» Workplace Boredom

Work in an office?
Got a computer in front of you?

Bored?

Right, then.

The machine in front of you is the second most complex, sophisticated and fascinating machine you'll ever use (the first being your own genitals). Computers (like your genitals) are tools for the creation of rather impressive things.

All too often, people expect other people to "work" with computers. This is a silly way of looking at what computers can do; computers are supposed to be our slaves, not our taskmasters. The idea is that they do the boring shit, and we think about stuff and make things that require creative thought.

If your job involves anything that you have to do over and over again, you can automate it and let the computer do your work for you.

Copying sets of numbers from one application to another? Figure out the tab stops and keyboard shortcuts (use the tab key to move between buttons, and space to press those buttons - use the mouse as little as you can, the keyboard is always faster), write them down in sequence, and write a little program to do your work for you.

The above link will tell you all about AutoHotKey, a program (and accompanying simple programming language) for sending keystrokes and clicks to Windows. Over, and over, and over again, until you tell it to stop. The language it uses is really, really simple and easy to understand.

Even if you've never written a program or script before, just give it a go - even if you're computer illiterate, it's a lot easier than you think, I promise. And the worst that can happen is that you'll have wasted an hour on a very interesting if futile activity, and maybe learned something new.

Before too long, after you've realised just what a piece of piss it is, you'll be scripting like mad. You'll have 90% of your work automated, leaving you to do what humans can do but computers can't.

Thinking, and creating.



...now, if you think you were bored before, you're going to be really fucking bored now. You've set up your computer to do most of your work for you. Which is, y'know, what computers are supposed to do anyway, but it kinda leaves you with seven to eight hours each day with nothing to do.

So you turn up to work, you engage in soul-crushing boredom for a good proportion of your life, and waste hours of your best years that you're never, ever going to get back. Unlike money, you can't make more time.

Now, a quick shift in perspective is what's needed; your company is paying you to escape their evil clutches. They're giving you a computer, a salary, and enforcing eight hours a day where you'll be in the presence of this computer with nothing to do but use your imagination. They're practically pushing you out of the door.

Let's come back to what I said before about your computer (and your genitals). Sophisticated, powerful machine to make creation easier. Now, you're stuck in one place all day with a machine in front of you that can do anything, really anything you can think of except think and create. Your company is, bizarrely enough, paying you to be there.

This machine, and the money you're being paid, can help you to be whatever you want to be. You can be an artist, a novelist, a poet, a programmer, a songwriter, a businessman, or all of the above.

I bought some web space and a reseller account, and set up a little web hosting company. Within a little while, it was earning me some nice extra beer tokens each month. I did it all in work, using programs I ran from my flash drive. In between, I was writing some short fiction and posting it around here and there, soliciting donations from readers. It doesn't make much money, but it's something I enjoy and my company is paying me to do it, so why the hell not?

The most frightening part about being self-employed is quitting your day job. The security offered by consistent pay is very cushy, very safe, very comfortable. But if you've got a computer that's doing your work for you and nothing to do, and your company is paying you to be there, then you don't have to quit your day job. Your company is financing your start-up costs.

At least set up something to earn some extra money for you by doing something you enjoy. Preferably something where you do the work once, and then get paid forever.


Some suggestions:

Using your newfound scripting skills, write a nifty little freeware program that does something useful, and submit it to free software websites. Ask for donations from people who like the program.

Make a website. Learn a little bit of HTML and CSS, and use Geeklog or WordPress if you want a blog. Just jump right in, this is the sort of thing that you can learn as you go along. Put something on this website - whatever you want. Put up some ads, and earn some extra pennies. You can even do this in the office without Internet access, just use XAMP on your Flash drive.

Write a story. Again, post it for free on the Internet and ask for donations (you'll actually get paid more doing it this way than with getting published - the publishing industry is a fucking joke these days).

Write a game. This is what I ended up doing, and it's full of foetid midget brothels. /shameless self-promotion

If you don't want or need to make money, make something. Even if it's something internal, like knowledge or strength or self-knowing - change something from being in one state to being in another state, but make it something that will still matter to you after you go home. You can learn literally anything, research any topic you want, using Google and Wikipedia.

Did you know that the kangaroo's reproductive process is akin to a human woman having a baby one month into the pregnancy and then carrying the foetus around in her handbag for eight months? I should probably mention that this handbag has nipples in it. Thanks, Wikipedia. Ever heard of a guy called Nikola Tesla? Look him up in Wikipedia, he invented the 20th Century and his story is fucking fascinating. Look up Pykrete while you're there, too. Floating battleships made of ice and sawdust? Yes please!

Get a pair of these (don't pay that much, though), take them into work and give them a squeeze when you're contemplating what to do next. Give yourself forearms like Popeye.

Talk to other people who are bored at work, whether they're in your office or on the other side of the world. Talk to as many people as you can. Make friends.

If you really can't think of anything to do, think about why you're in this job, how you got here, why you're bored. Sit and think, really have a good proper think, about what you want and how to get it. Imagine what would make a perfect life, and what would make you and those around you happiest, and work backwards from there. Be totally and completely honest with yourself - figure out what you're good at, what you need to become good at, what's good about life and what's bad, and how to fix the bad shit.

But for fuck's sake, do something. Start something, change something, make something better. You, with the help of that frankly fucking amazing machine in front of you, can do whatever you want.

Don't be bored.



Fuck me, that was a long post. And I only wrote it 'cause I was bored.


EDIT: And another thing!

I really, honestly, can't recommend this enough. It's a free program that helps you keep track of all your projects and where you're up to with them.

The general principle is that before you can do anything, you've got to do something else. If something's big and daunting, the idea is to split it up into little bits, and split those little bits up into littler bits, and do them one little bit at a time. It helps you to answer the big question of "Where the fuck do I start," and that's not just for projects either, it's for sorting your life out in general.
(Fri 9th Jan 2009, 20:14, More)

» Accidental animal cruelty

Oxford's Cock
This time last year, I was living with the Librarian Girlfriend in a flat in Pittsburgh, with a roommate who shall remain nameless (for politeness' sake). Said roommate had a cat named Oxford, who was a funny little beast, as cats tend to be.

Oxford wasn't allowed outside, because we lived on quite a busy road. I've never lived with an indoors-cat before. It was strange, and a little sad to see him perched on the radiator against the window, gazing out at the birds and wondering where they go when he can't see them.

I have a theory about indoors-only cats. They're all nuts.

Oxford, in particular, was a fat, filthy little fucking pervert who had the horn for my girlfriend and was not in the slightest bit shy about it. He'd scrabble against the door trying to gain entry when we were having (or trying to have) some "alone" time; he had a perverse fascination with the bathroom and would try his best to follow if he heard you open the door to pee; he adored waking you up by waving his fuzzy little balls in your face (and, sometimes, farting at you too); he enjoyed the occasional shoe humping, and, perhaps most disturbingly, the LGF's underwear would occasionally go missing and turn up in his litterbox, liberally smeared with every conceivable form of feline bodily emission.

Anyway. On to the partially-accidental cruelty. Partially because I did actually mean to do this and freak him out just a little bit, but I didn't expect it to have such a dramatic effect.

LGF was at work. I'm at home, in the bedroom, on the bed, laptop out and trying to get some work done while the first load of laundry goes through. Stay-at-home husband, and all that. Oxford is lying next to me - not so he can be cuddly and close like a nice cat, you understand, but because I have a Dell laptop and it gets so hot it'll warm the room up in winter. I feel movement, and Oxford's sitting up, yawning, stretching and leaving the bed.

A few minutes go past. I hear the occasional rustle of fabric and fur. Eventually, I begin to wonder what's going on, and I look towards the source of the noise. Oxford has left the bed, and climbed into the pile of worn female underwear awaiting the next wash. He's rolling from side to side, entangled in a pair of pink panties, grinning a little kitty grin.

He also has a tiny, glistening pink erection.

He stops rolling momentarily as our eyes meet. I can tell he's pondering whether to carry on shamelessly, or whether to slink off and keep a low profile. He takes a pair of faded pink panties into his mouth, and chews thoughtfully, his swollen kittycock twinkling in the morning sun.

Now, I've never seen a cat with an erection before. I didn't know that they were all... well, lubed-up like that. To this day, I don't know whether they just come like that, or if he was licking it before I looked down. Anyway, "That glisteny wetness," thinks I, "will make for good thermal transfer. I wonder what would happen if..."

I lean over towards him, slowly so as not to frighten him and spoil the fun. He stops chewing and watches me. When I'm about a foot away from him, I purse my lips, and blow directly at his cock.

It's a cold room, and the skin is wet. Think about rubbing an ice cube on your genitals.

There's an immediate result. Oxford jerks and rolls over to escape his own freezing willy, but it doesn't seem to work, so he rolls the other way - still not working! He kicks off from the floor with both feet, propelling himself like a furry, horny rocket as fast and as far away from me as he can - but his back legs don't quite catch up exactly right. They're entangled in pants! He's falling! He's sliding across the shiny wooden floors - all the way out of the bedroom, across the hall and into the kitchen! What's more, he's been struggling and rolling all the way, fat bastard that he is - and he's managed to get himself even more tangled in the pants!

I step over to what is now a hissing, spitting ball of hatred with a pre-worn pair of knickers somehow simultaneously trapping three feet and covering one eye, and gently remove the panties. Oxford slinks off to sulk in the corner, but not before giving me a look that seems to scream "You disgust me."

Length: about an inch and a half, with a furry base.
(Wed 12th Dec 2007, 11:46, More)

» Procrastination

Doing other things instead.
That's the true meaning of procrastination - finding other things to do, when you know you should be working on a particular project.

Last year I entered a writing contest, along a predetermined theme. The entries had to be based around the idea of a machine that would tell you, from a blood sample, exactly how you were going to die. I saw the post, thought "Ooh! I'll enter that," got a rough outline for three different stories assembled, and then did absolutely fuck all with them for three months.

The night of the deadline. I'm staring at a blank Writer document. Every now and then I tap out a couple of lines, cringe, and have a smoke.

Believe me, I wanted to enter. Hell, I wanted to win. But little things, so many little things, got in the way - jobs for actual paying clients, cups of tea, cigarettes, beer, Resident Evil 4 - I was a busy man! I had procrastinating to do!

And so it came to pass that two days before the deadline, I focussed my procrastination energy into a single, horrendously silly act of intellectual violence against the monster we call "motivation." If I must procrastinate, I thought, I shall procrastinate like a King. I shall procrastinate like the Gods. I shall create a Remarkable Procrastination Device, set it loose upon the world, and show them, show them all, what true procrastination is really all about!

And then I went back to letting my own machine tell me that I needed to Repeatedly Taste my Flappy Crotch, wasting another hour. Damn, it worked too well.

As I went to bed that night, having uploaded this infernal machine to the web, I had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind. Like I'd forgotten something.

Three hours later, two stories were ready. They were of such shockingly poor quality that they might have been written by an inbred orang-utan with a typewriter, a bag over his head, serious brain damage and no hands. But I'd written them. Achievement!

My latest big writing project is a novel about genetically-engineered forklifts. Obviously, I can't put this off by writing a silly little Flash widget to waste people's time, oh no. This is a novel we're talking about. This is big. This is important. It'd take some serious procrastination to do this justice!

...so I wrote an even bigger waste of time instead.

One day I'll take on a project so large, so ambitious, that I'll have to invent a robot that can procrastinate for me. It'll gaze at its mechanical navel all day, and perhaps discover the meaning of life. Or, it'll see how many pennies it can fit in there.

My record is ten.
(Thu 20th Nov 2008, 5:00, More)

» Pet Peeves

This will be unpopular.
I understand that every time I visit any given website, my browsing costs the site owner money. It's only fractions of a penny, mind, but I'm aware that data transfer, file storage and server maintenance aren't free. Every single page I look at is taking money out of the pockets of whoever was kind enough to put their creation online.

So, at least nine out of ten of these webmasters will seek to recover some of their expenses via ads, be they text-based, graphical, or even (shudder) Flash.

If a site uses too many Flash adverts, it puts my CPU usage up to 100% and my machine struggles to keep up. Unless it's a site that I truly do enjoy surfing, I tend to just leave and never return. Likewise with those annoying ads that take up the whole page until you click the button that says "Yeah, yeah, whatever, not interested, let me look at what I wanted to look at in the first place."

Anyway, most webmasters aren't silly enough to use ads like that, because they know that legitimate viewers will leave the site and never return. And, of course, selfish twats will install ad-blocking software.

There are spam websites, spam E-mails, and spam users too. These people are the traffic you just don't want - the users who take and never give anything back, even when doing so costs them nothing. You put something online, pay your hosting bills, and run a couple of ads so that you're not actually paying money to share your work with the world, and then the world says "No, sorry, I know it doesn't cost me anything but I'm not going to help you out. I just don't like adverts, you see. They hurt my precious little eyes. I'll just take what you've given me without so much as a thankyou - oh, and expect a bill for the data transfer, too."

What, mister AdBlock user, are you so fucking special that you think you're allowed to somehow "opt-out" of this economy? You tight bastard. You're not just the guy who watches the street performer and doesn't pay, are you? No, you're the guy who gets his cameraphone out and starts recording after pushing his way to the front of the crowd, and then fucks off as soon as the act is over without so much as a penny in the jar.

If you're honestly bothered by the ads on a website, simply close the window and never go back to that site again. But don't fucking leech resources from the people whose work you enjoy. And if you do, put your hand in your pocket and PayPal them some money to pay them back. If someone's doing something that you think is ace, and you visit their site all the time, then give them money, don't cost them money.

This little rant was brought to you by a player of a PBBG I'm running. She'd never donated, she played every day - to the extent that she ended up downloading five to ten megabytes of fucking text every day, and on this sort of game I'll start maxing out my CPU on the dedicated server long before I run out of data transfer - and actually boasted about blocking my ads. Cheeky fucking bitch. It's not even like she's a nice player, she just beats up newbies all day.

Apologies for length, lack of funny, and arrogant arseholeish soapboxism. Rant over. Grr.
(Tue 6th May 2008, 2:32, More)