Chan's Personal Blog

This e-mail requires no explanation or introduction:


Call me old fashion, but I prefer good old fashion American-made urinals that requires water to flush as opposed to water-free. Give me an American Standard any day. Green technology is kinda gross.

However, if we get fair tickets for everytime we hit the urinal bees, and we can trade in those tickets for prizes, then I'd be happier. Reward for accuracy == fun! We could also have a high score board in the men's washroom.

Every month, our department has a technology committee that convenes to talk about our information system. The decisions that come out of this committee obviously impacts my work since I work on their information system.

In either case, last week we added a whole bunch of new features and what not. We sent a liason to the technology committee to inform them of the changes. It turned out to be the worst meeting ever. People on the committee were completely out of line. They complained about all of the new features even before a demonstration was given. Part of this has to do with office politics which I won't get into. Anyway, our liason was on the verge of quitting because everyone was being so mean and harsh at the committee. The committee for some reason began to open up old issues that were resolved and started ranting about that as well.

These committees are really awful because group think takes over very easily. If someone says something, then everyone jumps onboard and parrots the same ideas over and over again. If the meeting starts on a negative tone, then the whole meeting goes negative. It's especially frustrating because most members on this committee are not experts when it comes to technology, so they're easily mislead.

Anyway, it's committees like this that are a drag since we put so much time and energy in improving their system, and they don't appreciate any part of it. This is why, you need a good sense of humour to survive this insanity.

We felt bad for our technology committee liason, so we sent a funny poster to her which was perfect for disgruntled office employees. I present to you a demotivational poster from despair.com which comments quite nicely on committees and such:



Anyway, you have to keep a positive attitude and a sense of humour about this sort of thing to survive in this industry. Otherwise, you'll become very jaded and bitter.

Despair.com has plenty of other demotivational posters. Go check them out. They're great!