I Totally Forgot » Work

It’s like I’m Frankenstein or something?

Daniel — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:59:14 +0000

My hosting went down. Then I paid for it. Then it up. That's about all I'm gonna say about that.

I am officially a full-time workin man again. I was doing contract work when I first moved down to Vancouver, but in the end that just wasn't paying the bills. So now I get to commute all the way to Yaletown from Port Moody. It isn't really that bad; only about 50 minutes, via transit, no less. The building I work in is literally on the same block as a Skytrain station, so that works out well. Job is cool, more web dev stuff. Bosses seem chill. I spent almost an entire day doing research. My kinda job

Bear Turing

Daniel — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 06:58:37 +0000

So I am not sure how many of you are familiar with what a Turing Test is, but basically it is a test proposed to see whether or not a computer system can successfully imitate a human. I'll spare you the boring details, but if you're interested you can read about it here.
Anyways, there is a program I use at work, and on one screen it gives a list of names of our clients. It will shorten the longer names... and I noticed that what it displayed for one client is "Bear ...turing" (I won't tell you the full name for the sake of confidentiality)

The whole point of this is, I now can't stop thinking about replacing the computer in a Turing test and replacing it with a bear at a keyboard.

Also I removed my eyebrow piercing today, which made me a little sad. It's tough for me to actually admit "defeat" in that kind of situation. However, I strongly suspected it was beginning to migrate away from my face, so I decided I'd pick my battles, and hope to try again later. At least this way it will minimize the scarring.

Long Weekend!

Daniel — Sun, 18 May 2008 00:18:14 +0000

Finally finished a project on friday at work that has been giving me troubles for a while. Got a haircut. Got the car washed. Cleaned up (a bit). Don't have to go to work until Tuesday. And that's not even the best part! Here is the best part: Shauna is going to arrive in Kelowna in about 3 hours!
I've got a bunch of (hopefully) fun stuff planned for this weekend, and we're totally going to do all those things that couples do to make all of the single people want to gag themselves with a spoon. ... Well, that sounded a lot nicer in my head. But it's still going to be a party. (And you aren't invited! Pthbbbbt!)

Anyways! Life is good!

Slightly indignant

Daniel — Tue, 13 May 2008 03:03:38 +0000

Okay, so on the whole I'm quite happy with my working situation, but last week got me thinking about some stuff. Basically, when I work overtime, the first 10 hours a week count for nothing. After 10 hours, I get banked time, 1:1. This has been collectively agreed to by the office, or at least, has been agreed by the boss that it is collectively agreed. We don't work a ton of overtime so it isn't a big issue in the first place.
The reasoning behind the 10 hours is that we get an hour paid lunch every day, so really we only 'work' 35 hours a week. This I get... I don't mind working up to 5 hours a week extra to help out, because the company is new, and I like to get stuff done on time. The other 5 hours is more or less due to the fact that we get profit sharing, so we should have a keen interest in keeping the company going. (Let's forget for a moment that my contract simply says that overtime = banked time ).
I was giving this some thought after working 9.5 overtime hours last week, and wondered exactly how much impact my overtime really has on my profit sharing, which I am told is my compensation for that second 5 hours. For what I'm about to explain, we have to assume that all of the employees in my company contribute equally to productivity, and that hours worked is proportional to profit. This is far from exact, but I think it illustrates my point.
There are 5 people in my company working full time, so this is 800 hours a month. So, the 5 hours of overtime I contribute to increase profit is 0.625% of the total monthly hours.
Now, for a company our size, in our particular field, I will say that making $25,000 in a month is reasonable and close enough to show my point, but still imaginary enough to avoid giving away any real financial information about said company. Given that time spent = increase in profit, those 5 hours I put in equaled $156.25. Scaling my wage a bit to compensate for the imaginary profit number, this is only a bit more than double what 5 hours is worth to me.
Long story short, unless my profit sharing is more than 50%, then my compensation is pretty much negligible.

Recap

Daniel — Sat, 10 May 2008 17:25:26 +0000

[long and boring]

And that should bring us up to now!

I'm working full-time as a Web Developer at a local design/marketing firm. I'm actually enjoying it quite a lot, even if a recent deadline stressed my face off.
I am an avid drummer, and music is my one true passion, so I hope to one day make a living with it. (I've been in 0.5 bands, so that's an okay start!)
I have recently met a most wonderful girl, who I am going to go hang out with later today. We live about two hours apart, which is pretty much the perfect distance, so I am quite stoked whenever I get to see her.