simont | (no subject)

Yesterday at work I went to a training course in time management.

I had originally been booked to go on this in 2001, but had missed it! (This is really true. In my defence, my entire group had moved office buildings that very day and things genuinely were hectic; but even so, I forgot to go to a time management course.)

This time round, they set me homework to do before the course (preparing a detailed log of one day in my job, so that I could analyse it in particular ways during the course). I had a vague feeling that anyone who turned up having actually done the homework would be told to go away because they clearly didn't need to be there :-) But in fact what happened was that the course instructor said there was always one person who hadn't done the homework, and then he asked if everyone had – and it turned out that there was precisely one person who hadn't done it. I wonder how often that joke doesn't work for him.

It was odd how much the start of the course felt like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Every time someone I knew walked in, it was as if I was hearing them say ‘Hello, my name's foo and I'm hopelessly disorganised’. Which, of course, I'd said as well by being there myself. (Although I'm uncertain of whether I'm still as disorganised now as I was five years ago when I originally booked myself on the course; I think I've improved a lot on my own since then.)

People on training courses get lunch provided; I had told them I was coeliac but wasn't sure whether they'd manage to do anything useful. As it turned out they provided me a salady sort of lunch which had no gluten in, but also had no carbohydrates, so I was rather hungry for the rest of the day. If I have another training course I might write something pointed in the dietary-requirements box (‘I have an intolerance of gluten but I still need some carbs’).

This morning I'm back at my own desk and have just started up Evolution, and it immediately put up the reminder window it didn't get a chance to show me yesterday (because I didn't log in), telling me that I should have been at a time management course yesterday. For some reason I find this wildly amusing.

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I once got an overdue notice from the UL for The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Which, idiotically, I didn't keep.

That sounds like a suspiciously familiar title. I think yesterday's course notes quoted from it, although I left them at home today so I can't immediately check.

It's a fairly well known book. I know it from the parody in Schlock Mercenary "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates" -- eg. "Pillage, THEN burn."

Actually, I find that annoying. What I find REALLY annoying is that practically no software I've ever used will synchronise its alarms with a mobile device. So, you get an alarm on your Palm/Phone/Blackberry, and acknowledge it. Then you fire up your desktop software, and get alerted a second time... *sighs*

Oh yes, the feature in general is annoying. When applied to a course on time management, though, it becomes funny.

Phil> Palm Desktop? ;)

On my PC, it still reminds me.

Maybe it's Agendus. I could try removing that temprarily - but I think it's always done that... Even before I used Agendus.

It's more than likely a setting or corruption that I've carried from PC to PC, ever since my first Palm III. :-)

No, it's quite possible. I've just never used it as a desktop reminding tool - If I have a reminder set on my palm, my palm can tell me, I don't need the desktop tool blathering on about it at all. Think I turned alarm notifications off entirely on the desktop, now I think of it. ;)

Stupidly, I get that too. If I tell a course organiser that I cannot have MSG and aspartame so they can tell the caterers, I always without fail end up with a salad with no milk, no gluten, no nuts and no meat in it. Somehow a small chemical sensitivity to two things which are comparatively easily aroided transforms me into somebody who will die if she gets the merest whiff of protein and, to boot, can apparently go for twelve hours without any actual nutrition. I have long since given up and told the course organiser that I am on nil by mouth, and then brought my own lunch.

I am currently on a project management course, where I can at least eat the food. However the free food and shorter days than usual are the current main benefits, the other being learning what vocabulary my employers would like me to use for things I do ALL THE TIME anyway. I could probably do that in half a day, rather than four.

Unless there's supposed to be some team-building effect from sticking 11 people who mostly don't work directly together in the same room for 4 days.

Trust you finished on time, at least.

Well, yes... professional cateresr are forced to be paranoid, and it is much easier (and less risky) for the them to cut out carbs entirely. In the eame way that the best way to deal with a benign tumor on your hand is to cut the arm off at the elbow. If you ask for gluten free carbohydrate, logic suggests that you'll get given coal.