Re: Herd instincts?

On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 12:51:05 -0800 (PST), bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:

On Dec 2, 2:53 am, John Fields <jfie...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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Yes, of course, since during that time I'm sure your opinions about
where your time would be better spent were often overridden by your
superiors and what you're left with is the record of how they
decided to use you by prioritizing your time for their advantage.
---

That does show up in a tendency to neglect stuff that I'm not being
actively hassled about, but it also made me well aware that my
superiors often didn't know enough about what they were talking about
and were trying to impose inappropriate and sometime self-
contradictory priorities.

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In _your_ opinion, and with conclusions reached, by you, without
having access to data which your superiors were obviously loathe to
share with cannon fodder.

But, then, that's always been your problem.

That is, you believe yourself to be the ultimate authority on just
about everything but, when in the pinch, you've always knuckled
under and taken subservient roles because you never had the balls to
do it your way, regardless of the risk.

And now, in the autumn of your life, it's getting to be too late for
you to make the mark you would have liked to.
---

My expertise in prioritising my time does represent more than a simple
record of what other people told me they wanted and it does include
the signficant insight that the predictive powers of everybody
involved (including me) aren't all that wonderful.

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Geez, I could have told you that. ;)
---

On one occasion I
produced a project plan (for a fairly simple project) in parallel with
one of my colleagues - neither of us knew that the other had been
stuck with the job, so we didn't collaborate - and both of us came out
with much the same total figure (some 1300 man hours) to within a few
percent

---
Using the same inputs and given the same tools, one would expect
something like that.
---

Neither set of time estimates had that much to do with the length of
time took to complete our part of the project.

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Then you were both above overhead and there _is_ a free lunch?
---

I've had more trouble
finding work since November 1991 - since then I've worked five years
full time and six years part time - so the skills aren't being
exercised as regularly as they once were, but it's fairly clear that
you won't have anything worthwhile to teach me on that subject.

---
"Fairly clear" is quite different from "perfectly clear" ,and is an
admission that since you're not using your skills (and learning new
ones) you're falling behind and losing whatever edge you might have
had earlier on.
---

You may think so, but since you don't ever seem to have done the kind
of work I was doing, it isn't a particularly well-founded insight.

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Whether I've ever done the same kind of work you have, or not, (and
I have) has no bearing on whether or not I can see that your lack of
recent activity has made you largely obsolete. By your own
admission, no one will hire you, while if you had some whiz-bang
stuff going on for you on your own you wouldn't have to be begging
for work, you'd have to be begging for time off.

Take a look at Larkin and Thompson.

Are they whining about that no one will hire them?
---

In this particular instance, the distinction between "fairly clear"
and "perfectly clear" is purely a matter of style.

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Have another drink...
---

I was telling krw to go soak his head, but since I didn't have to be
ostentatiously rude to get the point across I could afford to soften
the wording.

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Yeah, right...

You chose to use a willow reed instead of a 2 X 4?

Why? No doubt because you thought that everyone who read your post
would think that you were _so_ clever.
---

Your own skills in that area can be deduced from the time that you are
wasting trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs (in the strictly
metaphorical sense).

---
So you're his metaphorical grandmother???

You need to find a dictionary - even in Texas yoour local library
should have one -and look up "metaphorical".

You may need to go further and get advice on interpreting idiomatic
phrases, of which "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs" is an
example.

---
"Don?t give needless assistance or presume to offer advice to an
expert?"

You presume to be an expert?

In what milieu?

That of parasitically sucking subsistence from a system which you
have no intention of recompensing?
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Or you may just need to give up on the lame jokes that only a Texan
oaf would bother making.

---
Ain't a joke, Bill, you're a loser.


--
JF
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