Seems that Blogger (aka the privacy kings Google) want us all to use Google accounts form now on. So I've been forced to get a little organised and switch the original user id for my blogs over to a Google account. Once I'm back to blogging more regularly I'll probably move all my stuff over to a less invasive and less unprivate environment than Google.
¶ 12:57 pm
Yesterday I received a marketing call from a company. They've called before and I've ignored them. They've called again and I've contacted them to say "no". They've called again and again and again. They run a supposed "opt in" market survey system. Clearly a lie or they would not have called the very first time. There is a scheme here for telephone subscribers to opt out of receiving unsolicited marketing calls and my line is listed as "do not contact"; still they contact.
Riled at this flagrant disregard of my right I called the company back and ranted at whomever answered the call (I later found out it was their IT director -- tough luck mate) and asked to be put through to the CEO. They wouldn't do so. With a little web search I found the names of several more directors so I emailed them in an attempt to get my number expunged from their list.
Then I called to say I wanted to talk about using their services for my own business. That got their attention. They called back for that. Thankfully the call came late in the day. By which time I had lodged a formal complaint about them with the government agency responsible for dealing with the prosecution of unsolicited business calls to people with whom companies do not already have a business relationship. I certainly do not have a business relationship with the bunch of idiots who have kept calling despite my attempts to exert my opt-in status ... by opting out. I have also reported them to another government department because their formal accounts suggest that the company is dormant (i.e. not trading) when it is clear that they are conducting commercial activity.
I told the IT Director that the number they had called in the morning was listed as "do not contact". Also that they were in breech of various government regulations concerning contact of people with whom they had had no previous business dealings. I insisted that they expunge my number from their lists as it should never have been on there in the first place.
Half and hour later while I am dealing with the government departments another bunch of these self-righteous marketeers phoned. They exhibited the same attitude. They had caught me at home so I must answer their questions. No I'm not. If a marketeer wants my opinion on anything they have to pay for it. And that does not mean being giving shopping vouchers for a store I never purchase from.
And to cap it all at the end of this hour some git came knocking on my door selling home improvements that my house clearly does not need. The improvements area obvious and visible to anyone just looking at the front of the building.
I've also contacted the trade association for telemarketing, they run the "do not contact" listing scheme. They are a toothless bunch.
It you're a) a tele-marketeer trying to conduct a "market survey" or b) a door-to-door salesman whose opening line is "I'm not selling anything" and you know which is my house don't bother phoning, don't bother knocking. I will not give you my time. You have no rights to it. You have not right to ask me anything at all. If you want my opinion knock on the door, ask to make an appointment, and how much you are willing to pay, treble or quadruple the figure and expect to be up-ed to a price commensurate with my professional rates then maybe possibly I will give you some of my time. But buddy you ain't getting it for free or for a few worthless scraps of paper.
¶ 3:14 pm
One thing I hate is people mandating how I work. Micro-managers are the worst but so too web designers who insist that their page is so important that it must be seen a) full screen and b) in a window of its own. Nah! No way. I know how I want to use the web and neither of your approaches are in there.
No page is so important that it needs to full. Even my own page(s) are not so vital that all the screen real estate must be given over to the content.
I want your page in a tab, not a window but a tab. There are some sites, which I won't name, where the web master insists that all links are opened via a script. Nah! If needs be I'll hack the URL (Firebug is a good thing) and get that content in a tab.
Let's get it clear. The browser on my machine is well on my machine. I'll control it thank you very much.
Anything else is intrusive. It's up there with expecting me to answer the phone because it's convenient to you. Well it ain't convenient for me.
Labels: Rant
¶ 6:02 pm
Uh no. I don't do that. I screen calls on my phone. Thank God for caller id. I recognise the numbers of family and friends; if I'm charitable I may pick up the phone and talk to them. Sometimes I will let the answerphone pick up and screen what the person at the other end is saying first --- even if I know who they are. Also my mobile (cell to you USians) phone has caller id I heavily screen calls and SMS messages there. Don't expect me to reply just because you called me or sent something. My time is my time. I'll use it how I wish.
And there's where I part company from the time management people such as Stephen Covey with his 7 Habits. Great book, read it back when it was newly published. Liked it. Similarly David Allen and his Getting Things Done methodology. Okay not read it but seen enough secondary material to think there's some good in it. But while I have read about or considered these approaches I screen them out of my daily life. The intense proponents of each method encourage me to change my ways. To improve my life, to enumerate my goals, ambition, and objective, to bring order to the chaos of how I work. No, it's my life, my time. I've got things to do not methodologies for following metholdogies to follow.
I take pieces of these best-seller schems and incorporate them into my own scheme. For example, I tried out a computer package based on Allen's GTD. I "collected" my thoughts; this is great. But then the methodlogy and specifially the package forced me to evaluate those thoughts there and then, to decide whether each though was something for the future, or to be thrown away, or added to a project, or maybe initiate a new project.
The problem is these are just thoughts. Nothing grand some of them. I wanted to record them somewhere so I didn't forget them entirely. Some of them need a long gestation time. For example there are draft posts for this blog going back to the first heady days of creating the blog itself. I started to type them up but more time was needed to ponder them. Most of the posts for this blog are like that. Drafting. If I GTDed them them I'd have to delete them but these thoughts are important to me and maybe one of them becomes important to you too. I won't allow someone else to dictate when I should think.
And there are some tasks that can't be done immediately, or even annually. I recently received a notification to renew a professional qualification. Previously this was annually. Now it's perpetual. I don't need to renew ever again. However, I do need to re-validate my details every five years or immediately if my details changes. If the latter then the five-year clock is reset. So I can't simply put a five-year alarm in my online calendar or in my planner insert for five year hence, which by the way hasn't been printed yet and as I drafted this back in April neither had the yearly insert for next year become available.
I don't want their help (imposition) to order my life into neat packages. I like serendipity and happenstance. Those are concepts I can deal with, cope with. I've better things to do with my life than spend it on Getting Things Done. Elsewhere there are active discussion forums on GTD and 7 Habits. Time and again people comment that it has taken a year, two years, longer even to fully implment ABC scheme in their life. Me, I'll scavange something from each of these schemes and put it to use my way.
It's taken me six years to reach a point where I use my planner as more than a simple appointments diary. The daily pages are essential. I use a page-to-a-view format. Hour slots on one page, space for notes on the other. ToDo list and priority tasks there on view. Recently noticed that a rival planner company has a shorter page so additional notes can be made during the day. I took that idea; not needed for every meeting but can be helpful. I use the year planner too. Pull it out for an overview of where I will be months ahead. Now I'm supplementing the day and year plans with monthly plans. Less space to record where meetings are happening but a neat summary of available time for other meetings. Most recent addition has been my professional development plan. Those skills that may need brushing up or new ones that need learning with some thought to how this can be achieved and how.
It's my life. To the fanatics of order and methodology I get your hands of my life and go get one of your own. ¶ 10:57 pm
Over the years I've used various organisers to support my professional activities. Anything from a simple vest-pocket diary, a Psion Series 3 PDA, Lotus Organiser, other larger diaries (A3 or A5 sized), commercial organisers, Google (GMail, Calendar, Docs), and even iCal.
None of these systems is ideal. All have limitations. For example, bog-standard diaries, provided by employers, have always proved inadequate for my requirements. Week-to-a-page formats never provides enough space for the complex timetable of being a professional. Few, if any, have times printed on them. So regular meetings usually end up being noted in different places on different days. Day-to-a-page layout is better but there is no where to write background material linked to the meetings I'm scheduled to attend. Of course, I can use a common-place book for those notes but the notebook and diary end up in different bags, rooms, trains, ... plus a reasonable sized notebook is heavy.
Then there's the page size. How am I supposed to track my business commitments with a diary no bigger than my mobile phone. My handwriting is illegible at the best of times. If cramped onto the small pages of a vest-pocket diary then I might as well not bother (and I don't).
I hear you asking why I am not using the Psion or the Palm. Well the Psion is now very old. Already been in for repair once to replace wires in the hinge that had broken as the case was opened. Also the hinge broke and the case had to be replaced. Now the hinge has broken again. The Palm is a nice device; I have one of the colour ones. But the Graffiti system defeats me. I can't use it for more than noting an appointment. And yes I have the foldout keyboard. Nice but impracical when commuting to work by train as I do.
So I'm back using a paper-based organiser. At the moment it is stuffed full with a refill from one of the many organiser manufacturers.
I recently discovered one such extension GreaseMonkey that alters the way HTML pages are rendered. One interesting example removes those irritating paid for adverts that Google displays. While that maybe useful my purpose in using GreaseMonkey is to improve the readability of web pages. If only people would realise that black text on black background is not a sensible combination. Even more conventional choices are not helpful for me; my dyslexia includes Meares-Irlen Syndrome. It helps to have text and backgrounds in different colours. Web designers don't understand that so I have to get out the GreaseMonkey and make sure that the colours and fonts are perfect. Some of the bloggers I read regularly don't understand either so GreaseMonkey lets me remove all the extraneous crud from those blogs.
Now if only there was a GreaseMonkey for PDF files I'd be happy. ¶ 2:42 pm
The earliest and probably most infamous instances of such tampering was the removal of Trotsky from official photographs after he was deported from the Soviet Union in 1929. These photos (before and after versions) can be seen here. The only difference between the Leninist revisions and the Nature/Time/Newsweek ones is that today it is so much easier and quicker to disprove the axiom that "the camera never lies". One has to admire the skill of the technicians in the late 1920s/early 1930 who excised Trotsky from those images; they didn't have the benefit of PhotoShop.
As image editing software becomes more sophisticated it is highly likely that more attempts to clean up someone's image will occur. One does not even need to go to the expense of buying PhotoShop as the open source work-alike The Gimp is freely available and, for the likes of me who do not use either Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac, can be used on operating systems that PhotoShop does not work on.
To be charitable to Tufte, for a moment, he may be questioning the ethics of the scientists whose image was being described in Nature. But surely all such image editing is unethical especially when the historical record is being tampered with. ¶ 6:12 pm
