Quotes from the office

There is this fun side to working in the office – you get to listen to all those small talks, little arguments and what not. Here are some quotes from the recent discussions. I’ll remove the names to protect the innocent.

– I don’t like football!
– What do you mean you don’t like football? How is that even possible for you not to like football. You do.
– No I don’t!
– Even you kid loves football. Look at his pictures, he’s always with the ball and in football clothes…
– Dude, the kid is just a couple of years old. He doesn’t know what he likes and what he doesn’t. He’ll play with whatever you throw at him…

– If I remember correctly, you were married and now you are divorced, right?
– Yes. I was married twice.
– Some people… they never learn…

– Are you going to eat with us?
– I’m on a diet.
– Again?!!
– Still…

– What are you planning to do then?
– I will be a teacher in the public school.
– Teaching what?
– Computers.
– Listen, if I will ever know that you are teaching computers in school, I’ll come over and personally kill you.
– Why? You think I am alone like this? Other teachers aren’t much better anyway.
– I don’t care. I warned you. And you know what?
– What?
– I don’t have a limit of killing just one person. If there is more like you, I’ll take care of all of you…

Little things

I just got another revelation on how important little things are in our lives.  Take, for example, your office job (if you ever had one).  When I mention your job, you probably think of the office, salary, annoying clients, evil boss, and things like that, right?  Or at least something along those lines.  Well, how about some tiny things which can make or break your day, every day?

  • Parking space. Is there a parking place?  Do you have to spend half an hour driving around the building in order to find the hole to squeeze in?  How many traffic rules (running red lights, forbidden U-turn, etc) do you have to break to even drive into your parking space?  Is  your parking space in mud or tarmac?  What happens to it after the rain?  Is there any shade for those extra sunny days?  How often is you car locked by another one when you want to leave for lunch?  Or maybe you had to punch the crowds for two hours in the public transportation to get to your office?
  • Water closet (aka WC, bathroom, toilet). Is there one in your office or do you have to take an elevator trip every time you want to wash your hands?  How busy is that place?  Does it have all the essentials like paper, water and door locks?  How clean is it?
  • Kitchen (food and drinks).  Can you have a cup of coffee at your desk?  How about a coke?  A sandwich?  Do you have to pay for it?  Can you get any snack at all when you stay late?  How far is your lunch?  How expensive is it? Are there any cups, teaspoons, toothpicks, towels or paper tissues, salt, catchup?
  • Stationary. Do you have to bring your own notepads?  How long does it take you to find an empty CD/DVD for that extra backup?  How pens are there in your immediate reach that actually work?  Does it take you more than 5 seconds to find a calendar?  How about a calculator?  Can you get one while still on the phone? Do you even have a phone?  What about an extra network cable?  Printer cartridge? A4 paper?
  • Smells.  Does it smell like food in your office?  Do they smoke in there?  How often do they clean their ashtrays? Maybe it’s this guy right next to you?  Maybe it’s a flower, and only in spring?
  • Temperature.  Is thre any air condition?  How about a heater?  Can you even close that window behind you?  How sensitive are other people in the room?

I can go on and on an on…  Brings the memories, doesn’t it?

Yahoo Life! anybody?

(Side note: punctuation in product names sure makes headlines confusing)

Mashable has a post about upcoming Yahoo Life!

The premise is this: take Yahoo Mail, and make it the hub of your daily online activities; turn e-mail addresses into social profiles; connect e-mail to other services, and use the info from the contacts in these services according to the context.

This sounds good.  This sounds like exactly what I need.  Of course, there is a “but”:

It sounds and looks great, but we can’t know how well it works until the product actually goes live.

OK, we have to wait and see.  But I see that this niche will get a bit crowded pretty soon.  With all those web services and social networks more and more people are coming online.  Social connections will be more and more important, and therefor we’ll see more and more tools that do this.  There are some specialized tools for these purposes already, but none of them have enough functionality and momentum to lead the way yet.  Hopefully it will change sooner than later.  And, hopefully, Google will play some major role in this too…

On years of experience

Caught this excellent quote in gaping void post:

A lot of people in business say they have twenty years experience, when in fact all the really have is one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.

Well said, indeed. I’m working with computers for 15 years or so.  I’d say I have only about five years of experience with these damn things.

Odnoklassniki.ru – Russian classmates, but abroad?

My last post about Odnoklassniki.ru became the most popular post on this blog. It’s by far more popular than all the tips, links, and tutorials that I’ve written here, combined. It comes up pretty high in related Google search results and brings quite a bit of traffic. It also brings in some comments.

Most of the comments are from people who mistakenly assume that this blog is some sort of support forum for all the troubles they have with Odnoklassniki.ru, or, even, that this site IS in itself Odnoklassniki.ru. I am trying to limit those comments, since they don’t belong here. On the other hand though, there are some really insightful comments.

For example, Gennadiy Zaretskiy has recently posted a comment with the link to this article. Here is what caught my attention:

Foreign users constitute a significant share of the project “Odnoklassniki” audience. According to Mr. Popkov, about 20% of the traffic comes from abroad.

Wow! “20% of the traffic comes from abroad“. That seems like a lot. Odnoklassniki.ru web site is in Russian. Only Russian-speaking folks can make use of it. Also, the whole topic of the classmates is tied very much into specifically Russian users. So, does that mean that about 20% of computer literate (at least to some deree), educated (at least to some degree) young (mostly) people either live, study, or work outside of Russia?

That. Seems. Like. A. Lot.