another coffee, please

Also, I just noticed that I hadn’t set the proper timezone for this blog. It should be correct to UTC +11 now (ie. Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time).

I spent a chunk of time tonight updating my virtual profile. This is actually a lot more daunting than it sounds. The sites I have the most obvious virtual presence on (i.e. I use my full, real name) are LinkedIn and Facebook. I don’t have much of a presence on the former, but eerily it shows up as the second hit when I Google my name. And though I generally don’t mind when people search for me on Facebook, it does concern me that there are people out there who are able to use this information to their advantage, and to my disadvantage.

When I started my current job, I asked my co-worker why they’d picked me. Was it my eagerness to learn? Fitting into the team?

“Well,” he said, “we googled you.”

Uhoh. What did you find?

“That you’ve been involved in a couple of computing societies at uni (tick!), that you did pretty well in the HSC (tick!) – oh, and you met your boyfriend through World of Warcraft.”

Oh. THAT article. Where I proclaimed my skepticism of online dating sites and my distrust of the undead. Though I’m not terribly embarrassed by the article now – it’s a good talking point, you know? – when it was brought up by people I hardly knew I wanted to sink into the ground. The funny thing is that this article was written a year and a half ago and yet it’s still around on the internet. It’s been archived for all cyberspace eternity! And one day I will probably go for a job interview in which the interviewer will say, off the cuff, “so, Phoebe, are you still one of those World of Warcraft nerds?”

Interviews I regret aside, however, I’m interested in how my virtual presence can identify me even before someone’s met me. It can affect everything, from how smart (they think) I am, to how well I dress, to my personality traits. People can decide whether they like me before even setting eyes on me in the flesh. If this is bad enough with friends of friends (and potential partners!) I can only imagine what a potential employer would think of my Facebook photos.

So I’ve turned them all to private, so that only “my friends” who I am directly connected to can see them. (I have doubts about the integrity of this system though as I used to be able to copy and paste direct picture links to people who weren’t part of my Facebook “friends”). I’ve also limited the amount of information that complete strangers see. Is it relevant that I’m in a “complicated” relationship? Maybe. Does it imply that I’m not committed, or that I have personal problems? (No, he just lives twelve thousand kilometres away.)

I think it’s important to separate Facebook groups and widgets into those which are definitely just for fun (like a Scrabble type game) and those which are a bit more grey. I’m not a fan of the applications which aim to give you a net worth, or identify you via adjectives. I’m not a fan of groups which polarise, either, since I often don’t agree with the sentiment. Some groups I do believe in (see: No Australian Internet Censorship) but I think for the most part I reject invitations to groups I’m not a solid supporter of.

On to LinkedIn, the social network aimed at a slightly more serious audience, and I realised that my profile there also needed a bit of tidying up. Spelling inconsistencies irk me by nature, but I’d also not capitalised my first and last name (maybe at the time I didn’t quite know what I was signing up for). I’ve corrected this, and redefined my current job title. However, when it came to updating my profile, I was a little stumped…

Like writing a resume, LinkedIn is more about selling yourself than any of the other social networks I’ve been a part of. MySpace is (mostly) about expressing yourself, whether it’s through music or having an objectively aesthetically pleasing profile. Facebook is about connecting to old friends and acquaintances, and adding the random guy you bumped into last night who happens to already be within your network because he’s friends with your sister’s boyfriend’s best friend. It’s got a very casual factor to it that suits its demographic, which, remember, was originally college students (and alumni)!

LinkedIn is a step away from that. It’s the network where you won’t be afraid to talk about how good you are without coming across as arrogant. It’s where you want to link your Seek and CareerOne jobhunts so that you don’t ever need to fire up Microsoft Word again in order to try to make your resume look good. Not just does it list all of your qualifications, it also displays your referees and, should they move to a new job, will keep their contact details current. To this effect, I think it’s one of the best career tools online. However… this is the daunting part.

Where’s the line between selling yourself and going overboard when it comes to social websites? What kind of presence is “better”: a good career profile or a good social profile? Which are recruiters more interested in? One displays your skill set (according to you) and the other displays your personality, your attitude, and your lifestyle. Is it “okay” to describe yourself one way on Facebook and a different way on LinkedIn – your intended audience is different, after all – or will that person end up reading both and conclude that you are a hypocrite?

Add in my weblog (should anybody find it) and you have a third perspective of the same person. Hopefully my ideals remain relatively similar across the spectrum, although I foresee that as I advance in my career, and my personal life, there will be times when I can’t align the Internet and something will go terribly wrong, probably during the most important job interview of my life (or my wedding). Then again, I am a pessimist.

Curious? Google yourself.

I’m a gamer and a Family Guy fan, so this video really struck a chord with me.  It’s a Seth McFarlane special from the Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy on youtube.

Mario rescues the Princess, Seth McFarlane style (via Kotaku)

(This is a rant post, and all my rant posts are probably going to be lengthy and probably whingey too.  I don’t expect you to read them, and on the same note I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me.  I rant because this is my blog and I can write whatever I damn well want to.)

It’s nothing new to be sick of work, or the place you work, or the people you work with.  To be honest, I like my job.  I like the people I work with.  I like the atmosphere of this company and the work that I do, as long as it keeps me busy.  I loved this job when I started because every day I came to work I learnt something new.  I did something technical, I was involved at the system level, and there were things I didn’t fully understand.

I’m not going to say that ‘now, I know everything’ – far from it! I’m just worried that the way the company is heading is dithering on politics, on contracts, and on potential sales.  Things aren’t being seen through from start to finish with customers, there is a shortage (I won’t say “complete lack”, although sometimes it feels like it) of communication from the management through to ops, and, well, I know I’m not the only person here looking for a new job.

What would I like to see to make my workday more bearable? Hmm.  It’s an interesting question, because on one hand I could be totally selfish and say “Well an extra 30k would be nice” or I could be unrealistic and say “I’d like to have the whole organisation communicate like a well oiled gear”.  Or I can be realistic and say that the following things will slow down my search for greener pastures:

* Good communication.  We are a small-to-medium sized company (somewhere in the vicinity of 30 employees) with skills ranging from the technologically illiterate to those with 30 years+ of technical, practical knowledge.  The variety is refreshing and for a company of our size, good for us: with people around who are less technically literate, we in operations have to think about how we word things.  An example occurred today when one of the BDMs required clarification as to whether “dual hba card” meant two cards, two sets of HBAs, or one card with two ports.

On that note, though, communication has to go both ways.  I like to know what the company’s goals are from a board’s perspective, or from the sales perspective.  I want to hear about where we’re struggling such that I don’t pass on the wrong information to customers.  Since everybody in the company (pretty much) has interaction with the customers, it’s imperative we’re all on the same level.  I don’t feel like this is occurring; in fact, I feel as though the management is purposely telling us something different to what’s occurring over there.  And when we pass on this information to customers it causes all sorts of confusion, which leads to negative publicity for the company.

My solution? Even something as impersonal and tacky as a company newsletter for internal distribution is better than what we have now.  There are, on occasion, emails sent around briefly telling us what we already know about expanding and attaining new customers, but there really should be a central source of gossip rather than via the Exchange grapevine.  If not, then keep everybody updated with the latest happenings of the business and the outcomes of important internal meetings.  There are team leader discussions, but where’s the consolidated team email?

* Better relationships with customers.  Every company has the big fish, the small fish, and the three eyed fish as customers.  It’s a given that some will be easier to deal with than others.  I think it’s important that in a small company, where one of our biggest assets is being easily accessible, that we talk to the customers.  Unfortunately it recently seems as though operations staff is being told to “stay away” – don’t talk to the customer unless you have to; get everything in writing before you commit; push it back to the account manager.  I know that as we grow it’s wise to let the customers know that they won’t always be dealing with the same technical staff; on the other hand, we are small enough that alienating the customer makes them wonder why they’re with us when they can get the same kind of cold treatment from a larger and more established company.

My solution? Ensure that the customer is introduced to the technical staff.  Even a brief greeting and a chat is enough to build a technically founded relationship with a customer who operations staff don’t usually get to see face to face.  (Most of our incident handling is done over the phone/email).  Having the opportunity to meet your customers, and for them to meet us, removes that impersonal layer and promotes open channels of communication.

* Friendlier working environment.  I hate my desk at the moment.  This is seven eighths my fault.  I don’t keep it tidy, and I have a very strange sense of humour (such as the seven legged lamb picture that I pinned to my wall).  We, like most office workers, spend eight hours or more of our day living in a bland cell.  It seriously kills the imagination and I’m won’t be surprised if one day someone comes around and asks me for a TPS report and a stapler.  Why I think that this environment is bad: it suffocates me.  I know there aren’t going to be many other offices out there which are better, but I know that they do exist.  As a techie I can get more out of a mentally stimulating environment than one with four walls and a door.  Whether it’s technical equipment to play with (sorry, “work on”), a chillout area which gives us some place to relax, or improving the general environment and atmosphere, I would really like to see more care given to the operations habitat.

Solution: get a fuusball table.  We’ve tried the magnetic dart board (bad idea) and whiteboards (which actually get used for work).  I would like to see more pictures up and around the walls to make them less bare.  Force people to use their cells – I mean, cubicles – as a place that is both comfortable and aesthetically pleasing.  It will make the whole office look better, and improve your mental health when you’re at work.  Feasible? Probably not.  But I can dream.

(also: invent more interesting titles)

+ Spending habits

+ Long distance relationsh-erks

+ Designing a useful asset management system

I’m 23, and I live at home with my parents.  It’s not quite as embarrassing to admit as it would have been, say, a decade ago.  It’s so expensive to move out, for one thing; my parent’s place is gigantic (room for more!); I don’t have to clean up after myself (yes, Mum, I’ll clean my room.. when I want to) and, well, it’s just so easy.  At least, so I’ve told myself for the last five years.  (Five years before that I was hating my parents, the world, school, and boys, and wanted to wear black and listen to Marilyn Manson all day.)

But things are getting a little, well, stale.  I’ll be the first to say there’s nothing wrong with my family or my living situation.  Hell, I have an incredible disposable income.  But sometimes there’s just this desire to suffer.  I want to wake up on a Saturday and groan because I have an apartment with various toilets, bathrooms, kitchens and bedrooms to clean (I’m very spoilt at home.)  I want to choose my furniture.  Oh, hell, I want to pay the rent late and have someone very cross on the phone telling me they have seven kids to feed.

Of course, I’m not the kind of person to do things by halves.  It would be easy to move out into Sydney’s inner ‘burbs.  Too easy.  I’m not thinking about simply throwing down a deposit on a place and being out of home next week.  Oh, no.  I want to move – to California.

There are a couple of reasons I have chosen a destination over twelve thousand kilometres away (about 7.5k miles).  One, a boy.  (What else!) He’s adorable, charming, and is prepared to move in with me.  That solves problem #1, and that’s getting around; as convenient as the US is, it is not known for its public transport.  Two, the booming IT industry.  Sure.  I could choose any place in the world and say the same thing (except maybe Uzbekistan or any city in Australia) but there is no place quite as appealing as SIlicon Valley to a little tech head like me.

Three, that a lot of people speak English.  I guess I don’t like the thought of having to learn a new language and settle in as well.

And finally, that it’s twelve thousand miles away from everything I know.  There’s no running home to Mum and Dad if I get scared, or if there’s a spider in my room (ack!) or if I lock myself out of the house (which I just did last Saturday).  This is me, and this is the world, and hello me, welcome to Harsh Reality.

I’ve given myself just over seven months to work this out.  It sounds like a long time; it sounds like no time at all.  I am scared, and I am getting prepared.  Hopefully I can use this blog as a bit of an outlet and a bit of a motivator(!) to burst my idyllic childhood bubble and get the hell out of here.

Hello and welcome to my first post! I’m going to be writing about my interests here, and mostly while I’m at work (hence the strange blog title, I guess!).  There are a couple of topics I’m most interested in, although of course I expect these to change over the course of this blog…

Computers

It probably makes sense, since I studied Computer Science at university (and quickly escaped, programming not being my forte).  I’m always thinking about upgrading my home computers, or buying a new, nifty gadget that will make my life no better (but is oh so fun!).  I’d like to write about these things and hopefully make it somewhat interesting to read even if you’re not a computer person.

World of Warcraft

I don’t think I’ll be able to make this interesting if you’re not a WoW player already, but I will try my best.  I won’t explain anything that I think is common knowledge to a wow-er or a gamer but do feel free to comment if you want me to be more verbose! I used to play a lot more than I do now, but I do find a lot of things interesting from both technical and social perspectives, as well! Yes, I’m one of those gamers who plays games to actually MEET people…

Food

I like it.  I like talking about it and I like eating it.  Enough said!

Travel

The first major trip I did on my own was a three week holiday to the United States (southern part of California, mostly) in late 2007.  I realised quite how fun it is organising and experiencing different places and cultures, and I’d love to travel some more even just within Australia.  I’d like to document some of these thoughts so I don’t lose them..!

I’m also a big fan of Sydney – you have to love it to live here, they say.  When my boyfriend came to visit a few weeks ago I got to do some of the touristy things I don’t usually bother with because I live here.  I’d love to write these down both as a memento of my recent holiday and perhaps to inspire other people to seek out the interesting facets of what is a truly vivid city.

And that’s all for now!