6 posts tagged “computing”

Well, it's my birthday *checks time* today, Don gave me his presents early... he gave me $100 towards a media Centre PC (which is sitting in the entertainment unit just nicely!), and he gave me an installation of the Mobile Antenna setup that Telstra have (hopefully) paid for for me.  (He's the handy-man, and I am... not. lol)  lookin' forward to having James, Ben, and C around for a small party, and then off to Mum and Dad's on Sunday, for mum's birthday, and possibly back again in a week for Brother's birthday
wheee!

So, by now, the whole of Vox is aware that my degree is wrapping up, and that it depends on a team collaboration in which we build a piece of software for a client.

Well.  Throughout the whole thing, we've had a team member who just hasn't pulled his weight. (If you're reading this, you either know who you are, or you're going to get told by 3pm today in front of the Lecturer-In-Charge, with whom I've had a number of conversations about you.) His name is Ben.  I know a few Bens, so no, this isn't the one who forgot me recently, this is another one.  He has had 0 assignments left for his semester for the last week.  Every other team member has at least 1 and probably 2 due this week.  It's a part of why I haven't been blogging recently (expect that to change after Friday, when boredom will set in really quickly.)  now, recently, we figured out this guy was useless. I actually can't remember if I've blogged about him or not yet.  I've emailed the lecturer a couple of times asking for some advice. 
Well.  We (foolishly) said (nicer, but it's basically what we said) "well, you've done -no- implementation, here's a chance to do some documentation and regain some marks.  Would you be happy to do the general user manual?" 
"Sure, no worries" says Ben the Terminally Lazy.
"Cool, you need to do this this and this"
"No dramas"
and we were set. the rest of us actually had some time to work on our assignments since Ben was doing things.  Thursday rolled around.  "So, what have you done?"
"this this and this" says Ben.
"Cool, can we see it?" queries my lovely self in the sweetest, most non-threatening voice I can muster
"I'd have to go home to get it" responds Ben.  My urge to kill rose.
"Ok, well can you email it out when you get home?"
"oh, I don't know that it's ready tonight to send out" urge to kill: rising, subtext: I've done nothing.
"All I want is something so that I know what sort of material we're supposed to produce"
"Yeah, no worries"
"so can you send it out tomorrow?" Says I.
"I reckon"
and the conversation ended there.

Friday rolls around: nothing.

Saturday: nothing from ben, but Darren has produced templates because he was so sick of waiting, and a response from Ben saying "we don't need to use templates beacuse tehre will still be formatting differences and we'd need to reformat them anyway." at 12:30AM on Sunday I send an email asking for something so that I can take a look at to see what Ben wants us to write since he's collating the General User Manual.

An email came through to me (and me alone) at 11:08 AM Sunday morning with just over a page of text, a significant proportion of it bullet points. none of which I would deem sufficient for submission.
I forwarded this on to everyone since I worked out that I actually had nothing that I needed to contribute to that manual myself. then at 11:57AM, he sends out another one with a couple more paragraphs.  It was obvious that he'd been writing it that morning so he'd have something to send.

and eventually, I got the Times that Ben wanted me to use to update the project schedule.  He'd broken it up into sections. and his highest time was for presentation!  (I think I may have ranted about ben not wanting to come to an important meeting before)  He almost didn't come to the really important meetings about the presentation where we produce the thing, and it's only because I was nasty and said that it was disloyal, disrespectful and hurtful of him to decide not to come to what was arguably one of the most important meetings of the semester that he came!  His highest time! 2nd highest? meetings. yep, you heard me, meetings. I was appalled. I was disgusted. I was horrified.  and then I read the time he put down for the first instance of "user docs/manuals" 75 minutes.  my voice went black, and I did Death's voice. you know the one. THE ONE WHERE HE TALKS LIKE THIS.  I said something along the lines of "I'M GOING TO KILL HIM!"  and I continued reading.  I found User Manuals: 475 minutes.  Better. It would of course have been lovely if we had seen anything at all that suggested that he'd done anything like that much work.  On seeing those times, I started printing things.

• The "manual" he sent to me
• The "manual" he sent to everyone else
• The email Darren said that he was sick of waiting. (Darren's single section was longer than Ben's "manual" by the way)
• The Times that Ben sent me
• The email where Darren tells me that he doesn't believe there's a template.
• The email where Ben says that there's no point to a template.

I figure that will give me plenty to talk about in our management meeting at 2.40pm Monday 15 Oct.

and right now, I have something to say to Ben:
"Dear Ben,

This is going to shock you.  You're used to me being a nice person who is easy to get along with.  And, by and large, I think (I definitely hope) that you're right.  I mean, I'm a bitch, for sure, but who isn't?  This letter, however... This letter is a result of me being so nice and easy to get along with.  I didn't rant at you for not doing your work when I probably should have.  You've seen that I can play dirty, tweaking emotions when I need to.  Right now, I need to rant, I need to play dirty.  I need to write something so that if you ever do read it, you'll understand how I feel. I need to at least write about how I feel about you before I see you tomorrow.  So that when I see you in that management meeting, I don't absolutely blow my stack and lose all my professionalism marks.  With that said, here is what I have to say.  I know it's not pretty, but it's the truth.

I don't know what you thought project was going to be like.  I knew it was going to be hard work, and chew up a lot of my time.  That's why I didn't take an extra (overtime), completely optional unit in second semester even though I wasn't already failing units multiple times over. I would never attempt to do that uni load and work 2 jobs.  I actually quite liked you at the start of the year.  I figured you were a good student and a decent guy.  I don't understand how you can spend so much on uni tuition and not put in the effort.  I don't understand how you can be happy just failing. 

What I do understand? I understand that helping you pass cheapens the degree I'm working fucking hard to get.  I've already had one person pass for a qualification based almost entirely on my work.  I am not doing that again.  I understand that you need to get 45% of your internal mark to pass this unit, which is a core unit to obtain a computing degree.  I understand that you have done almost no work this semester, and there is virtually no tangible evidence that you have done anything.  I understand that your Work Product Pay Packet will be as close to Zero as I can make it and still have a clear conscience.  I understand that I am not going to sit idly by while you cheapen my profession.

What you need to understand?  You need to understand that in my eyes you have failed. You didn't pull your weight, wouldn't tell us you weren't doing things, and every time we bailed you out because it's better the devil you know, and we were understanding of workloads and stuff.  Well, no more.  As far as I'm concerned, your individual marks will be nil, nix, nada, zilch.  I don't know that I'll ever be gutsy enough to say this to your face,  but in the year I've known you, you have become contemptible to me. 

I'm sure you'll enjoy repeating project and making some other team miserable.  Thinking about that almost makes me want to let you pass.  It's not an experience I would wish on anyone.  But then, I wouldn't wish you on an employer either.

I'll see you around, I'm sure, because I start Honours next year, and you're still going to be around."

I'm sorry, everyone.  That venomous type/rant/vent/cry has saved me from actually going psycho on his arse, I think.  (I'm still not going to risk it, I'll leave the sharp objects in my locker before the meeting)  I hate feeling like that.  I hate feeling like I'm dishing out what people deserve. This post may not be pretty... but it's true for me.

Well... I'm sitting in a lecture theatre bored out of my brains, and I can sit here on my laptop looking like I'm doing an excellent job of taking notes, when instead, I'm just tapping out this blog entry to you...

That is why WiFi is one of the most awesome technologies around.  my laptop has 0 cords hanging out of it (courtesy of my battery) and I can still get on the net and screw around.

The fact that my uni has a great WiFi infrastructure really helps.  I can go to any of my lecture theatres with my laptop and connect and surf/research/work/blog/play.

Love your WiFi, you know you want to.

Well! we got assessed right before I was due to start my shift, so that was a relief.  Just as I was starting, the TAFE Cotingent arrived, including one face I shall never forget, Henry Bush, Teacher extraordinaire of the TAFE Diploma Courses and all units Programming.

I have a number of Screenshots!

is today!

We have a big bowl full of lollies to give away, more lollies if those ones run out. I have my business cards to hand out when I'm on. We also have our incredibly sexy my.plan system, (I don't know how we managed to make "my.plan" funky, sexy and enticing, but I think we did!) (glory be to me, who fixed the design as necessary, and to Tom, who rewrote the categories section to include the new design) with its swipe card login and user-tailored interface, and now we need to demonstrate it to the public in general.  Tom and Darren are first, then Emma replaces Tom, Then I replace Darren, and finally Ben replaces Emma.  (We each have a 1-2 hour shift)  we have awesome Team Trainer T shirts with the Trainer logo (A big "T") embroidered on them, along with "<Team Trainer>" and our names.  Yay for my mother-in-law with her many embroidery machines!  I'm feeling really confident and pleased with how things are turning out.  It's all pretty much going according to plan.  I think it's time for my coffee though.  I'll blog about how it went, and I'm -definitely- taking screen shots to put up here soon.

I'm so happy, my hair looks decent, I have parking all paid for until well after Demo Day ends, when all is said and done, I'm feeling awesome, I even got a good night's sleep last night.

If you're local, drop by and see me! School of Computing, uTas Launceston, Newnham Campus, just follow the arrows in the SoC and you'll find us.

Love you all,
D

Well, Today was the day of the School of Computing Dinner, which was fun, we had a grand total of 15 out of a (local) school of 100 students, we had 3 staff and 12 students (provided you include postgrads as "students"), we had some trivia and ate some awesome Mexican@ the Prickly Cactus.  A good time was had by all, and C and I left about 9:45.  We even had fun with Mike Cameron-Jones, which we weren't expecting (see C's rants about Computer Graphics and Animation).  OMG, check out the cocktails they had, I should have taken photos, but oh well... Thier namesake cocktail, Prickly Cactus, was Kahlua, Baileys, Galliano, Banana Liquer,Milk and Cream... it was delicious.  As was the Mexican Fruit Tingle, which turned out purple courtesy of the Raspberry Syrup.

and the anticlimax:  a friend and I lived together once, and when another friend of ours stayed (once a week) for uni, we would have a "Woine Toime" (if you don't know what that is, you need to watch yourself some Kath and Kim) which involved drinking cheap wine (quite nice tasting (stanley's White Lambrusco/Dolce Bianco)) eating corn chips, and talking about random crap.  They were great fun. And so, I thought, since I was staying at friend's place tonight, that we might have a woine toime again, as I attempted this last time I was here, but he was already asleep before I had the opportunity to pitch it to him. 

This morning, he seemed into the idea, but as I headed off to the dinner, I got a message saying his other half was feeling a bit low, and he was going to spend the night with him instead.  (I have keys, so logistically, no worries)  I was a bit disheartened, but understand.  I then invited the bf to come Woine Toiming too, but he's tired, so no go. The rub is that I haven't actually spent any quality time with this friend for well over a fortnight, despite arriving here every morning for a shower, and sweeping the place for anything I may have left behind in the morning before I head home.  mainly because he's been spending a -heap- of time at the boyfriend's house.  And again, I understand. 

But that understanding doesn't necessarily lessen the feeling of being left behind and/or out of his life.  If I'm really honest with myself, I don't know how I feel about this, I think I feel a bit hurt, and a bit disappointed, that I'm not important enough to warrant... keeping plans with?  And there's a bit of realisation that things are changing, too.  That, unless we make an effort, once Uni finishes, we'll just drift apart, and when all is said and done, this is one of the best, most rewarding friendships that I've had.  The thought of losing that makes me quite sad...

Maybe I'm waxing crap because I'm feeling a bit down, I dunno... tell me?

So, I've booked him for next Tuesday, and told him his bf is welcome too (at my friend's house, teehee) but that he is most definitely booked, and no is not a suitable answer without good justification.