So Christmas came and went and this was the first year that I didn't spend it with my immediate family. Actually, I was completely alone the entire Christmas, and it was quite a welcome change (not that I mind spending time with my family, quite the opposite, in fact). No stress, no real human contact, just lying around and so on. Oh, and I did watch both Bridget Jones movies, and I have to say that they still are very brilliant (and for those that say that they're only for chicks; sod off!). They are really quite clever and I'm actually pretty happy that Mr. Darcy still was the one who came out on top. Maybe because I identify myself more with Darcy than Cleaver. Well, ok, I may not exactly be on par with Mr. Firth, but oh well. The films did, though, trigger some fairly sensitive and personal memories and scratched open some old wounds, but I think I can safely say that this is a healthy and most likely the final part of a healing process of sorts. Good as new, at last. But of course these things have no place in a blog, especially not mine. I'm not that open. ;)
Overall the break from normal life for the extended weekend allowed lots of time for introspection (again) and I am actually fairly pleased; I can, with quite a bit of certainty, say that I am learning more about myself each time and I think I'll have to take a moment some time during 2007 and try to figure out and organize a lot of thoughts and try to get them on paper.
Anyway, I did also get around to planning my schedule for next spring and I decided to start my BSc thesis and also keep log of the process on my web page (available here, only in Finnish, though). The topics seem quite interesting, but I still have to see if I can actually do the thesis as I'm only taking the course on managing a software company this spring, and it's listed as a pre-requisite for two of the BSc thesis topics. Hopefully there'll be room to negotiate a bit - otherwise I may have to push the thesis to next fall.
In any event, I also typed up a list of resolutions for 2007 and put that online, too (available here). The idea is simple; I'll set that as the homepage for my browser and I'll have to confront that screen every time I open up Firefox. That way I can't get away from those. In addition, by making the resolutions public, Google will most likely index them (as will The Way Back Machine), and I'll seriously have to work towards keeping them. The toughest two will be getting my BSc done entirely by next Christmas and getting a place as an exchange student in some eastern European country. I guess we'll see what will happen in about 365 days...
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Rate of Change
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." Newton's third law, if my memory serves correctly (ha! I know something about physics even though I haven't gotten around to passing my obligatory physics courses!). Although I guess that is primarily applicable to mechanics, it might have some interesting applications in other fields as well. Anyway, if you consider the current ICT field, it's obvious that in order for a company to be succesful, it must be able to react to changing situations immensely quickly (first-mover advantages, anyone?). This of course has some practical implications as well - namely that the individual people who make up a company need to be able to also react quickly and reinvent themselves as the need arises. All in all it would seem that the entire culture of doing business in high-tech is being pumped more and more full of steroids every passing year.
So, about Newton's third... That would explain why in the recent year Morgans have started to look very appealing. Well, ok, they still won't be very practical in your typical Finnish climate, but come on; a car for which you have to buy door handles from the options list has got to be immensely cool! Morgan Motor Company itself has been operating the same way since it was founded in 1910 and their cars are still reminiscent of the cars the predate the war. Perhaps because they, in fact, do. I guess you can't go further away from the rate of change of the ICT world than that. Unless you want to look at the British bespoke clothing scene, which predates the Morgans by a hundred or so years...
So, about Newton's third... That would explain why in the recent year Morgans have started to look very appealing. Well, ok, they still won't be very practical in your typical Finnish climate, but come on; a car for which you have to buy door handles from the options list has got to be immensely cool! Morgan Motor Company itself has been operating the same way since it was founded in 1910 and their cars are still reminiscent of the cars the predate the war. Perhaps because they, in fact, do. I guess you can't go further away from the rate of change of the ICT world than that. Unless you want to look at the British bespoke clothing scene, which predates the Morgans by a hundred or so years...
Monday, December 18, 2006
Equestrianism
I just love the Rolex commercials and I think the marketing campaign has been one of the better ones. The commercials all contain snippets of the same song with traditional strings mixed with a modern backbeat (I hear this was specially made for Rolex and isn't based on any existing track) and show bits and pieces of various "prestigious" sports - tennis, golf, equestrianism, car sports... Place the different disciplines and athletes on a high enough podium and make them seem cool and then associate yourself with that. It never fails.
Anyway, I still would never wear or get myself a Rolex (*cough* yeah, like I'd even afford, but it's nice to play with ideas... :), but I think I actually should try equestrianism at some point...
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Hi ho, hi ho...
... it's off to [the] opera we go. Eugene Onegin on the 27th is now on the agenda. Just got the tickets ordered.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
The future
I recently got to take part in a nice seminar about the current and future stuff happening in the internet world and N. I can't remember the fine print of my NDA, so I guess I won't be saying that much about the N part, but sufficient to say that just as OPK has been drumming, there seems to be some sort of movement towards becoming an internet company.
Anyway, the most interesting parts of the seminar were when a couple of investment bankers (Mark Tluszcz of Mangrove Capital Partners and Doug Richard of, well, many things) took the time to come tell us about what the future seems like and so on. The general consensus seemed to be that in the cellular world (at least), the operators will be taking quite a beating and will become increasingly irrelevant. Perhaps not now, or not next week, but it'll happen as they will be reduced to mere bit-pipe suppliers, pushing one bit from one node (be it a server, a handset, etc.) to another at a time. VoIP, etc. Oh well, I think that this is nothing new, really, but it's always nice to be able to throw around big names to back up your views; thirst is nothing, credibility is everything.
Asides from the impending doom of the operators, the guys talked about some of the other trends, such as the fact that Google may have a tough time in the future, since even they can't beat search engines that focus on certain specific topics (e.g. real estate). I can see where Mark was coming from, but Google does have some advantages, namely the current size, the user base, the shear size of their bank account and the fact that they have the cash to hire the best of the best. But yes, I can see a small niche for specialized search engines, that's true. What else? Eastern Europe continues to remain strong, etc. And a comforting thing is that even though everyone else has slimmer phones than N these days, both Mark and Doug seemed to agree that N are the leaders in phones, thanks to the feature set and capabilities. In addition to the bankers, the same type of message was heard from Oliver of MobileCrunch. Comforting to know that even amidst all the RAZRs and KRZRs, N still seems to have a decent looking future. Oh, and I can also see why Mark and Doug are backing players that are bent on shaking up the status quo; they're both investing in small businesses and that's where the profit is at. If you can shake the foundations, you'll make a huge profit. So of course, as always, their views too are skewed a bit. But not as much as some, I would argue, since if you truly want to see the future, follow the money. And I'm guessing these guys have a couple of dollars.
Anyway, the most interesting parts of the seminar were when a couple of investment bankers (Mark Tluszcz of Mangrove Capital Partners and Doug Richard of, well, many things) took the time to come tell us about what the future seems like and so on. The general consensus seemed to be that in the cellular world (at least), the operators will be taking quite a beating and will become increasingly irrelevant. Perhaps not now, or not next week, but it'll happen as they will be reduced to mere bit-pipe suppliers, pushing one bit from one node (be it a server, a handset, etc.) to another at a time. VoIP, etc. Oh well, I think that this is nothing new, really, but it's always nice to be able to throw around big names to back up your views; thirst is nothing, credibility is everything.
Asides from the impending doom of the operators, the guys talked about some of the other trends, such as the fact that Google may have a tough time in the future, since even they can't beat search engines that focus on certain specific topics (e.g. real estate). I can see where Mark was coming from, but Google does have some advantages, namely the current size, the user base, the shear size of their bank account and the fact that they have the cash to hire the best of the best. But yes, I can see a small niche for specialized search engines, that's true. What else? Eastern Europe continues to remain strong, etc. And a comforting thing is that even though everyone else has slimmer phones than N these days, both Mark and Doug seemed to agree that N are the leaders in phones, thanks to the feature set and capabilities. In addition to the bankers, the same type of message was heard from Oliver of MobileCrunch. Comforting to know that even amidst all the RAZRs and KRZRs, N still seems to have a decent looking future. Oh, and I can also see why Mark and Doug are backing players that are bent on shaking up the status quo; they're both investing in small businesses and that's where the profit is at. If you can shake the foundations, you'll make a huge profit. So of course, as always, their views too are skewed a bit. But not as much as some, I would argue, since if you truly want to see the future, follow the money. And I'm guessing these guys have a couple of dollars.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Save the planet, they said
This week's The Economist had an interesting article about ethical food and whether or not it's really ethical. Overall ethical food products consist of three groups; organic foods (save the environment), Fairtrade products (save the poor farmer in some 3rd world country) and local products (support local farmers).
The article suggested that producing organic food is less efficient and in order to produce the same amount of food by organic methods than what is produced right now with more efficient methods would require us to just about eliminate the rainforests; that much land is needed. Fairtrade products in turn help drive down the prices of a market that is already overflooded with goods and gives the 3rd world farmers the message that instead of diversifying, they can make a buck by driving the supply up and prices down even more. And buying local products in turn hurts the 3rd world farmer by disregarding his goods and then the environment because producing lamb in Britian takes more effort and resources than doing so in New Zealand and just transporting it the Britain.
Overall this just goes to prove that nothing is black and white anymore. Grey is, has and will be the trend for the next century.
The article suggested that producing organic food is less efficient and in order to produce the same amount of food by organic methods than what is produced right now with more efficient methods would require us to just about eliminate the rainforests; that much land is needed. Fairtrade products in turn help drive down the prices of a market that is already overflooded with goods and gives the 3rd world farmers the message that instead of diversifying, they can make a buck by driving the supply up and prices down even more. And buying local products in turn hurts the 3rd world farmer by disregarding his goods and then the environment because producing lamb in Britian takes more effort and resources than doing so in New Zealand and just transporting it the Britain.
Overall this just goes to prove that nothing is black and white anymore. Grey is, has and will be the trend for the next century.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Marketing Management & Luck
The exam for Marketing Management was today and let's just say that I got moving a bit late in the semester when it came to preparing for it. In the end I didn't even have time to delve that deeply into Kotler & Keller, but thankfully there were rather decent summaries at the end of each chapter which helped create a rather good high level view of what the course was about. Additionally the questions in the exam couldn't have been better for me.
They'd also done away with the multiple choice questions part, which has traditionally been the hit or miss part of the exam. I stumbled a bit in the first exercise in which you were to explain various terms briefly. The maximum was 10 points, I'll venture a guess that I should get about five.
Then there were the essays. Three essay choices and you had to answer two. The two I did were on differentiation (what is it, what are the different dimensions of it and then examining how IKEA differentiates itself from the competition) and segmentation (what is it, when should it be done, advantages/disadvantages and then how the traditional segmentation model differed from the "Strategic Segmentation" concept which was discussed at a lecture). And best of all, English was allowed. Overall I'd say that the exam went extremely well considering the amount of effort I put into it.
I'm starting to get to the conclusion that school, in fact, isn't that difficult at this level either. It's just a question of optimizing workload and goals. I'm satisfied enough to have a grade average of 3 or higher, preferrably closer to 4 than 3. Of course 5s would be nice, but they're hardly worth the extra effort, especially if that extra mile would most likely increase the required effort by an additional 40-50%. Oh, and right now I'm becoming increasingly certain that I indeed want to do my minor at the dept. of industrial engineering and management.
They'd also done away with the multiple choice questions part, which has traditionally been the hit or miss part of the exam. I stumbled a bit in the first exercise in which you were to explain various terms briefly. The maximum was 10 points, I'll venture a guess that I should get about five.
Then there were the essays. Three essay choices and you had to answer two. The two I did were on differentiation (what is it, what are the different dimensions of it and then examining how IKEA differentiates itself from the competition) and segmentation (what is it, when should it be done, advantages/disadvantages and then how the traditional segmentation model differed from the "Strategic Segmentation" concept which was discussed at a lecture). And best of all, English was allowed. Overall I'd say that the exam went extremely well considering the amount of effort I put into it.
I'm starting to get to the conclusion that school, in fact, isn't that difficult at this level either. It's just a question of optimizing workload and goals. I'm satisfied enough to have a grade average of 3 or higher, preferrably closer to 4 than 3. Of course 5s would be nice, but they're hardly worth the extra effort, especially if that extra mile would most likely increase the required effort by an additional 40-50%. Oh, and right now I'm becoming increasingly certain that I indeed want to do my minor at the dept. of industrial engineering and management.
Friday, December 08, 2006
What if you didn't have to sleep?
I guess most people at some point in life play around with the idea of not having to spend the 8 hours a day sleeping. There also seems to be quite a large consensus that the sleep, however, is needed for a human to function properly. I ran across polyphasic sleep today, and I guess I'll have to do some more reading on that, since it seems quite interesting. To be able to cut back sleep even to 5-6 hours without adding the extra tiredness would be incredibly nice.
Two problematic issues are that it requires a rigid schedule, which I'm not sure I can fit in my life right now (considering the fact that students do occasionally party, and that needs to be offset with proper sleep) and secondly that I have some actual obligations, like work. And I'm not so certain that I'd be able to explain to people well enough why it's imperative that I sleep for 20-25 minutes ever couple of hours. This might, however, be an interesting experience if I ever have a long summer vacation again, though.
Two problematic issues are that it requires a rigid schedule, which I'm not sure I can fit in my life right now (considering the fact that students do occasionally party, and that needs to be offset with proper sleep) and secondly that I have some actual obligations, like work. And I'm not so certain that I'd be able to explain to people well enough why it's imperative that I sleep for 20-25 minutes ever couple of hours. This might, however, be an interesting experience if I ever have a long summer vacation again, though.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
More calculations
Ok, after my recent blog entry where I complained about my salary, I figured out that to lift my mood a bit, I should look at some statistics about the salaries for people with MSc degrees in Finland. TEK (the Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers) compiles salary statistics on a nearly yearly basis, but alas they only publish those for their members on the web site.
Anyway, a survey they conducted for the year 2005 shows that things that affect MSc salaries are
There were more things, but these were the criteria that I figured I could meet. So by multiplying those, the overall benefit would be +56.5%. TEK also suggests that a fresh MSc should get paid 3070 euros/month. Now if you take into account the supposed +56.5% increase, that would amount to about 4800 euros/month of gross income. And I'm assuming that TEK's statistics don't take bonus arrangements into consideration.
Then assume that with the overtime work, the average working week would be 40 hours long and there are four weeks in a month for a total of 160 hours of work/month. That equals 30 euros/hour. Also, considering that I'll hopefully be graduating in four years, this'll have to be adjusted with inflation. I can't be arsed to get any statistics on that, so I'll just add a yearly inflation of 1% to that, for a grand total of about 4990 euros/month. So now I know what I should be aiming at...
And now I have to admit that I don't feel any better. I would've been happy with the three grand that TEK suggests. But now because of these damn statistics, 3k sounds sort of... Well... Small. Not to mention my current salary. Oh well, I think it's time to get back to Kotler & Keller, lest I want to ever graduate.
Anyway, a survey they conducted for the year 2005 shows that things that affect MSc salaries are
- focus on computer science (+7.7%)
- employed by the private sector (+13.8%)
- working in the Helsinki metropolitan area (+7.8%)
- male gender (+5%)
- emplyed by a company with 250+ employees (+2.1%)
- 5+ travel days per year (+6.4%)
- 2.5+ hours of overtime work per week (+3.9%)
There were more things, but these were the criteria that I figured I could meet. So by multiplying those, the overall benefit would be +56.5%. TEK also suggests that a fresh MSc should get paid 3070 euros/month. Now if you take into account the supposed +56.5% increase, that would amount to about 4800 euros/month of gross income. And I'm assuming that TEK's statistics don't take bonus arrangements into consideration.
Then assume that with the overtime work, the average working week would be 40 hours long and there are four weeks in a month for a total of 160 hours of work/month. That equals 30 euros/hour. Also, considering that I'll hopefully be graduating in four years, this'll have to be adjusted with inflation. I can't be arsed to get any statistics on that, so I'll just add a yearly inflation of 1% to that, for a grand total of about 4990 euros/month. So now I know what I should be aiming at...
And now I have to admit that I don't feel any better. I would've been happy with the three grand that TEK suggests. But now because of these damn statistics, 3k sounds sort of... Well... Small. Not to mention my current salary. Oh well, I think it's time to get back to Kotler & Keller, lest I want to ever graduate.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Independence
It's the Finnish independence day today (6th of December) and Finland is turning 89. And as corny as it is, I think independence days are good days to reflect on the whole concept on a personal level. I myself aren't that patriotic a person - those who know me will undoubtedly consider this quite worthy of an Understatement of the Year award. The problem that I have with all this overly patriotic stuff is that it just promotes nationalism. Nationalism itself may or may not be a good ideology, I guess that's still up in the air, but there are problems that it causes. Nearly always there are nationalistic ideals behind racist behaviour, national stereotypes are often funny, but also insulting, and wars/conflicts more often then not have nationalistic zeal in the background.
On a similar parallel, the Olympics and other sporting events that promote competition between nations often result in bigotry - "Damn svensktalande bättre folk, go back to Swedenland and learn to play ice hockey!" I don't remember when I've last watched any sporting event between nations. But the whole nationalistic element in sports doesn't further global integration and interaction.
EU has also been a controversial topic in Finland, at least within certain groups. There are quite many people who are fairly skeptical of the benefits that EU has to offer. That's of course understandable, if the default mindset is that "I'm primarily a Finn and proud of it". That mindset should change to "I'm a European and proud of it". At least that would be a step in the right direction. And hopefully eventually we'd reach a global mindset and we would consider ourselves as citizens of the same world, regardless of the region where you live. And at this point, I guess I could go run in some beauty pageant and tell about my vision of peace on earth. Luckily I'm cynical enough to take all of this with a grain of salt and acknowledge the fact that because of human nature, this will never happen.
Now, don't get me wrong, independence is nice and everything, but I just feel that some things that are pretty integral to the concept of independence are very negative and might even overshadow some of the good things. As such, I didn't celebrate independence in any special way; I just lied in bed with my laptop, surfing the web, listening to music, etc. Might've had something to do with the fact that we had our Christmas party with some of the trainees from N...
On a similar parallel, the Olympics and other sporting events that promote competition between nations often result in bigotry - "Damn svensktalande bättre folk, go back to Swedenland and learn to play ice hockey!" I don't remember when I've last watched any sporting event between nations. But the whole nationalistic element in sports doesn't further global integration and interaction.
EU has also been a controversial topic in Finland, at least within certain groups. There are quite many people who are fairly skeptical of the benefits that EU has to offer. That's of course understandable, if the default mindset is that "I'm primarily a Finn and proud of it". That mindset should change to "I'm a European and proud of it". At least that would be a step in the right direction. And hopefully eventually we'd reach a global mindset and we would consider ourselves as citizens of the same world, regardless of the region where you live. And at this point, I guess I could go run in some beauty pageant and tell about my vision of peace on earth. Luckily I'm cynical enough to take all of this with a grain of salt and acknowledge the fact that because of human nature, this will never happen.
Now, don't get me wrong, independence is nice and everything, but I just feel that some things that are pretty integral to the concept of independence are very negative and might even overshadow some of the good things. As such, I didn't celebrate independence in any special way; I just lied in bed with my laptop, surfing the web, listening to music, etc. Might've had something to do with the fact that we had our Christmas party with some of the trainees from N...
Monday, December 04, 2006
Notes on juggling...
How good a juggler you might be, external events may still cause you to drop a ball or two...
Ok, so now that the biggest deadline is behind me (well, maybe it was just a local maximum, i.e. downhill until it's uphill again and the next one will be even bigger), I think it's time to reflect on some issues and recap the learned lessons. I think the most important thing to note is that as competent a person (*cough*, that's still being debated), some things might not always work out. And then there are the other people, the other systems, the external stuff that you typically depend on. And they can fail too.
So, some concrete examples, then. I pulled off a small miracle by actually getting a working piece of software done and packaged by the deadline for the Computer Network assignment. Out of the two protocols, I implemented both, but there was some sporadic glitch occuring in the link-state routing protocol - I'll venture a guess that it's caused in a situation where the network contains more than one optimal route to a given node. The implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm that I based my solution on - as a typical Dijkstra implementation should do - only creates a spanning tree with single routes and only picks one of the optimal routes. I didn't think of this until it was too late, and didn't have any more time to start changing anything. But I guess I'll at least get a 3 from the exercise, a 5 if the assistant who's grading the exercise got laid the nigth before... And with some clever planning, I got my marketing exercises done too, though I must say that the essay on business-to-business customer relationship management was complete and utter bullshit. I think I only had about three or four actual points in the entire essay and the rest was just filler words and lacked all actual meaning.
The next deadline is on Thursday, and that'll be the 5th phase of the Software Development Methods project. Needless to say, that's looking somewhat problematic right now, especially since the SoberIT site is down right now and instead of using the 90 minutes on the train to work on the project, I ended up blogging this entry. So much for automatically assuming that the machines at the uni would be reliable enough to stay up. This isn't the first time that I've had to postpone work due to the SoberIT site blowing up.
Anyway, today there's a Christmas/recruiting party at Accenture, so that'll hopefully be fun. Hopefully this'll shine some more light on the actual future views on the consulting business and what sort of things would be available for a person of some technical competence and understanding of business. And tomorrow we'll be having a Christmas party with some of the guys, who were also trainees last summer at N, at my flat. Still have to go get a bunch of wine and stuff. And a cool Christmas hat. But alas, I guess I'll need to dedicate the entire Finnish independence day (6th of December) to doing the SDM project, so that'll cut back on the partying quota for Tuesday...
Ok, so now that the biggest deadline is behind me (well, maybe it was just a local maximum, i.e. downhill until it's uphill again and the next one will be even bigger), I think it's time to reflect on some issues and recap the learned lessons. I think the most important thing to note is that as competent a person (*cough*, that's still being debated), some things might not always work out. And then there are the other people, the other systems, the external stuff that you typically depend on. And they can fail too.
So, some concrete examples, then. I pulled off a small miracle by actually getting a working piece of software done and packaged by the deadline for the Computer Network assignment. Out of the two protocols, I implemented both, but there was some sporadic glitch occuring in the link-state routing protocol - I'll venture a guess that it's caused in a situation where the network contains more than one optimal route to a given node. The implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm that I based my solution on - as a typical Dijkstra implementation should do - only creates a spanning tree with single routes and only picks one of the optimal routes. I didn't think of this until it was too late, and didn't have any more time to start changing anything. But I guess I'll at least get a 3 from the exercise, a 5 if the assistant who's grading the exercise got laid the nigth before... And with some clever planning, I got my marketing exercises done too, though I must say that the essay on business-to-business customer relationship management was complete and utter bullshit. I think I only had about three or four actual points in the entire essay and the rest was just filler words and lacked all actual meaning.
The next deadline is on Thursday, and that'll be the 5th phase of the Software Development Methods project. Needless to say, that's looking somewhat problematic right now, especially since the SoberIT site is down right now and instead of using the 90 minutes on the train to work on the project, I ended up blogging this entry. So much for automatically assuming that the machines at the uni would be reliable enough to stay up. This isn't the first time that I've had to postpone work due to the SoberIT site blowing up.
Anyway, today there's a Christmas/recruiting party at Accenture, so that'll hopefully be fun. Hopefully this'll shine some more light on the actual future views on the consulting business and what sort of things would be available for a person of some technical competence and understanding of business. And tomorrow we'll be having a Christmas party with some of the guys, who were also trainees last summer at N, at my flat. Still have to go get a bunch of wine and stuff. And a cool Christmas hat. But alas, I guess I'll need to dedicate the entire Finnish independence day (6th of December) to doing the SDM project, so that'll cut back on the partying quota for Tuesday...
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Pandaemonium
It's fun to see how different people react under stress and pressure. As much as it might be a cliché, some people fall apart and start acting according to the old rule of "When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" and give up on everything. Other people, in turn, get a lot more focused, efficient and are able to go the extra mile. I don't know exactly where I fit in with all of this, I guess I'm the type that continues to be confident that I'll be able to pull something off until the final moment, when I either do pull it off or fail. The trick is to set your own personal goals higher than what others expect you to accomplish; that way even if you do fail to meet your personal goals, there's a slight chance to still get something concrete done.
I also like airports. And cafes. And overall places that are busy and crowded, especially when I need to be able to think. There was a discussion at work regarding the working environment and some people voiced issues that the open office was too noisy and something would need to be done about that. I feel quite the opposite, the noise, life and all things related are able to help me focus on something. I'd even go as far as to say that if I don't continously receive signals of whatever sort, I can't really feel completely at ease. Even when I'm alone, on my laptop, doing something, I typically keep at least a couple of internet relay chat windows open so the text keeps scrolling by. I don't necessarily even have to read them, it's enough that something's happening. The curse associated with the current multitaskin lifestyle.
Or perhaps it's a symptom of me being a left-handed person - I read somewhere that people who are left-handed can typically have a lot more things continously under work than right-handed people on average. E.g. right now I'm blogging, I have the chat window open in the background, I'm working on my computer networks project and I have Kotler & Keller open besides me as I need to do some multiple choice exercises for the marketing course. Tomorrow evening at midnight I guess we'll see if I pull this off or not...
I also like airports. And cafes. And overall places that are busy and crowded, especially when I need to be able to think. There was a discussion at work regarding the working environment and some people voiced issues that the open office was too noisy and something would need to be done about that. I feel quite the opposite, the noise, life and all things related are able to help me focus on something. I'd even go as far as to say that if I don't continously receive signals of whatever sort, I can't really feel completely at ease. Even when I'm alone, on my laptop, doing something, I typically keep at least a couple of internet relay chat windows open so the text keeps scrolling by. I don't necessarily even have to read them, it's enough that something's happening. The curse associated with the current multitaskin lifestyle.
Or perhaps it's a symptom of me being a left-handed person - I read somewhere that people who are left-handed can typically have a lot more things continously under work than right-handed people on average. E.g. right now I'm blogging, I have the chat window open in the background, I'm working on my computer networks project and I have Kotler & Keller open besides me as I need to do some multiple choice exercises for the marketing course. Tomorrow evening at midnight I guess we'll see if I pull this off or not...
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