Hygiene in the work place

Hygiene is usually never meant to be an issue in the general office type environment workplace. Obviously workplaces that involve hospitality (particularly food) and the health services need to have fairly strict hygiene standards. Generally, hygiene issues are not that big a deal in the standard office workspace.

However, when you are working in a call centre, there are some important issues to be aware of in regards to hygiene. Most call centre type work spaces have policies in place to deal with these issues. Unfortunately, an organisation may have the best policy in place, but if it is not effectively policed by the team leaders and managers, then it is useless.

Working in a Government department, I always thought that there would be well implemented policies on most (if not all) matters related to OH&S. Generally this has held to be true. Unfortunately, like many other things in life, People tend to only pay attention to those things that relate to themselves, or that they can see the point in.

Enter the issue of headset hygiene.

My current employer has policies in place to deal effectively with telephone headset hygiene. My current team is not what you would call a real call centre environment. Our team consists of about 30 people spread throughout the region, distributed between about 4 offices. Our office usually has 4 members of the team, and we sit in our own section of the greater office space, make our little phone calls all day long. We use telephone headsets for obvious reasons. I have seen our department's policy on headset hygiene on our intranet, but it doesn't get policed in our office.

The biggest issue with headsets is reusing the ear padding. This is meant to be a big no-no. However, this does not seem to be an issue for my local office. In my short time ere, I have changed desks 6 times, and used at least 4 different headsets. None of them have had their ear padding or microphone covers changes as I went around the desks.

You would expect a government organisation to have good standards on this, but I have found private companies to be much better on this. A call centre I have previously worked in gave all its workers their own microphone tube and earpiece pad to take with them for which ever desk they moved to.

Look, to be honest this is not something that would really upset me. Apathy is really not a motivating force to make you want to kick up a stink about these things. But then, something happens that drives home the point of these policies, and the need to enforce them.

I have mentioned earlier that the Hippie has left us. Well, one of our old team members has re
turned to our team from maternity leave to take the Hippie's place, and her desk. This returning team member has discovered that she has been infected with head lice. Her first thoughts were that her older kids had got them from school, but upon checking out her whole family, she found that she was the only one with nits.

Se has gone over her movements in the last while, and she the only place she can see that she would have got the lice from, is from the Hippie's headset.

I guess this makes another good reason for her to have gone. We first of all loose her negative whining attitude, but now we have lost her dubious personal hygiene.

Navel gazing on a global scale

I have posted previously that I enjoy using Google Earth. I still do. It is a fantastic application. I can waste hours just browsing the entire planet. Microsoft has tried to imitate the success of Google Earth by releasing an application called Virtual Earth. No where near as good as Google Earth, or Google Maps, in my opinion. It is essentially a copy of Google Maps, but you can only use it in Internet Explorer, surprise, surprise.

Lets not forget NASA's entry into the fray with World Wind. An unfortunate beast with an awkward interface ans non intuitive navigation system.

Anyway, this is not why I am posting. I wanted to draw your attention to Google Sightseeing. This is a fun sight (if you like this kind of thing, and lets face it....I do!) It shows you some of the things in Google Maps that have been spotted by other people, and posted.

If you want to loose a few hours of your life, check it out. Browse the categories and follow the picture links to Google Maps. All postings have links to the Google Maps reference, from which you can easily find them on Google Earth, if you have it. If you don't, Google Maps is still bloody brilliant, and it works in Internet Explorer AND Firefox. YAY.

DPS.

The Inevitable has Happened

The Hippie is dead! Long live the hippie!

Well, no quite dead. But her career with the Public Service is.

She has announced to all and sundry that she is leaving us, and going to work for the local council organising a festival. Apparently she used to do this a bit.

So, she is off, and escaping from the fun and frivolity of outbound calls to our select clientele.

When she announced this news, one of my co-workers and I looked at each other, and said: "Are we surprised?"

Nope. We are not surprised that The Hippie has taken the first opportunity she could find to get out of here. I am surprised though, that she has gone back to a situation that she has told us all a number of times that she had to get out of before because she couldn't handle it. Just like when she had to quit her photography job because she couldn't handle it.

I am starting to see a repeated pattern here.

This reminds me of a young lady I used to work with at my previous employer. She had come to our team, and although she was a nice enough person, she could get a bit negative at times about her previous work, and sometimes about the work she was doing with us at the time.

Anyway, after a short while, she left us to go work for a different company, in a different industry. A couple of months later, my then manager had to contact another company, and found himself talking to this young lady. She had gone through 2 different jobs with different companies since she had left us. Shortly after this brief reconnection, she called me directly and asked if there were any jobs available with our team. We had obviously refilled her position since she had gone, but she was asking because apparently she didn't realise how good our work place was before she left. She said she wasn't happy in the places she had been since she left us. I felt for her, but asked her if she will ever be happy in a workplace. She insisted that she could be.

Unfortunately we were not able to bring her back into the fold. But at the same time, I do tend to feel that you should never go back to a previous employer without a very good reason, and not just because everywhere else you have been to sucks.

This young lady didn't know what she had until she lost it. I hope she learnt from her mistake and was able to chalk it up to experience.

Anyway, I digress. The Hippie is now leaving us. I played the role of the encouraging team mate: "This should be a good move for you", "That sounds like a good challenge", "Its a better move, career wise", etc. But inside I am jumping cartwheels and shouting WOO-HOO! and spinning on the floor, a-la Homer Simpson style.

God, I am a hypocrite.

But a happy one.

DPS

PS, no image for this post. I wanted to find images of a "dead hippie" and "office escape" or "work escape" and "homer Simpson" Flor spinning. Nothing that Google images found was quite right, and I can't be bothered looking elsewhere. Besides, if it ain't on Google, it doesn't exist.

Shifting the Blame

An incident occurred at work a few weeks ago that really ticked my goat.

Like many workplaces, we have a tea room/staff lunch room/break out room. Whatever you want to call it, it amounts to pretty much the same thing. A room where staff members can eat their lunch without having to leave the office, and away from the prying eyes of the public.

This tea room, like many others, has a dish washer.

It has become an issue from time to time, that some people are making a mess in the tea room, and not cleaning up. It has also become an issue that some people are misusing the dishwasher. The main crime is opening the dishwasher before it has finished its washing cycle. This causes the dishwasher to stop, and people tend to open the dishwasher, notice that it has not finished, and then just close the door and walk away. This leaves the dishwasher sitting there full of half cleaned dishes, and dirty water everywhere. Not surprisingly this really frustrates many others in the office. It has been raised a number of times at our (semi) weekly staff meetings, and there is even a big sign on the front of the dishwasher saying not to open it until the dial is showing that it is finished.

This is not what annoyed me. I am fine with this. I think it is a bit silly that it is something that needs to be brought up at meetings, but I get the point. I can honestly say that I am not one of the people who make a mess without cleaning up I guess good parenting and working at Maccas has instilled a "clean as you go" philosophy in me.

I also have enough intelligence to be able to read and understand signs such as the one on front of the dishwasher.

The situation that pissed me off was this: One day, the Hippie was looking for a mug for her herbal tea. She couldn't find one that suited her in the cupboards, so she went to the dishwasher, and without checking, opened it. She discovered that it was part way through a wash cycle. She muttered an "oops" and I made some comment about the sign on front, to which she responded with an "oh well" and left it there without turning it back on. I left the tea room with my coffee as some other workers were entering, and when I came back in, The Hippie told me that she had blamed me for opening the dishwasher!

This is what pissed me off. She thought it was funny, and I later heard her telling another team member that she gets off on that sort of thing: shifting the blame to other people.

Shifting the blame is, in my view, totally wrong. It shows cowardice, and an unwillingness to accept responsibility for one's actions. Anyone who tries to shift blame is beneath contempt. Even though this is just a small issue, it demonstrates a possibility of it happening with larger issues.

This is not really what got my goat. My cynical nature half expects people to fail morally, or in competency. What really bugged me was the fact that the Hippie was trying to blacken my name. Trying to make me look incompetent.

I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that I am not an incompetent slob. But I find it aggravating when my work ethic is brought into question.

As far as the Hippie was concerned, it was all just a joke. But even jokes can ruin a reputation.

This is my view in the greater world too. My reputation is MY reputation. If I do something to fuck it up, then I reap the rewards of my own efforts. But if a smear is made on my reputation (even only in jest) then it can irreparably damage it. Even little dents can add up over time. I value the good will that I have built up with people, both in my professional and private lives. I do not appreciate this being placed in jeopardy simply because some Hippie wants to have fun, and try to shift the blame.

This may seem a little bit like over reaction for something so little as opening a dishwasher, and I may be making a mountain out of a mole hill. But I like to remember the example of the par-boiled frog. Many little instances can add together to make a big issue.

DPS

A Great Miscarriage of Justice

Saddam Hussein is dead.

This is a great shame.

Before I get lynched, let me state that I think Hussein was a tyrant. He was a dictator who ruled a country with an iron fist. But did he deserve to die?

Bob Ellis had a good opinion piece about this in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday. It is not a long article, but makes you think. I don't usually have much time for Mr Ellis, but this article struck a chord with me.

I feel a great pity when I think of all the crap that the U.S. is making the world go through. I know through other reports that the U.S. wanted to postpone Hussein's execution, but apparently they only wanted to by two weeks.

We have all heard the reports of ordinary Iraqis longing for the good old days of Saddam Hussein. The days when you were pretty sure that when you left your house in the morning, you would live through the day to enjoy coming back to a still standing house. That is, unless you had spoken out against Hussein. Then you knew you were a marked target.

Yes, he was a bastard, but at least under his rule, there was law and order. It may have been his law and his order, but what has been left in his absence?

I won't try to defend Hussein's record. Not in the slightest. My greater concern is in the performance of the US. The hypocrisy, the incompetence, the double standards.

Ellis says in his opinion piece: ...if a head of state can hang by the neck until he is dead for having ordered, or countenanced, or signed off on, or not punished, or failed to countermand the torture and killing of 148 Iraqis guiltless of any great crime, what will happen to the generals, bureaucrats, prime ministers and heads of state who ordered, or countenanced, or signed off on, or did not punish, or did not countermand, the killing of 150,000 Iraqis guiltless of any great crime (this is now the Iraqi Government's estimate of the dead) and the torture of ten thousand more of them in Abu Ghraib? And how many Americans - Bremmer, Abizaid, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Bush - should on this precedent be charged and hanged?

This reminds me of a few important points.

1. The U.S. went against U.N. orders when it invaded Iraq.

2. The U.S. is the only country, to my knowledge, that has been found guilty of terrorism by international courts

3. The U.S. no longer consider it's citizens to be answerable to international courts

4. Hussein, and Bin Laden are essentially U.S. creations. Both were financially and materially supported by various U.S. administrations, and were at one stage or another considered allies.

The world is still going to Hell in a hand basket, and it is the U.S. that will drive us forward.

The people in power (and in this regard I do not include Bush) will probably never answer for their actions. All the atrocities the U.S. have committed, or allowed to be committed, will go unanswered by those who are responsible.

Ellis also raises the point:

They may also ask, as many legal experts have, how much was fair about a trial in which three of the defence lawyers were shot dead and those who survived forbidden to see the prosecution's written testimony before it was unveiled in court, and only those parts of the proceedings the Government liked were telecast - lest Saddam "grandstand" his cause and gain followers. And how wrong it was this trial was not aborted, and another trial begun in The Hague.

They may ask as well why Saddam died so soon. Something to do, perhaps, with his coming genocide trials and the complicity of Germany, France, the US and Britain in the manufacture of his nerve gas, anthrax, cluster bombs and helicopter gunships, and his amiable business relationships with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush snr, once head of the CIA, in past decades, and how his genocidal methods back then did not greatly annoy them, not so long as he paid his bills.

Interesting questions indeed. Read the opinion piece. There are some thought provokers about the freedoms we have, too.

So, why was Saddam Hussein executed. Really.

DPS

Back.....Again.

I have returned.

Again.

I know, I know. I'm a slacker.

Well, yes. I am a slacker, but at the same time, there have been external forces at work preventing me from devoting much time to those pursuits that I wish to.

The first thing that has prevented me from posting, has been the ISP problems I described in my previous post. Yes, Optus had allowed us to connect, but only at dial up speeds. I didn't really do any surfing at all while we had dial up access. I tried it a few times, but just found things too excruciatingly S L O W. I guess I had become accustomed to the relative speed of DSL. (I will not refer to DSL as broadband considering the level of broadband speed experienced by people in other countries. Those that consider DSL to be on a level with dial up).

Anyway, we were finally reconnected to DSL. It only took 3 weeks to get things back to normal, thanks to finally getting a replacement modem (even though I told customer support it was a modem problem within the first week).

When we finally got a decent internet connection happening, it was getting well into the silly season. Christmas day was just around the corner, so the annual tirade of family visits, interspersed with the enjoyable visits of friends (thanks to Harrangue Man's Mikey Capital and his good wife!) consumed just about every waking hour. Then, after Christmas it is the limbo days before New Year's. I always find those days bizarre. It is a period in time when you don't feel you can really start anything. Half of the businesses in town close down totally between Christmas and New Year's. Well, at least they do in this city/town. I know in the major capitals, most things stay open, but out here in the rural towns and cities of Australia it is the opposite.

Anyway, I have been a slacker, but it has not all been my fault either. I do feel guilty though. I guess my New Year's resolution can be to keep up with a (fairly) regular posting schedule, so all my adoring legions of fans (*cricket's chirping*) can get their daily/weekly/monthly DPS fill.

ISP Hell

I am stranded. It's amazing how much you realise something impacts your life when you lose that one thing.

We are living without broadband.

We have been without broadband for nearly two weeks now. Initially we thought it was just a phone line issue. We had a close lightning strike one night that seemed to fry our line. We got that fixed within one day of calling our phone supplier. When we found that our DSL connection was not working, I called that in too, and (after faffing around performing various tests such as changing phone sockets and removing the splitter/filter) eventually was told to expect a call within the next 3 days from a technician to arrange a time to look at our connection.

4 days latter, after no call, I called customer support again, to be told that the technician had us on their list for 2 days time. I was miffed, but accepted it and expected the call from the technician to notify us of what time, exactly, they would be coming round. Both my wife and myself work, so (like many people) we do not have the time to sit around at home for hours on end waiting for a technicial to turn up.

Still no call.

That night I called customer support AGAIN and was told that they would look into it and get a technicial to make a house call, but that there may be a $99 charge for the call, if it is determined that the fault is our doing, or caused by equipment not belonging to them.

It was getting worse.

The next day, I received a call from customer service expressing concern that our connection had not been fixed up yet. They were going to credit our account the same amount that it would cost for us to be using dial up, so that we can connect through dial up while our DSL is fixed.

OK, not fantastic, but at least we are online again. Even if we are chugging along at 56kbs. WhoooooooHoooooo!

Now the experiences above (phone line, and DSL broadband) are very different. You would expect that I am dealing with two different companies. But NOOO!

Our phone is provided by Optus. Our DSL internet connection is provided by Optus.

Why is is so difficult to get both aspects of the one company to behave in the same way.

Now, I know that different parts of a company can be very different from each other, even to the point of being outsourced to other separate companies. But, this is no excuse. A large company will value its brand. It would not appreciate any aspect of public experience that was a negative experience towards its name and brand.

So, why would Optus have two very different customer experiences for the same customer?

Shut your big yap!

Man, I hate it when people complain about things that can not be changed, or that they have the power to change, yet do not.

The Hippie (see previous posts) is one such person.

When I last posted on our office work assignments, I think I mentioned that us newbies are being rotated through the office, to give us all a break from being on the phones.

This has now changed. The newbies and one other older staff member are now located on the phones permanently. The main reason for this is because of office costings. The office that our team is located in is administered and budgeted by a business line coded the the actual physical office. This office is apparently over staffed by 5 people.

Our phone team is part of a larger team situated in a number of offices, and is therefore administered by a business line that is separate from the line of the physical office we are located in. Our phone team is not over staffed. In fact we are reportedly going to be growing.

So, in placing us newbies permanently into the phone roles, the office manager is protecting us from any possible redistribution of staff in the rest of the office.

The Hippie can not, or will not, see this. When she heard that we were no longer to be swapped around the rest of the office, her first reaction to proclaim that she did not know how much longer she could last on the phones. She did not want to be a "Battery Hen" for ever, and let just about everyone know it.

There was no acknowledgement of the fact that this situation may just save her job. She can only see the negative aspects of the situation and how they directly affect her.

Now, I am not too fond of being on the phones either, but I realise that someone has to be on them, and that by putting us on them, the office manager is guaranteeing that we will still be here in the near future. The Hippie just needs to get over it, and see what she can constructively do about changing her circumstances, not just winge and bitch to everyone who will listen.

She has also noticed that her flex time is in a negative balance of over 12 hours. That's 12 hours of time that she owes our work. She keeps complaining about it, concerned about how she will make up the time.

The annoying thing for me is that I have to listed to it, knowing full well that it is her own doing. First of all, she has taken a flex day when she didn't have the full hours in flex to cover it. Second, we are rostered to start at 8:30am. In the last two months, I have not once seen her come into the office before 8:50am. Third, and last: we get allocated an hour for lunch. The Hippie regularly takes at least 1hr 10mins for lunch.

Most times that she complains about it, I remind her why she has this negative flex time.

But this is what I mean. The Hippie just wants something to complain about, and doesn't want to look at how she can fix it, or acknowledge that there is no way to fix and she should just get on with it.

So either she fixes it herself, and then stops complaining, or she recognises that it can not be fixed right now, and she just has to deal with it, and stops complaining.

Either way, she just needs to "Shut her big YAP"

DPS

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Apparently this is true, although I don't expect anyone to come gushing forth with exultations about the joy they feel at my return to blogging.

Yes! I am back.

Now I realise that people will not have been waiting with baited breath for my next posting, but I do feel a certain amount of guilt for not posting for so long.

I have previously made reference to finding myself with not enough time to do things. Well, I am now at the stage of working my way out of this phase. Towards the end of last month, I was very busy. I was doing my usual full time work in the public service, but most evenings I was moonlighting for a few hours in another job. I won't go into specifics, but the area that I was moonlighting in is the area in which I would spend all my free time, if I could. But that issue is for another time.

What I found is that the time that I usually used for catching up on things, doing housework, looking after the kids, reading email, posting on my blog, etc., had disappeared! I also found that a hard day of mentally draining work, followed by a few hours of mentally energising, but physically draining work, was leaving me with no energy to do anything at all when I got home. I would get home, reheat my dinner (that was lovingly cooked by my wife hours before), eat said dinner, collapse on couch and fall asleep in front of the TV.

That was pretty much my life for the end of October and the beginning of November. Wake up, eat, work eat, work, work, eat sleep.

Anyway, I am through that period, but I still find my energy levels not what they used to be. I am gradually getting back to normal, but it may take a while.

So, essentially, I have not posted in such a long while, because I have been a lazy shit. Which I apologise for.

I will be resuming fairly regular posts from tomorrow. I have a fair bit of information to share with everyone about the Hippie at work, and also a few issues I wish to vent, and use my masses of readers as a sounding board.

Cheers,

DPS

Hypocrites in the workforce

The Hippie is a hypocrite. The Hippie is a hypocrite! The Hippie is a hypocrite!!

Let me say that one more time: The Hippie is a hypocrite!

My previous posting made some mention of the fact that I have joined the Union. The main reasons are explained in that post. Now the Hippie has mentioned before that she is an activist. She had previously asked me to grab her a Union enrolment form, which I had done. When I later asked her if she was going to join the union, her immediate response was..."It's expensive".

What? Expensive? She is on the same pay level as me, she has no kids, she rents a house out of town (cheaper rent) yet she thinks that a fortnightly fee of less than $20.00 is too expensive.

I have 3 kids and loads of debt (that we are gradually getting out of), but when I spoke to my wife about deciding to join the union, it was a no brainer. The cost is minimal to us.

Yet this "Hippie" who does not like large corporations or organistions, did not think it a priority to join an organisation that has the interests of the workers as it's core beliefs.

Fine...I never like the Hippie that much in the first place, but her value has just taken a plunge.

Yet, that was not all.

The Hippie likes to try and pass herself off as a self confident, mature woman. She has told me before that she does not play office games.

This afternoon our team managed to get ahead of our work allocation. For a good portion of the afternoon, the hippie was huddled in her cubicle corner whispering to another of our team mates. Everyone around knew that they were gossiping, and I can honestly say that I have never seen anyone gossiping in this office before. It just smacked of immaturity.

After the Hippie and her friend had their gossip fest, she told me that she was now all caught up on the office goss. I flippantly replied "what, who is sleeping with who?" She said "Yeah". I didn't want to know, and I stopped her by saying to her "Before you say anything to me, ask yourself if it will do any good. Will it make a difference to anything?"

That sort of stopper her in her tracks, but she really wanted to tell me the really juicy bit of gossip. She wanted to tell me that she knew who in our office has slept with everyone else. She wanted me to guess who it was, but I wouldn't play her little game. I can proudly say that I took the moral high ground, and boy did it feel good. She started saying names, telling me who it was not. Again, I stopped her and said, "Who cares? What difference will it make knowing that? Will it do any good knowing it?" She eventually realised that I was not going to give her the satisfaction of playing her game, and she shut up about it.

Man, did that feel good. You see, the Hippie is one of those self righteous bitches who have a belief that they are always right, to the point of self delusion, and that they can not be tricked. They make these kinds of statements with cheery smiles and believe that everyone thinks that they are nice. Unfortunately there are enough people that do not see past the smiles, and cheery voice, that people like the Hippie manage to get away with it. While she will profess one thing, she will do another.

The Hippie claims not to play office games, yet here she is trying to spread gossip.

I found it very easy to take the moral high ground in this matter. The fact that I do not like the Hippie aided me in this matter. Because the gossip was being offered by the Hippie, it was extremely easy to reject it.

I stopped her, and I would like to think that I made her think about if it was a good idea to keep gossiping.

Mind you, I am also fully aware that if it was anyone else, I do not know if my resolve would have been so strong. Part of me does want to know who has been sleeping with who, but at the moment my feel good, moral high ground, centre is winning.

DPS

DPS is a Unionist!

Ok...it has been a while since I last posted. I've gone through a period where I have found time to be very short. Have I been doing more than usual? No. Have the days shrunk? No. It just seemed to be a phase in life where no matter what you do, you never have enough time to do everything you want to do.

Anyway, enough of my winging.

I am now a Union member. Yes, I have joined the ranks of the great unwashed. I can proudly stand next to my fellow worker, and call them "Comrade". I have never been a Union member before. It is a totally new experience for me. I have never before really cared that much to bother joining a workplace union.

What has prompted me to do this? Three simple letters: AWA

These letters have struck fear into the hearts of many workers in Australia. They have existed for many years before, but they have never been that much of a threat. However, since Howard and his cronies introduced the current IR laws, AWAs have become a real threat to workers.

The public service organisation I work for, is trying to encourage all of its employees to sign AWAs. How is it doing this?

Well, I was recently in a meeting where one of our higher up managers explained to us the organisation's take on the available AWA model. He went to great lengths to explain that employees who are on the AWA will receive a significant pay rise straight away, with another pay rise on the year anniversary of signing the AWA, subject to performance standards (more on that below). Many people will see the immediate pay rise, and be lured by that alone. To me, this sets alarm bells ringing. If any organisation is offering a significant pay rise immediately, then you have to look at what the pay off is.

If, for example, a company is offering an immediate 10% extra to anyone who signs an AWA, then you can bet you ass that the AWA will remove or modify conditions, so that the organisation gains more than 10% worth of benefit for it. It may be difficult to identify exactly where the benefit to the organisation is, but trust me...it is there in one form or another.

This manager also went on to explain that the AWA is only really of benefit to those people who are good performers. The incentives, and pay increases are ony applicable to those employees who have performed to a specific standard (a standard that is not specifically outlined in the AWA). The implication here is that only poor performers, or bludgers would want to stay away from an AWA. Therefore, if you don't sign an AWA, then you are not a good worker.

There are many points that our manager tried to make about the AWA, but the one that really had me concerned was the provision that if you are signed onto an AWA, then you do not have the right to take industrial action. You can not strike.

Now I have never taken industrial action in my life. But, if there is one thing that will ever incite me to do it, it will be a large organisation trying to get me to sign a contract that will tell me that I can not do it. This is one of the main reasons behind my signing up to join our worker's Union.

In the past I have also had a fair amount of faith in the industrial relations of this country, and state. But now that Howard has continued to strip away the rights of workers, I feel that the government is not interested in protecting the interests of the common man. I am now of the opinion that the only people who will stick up for us is the Union, and I feel compelled take action to help have some say in the security of my working future.

So, am I becoming a Lefty Union Scumbag? Or am I just clinging to a last shred of hope, and trying to stick up for myself?

Reality TV...very real

Luci's struggles against Project Green Light Australia reminded me of my regular thoughts about the reality of reality TV game shows. I have my conspiracy theories about how rigged these shows are. Now the shows in question may not be directly manipulated to dictate who wins or looses, but the circumstances of the game can be adjusted to suit a particular contestant.

The grandaddy of reality TV game shows is Survivor. Every year a new wave of contestants try to outwit, outlast and outplay each other. But every year, we also see slightly different variations of the game each year. Tribes get mixed up at different stages, if at all. Tribes merge at different stages. There are different numbers of tribes at different points in the game. Because of the security surrounding the production of this show, no one outside of the production staff know what is up ahead.

But...how do we, the unsuspecting public, know that what happens has been planned right from the very beginning? I think it is obvious that the votes at tribal council are adjusted in the pot to be revealed in the most dramatic way possible. It is also very apparent that the host, Jeff Probst, has really disliked some of the contestants. Surprisingly enough, none of these have ever won a series.

Survivor is not the only reality game show out there that could be manipulating things, but as with any largest participant in a given field, it makes them an easy target. I don't want to target only Survivor (I am a fan of the show) but I am too lazy, and harried by children to get them something to eat (go eat some cardboard, kids), to properly research other shows.

My point still remains: How do we know that the sequence of events are not manipulated to suit particular contestants. How do we know that it is reality TV, and not just actors pretending to be reality TV contestants?

DPS

DPS

They go in threes

Has anyone else noticed that celebrities seem die in groups of three? There appears to be a trend that there will be a group of celebrity deaths within a week or so of each other. Of course, I can not bring up any corroborating data to support this statement, but it is my general feeling.

Having stated this, I am fully aware that Australia has had 4 celebrity deaths in recent weeks:
1) Don Chip
2) Colin Thiele
3) Steve Irwin
and now...
4) Peter Brock

Now, as far as I can predict, my feelings about celebrities going in threes is about to be shot down, or we are due for another two famous deaths within the next week or so. These will not necessarily need to be Australian to qualify.

We will have to wait and see.

DPS

The wonders of music

Last weekend I watched School of Rock for the first time. I know, I know...it's been around for ages. Its just been one of those movies that I never got around to seeing. Until now.

This posting, though, is not about School of Rock. This movie reminded me of my opinion of the music industry. An opinion that I would now like to share with you.

Record labels suck. Big time. They are companies that are following a business model that came into existence over 50 years ago, and are extremely reluctant to change, no matter what technological changes occur.

The media often run stories on the decline in CD sales, and how the record companies are blaming the proliferation of illegal MP3s on the internet.

I can not remember where I read it, but I have read someone pointing out that the sales of CDs has been artificially inflated due to the number of people replacing their vinyl and cassette tape collections with CDs. This replacement phaze is apparently petering out. Therefore the number of CD sales has been dropping, as people are scaling back to be only making new purchases, not purchases to replace vinyl LPs or cassette tapes. Yes, some CD sales wil be lost by free mp3 downloads, but how many people in the past have had a taped copy of a CD they "pirated" from a sibling or a friend? I know I have.

If record companies want to win back market share from internet downloaded music, then they need to be offering something extra that you can not get via download. Not just a CD with a bit of cardboard acting as a cover. Something else needs to be offered. Something that you can not access through downloading the songs. Some bands have made their record companies follow this path e.g. Pet shop boys re-released some early music, and added a booklet for each CD (slotted into the cover). these types of booklets can be a fan's nirvana, providing extra background and inside information on the music and the band. Not many bands have done the same thing. Why would people bother to pay for a CD, when they can get a copy for free, either by downloading it, or burning a copy of a friend's CD.

MC Lars' song "Download this song" is a great thesis on the new music distribution model, and the hipocrasy of the major record companies.

$18.98 Iggy Pop CD?
What if I can get it from my sister for free?
It’s all about marketing Clive Davis, see?
If fans buy the shirt then they get the mp3
Music was a product now it is a service
Major record labels why are you trying to hurt us?
Epic’s up in my face like, “Don’t steal our songs Lars,”
While Sony sells the burners that are burning CD-R’s

As a side note, I find microsoft's Digital Rights Management a laugh. Windows media player will not let you directly copy a protected CD (e.g. straight from CD-ROM drive to CD-R/W drive). However, it will not even raise a murmer if you rip the CD to your hard drive, and then burn the CD's contents to a blank CD-R or R/W. Great protection!

Anyway, That is my first major issue with the music industry. I was reminded of my other beef while I was watching School of Rock.

My other beef is the lack of originality in many of today's groups and/or atists.

Where are the supergroups? While the majority of the music industry's new artists are RnB and rap fuckwits, there are no new supergroups like the days of old (60's-80's), like The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, The Who, Genesis, etc. The only thing we have today, even slightly resembling the supergroups of old, are...those same supergroups themselves. Revived, and pushed back out onto the world stage in a last ditch effort to prop up the record companys' bottom lines. There are fewer and fewer bands and/or artists with the ability to put on a good show these days. Even the middle aged reanimated groups of yore are not as energetic as they used to be.

Tied in with all this is a problem that I refer to as the lack of virtuosity in bands today. We rarely see bands with members who could be said to be a virtuoso of their instrument. I remember the days when concerts used to have a certain period when each band member spent time doing a solo, showcasing their virtuosity on their instrument. We don't see that anymore.

All we get now in new bands is RnB and Rap shite, or bands emulating the sounds of the 60s and 70s, like Wolfmother (blurgghhhh!) and Jet, for example. The record companies are not interested in nurturing and developing new and different talent. They want to be able to quickly produce a product that they know will work, because it sounds a lot like something else that was very successful in the past. They are not willing to take a risk and try something new. They will keep trying to find acts that will reproduce a sound that has already prooved to be successful in the past.

Of course, there are always exceptions to any rule, as there are some groups and/or artists that do not fit into this mould, however on the whole, my setiments hold true.

There is nothing new in the music scene. Except for Ultimo, of course.

DPS

I can't believe it!

Well, I guess I shouldn't be suprised. It was going to happen sooner or later. Someone has posted the video of Steve Irwin's death on Google Video.

I'm not even going to comment. Each individual will have to make up their own mind if they want to see it or not.

DPS

Funny

Check this out. This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

The Princess strikes again

Naomi Robson has once again shown her arrogance and willingness to blame others for her mistakes. Robson was apparently forced to apologise for a "tacky" move during a broadcast outside Australia Zoo for Today Tonight. She appeared on camera in a khaki outfit, with a live lizard on her shoulder.


Come on! What the fuck is this woman's problem?

What is going on in her precious little brain that makes her think that this is in good taste? This just smacks of the media trying to emulate the big story of the day. There is no sincerity in this type of move. But, I guess I should not be surprised by this. I have heard a number of stories about Robson, and her "Princess" attitude. But, the commercial channels themselves have been doing this kind of thing for years. Who remembers the man who was lost in the middle of the desert in remote WA a few years ago, and when he was found by a commercial camera crew, they didn't whisk him to a hospital straight away in their helicopter? Oh no. They got him to walk around for a bit first, so that they could get some shots of him from their helicopter, then do a story, and then they were kind enough to actually rescue him. I can't remember which channel it was, but it was the sort of thing that is not confined to one particular show.

There are many other examples of news and current affairs reporters' egos getting in the way of their judgment, and trying to maximise the "exclusivity" of their story by doing things that are either stupid and ill considered, or just plain fucking dangerous. Not dangerous for themselves, of course, but for someone else "in the line of fire" (remember Mike Willisee and the kids held hostage by muderers near Dorrigo/Armidale, NSW).

Back to Robson's crass display, I love this: "In a rare victory for Channel 9, viewers even went so far as to switch stations to rival A Current Affair, which overtook Today Tonight in the official viewer ratings for the night." Nice to see that viewers showed their contempt for Robson the best way for Channel 7 to sit up and take notice.

Another good indication of the public's lack of tolerance for this type of thing, is from an online poll conducted by The Daily Telegraph. Now the Tele's readers are not usually considered the most enlightened lot, but even they were not appreciative of the khaki appearance: In an online poll 71 per cent of Confidential readers thought the khaki shirt and lizard stunt were too crass so soon after Irwin's death, with just 28 per cent saying it was a fitting tribute to him.

Now, if an inbred pack of Telegraph hick readers feel this way, then I feel confident in saying that the rest of the educated public would feel even stronger about it.

If all that isn't bad enough, when Robson was forced to apologise, she tried to shift the blame onto, a) her wardrobe assistant for the khaki outfit, and b) a young Irwin fan.

Oh come off it. a) We all know that Robson would not be seen dead on screen in any outfit she hadn't personally approved, and b) we also all know that Robson wouldn't be seen dead on screen with any live animal that she hadn't personally approved.

I don't know about you, but I'm not buying any of it. We all saw how she was dressed during some of the broadcasts from Beaconsfield (not live to air, but as reported by other sources), I have heard too many other stories from reporters about Robson's behaviour to believe that she was not in charge of the whole episode.

To be partially fair, though, I have to admit that I have had no personal dealings with Naomi Robson, and that she may very well be a very nice, polite, considerate lady. Then again, she may just be the most stuck up bitch that the western world has ever seen.

You decide.

DPS

PS. Strangeness...I've searched online for an image of Mike Willisee, but can't find one of him anywhere. Well, nothing recent. Has he managed to wipe his previous career as a current affairs "journalist" off the pages of history?

Dreaming of good customer service

My previous posting about telemarketers, or CSRs, seems to have pervaded into my dreams. I woke up this morning on the tail end of a dream....

I was at my grandmother's house, only the lady in question was not actually my grandmother (both of whom have passed on), and we were in the U.S.A., but I was calling her grandma, and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary.

Anyway, my 'grandma' was talking about how she had recently fallen in the bathroom and had been unable to get help (how this situation was resolved was not discussed). It cam out in conversation that she now had one of those emergency beacon distress alarm thingys, in case it happened again.

I found it in her dressing gown, hanging on the back of the bathroom door. In my dream, this beacon looked like a mobile flip phone. I opened it to check that it still worked, and saw that it sent a signal. I don't remember specifically how I saw this, but I knew it had happened. After I knew that it had sent a signal, I though it would be wise to call the monitoring people, and let them know that there was not a real emergency. So, using the emergency 'phone', I called the monitoring people.

I explained to the man that answered that there was not an emergency, and that we had just briefly opened the 'phone'. I heard him mutter something, then pause, and then say something like "thank you for calling". I asked him what he had said, and he refused. Then I figured out that he had said "Wanker". I told him that I hear what he said, and I knew what it meant, as I was Australian, and not American (remember, my 'grandma' lives in the U.S.A.).

The bit that tells me that my previous posting has pervaded my dreams is that I didn't go off at this CSR. I calmly talked to him, and explained to him why it was inappropriate to call people a wanker. Unfortunately, I do not know how the conversation ended, as I woke up part way through, but it seemed to be going well.

I am slightly disappointed though, that I didn't fly off the handle. I mean, if you can't do it in your dreams, when can you?

DPS

A man of the people...NOT

John Howard has once again demonstrated to the rest of the world, that he is definitely not a man of the people. In parliament today, he was speaking of the tragic death of Steve Irwin. I wasn't able to catch all of what he was saying (kids were making noise) but I heard him refer to Irwin as the "Crocodile Man".

CROCODILE MAN? You've got to be kidding me. It really irks me when people like Howard (sorry Mikey_Capital, I think Beazley is just as bad) try to show how in touch they are with the everyday people of the population. All it takes for their shallow attempts to become unstuck, is for them to make a simple mistake in their grandstanding speeches.

To me, if you can't get the name of someone right, then they are obviously not all that important to you. How dare Howard stand up in parliament and espouse how great Steve Irwin was, and then not even bother to get his common name correct.

Kids on the 'Net

My daughter came home from school on Friday, excited to tell me about a web site one of her friends had found. It is a short flash cartoon series that they had been looking at during school time. I don't know if you have heard of it. It is called Salad Fingers, by David Firth. It can be found, amongst other things, here. It is building up quite a following, including parodies, Fan Fict, clones, Lego models, and served as the inspiration of other animations. It even has a wikipedia entry. Just do a Google Search for "Salad Fingers", and you will find your bounty.

Now, have a look at some of the episodes. When I saw them I thought, "weird, but cool, and yet slightly disturbing, which can be cool too." My second thought was, "the teacher let the kids watch this at school?"

I don't personally have a problem with it, but I could imagine teachers and some parents getting quite offended if they knew their children were watching this at school. I asked my daughter what her teacher was doing when they were watching this, to which she informed me that her normal teacher was not there, and that the Computers teacher was taking them at the time. She didn't enlighten me as to what the Computers teacher was doing, but she seemed to imply that the teacher knew what was happening. The teacher probably just thought the kids were looking at harmless fun animations, without really looking at what they were doing.

I found the whole thing quite amusing, and I was happy to see that my daughter seems to be developing the same appreciation for the darkly absurd that I have. I find it funny what kids come home from school with knowledge of something totally unexpected. Most times you will find that it is knowledge that has been gained from other children.

I do have one doubt about this whole thing, though. It clearly shows that the children are not very closely supervised when they are on the internet at school. This could be a worry.

DPS

P.S. Another great flash animation I have seen is the Banana song at rathergood.com, One of my all time favourite internet songs. It gets stuck in your head. I challenge you to watch it, and then not have "I bought the wrong bananas, I bought the wrong bananas (I bought I bought the wrong bananas)" going through your head afterwards. Go on, I dare you!