02.21.08
Posted in randomosity at 9:31 am by coldclimate
Any economics 101 student or 1980’s middle manager can tell you about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Simple put, theres a stack of stuck of stuff, and unless you have the items in the stack below you, you’re unlikely to be happy. It’s a way of modelling ways of motivating people. Giving me a pair of shoes and a sandwich will not motivate me, but will motivate the hungry man with no shoes.
It’s fallen out of favour over the last few years, like many Taylorist management techniques, but I think it’s almost more valid now that ever, it’s just you need to look at it with fresh eyes, and I think many companies would benefit from thinking about it again.
So lets crack in. Lowest on the pyramid of needs are the “physiological needs Excretion, Eating, Sex, Drinking, Sleeping and Warmth. Highly mobile companies inturupt virtually all of these. You still do them, but not well, and probably don’t see the benefits. Eating, sex and sleep seem to be those that are most affected.
You don’t tend to cook for yourself when you’re on the move a lot. You live of take away, hotel food and sandwiches. I have a friend is virtually lives on sandwiches alone. He has a BLT for breakfast, another sandwich at his desk, and then one in the evening on his way “home” (eg. the hotel). Sandwiches are ok, but they’re not exactly healthy fod most of the time, and the lack of repetition
Sex seems ike a humourous subject, but if you work away from home Monday to Friday, the seeing and seeing to of your other half needs to be planned. Planning sex is not sexy. The is of course the option of not being in a relationship and findign comfort where required, but that too has knock on effects.
Finally there’s sleep. Getting enbough sleep is one thing, and if you go to bed with your head still buzzing with thoughts about the working day and the day to come, your sleep will not be good sleep. You won’t wake rested, you’ll frequently wake early because you’re worrying about something, you might even dream about work. I’ve woken up talking about the answers to that days problem. I’ve stared at the ceiling for 8 hour worring about the best ways to deploy code, and organise shreadsheet data, and tell somebody they are crap and I’m moving them to another team. This is not good sleep, and very far from restful.
So there you go. I’ve not even moved upto the second level of the pyramid, and already big sprawling companies seem to have under mined the foundations of motivation. Much higher up in the pyramid are things like Growth and Self Improvment and things which companies and HR departments pride themselves on having initatives and policies about, but maybe they need to think a little further down the pyramid. If you’re going to ask people to work super hard, they need to be super motivated, and to do that they need to sleep in the same bed, eat well and get laid regularly. They need time to do all the stuff in life which makes it livable, like washing and tax returns, car insurance and bonfire night. They need time for themselves over and above just saturday night.
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02.18.08
Posted in rant at 10:45 am by coldclimate
Capitalist society puhed you to make enough money to have other people do things for you. At the very lowest level, most people don’t grow their own food, they pay somebody for it. They don’t make their own clothes either, they buy them. Once you move up the food chain (the financial food chain) a bit, you pay people to do other things for you. To drive. To cook. To clean your house.
Once you reach the very top however, you’re paying people to do things that are very personal (even more personal that cleaning yor loo). To look after your own children. To buy presents for people you know. To remind you of your own childrens birthdays.
And why? Well this free up your time to do “your things” to “live your life” and (unfortunatly this is probably most common) to make enough money to pay to deligate thee things to other people.
What you’ve done, what other people seem to be aiming for, is to have other people live your life for you. Doing things, making things, growing, cooking, eating, cleaning, loving, caring, thinking and playing re what life is made up of, and everytime you pay somebody to do these for you, you’re loosing a little bit of your life. You’re dieing one action at a time, and paying to do so.
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Posted in business, randomosity at 9:27 am by coldclimate
Sitting on the train this morning, reading the news and catching up on my inbox (pre-7:30am - get me), I looked up, and my mouth fell open, as I watched the firey peach ball of sun burning off the layer of mist which was caught agains the frozen ground. It was breathtaking, magnificent, almost too perfect really.
Right here, right now, I resolve to get up a little earlier each day, and to look up every so often from my work, because nothing else I am likely to see today will catch me so unawares.
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02.15.08
Posted in business, ideas at 5:20 pm by coldclimate
If you’re having trouble fitting the diagram onto a page, or to not let Visio mess up your alignments, then the solution you’re trying to design is too complex.
Paraphrased: If it wouldn’t fit on the back of a fag packet, you shouldn’t even think about it.
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02.13.08
Posted in business at 8:34 am by coldclimate
As I give what I’m doing with my life far too much through at the moment, I enjoyed both these articles, “Open letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs across the corporate world” and it’s follow “Open letter to employees across the corporate world“, both of which makes some very good points.
This morning I ache, I pain, my back hurts and I’m back on a train at 6:30am continuing the journey I abandoned at 8:30 last night because the trains were knackered. The only bonus is, I get to see an amazing sunrise from the train.
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02.09.08
Posted in randomosity at 10:14 pm by coldclimate
Kitty was cool, but these are vile.
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Posted in randomosity at 10:05 pm by coldclimate
oh yeah! kitty rocks!
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02.08.08
Posted in news, rant at 6:45 pm by coldclimate
Dear Paranoid Ameriica,
Putting police men with fuck off huge machines guns on the street will not make you more safe, it will just make your populus more scared, meaning yet more draconian laws can be passed.
If your police men can’s kill a suicide bomber with their current arsonal of 9mm semi automatic pistols, having what looks to me like a fully auto M16 (correction, aparently it is an M4) will not help, it will just result in collateral damage aka. innocent people’s facing getting a 5.56×45mm NATO through the face.
If the collateral damage’d people are lucky, it’ll only be on three-shot burst mode, and not full auto.
Love and hugs,
coldclimate
PS. I’m probably not coming back for a while, you kids really scare me at the moment
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02.06.08
Posted in ideas, randomosity at 6:09 pm by coldclimate
From my minds eye
High in the sky
I see a house
I knew so well
And where I will
Trend never again
I’m sorry
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02.04.08
Posted in rant at 2:53 pm by coldclimate
…they sometimes don’t say what you want them to say.
Personally I beleive in being a speaker of unplesent truthes, and generally it serves me well in work, life and hopefully other areas. The easy thing to do in nearly all cases is to ignore the really rough bits, and hope everythign works out ok, but frankly, thats a pathetic way to live your life.
Eerily echoing somethign I was discussing with a randomly met self made millionaire on the train on Friday, it would appear there are yet more stpes being taken to remove expert from our legal system. In this case, coroners.
Why? Well one suspects its because they have a nasty habbit of not towing the line in our “democratic” society. They tend to not come out with pathetic and lilly-livered copouts such as the Labour years seem to have generated.
So whats the solution, well, you can spin everythign they say, or you can stop them from saying it somewhere that matters, and that would appear to be our wonderful governments new move.
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02.03.08
Posted in food at 10:36 pm by coldclimate
Pies are deeply unfashional at the moment it seems, with chavs munching down (and silencing their offspring) with Gregs Dummies, and every Food Nazi from Queen Gillian McKeith downwards loathing their fat laden fillings and pastry topping, so I was quite proud of Jamie Oliver when he set about making a beef and cheese pie on telly last week.
After a truly crappy week (working hard, storms blow a wall onto my car possibly writing it off, next car insurance quote being three times what they ask for it on monday, etc etc etc) I was in the mood for pie. I had a remarkably good one in Reading this week, and decided there was nothing for it, I was going to have to have a go. It turned out to be the best pie I’ve ever eaten, and the same phrase was used by three other people, so I feel I should share it with the world. The pasty is the easiest I’ve ever made, and turned out ok even through I’m crap with pastry.
Pastry: 8oz plain flour, 2oz butter, 2oz cooking margarine (this should probably have been lard to be honest), hand full of chopped thyme, some cold water (about a cup full im guessing) and a teaspoon of salt.
Sieve the flour, dump in the thyme and salt, drop the fat on the top, and with cold hands, rub it all together until it looks a bit like breadcrumbs. The colder your hands the better. Add enough cold water to bind it all together into a lump without being sticky. Wrap in clingfilm and stick it in the fridge until needed.
The filling: 2 pounds of shin beef, one large onion, 4 rashers of fatty bacon, as many mushrooms as fit into your hands cupped together and a bottle of beer, a stock cube and a teaspoon of mustard.
First up, chop the onion into half. One half slice finely, the other into big chunks. You need an onion about the size of a grapefruit, or several small ones. Pop them into a big pan (not frying pan) with a good lug of olive oil on a low heat. They’ll take about 20 minutes which is plenty of time to do everything else (including the pasty if needed).
Chop the beef into big chunks. Too big to go into your mouth comfortably. Douse them in plain flour and black pepper, then shake off all the excess flour. I used shin beef because it’s god a great flavour and perfect texture for this sort of thing. Any other slow cooking cut would work well, using best steak is pointless and will add nothing. Shin, brisket, neck, all would be good, and very cheap too. 2 pounds in weight was £6 and a mighty chunk of meat.
Once the onion is golden and melting, scrape it all out of the pan and off to one side. Chop the fatty bacon into inch long strips and put it in the pan, turn the heat up, and add a teaspoon sized blob of lard. Once it’s all sizzling and exciting drop a handfull of floury beef in, and brown on all sizes. You want some burnt bits, they give the good flavours. Brown the rest of the meat in handfull sized batches, fishing the last batch out and dumping it in with the onions.
Once all the beef is browned (and at this point pinch a bit - it’ll be melt in the mouth soft, bloody on the inside and burnt on the outside - perfect), put everything back into the pan (the onions and the beef), turn the heat down to it’s lowest setting, and add the crumbled up stock cube, mustard, pinch of salt and the bottle of beer. I used Hobgoblin beer, and I imagine any dark and malt beverage would do the same. Guiness is somewhat traditional, but I like beers not stouts with my meat. Pop a lid on it, and leave it for …. 2 hours. Yes, all 2 hours. Don’t mess about here, the long cooking it what makes this perfect.
After 2 hours, lift the lid off, turn the heat up an ddrive off some of the liquid. You’re looking of a thick gravy that coats meaty chunks which you can just about break apart with a spoon against the side of the pan. It’ll take about 5 minutes I’m guessing.
At this point you can leave everything to go cold and move on to the enxt stage an hour before you want to eat, but be warned, all house guests will pinch spoonfuls of the meaty goodness at all opertunities, so best just get on with it.
Laddle the meat into a tin and scatter another good handful of thyme over it. I used an 8 inch wide rectangular tin, because i like my pie thin, but a deeper dish would work just as well. Leave it to cool whilst you sort of the pastry. Roll it out to the size of your dish, using plenty of flour to stop it sticking. Mr Oliver also put greaseproof paper on the top whilst rolling and I have to admit, it works very well.
Lay to pasty over the top of the tin, and push all the over hang into the tin so it rumples up. These bits all be extra crunchy goodness.
Cut a few nicks into the top to let the stream out, and stick it into a hot over for 40 minutes or so. The meat is cooked, all you’re doing it baking the pastry and letting the meaty liquid goodness bubble through it.
Best served with fresh with chips, or cold the next day, my personal favorite.
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