Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • How to get your geek to love you

    I’ve done some of these before. I did my week of GeekTraining tidbits (1, 2, 3). Today, it’s some stuff for project managers. The title is different depending on the company (or even within the same company). Here, they used to be called project managers, and now they’re producers. The name’s been changed about ten times without the job function moving at all. Being a project manager is a pretty crappy job, as far as I can tell. You end up as everyone’s dumping point for bad news, demands, requests, problems, gripes, requirements, schedules, conflicts and slips. You don’t get the thrill of building something, much credit if it’s successfull, but a lot of blame if it fails or comes in late.

    I won’t deal with project management as it relates to dealing with business folks, because I don’t know much about it. I do know how to deal with geeks, because I am one, and have to deal with project managers of varying talent levels all day, every day. Here are some of my observations, gathered from my three years in my current position:

    Good Project Managers:

    		 Bad Project Managers:
    understand, at least at a high level, the technology involved in a project. They understand acronyms, implementation timelines and relative complexity.

    		 constantly remind the geeks how stupid they are by asking the same question several times in the same meeting, constantly answer questions with blank stares and decide certain tasks are easy because “it didn’t sound hard to me”.
    provide a buffer between business folks and geeks, translating businessSpeak into real requirements and providing effective communication between the two groups.

    		 forget to tell the geeks about requirements until the last minute and refuse to stand up to business folks when the business folks give unreasonable timelines or demands.
    keep track of each step of the project. A good project manager knows that person A from design is going to be late, and therefore, geek B needs to know that work won’t be coming until later, and then communicates the slip to the business so they can readjust their schedule.

    		 do their best to avoid being the bearer of bad news, and conveniently ignore slips by other groups while still expecting the geeks to make up for everyone else by completing their work in less time than they agreed to.
    are friendly and develop good working relationships with each party. This goes a long way to making everyone do their best work. When a requirement becomes a request instead of a demand, everyone is more likely to accomodate it.

    		 are antagonistic and think the best way to get people to do their job is to constantly nag them, stand over their shoulder, speak for them in meetings and set schedules without consultation. They’re my favorites.

    There are more, I’m sure, but this is all I can come up with at the moment.

  • And to make myself feel

    And to make myself feel better, I am worth exactly: $2,572,760.00.

  • Insider Info

    Yesterday, people on AOL searched for “yo mama jokes” as many times as they searched for “notre dame” and “cysts“.

  • The tide is turning, and it’s headed right out my nose

    I learned an important lesson last night. It was hard-won and therefore I’m going to share it with you. If you have a serious sinus infection and you take serious antibiotics long enough, there comes a point when the snot loses its purchase in your face and decides to turn tail and head for the exits. If you’re smart or lucky, this will happen during the day, when you’re home on the couch with crappy action movies and several boxes of Kleenex. I’m apparently neither smart or lucky. The mass mucous exodus started at about 10 last night and lasted until about 3:30am this morning. It was an amazing technicolor display of reds, oranges, greens, yellows and some clear viscous liquid I seem to remember from many months ago as normal non-infected proto-boogies.

    I spent a part of this time on the couch with a roll of toilet paper (because I couldn’t find the Kleenex enclave) and the garbage can, watching the rest of Ghost World, which I just didn’t get. The relationship between Enid and Seymour was interesting, and Thora Birch was unendingly cute, but I just didn’t get it. Maybe this is the snot talking, but I think maybe it only works if you read the comic book the movie was based on (which I didn’t). The rest of the night was spent watching re-reruns of the Olympics on NBC and cursing my nose.

    So, don’t ever ever ever get a sinus infection. And, if you do, go see a doctor right away or else you’ll end up on the couch in the middle of the night trying to figure out exactly how much snot your head is holding and why it has to leave in such an unorderly fashion. I mean, couldn’t it stand in line until I was ready to open the doors?

  • For whoever it was that

    For whoever it was that searched for “amon tobin bmw”, the name of the song from that commercial was Get Your Snack On from Supermodified, which is an amazing album. The same song was also used in a Coke commercial. And, if you watched the latest Clairol commercial with Heather Locklear, the song they used was Boss on the Boat by Tosca (can’t remember which album it’s on).

    There, I’ve done my part to make the world a more informed place. Now, I’m going back to my TiVo and decongestants.

  • I know there are things

    I know there are things you say and do that you can never take back. But, if you could see it in your heart, could you please make it a cheeseburger? – Lyle Lovett

  • Into the fray

    I have a big meeting in fifteen minutes where I have to defend a whole platform against a roomful of people. I doubt the folks who write AOLserver will even show up, which will leave me all alone to defend it. I have papers and figures and drawings, and it probably won’t matter. They’ll make the switch and then they’ll realize that they can’t do everything they used to, and feel bad for not listening to me. I would much rather they listen to me now than realize their mistake later when it’s too late to turn back.

    If I have time today, I’m going to write an essay about national cultures, but don’t hold your breath for it. I’m still sick, and work is really busy. I went to bed at 9:30 last night and barely woke up when the alarm went off.

  • Just when I post my

    Just when I post my Civ3 missive… they go and release a new patch that fixes some of my complaints!!!

    • They fixed the railroad bug

    • They added unit grouping (yes!)

    • and lots of other fixes

  • It’s crack, but it could be so much more addictive

    I’m addicted to Civ3. I was addicted to Civ2 and still played it regularly until Civ3 came out. The game is addictive, and since I’ve been sick and alone in the house, I’ve played a lot. Civ3 is a great update of the previous game, but it’s missing a lot of the stuff that made playing more convenient in Civ2. I’ve come up with a little list of things I’d love to see them add back to the new game.

    • The Go to city command for units. It’s a pain in the butt to have to drag each little unit individually to a city.

    • The “Upgrade All Units” that Leonardo’s Workshop used to give you. If you’ve got cash in the game, there’s no real reason to build it.

    • Build Railroad doesn’t work with the R key like it’s supposed to.

    • I haven’t played enough to have tried putting the barbarians past the second level, but they never show up. I have yet to see one.

    • Ou est le cheat menu?

    There are also some things that other strategy games do that would make the game a lot better and more than a facelift.

    • In Command and Conquer and Age of Empires, granted they’re both real-time strategy instead of turned based, you can group units and move them together. Why oh why can’t we do that in Civ3? Towards the end of a militaristic game when you’ve got hundreds of units, moving them all individually is a waste of time that doesn’t improve the game experience.

    • Better special units. I’ve only played the Americans and Zulu’s so far, but the Impi is a horrible unit. Once you’ve got Spearmen, he’s useless, other than looking kind of cool.

    • Swordsman should be upgradable to Musketmen, or at least Infantry. I never build them now because you can’t upgrade them at all until Mechanized Infantry (which only take 1200 years)

    • I’m not sure anyone else does this, but how about a different leader over the years? No one’s emperor lives for three thousand years, although I guess in the game, the player is the leader. It would be interesting though to see Abe get older, and then be replaced by Kennedy, then maybe Reagan.

    I was thinking about this yesterday on the way home from work, through my swollen face, that the diplomacy in the game is just a little more complex than in Civ2. Trading and making deals through the diplomatic screen is great. But, I’d love to see more nuance. I know it would be incredibly complex, and be a game within itself, but wouldn’t it be cool if you could nurture your advisors, make them act like real people, put them in charge of trade altogether, military operations, etc. That way, you could concentrate on the parts of the game that interest you without completely dropping the others. Also, it would be great if there were a system of back channels. Clandestine meetings with other countries’ advisors instead of going to the leader, with each nationality getting a different set of unique advisors (for example, the Greeks would have a killer Cultural advisor, the Americans would have great military and trade, the Romans, a great military advisor). Also, it would be cool if you could recruit away the Greek’s cultural advisor to improve your civilization’s culture. Yeah, that’s complex, but would add a new dimension to the game that I think it’s missing. Now, it’s “Hey, want some stuff?”, “Want a map?”, “Die, scum!” and that’s about it. There’s no real way to intimate sabre-rattling without sitting a bunch of naval units inside their borders until they declare war on you (cuz I don’t like to throw the first punch).

    I’m not saying Civ3 isn’t a great game. It’s an excellent turn-based strategy game. It’s held up well over the years, and this installment adds some nice wrinkles. I just think it would be nice if they didn’t remove some of the nice utility features of Civ2, and added some more complexities.

  • Someone at work actually noticed

    Someone at work actually noticed that I’ve lost weight. First time someone other than an immediate family member noticed since I started. Damn, that feels good.