Category: Waffle and randomness

This morning, the office has been full of much hilarity and mirth – as well as extreme geekiness.

It all started off when discussing the appropriate colour patch leads to use for a new network (really – network administrators will understand that this is important) and Nick suggested that the colour of the cable is related to the speed (it’s certainly true that the light blue cables which are our corporate connections have significantly slower Internet access than the yellow ADSL in the corner!). Allan had his own theory that whatever is planned, in reality cable colour is directly related to the proximity of the cable – it doesn’t matter what colour should be used, the answer is whatever is closest to hand.

Next comes in the Project Manager, looking for a “jealousy” of architects (she claimed that was the correct collective noun), which got me googling…

According to Chris Sells’ blog post on collective nouns for geeks, it’s a “glass house” of architects and a “slack” of project managers. There are some other funny ones in Chris’ post that I won’t repeat here but I’m returning to my glass house now. Really, I like to think of myself as just one element of a RAIG (Redundant Array of Intelligent Geeks), although based on our conversations today the use of the word intelligent is questionable…

Recently, with the introduction of new flexible working legislation, there has been more and more attention paid to the subject of home-based working and on the way home this evening I heard that today has been designated National Work from Home Day by Work Wise UK.

As someone who frequently works from home, I don’t need to be convinced of the benefits for me personally (less time commuting; less money spent commuting; less money spent on snacks at work; potential reduction in waistline measurements by not buying up large sections of the Marks and Spencer food hall each lunch time; and actually getting to see my family for a short time each day) but there are also benefits for employers (I’m more productive when I work from home; they don’t need to provide as much office space – just some “hot desks” for the days I am in the office; and my travel expenses are reduced) as well as for the nation as a whole (fewer commuters means less congestion).

Working from home is not for everybody though and some people may find it difficult (particularly if away from the office for long periods, or even on a full-time basis). When my wife left a busy public relations consultancy, to set up her own business working from home, she missed the office “buzz” at first (although now she finds the flexibility to be a major advantage). Personally, I find a quiet environment more conducive to work. What can be difficult though is remaining highly motivated and disciplined to keep up the work momentum when you are on your own all day. Some days I find that I can’t get going – more often I find myself putting in extended hours because I’m “on a roll”. Indeed, whilst the break from distractions is initially welcomed, without the movement of others around it is all too easy for the hours to slip by and it can become hard to separate work and private lives. This can be hard enough in a demanding job, but can be even more difficult when home is also the work place so its still important to plan breaks away from work.

One way to compensate for a lack of human contact whilst spending all day working at home can be making a conscious effort to get out after work (using all that commuting time that has been regained, perhaps taking up a hobby or sport).

It’s also possible to keep in touch with colleagues or clients by phone and email on a regular daily basis but this contact cannot replace face to face contact – a lot of information gets passed on informally when people bump into each other in the office and so it’s important to make an effort to keep in contact with the right people.

Of course, some jobs just cannot be done from home, but as the UK moves from a manufacturing-led economy to a service-led economy there are more and more opportunities for home-working – especially with the expansion of in broadband Internet connectivity and consequential growth in associated technologies like voice over IP.

Unfortunately (for those who have dinosaur managers who insist in staff being present at their desk for a fixed number of hours and at certain times each day) and fortunately (for those who could finish work at the end of the day without spending hours in traffic), we had a mini-heat wave in the UK today and I’m sure not everyone would have heeded the message from Work Wise UK that:

“National Work from Home Day is not intended as a holiday, or an extension of the weekend. Its aim is to let staff, and employers, see just how it could work – how productive we all can be.”

It seems that you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Alex accuses me of being Microsoft-sponsored and jumps in whenever I dare to criticise Apple (or, to be fair, anything he knows more than me about).

Then, a few days back, Sunny (who knew my blog before he knew me) remarked that I’d “gone over to the dark side” with “all this Solaris stuff”.

Actually, Jamie summed it up best of all when he christened my ramblings “incessant infrastructure and tech gossip” – it just happens that in the past I’ve written mainly Microsoft stuff because that’s what I know best, but there’s always been a bit of industry chatter and stuff about my home network or technology that excites me.

For everyone who has me in their feed reader for Microsoft-related posts, please bear with me – I’ve got a whole load of posts which are in a half-written state – I promise there will be something for you all soon.

Let’s face it. Some people have really good ideas that make them lots of money. Unfortunately I’m just not that clever/lucky/devious.

A few minutes back I was recounting a story to my wife about someone who sold a leaky tent on eBay, telling people how bad it was, that it had enough water in it when the morning came to make a cup of tea and a boil in the bag meal, starting off at 99p and finally selling it for something like £300 (I wish I could find the link to put it here!), when she told me about another story which appeared on this morning’s BBC Breakfast news.

Basically, a student called Alex Tew came up with the idea of selling advertising space on his home page for $1 a pixel (total 1 million pixels, with a minimum purchase of a 10×10 block) to help him meet the cost of getting through uni’ (and then some, unless Student Union prices have gone up a bit since my days at the University of Glamorgan in the early 90s!). He plans to leave the site online for ever (but has committed to 5 years) and so at the time of writing has sold 437,500 pixels (in just under two months) .

Of course the idea is flawed – it’s all fuelled by the press interest and once the initial interest has died down, there is no reason to visit the site but it’s a great idea. $437,500 is about £236,250 – about what we paid for our 4-bedroom house three years ago! Even with hosting costs and taxes taking a chunk out of the total, it’s still a tidy profit.

Bloody students!

(Of course, I’m only joking. And jealous!)

Actually, I say good on him for coming up with the original idea. As Alex notes in his FAQ page, there’s bound to be copycat sites but The Million Dollar Homepage will always be the first to have made it big – I just like the way he signs off the FAQ piece about copycats: “Am I bothered?” (for those reading this from outside the UK, that’s a reference to “Lauren, the modern-day schoolgirl constantly troubled by current parlance and infecting the country with the catchphrase ‘Am I bovvered?’”, in the BBC’s Catherine Tate Show).

You can read the whole story since the site was set up at the end of August 2005 on The Million Dollar Blog

I have a lot of “stuff” hanging around taking up space, some of which I don’t use (mostly old IT odds and ends, plus some books and videos). Now, some of it turned out to have little or no value (at least commercially), but I have sold some of it on eBay.co.uk.

The trouble is, in my bid to make this stuff attractive (in a market of people selling things for silly money), I didn’t set the postage charges high enough…

I hate it when I buy a £4.99 item and someone charges me £5 to ship it, only to find that they only spent a few pence on postage; so, in a bid to be fair, I weighed the items, looked up the correct prices on the Royal Mail website, and just passed on the Royal Mail costs to my buyers. The trouble is, on a couple of items earlier today, I forgot that the weight of the packaging would push it up into the next bracket (and then there’s the cost of buying a Jiffy bag…). In another (just about to be very expensive) deal which closes in a few minutes time, I only charged £6.95 for up to 2kg by Royal Mail Special Delivery but forgot that whilst that should cover the item, it wouldn’t be enough once I’d added the cables that were also part of the deal and the actual cost to me (as the next price band is up to 10kg) will be £19!

I’ll still make a profit but, when I sell goods for less than I would like (to attract bids), and then don’t add enough to cover my postage and packing costs, I feel a bit stupid. Still, at least it’s better than selling books/videos through Amazon, where they set the postage costs and the seller always seems to lose out.

On top of all this, eBay is not really very user friendly. Sure, it guides you through the process but it takes ages to list a new item and you’re never quite sure what communications the buyer has received from eBay so in a bid to keep my feedback high through excellent customer service, I often find myself contacting the buyer to tell them I’ve shipped it and to ask them to leave feedback if they are happy with the purchase.

I understand that an amazingly high number of people are actually in business selling via eBay. Good luck to them, but for anyone like me who’s just trying to flog their old gear, here’s some advice I’ve worked out over the last few transactions:

• Use a 10 day auction and time it to cross two weekends to maximise your chances of getting some bids.
• Make sure your postage and packing charges really will cover your costs.
• Don’t forget that eBay and PayPal will each take their fees on the transaction.
• See what other people are selling the same or similar items for (and how much interest they have had) and if you don’t want to let it go that cheaply (or there is no apparent interest), leave it a week or so before advertising at the price you think is fair.
• Remember that even on second-hand goods, your income from the Internet is taxable (yes, I know, it sucks)!

Good luck!