Tag: work

Dealing with idiots

Posted on By admin

Anybody who works in a service industry will tell you that clients and users are generally the dumbest people on the face of the planet.

I love my job, but there is one aspect I hate having to deal with and that's having to answer support emails. Generally, they boil down to “I have a problem and I'm too lazy to try and fix it – do it for me because it's your job”. Well, you know what? Dealing with your stupidity is not my job.

I don't mind helping you and telling you what you need to do to get the problem solved, but I'm not going to spend hours at a go to do your job for you. I have my own problems to solve for the job I'm being paid to do.

Also, to those who send emails telling me “I need this feature for the hugely important project I'm working on (that only you and your labmates will be using) and I need it now! Now! NOW!!!!!! So do it!”. Please send those emails to the request tracker. Or better yet, stick them up your ass.

Thank you,
The Management.

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Time to update this thingie

Posted on By admin 1 Comment on Time to update this thingie

I hate changing from DST to EST (or GMT, as is currently the case). I always feel fucked up for a few days as my internal clock struggles to adjust.

So yeah. Been quiet for the last little while. A few interesting things happened, but mostly it was a day-to-day thing. I was a pseudo-bachelor for most of last week, as Katy was taking some R&R in Leicester to go walkies, do puzzles and generally harass her dad. The whole week I was alone, I did not kill the cat. This is, for me, a major accomplishment.

We went on a little day trip to Norwich this saturday, which was nice and we went to see 300 at the cinema this sunday, which was decently bloody and violent. We'll probably buy the DVD when it comes out.

I found out last week that my contract is being renewed for another 3 years. It was a touchy thing for a while. They were always going to offer me a renewal, as my boss fairly lavished praise on my work (which, you know, is always nice!) but since we're funded by public research grants, balancing the books is always tricky. Our main operating grant is running out next year and they haven't secured a replacement for it yet, so they weren't sure if they could offer me a 3 year contract or simply a 1 year bridging contract.

I was fairly blushing when my boss told me that, although they don't have enough money to renew all the contracts they want, mine is one of those they really want to keep. I think I really hit a home run with the OLS. I never expected it to be so popular. The thing I'm working on right now could potentially be bigger, if I can get it to work properly.

So yeah. Happy dancies at job security :)

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People conspire to annoy the hell out of me today

Posted on By admin 3 Comments on People conspire to annoy the hell out of me today

A lot of my daily work time is spent answering support emails. Usually, people ask questions that fall into a few general categories and these are quickly dealt with. Once in a while, they have a genuine bug to report or encounter a snag we haven't seen before. All of which are ok.

Once in a while though, you get dumbasses.

We have a very comprehensive user manual for all the projects we work on. It takes a lot of time to make sure it's up to date and complete. It is. Sadly, the dumbasses never seem to use it.

I have just spent the last 15 minutes politely answering questions sent by email when all I want to do is send a one liner that would simply state “clearly, you haven't read the fucking manual”.

One day, I will.

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It's hot and it's wet

Posted on By admin 3 Comments on It's hot and it's wet

… you know the rest.

The air conditioning in the shed is straining to keep us all alive and not roasting at the moment. It's forecasted to be like this all week, joy.

A few random thoughts, in no specific order:

– Peppercorns, salt and mace makes a really, REALLY good dry rub for a beast roast. We tried that last night on a prime silverside roast and it was glrmph! Roast beast that tastes like sausage!

– People have started receiving the invitations, yay!

– We've sent off a cheque for the wedding cake, so that's one more thing that's settled for the moment.

– it's too friggin warm to think straight.

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The dangers of working on campus

Posted on By admin

Honest to god email I got today:

Dear All,

Please be aware that it is not wise to lay or fall asleep in the meadow
long grass on campus as there is the danger of being run over by the
lawn mower.

There was a near miss earlier and luckily due to the grounds maintenance
chaps awareness the person was seen in time and a serious accident
avoided. Please look for other solutions to keeping cool that will not be as
potentially dangerous.

Your cooperation in this would be appreciated.

Regards
Facilities Management

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On the joys of powerpoint

Posted on By admin

I've just finished the second draft of a poster I'm presenting to the British Society of Proteomic Research in a few weeks. This afternoon, I need to finish more powerpoint slides for a research proposal for an EU-funded grant and then, all of tomorrow, I need to sort through a few hundred powerpoint slides for the presentation I'm giving in Poland.

Have I mentioned just how much I hate powerpoint? I blame it for dumbing down audiences and completely destroying what skills I had at business writing.

While I was hunting around for an eastern European plug adaptop, I got caught up in a discussion about data submissions to large databases, such as PRIDE, IntAct, SwissProt and EMBL nucleotide. My conclusions, from purely personal experience, are:

– Even with the best documentation you can give them, people will not use it, or find ways to make a square peg fit a round hole. You need to say in excruciating detail what you need, and still then, be aware there's a high likelihood you won't get it. Or only partially. But the wrong parts.
– The best way to get data from people is to give them a document template, preferably in some sort of microsoft flavour. Everybody loves excel, even if it is evil. If you give them a tool they need to install, they won't. If you give them a complicated tool to use, they won't. People love spreadsheets, even if 3/4 of the information in it is redundant. Copy-paste is the best method to extract water from a stone.

Hiho, Hiho, it's off to powerpoint I go!

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Version 2.2, baby

Posted on By admin

After weeks of blood, sweat and tears, I have finally deployed the refactored version of PRIDE to the production servers. This probably means Sweet Fanny Adams to most of you, but this makes me happy because it means that I can finally stop writing test cases and doing pain-in-the-ass fiddly stuff with raw SQL database dumps.

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Sometimes, I hate people

Posted on By admin

I hate having to deal with people by email.

Sadly, it's a big part of my job and also the only way I have to deal with some people. It's too easy to avoid answering emails you don't want to deal with. I know I'm guilty of it myself, but I do make an effort to at least give a token reply.

This is a public service announcement broadcast: if you really want to piss me off, ignore my emails. Especially if it's important. Even more so if it'll only take a yes or a no answer to send me on my merry way.

</sarcasm>

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