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How to Fake A Hard Day at the Office
futileboy writes "There's a great article in the WSJ about how to use technology to avoid work, while giving the impression of working. At the bottom of the article is "A beginner's guide to making it look like you're working when you're not." "
Just watch office space. Lots of hints
...is my best friend.
Life in Orange County
If you need help getting motivated, just get onto a project whose code you can share w/ your own projects.
/. with ghostzilla.
Then again, it might be easier to IM friends and browse
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Didn't I see that crappy software in thousands of popup and banner ads? Isn't there a free, open-source alternative called (Tight)VNC that is probably just as (in)secure?
No, it's not off topic. GoToMyPC.com is mentioned in the article as a good way to remotely control your computer for "only $19.95 a month".
Today's violation of copyright:
... If everybody does that, the company goes bankrupt," says Stuart Gilman, director of the Ethics Resource Center in Washington.
(Let's hope they consider it a free sample)
Shirk Ethic: How to Fake
A Hard Day at the Office
By JANE SPENCER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
David Wiskus gives new meaning to the term "working lunch." The Denver tech-support worker installed a program on his Handspring Visor hand-held that allowed him to manipulate the screen on his office computer from a booth at a local diner.
As he lingered for hours over burgers and fries, he could actually open windows and move documents around on his screen via the hand-held -- creating the impression to anyone who walked by that the diligent Mr. Wiskus had just stepped away from his desk.
It has never been easier to be a white-collar slacker. While the uninitiated are still grousing about how mobile technology has created a 24/7 work culture and sabotaged their private time, a savvier crowd has moved on to a more rewarding pursuit: using technology to make it look like you're working when you're not.
The tactic isn't new, but the tools have gotten a lot more powerful. Executives have long discreetly asked their secretaries to flip on the office light to make Friday absences less glaring; leaving a jacket on the back of your desk chair is also an old trick.
But the latest generation of office accessories, from cellphones to the RIM BlackBerry, have brought a new level of sophistication -- and a host of new strategies for manipulating perceptions of your diligence.
The new options allow people to do far more than send e-mails from the beach. Services like GoToMyPC.com -- similar to one Mr. Wiskus used on his hand-held -- let you operate your office computer by remote control. You can even move the cursor on your screen, opening documents and printing them on the shared office printer.
Other strategies involve using existing technology in new ways. E-mail timers, a standard feature in Microsoft Outlook, let you send e-mails hours after you have gone to bed -- a painless way to suggest to the boss that you are burning the midnight oil. (In Outlook, open up a message, go to "options," and fill in the "do not deliver before" option.)
Instant Message programs, a more-immediate form of e-mail now used by millions of employees, can also be reconfigured. Typically, if you haven't touched your computer in a while, the people you chat with online see an "idle" message next to your name. Diehard slackers can crack into the program settings to make themselves appear perpetually available.
Psychologists call these games "impression management," a field whose rules have been transformed now that so many people communicate through technology rather than a handshake and a conversation. In some ways, the e-mail that arrives at 11 p.m. is the modern sign of a dedicated worker.
But others see all this as yet another legitimate technology that has been hijacked by people with skewed ethics. "If you're out playing golf, and you look like you've spent four hours in the office.
Even some lower-tech tools, such as call forwarding, have grown more sophisticated, making it a snap to answer your desk phone from your daughter's soccer game or the pedicure chair. Phone company SBC Communications Inc. currently offers five different call-forwarding services, including a new one that lets you transfer your phone to different phone numbers throughout the day.
E-mails Read by Jenni
Services like Yahoo By Phone also let you pick up your e-mail from afar, even without a hand-held gadget. For $4.95 a month, a computerized voice named Jenni will read your messages aloud over the phone.
Wireless e-mail gadgets like the Palm Tungsten W and the BlackBerry can also be tinkered with to help cover the tracks of an office absence. E-mails sent from a BlackBerry, for example, automatically sign o
Don't have it automagically send out on the tens or fives.
I liked to keep it on the odd minutes.
1 am is nothing, the 3 or 4 in the morning message have that feeling of really busting your ass.
I always liked Apple Remote Desktop for my control the machine from afar.
Hell I could sit at my Mac at home, remote in, turn on Virtual PC and admin the Novell Network.
Yes! That one was called "Bash Big Blue". You would chase an IBM logo around with an Apple logo. You got points if you caught IBM. I think the game might still be downloaded at http://www.kidsdomain.com/down/mac/retroengine.htm l.
This was back when IBM and not Microsoft was the big bad monopoly.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
This one is simple but it really works. It comes from two simple observations:
- If there are serious looking stuff on screen and you use the keyboard a lot, it looks like you're working.
- Your boss has probably no idea what you're doing with all the terminals windows. (Besides if you're like me they are using tiny characters that can only be read by the one sitting in front on the monitor)
So just use lynx to browse the web, (re)play the great classic infocom games, code fun little games and then do the gameplay tests, read ebooks. Just make sure that emacs is open with the current official coding project loaded and NOT always on the same page.
Easy, have fun!
True warriors use the Klingon Google
"GoToMyPc.Com: Download software to your office PC that allows you to control your work computer screen over the Internet from anywhere. You can even operate your mouse remotely. Costs $19.95 a month."
Why pay $19.95 a month when there is VNC ?
Seems a bit silly to me... And of course there is SSH if you are not part of the Borg.
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
and probably will be your best friend Ghostzilla it is such a noble browser.
This is especially a problem for programmer-types who need to get uninterrupted concentration, and can't do that in the daytime because they have cubicles rather than offices.
I tend to check my email before going to sleep, and one of my coworkers in Boston often gets started early in the morning - we've had email conversations at 2am on occasion.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
GoToMyPC.com is not a bad program solely since it is "in thousands of popup and banner ads." It's a web-based app that includes a file-transfer component (TightVNC does not) and encrypts sessions.
For more information, CNet has a review. Please read it.
For more information, click here.
I noticed that myself - who would pay $20 for a friggin glorified VNC system? If the dynamic-IP adress is a problem, then just get a dynamic-IP redirection service like dynip.com - that's $25 per year for a big, user friendly business.
Great, I can replicate their service for 1/10th the cost, and could set it up in five minutes flat. Don't even have to memorize an IP address. Not to mention that with the IP redirection, you could also set up an FTP so you could get your files locally.
Hell, I don't see why anyone should ever need to use such a service. With ICQ2Go, Webmail service, and MSN I can log in to all my communications systems at any net cafe or handheld. I can keep in touch just fine - I only VNC to my machine to use the compiler.
E-Mail Timers
Yeah. Okay. Most users barely know how to send regular e-mail.
BlackBerry
That's why bb mailboxes are separate from regular mailboxes.
GoToMyPc.Com
Aside from probably getting you fired, every good admin blocks crap like this at the firewall. The only out from your PC is through the proxy and firewall. The only way in leads to the DMZ.
Instant Messaging
Also blocked at the firewall. Get to work!
Yahoo By Phone
You can't forward your mail an SMTP address, only local accounts.
Call Forwarding
Not our phones.
If you're using Mozilla / Firebird / Phoenix, add this to your profiledir/chrome/userContent.css and links to goatse and tubgirl will be in brown with a line through them, reminding you not to click.
a[href*="goatse.cx/"]
{
text-decoration: line-through ! important;
color: brown ! important;
}
a[href*="tubgirl.com/"]
{
text-decoration: line-through ! important;
color: brown ! important;
}
Good old tricks,
but I would just suggest the free VNC instead of the quoted GoToMyPc.Com which costs $19.95/month.
It has versions for PC, unix, PDAs, etc.
{Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme}
If there is one thing George showed me it is that angry people look busy...
Also for everyone who though Dilbert was like life in an office take a look at The Office
I don't know if Scott Adams got this from elsewhere on the Web, but I saw this same anecdote in his Joy of Work: Dilbert's Guide to Finding Happiness at the Expense of Your Co-Workers . Incidentally, I would highly recommend that book for the pranks and practical jokes it contains.
It's easy.
Dress well, keep yourself well groomed in general, and don't act like an ass. Your appearance and demeanor are the first things that people will see, and even if they won't admit it, it makes a huge impression.
Go to places where there are lots of people. Be social. This has a lot to do with the first point, but it deserves its own. Simply interacting with people builds confidence (not to mention makes friends).
Actually ask people. Don't assume that she'll say no. Even if she does, that's not the end of the world. Don't be too invasive, because that's a great way to push her away. I actually know someone who dumped Bill Gates because he was too pushy.
As mentioned in previous articles, learn origami. Really, almost any sort of hobby will do as long as it isn't too technical. The more, the better. People are curious, and common hobbies are a great way to get to know someone. Be prepared to discuss said hobbies.
Don't go too far into politics, religion, or any other controversial topic unless you are both prepared to do so. You should discuss them, but if the other person doesn't agree with you, there is no point in getting into a fight over it.
I, personally, carry some origami paper and make a model called a kikuzra whenever I'm nervous. It's very calming and it's also a great icebreaker. I'm still working on writing up the instructions for it since I can't find them anywhere online.
My girlfriend and I actually met at a church get-together. Strangely enough, our families are good friends, but we had never met or even heard of each other. Of course, my extended family is well over 150 people, so I suppose that it's excusable.
And MacPlaymate, on the first macs, which had drag-n-drop playtools for a line-drawn nudie.
God, the audio in that kicked arse at the time. Of course, the boss screen was a plain old spreadsheet.
Unfortunately, I was at school at the time, and we didn't use the macs for spreadsheets, so it was pretty useless.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
There's a significant difference between the two products.
With VNC, you must have access to your machine. If it's behind a corporate firewall that doesn't allow inbound connections (i.e., virtually all firewalls unless you personally control them), VNC isn't going to work in this scenario.
GoToMyPC, though, utilizes a type of push technology. You run a 'client' on the PC you want to remote control. Said 'client' establishes a connection to the central servers at GoToMyPC.com via HTTP (since many corporate firewalls allow outbound HTTP access without issue).
Then you, from the remote machine, go to the GTMPC(had to give up typing the whole thing) servers with YOUR web browser, and they do a form of proxy that, voila, allows you to communicate with a machine inside the coorporate firewall.
It's also a serious security breach that I suspect many companies would frown on if they found you using it -- ultimately, everything passes though GTMPC -- do you trust them with all your data?
Steve
Um... it's a girl laying on her back in a tub, with a huge geyser of what looks like butterscotch pudding coming from from her anus and then falling back down on her. It's really rather revolting.
To clarify: It's falling on her (maybe open) mouth.