21 Jul 06 How to make IT staff less angry
Bryan a coworker of mine passed this along last week.
How to make IT staff less angry
Basically it is a 5 part guide to managers on how to manage IT workers. None of it rocket science, most of it is obvious at least to this IT worker.
Quote I find interesting from part 4.
On point two, you can’t force something to be fun. Forcing staff to go off on some ‘team-building’ exercise can have two disastrous effects; one, if they really don’t want to spend time outside the office with co-workers you’ll just make them more resentful and anti-social. Two, if they actually have fun doing something that’s totally unrelated to work you run the risk of simply highlighting how far away from fun work actually is.
Keep your motivational efforts focused on work. Encourage people to socialize by all means but don’t force it. If your CODE-IT workers want to spend more time together, they’ll do it without being forced. Also, social events have nothing to do with making the actual work more interesting. Enjoyable social events are part of the overall workplace environment as discussed in previous posts. This is linked to but distinct from interesting, challenging and enjoyable work.
Another point that I would add is not forcing staff to do team-building exercises with individuals from other departments that they don’t know or work with. Team building with basically strangers from other areas is really not TEAM building. AND please no teambuilding that involves such an encroachment to personal space that if the amount of touching or closeness took place during regular business hours that sexual harassment accusation could easily be made.
15 Jul 06 darthvader vs japanese police
I wonder sometimes that if I actually learned Japanese if the clips would be as funny.
12 Jul 06 Headbutt heard around the world
I am not a big soccer, er futbol fan although I did catch some of the world cup action and it was pretty good. It would have been nice to see the US team advance farther, but eh, that’s the way it goes. I did see the infamous headbutt by France’s Zinedine Zidane’s on Italy’s Marco Materazzi. Here is my view on the situation, one dude that headbutts someone and gets a red card should not be named World Cup best player, no matter what was said to him. There has to be other players that contributed just as much with out physically assaulting another player. Two, its pathetic that they are getting lip readers to try to figure out what the guy said. Does it really matter? What ever happens to sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me? Is it that bad that if Materazzi said something so bad that he should be penalized for it? This reminds me of the clip below with Kevin Stevens and Brian Trottier of the Pittsburgh Penguins giving some lip speak to Brian Bellows of the Minnesota North Stars.
12 Jul 06 Atari commercial Pole Position
Imagine getting that excited over graphics and game play like that.
12 Jul 06 Axing sex, swearing from films violates copyright
Deleting swearing, sex and violence from films on DVD or VHS violates copyright laws, a U.S. judge has ruled in a decision that could end controversial sanitizing done for some video-rental chains, cable services and the internet.
The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by 16 U.S. directors, including Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford and Martin Scorsese, against three Utah-based companies that “scrub” films.
Judge Richard P. Matsch decreed on Thursday in Denver, Colo., that sanitizing movies to delete content that may offend some people is an “illegitimate business.” [.continue.]
Illegitimate or not I think these companies provide a good service. Since there are about 90 companies out there doing this apparently there is a market place for them. I do think DVDs that have been ’sanitized’ should be clearly marked so someone isn’t fooled into buying an edited copy of the movie. This is all about choice, giving people that don’t want to see the sex, violence, language or gore but wants to enjoy the movie a chance to watch it.
“Their objective … is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies,” the judge wrote. “There is a public interest in providing such protection.”
Is this the same public interest that gets served by editing movies shown on broadcast TV? Language that is redub typically badly or muted out all together. Scenes deleted for content or for time constraints? Why isn’t their reputations hurt over that?
