retro.
Whatever the reason, I’m wearing out my copies of Neuromancer and Snow Crash as I re-read them each year in anticipation of some new author releasing a cyberpunk masterpiece.
Do you have any recommendations?
Emulators
I love emulators.
They allow me to take a nostalgic trip back in time running software and playing games from yesteryear without leaving the comfort of my current desktop. I can load up WinUAE for example and delve back into my Amiga days playing forgotten classics such as Cadaver, Dreamweb, or Alien Breed. Or fire up Directory Opus and play around with the Amiga OS.
In most cases I don’t even need to run an emulator on my OS as there are plenty of websites that will do that for you. Catering to the retro scene you can play just about any game on a myriad of bygone computer hardware or gaming consoles.
Maybe you are in the pub talking to your mates discussing the video games you played in your youth. You could pull up a YouTube video to show what it looked like, or you could fire up the game via emulation and actually play the game yourself in real time. The power of the internet!
I do love emulators!
Now for a quick game of Galaga..