Comments (0) I should be getting a warm and fuzzy feeling today. I just put two sets of people together that I know very well. The idea being that they will probably do some business together and its likely to be financially very profitable for them. I just can’t help getting the feeling that I should have inserted some sort of commercial reward for myself in this process. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll die a happy man; probably penniless though.
Sometime ago I purchased, at not inconsiderate expense I might add, a Sony e-reader. I’m a fairly avid reader of books and bought the e-reader to solve to a couple of simple ‘problems’
The first is that if I go on holiday or travel I always need (wish to) take loads of books with me. As you can guess these are bulky, heavy and quickly use up all my weight allowance. This is itself is not that major a problem as I don’t get that much holiday and with two small children I don’t actually get much time to relax on holiday either.
The second and more pressing reason is a lack of space in my house. I have an aversion to throwing books out after I have read them. So I’m a hoarder of books. So while the size of my book collection increases, the size of my house has failed miserably to keep up with this.
So after a large amount of research on the internet and a lot of thinking about exactly what I wanted to e-reader to do and have as functions I plumped for the PRS-505. A great little thing that works excellently. One factor that was critical to me what that it needed to be very close to the experience of reading a book. So long as you don’t drop your book down the lavatory or give it to a rabid dog then the only thing you have to do it open the book and read. The same should be true of the e-reader.
In general to use the e-reader there are 3 different parties involved for me.
1. There is Sony who make the device I use.
2. There is an on-line book store who sells me an encypted book.
3. There is Adobe (grrrr, jump on their grave) that de-encrypt the purchased book.
This last point may just have given you an idea of where things are going.
I have used the device happily for almost a year now, and for a period of a couple of months didn’t buy any books. I then bought 2 more books, downloaded the files ready for decryption and all of a sudden I was unable to actually de-crypt them. The software from Adobe that handles this had decided to become terminally ill. Being a good boy I Googled the symptoms and tried the possible solutions.
All to no avail.
So I made a support call at Adobe, included good descriptions of what I have tried, what the issue is , I included a picture and even a movie so that the support guys could see the problem in all of its glory. So far in 2 months the only support I have got is that
1.Adobe have re-set my account which gave no resolution
2. Adobe have asked my if I followed the support ideas found on Google (which I actually explained when I opened the call that these were already followed)
In TWO MONTHS the only other activity is that Adobe edit the support call each day (with no new text) so that it will not ring internal alarm bells for un-answered calls. HOLY SHIT if they stop doing that and just give me some support it would probably be a whole lot easier for them.
The real bummer here is that actually no one needs to care. I will probably never get support.
Sony already sold the hardware
The bookstore already sold the books
Adobe don’t get any more or any less money as they will be on fixed fees to provide an annual encryption service to the bookstore. Welcome to the world of the little man!
I’m off to buy an iPad now as I know that Apple at least provides support. So does anyone want to buy a really nice e-reader from me?
Damn, how I really wish I had the nerve and intelligence to write to some of the people around me in the same way this guy does. It is hilarious and really improves a bad work day for me when I read this stuff.
For my sins I attempt to run projects 9-5. Sometimes these go well and sometimes they don’t. I’m not sure if I score the 70% failure rate that are typical of projects (I may be higher!) but I also think it depends on a lot of things such as how to classify a failure and just as importantly how do you classify a success.
People often make the fatal assumption that any divergence of any sort from your original budgets, aim, documentation etc. is automatically a failure. The same people often fail to ask if it is realistic on a large project if it is sensible or even possible to know everything with 100% certainty of the future. Last time I checked there were only gypsies and soothsayers professing to have this level of knowledge! By this I refer to such things as markets changing, financial crashes, changes in business direction, better insight into the amount of work to be done to achieve the desired outcome, changes to the desired outcome, people factors etc. The list is endless but it is simply used to highlight that it is in my opinion categorically not possible to have the level of knowledge at the start in order to complete a project without any changes to your initial situation.
That said it should stop one from trying!
So where I am going to with this, well I just wanted to give a link through to a website where I believe they have a lot of information that can really help project managers keep structure in their work and also avoid making too many of the pitfalls that others have already made. The site is ProjectSmart. If you know another good one feel free to comment it.
I’ve camped with motivational issues for so many years now. I don’t have any motivational issues with drinking beer, sitting on my ass all day, avoiding physical exercise, avoiding as much work as possible etc. but I do have a motivational issue when it comes to taking physical exercise. This in itself is rather strange as I used to be (yes, in the famous ‘good ol’ days) quite fanatical about exercise.
By fanatical I mean it, I used to excerise 3 times per day , every day!
But things went rapidly down hill after I got just 1 injury too many and spent ages in recovery yet still kept on eating as though I was training. Now 10 (plus) years on I’m a larger rounder person. A person who breathes hard after walking stairs and sweats at the mere thought of excersise.
In the mean time my injuries (about 6 serious ones) are now pretty much under control, but they still have a noticeable effect on me when I attempt to get started on training again.
But as a new father with 1 toddler and a second baby on the way it would be good to stop putting myself in the “walking hart attack” category.
So I’ve bought myself a fancy weight scale from Withings that will show my fat content (yes embarrassing) and I’ve purchased the ” Fat Burning Furnace“. I’m hoping that this time I can motivate myself and slim down. I’ll keep you all posted on the progress .
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