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..
Gig economy
I’ve started watching this YouTube channel called London Eats. Not sure why. Maybe because I find it relaxing?
This guy zooming around the capital in the dark making food and parcel deliveries on his electric bikes and scooters. It got me thinking about the gig economy. How these workers don’t have a traditional employment contract, but are paid a fee per job.
After four hours of work this guy earned less than minimum wage and called it a good night. How? Less than minimum wage? Is the gig economy a way for employers to hire cheap labour? The apps these workers use must take a cut of the profits although they do offer meagre bonus payments if you work harder, faster, completing more deliveries within certain time periods.
The London Eats guy augments his meagre earnings by filming his shifts and turning them into quality viewing. He also confesses to having a day job so his shifts only need to be a few hours. He also sells swag from his channel and has sponsorship from various companies. So he’s making ‘his gig’ work. But I’m curious how others are faring from this industry, being paid per delivery.
I guess it’s nothing new. In my youth I worked for a company that paid me 1p for every flyer I delivered. If I could deliver one a minute that’s 60p an hour! Sounded great as a kid needing to augment his pocket money, but even with inflation an adult wouldn’t do it. Explains why so many of us were school age delivering those flyers. Child labour.
The gig economy is here to stay. It makes sense for the employers as it’s cheap labour. And as there appears to be no shortage of willing workers it must be profitable enough for some. Or maybe they just like working when they want to, being by themselves travelling around the city listening to their tunes going door to door, having no in-person boss.
Waiting..
Have you ever considered how much of our lives we waste just waiting? Waiting for public transport, parcel deliveries, holidays, the weekend.
Waiting, waiting.
I needed a change of scenery so I decided to take the bus into town to hang out in my favourite coffee shops reading and writing. I’m at the bus stop actually willing the bus to arrive, constantly looking down the lane for it. Why? I don’t have an urgent appointment to get to. I’m not in a rush to be anywhere in particular. Yet here I am in waiting mode. Waiting for a bus, which isn’t late.
We spend so much of our lives in queues waiting. Wasting time willing actual time to pass, not being in the moment. This is probably part of why we are stressed so much. Everything is scheduled and automated these days and yet it’s still not fast enough. Microwaves get hotter and faster yet they seem slower. How? Are we so impatient?
It’s later now and I’m in my coffee shop with fresh brew in front of me staring out the window people watching. Watching people in a rush to get somewhere, queuing waiting for a shop to open, waiting by a bus stop looking impatient. Such busy impatient lives we lead.
Ferris comes to mind and his quote about stopping and looking around once in a while. If we don’t life will pass us by while we are waiting.
The Net
Do you remember the Sandra Bullock movie The Net? I loved that movie when it first came out. Not for the storyline or because Ms Bullock was in it. I loved it because it showed me a possible career path that I didn’t know existed. One that I thought looked perfect to me.
You see Sandra’s character tested computer software for a living, all from the comfort of her own home. She didn’t have to deal with long commutes or co-workers. She worked freelance when she wanted for whomever she wanted. Free from office politics and office parties. Bliss!
I vaguely remember the rest of the movie. It was probably so-so. Not as good as Speed or Demolition Man (remember the seashells?). But I do remember it igniting the idea of becoming a freelance tester, a troubleshooter of software, and an ethical hacker.
It’s interesting where ideas can come from. A book, an overheard conversation, or a conspiracy movie from the 1990s.
Thanks for the career inspiration Ms Bullock!
Graphics adventure nostalgia
I grew up in the 80s and 90s, the era of the point-and-click graphics adventure games. Games like The Curse of Monkey Island, Broken Sword, Universe, and Dreamweb.
I have a large tome on my shelf dedicated to the graphics and storylines of these games. Simon the Sorcerer, Beneath a Steel Sky, and The Legend of Kyrandia to name but a few. I spent many hours of my youth immersed in the worlds conjured up by these games. Sailing the seven seas, exploring foreign lands, looking for treasure, saving fair maidens from dragons, or just hanging out in bars talking to the drunken natives in the hope of eliciting a clue in order to make further progress in my adventure.
People say that when they dream they can’t recall if it was in colour or black-and-white. When I dream I can recall not only the colour but the resolution! I recall many a happy hour spent exploring the world of Valhalla and the Lord of Infinity to many calls of “It’s a skull!”, or “It’s just a book”.
I’ve explored many a low-resolution pixelated world in my day. Minecraft players don’t know what they are missing!
So long and thanks for all the 8 and 16-bit memories!