I Have the Best (But Oddest) Friends

Apparently last night Geek Goddess Felicia Day Tweeted the following.

I did not see the tweet myself due to being asleep. What I did see was the emails waiting for me in my inbox, and the DM’s on Facebook/Twitter from different friends. Mostly along the lines of “Congratulations”, “How did you manage that”, “WOW, your fantasies have come true” and other variations on the theme.

For those of you with a confused look on your face, IN Uni I was referred to as “Pen” and my Uni friends, and SPOD friends from that time still call me Pen. Which makes the phrase “Pen exploded all over me.” a totally different meaning.

Friends. You Rock !m!.

 

Kids Need to Read Tweetathon

Greetings and Salutations Dear Constant Reader, Can I call you CR for short? Why? Oh its because I am lazy that’s why. In university they group I hung out with would shorten everyone’s name to just three letters out of laziness (e.g.. mig,sal,pen,col,mem,ben,bob,etc..) As a more experienced Adult I have improved on this system and reduced everyone to just two letters.

But to more serious matters. KIDS NEED TO READ!. Reading is an amazing experience, it opens up new ideas, lets your mind travel to distant lands, or times, it allows you to experience all kinds of adventures in that most powerful of virtual realities “The Human Imagination“. Therefore it is the utmost importance that we all do whatever we can to help encourage and enable the newer generations to discover the wonders of a good book. And as part of doing our bit, we here at the Ninja Temple would like to bring your attention to the efforts of “Hyde and Geek” @hydeandgeek and his 36 Hour Tweetathon in aid of “Kids Need To Read” Which you have to admit is a very noble and worthy cause. He raised $2000 for them during the 2010 Tweetathon, so lets see if he can do better this year.

Now, I shall hand you over to Scott courtesy of his Blog over at hydeandgeek.blogspot.com Or you could just jump to the link giving this years details HERE. The text below is taken directly off Scott’s site.

The 2011 Kids Need to Read 36-Hour Tweetathon is officially going to take place from Thursday, May 19th at noon through Friday, May 20th at midnight.

For those who missed out on the fun in 2010, I’ll recap the basic idea. (More details can be found in the FAQ.) I will be sitting in front of my computer for 36 hours straight and tweeting at least once every 10 minutes for the duration of that time to encourage people to donate money to Kids Need to Read through a charity page that will be set up specifically for the Tweetathon. What will I do for 36 hours? That’s sort of random. Last year, I asked geek trivia questions, posted photos (some of them embarrassing) and made a general fool of myself. This year, well… we’ll just see how it goes, shall we?

Just be sure to follow me on Twitter so you don’t miss out on all the geeky fun!

I Love the smell of Estrogen In the Morning!

WOW.

Its all I can say, WOW.

I am experiencing a mixture of 60% Shock and 40% Anger, With a small sprinkling of Homicidal Tendencies on top.

I’d not seen the Governor all day in the Asylum.  I’d heard slight grumblings coming from down the corridor but that was it.  You see one of the Support Drones has not been doing his job fully, and it had been spotted while he was on holiday for a week.  And everyone else had run around sorting it all out (Without anything really being said to the drone.) Hence Grumblings.

Towards the end of the day, The Governor storms into my Cell screaming “Wheres this website!” “I’ve given you a long rain of time for it, I need it now“. Most people would have opened with a hello, or the question asked in a normal voice, not at full rage decibels.

Now, I’ve not worked on a major web project since I left the Development department three years ago, So I’m rusty. I should also point out that the website needing the overhaul was written by someone learning PHP badly at the time. Each page needs about 25 separate files of code to work, and DIV tags are spread over several files. Its a mess, and the work being done must not change the look and feel of site. Oh, and after the site was finished it had a lot of work done to it by another person with limited PHP knowledge. I digress.

So I’m rusty, it’s not an easy site, still it’s not impossible to do. Apart from the fact that I get disturbed a dozen times a day on average to help the Support Drones with problems with the ISP part of the company, or The Windows server admin wanting help with something, Or the Linux admin is working on something and wants some scripts altering to help him out, or improve something. Or the development department is bust so needs help, Or customers need help, Or the Governor needs stuff looking up or doing.

After each interruption I have lost my place on the project, and cant remember what I was doing, So I have to delete the stuff I was typing and start again. This week for example I managed about four hours of usable work on this Project.

This on top of the slight Depression I feel by not actually having a defined role in the Asylum. The Linux SysAdmin looks after the Linux Servers (Theres a lot of them), ICT Engineer only does ICT work, Developer only does development, Support guys only do support. I do, Support, Development, windows sysadmin, linux sysadmin backup work, internal development, bt development, question answering/help for all other departments, out of hours emergency support when linux sysadmin unreachable, I cover every department when they have staff people on holiday.

And they wonder a web project takes a bit longer to do than a dedicated web developer would take?

I can never finish any project, I start one, get a week working on it if i am very very lucky, then I’m given another project, and another.

I really feel like I will snap at any point. And being screamed at as the opening question of “is the website finished yet” really does not help.

I will admit that after that incident I may have vented slightly. I posted a Tweet on my Private, None Work based, None Linked to Work Twitter account thus :-

Given a web project, constantly pulled off to do other urgent jobs and get screamed at asking why web project not finished.

Only The Governor follows my Twitter account, So I get another ballistic explosion, of how he’s under pressure and how do i think it makes him feel to see a posting like that? err. probably no where near as bad as being the person screamed at for no reason? And I can remove that tweet or get sacked.

So I have decided to separate my personal “Social Networking” with my Current Employment. Since I feel I should be allowed to vent whatever I want on line as long as no names, or company names are mentioned.  It’s a hell of a lot healthier for everyone for anonymous on line venting, than holding the anger in, snapping, and going on a psychopathic killing spree in the office with a philips headed screwdriver.