nt

Sweet!

A good attempt to game the system though...

... Sherlock? Seems to have had the same deductive skills.

Aw, you beat me to it :D

While Sherlock Holmes is often depicted as using deduction, his methods are more accurately described as inductive or abductive reasoning.

ICON - Not sure if it should just have been "I'll get my coat"

> Not sure if it should just have been "I'll get my coat"

That depends Watson on it...

Talking of Sherlock……….I once witnessed an what looked like an inquisition of sorts going on as a visitor to a company. All the staff of one department, my mate’s department were being called into a meeting room one by one. They would walk out after a few minutes normally looking relieved and the next person would be asked to come in. The mate I was visiting eventually finished in there and we went out for lunch. I innocently enquired what had been going on because it looked like a redundancy set up.

That wasn't it at all he said. They'd noticed that they were having problems with a particular system. They ran a complex report every night using a very high spec office computer at 18:30 and this was automatic. Only problem was several reports spanning a period of weeks were missing and had to be re-run when the first person had gotten in in the morning. This delayed the start of day for several people. After just a few instances of this happening they'd installed a logging program to see who was doing what on that computer. The logs had told them who had logged in and stopped the program running,

They'd found out that it was Employee ‘X’ but had decided to call everybody in, not just him. They revealed to each person in turn that there was a now a monitoring prog on that computer. They asked each employee if if they'd got anything they'd like to mention at this point. None of the rest of the had anything significant just things like burning an copy of a CD etc. all within office hours. Employee ‘X’ on the other hand was sweating profusely and had sung like a canary. He used the machine to play something like Quake or Half Life etc. on as it had the best graphics card the most memory etc. He'd had to hide the game on the hard drive and was playing it after work. However the reports prog was quite memory and processor intensive when running. So he'd shut it down before playing and if his gameplay went beyond 18:30, as it frequently did, no report was run.

Discussions were ongoing as to what punishemnt he'd get.

'cause the clues he used and instant right deduction, without even checking the PC.

Maybe he who checks behind the door hath hidden there once before?

So true! You learn from epic near-disasters (and actual disasters) that you caused but resolved, particularly if no-one else saw it.

Getting longer in the tooth gives you the opportunity to gain wisdom from other people's mistakes. If you find out about them, that is.

To quote the great Sage PTerry

"Wisdom comes from Experience. Experience is often the result of a lack of Wisdom."

Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.

Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined. —Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. —Oliver's Law

I would have thought even in 2008, a troublesome PC would have earnt a quick trip to the ewaste skip.

"Pharmacists were especially demanding. "One of them treated me to a long diatribe about how a software update required three more keystrokes than before for one task,"

As a pharmacist: relatable. It is a profession that demands such a high level of accuracy and attention to detail, that it tends to attract a certain personality type. Slightly neurotic, some maybe even somewhat on the autism spectrum.

But also highly demanding of themselves, they are the last to catch medication errors (by pharmacy staff, or doctors) and therefore often also demanding of others.

With a wife who is a Pharmacist and Independent Prescriber, a daughter who is a GP and as a Certifiable Software Engineer myself, all requiring a high level of accuracy and attention to detail - how tidy do you think our house is? The Lead Zoo Keeper and Actor/musician daughters are certainly from a different mould (but definitely mine!)

how tidy do you think our house is?

Honestly, it could go either way. Either neat as a pin, or an unholy mess, one extreme or the other.

Isn't there a saying: in a carpenter"s house, no shelve is straight?

My workplace: tidy, but my desk and workbench at home?

Said unholy mess. But I know where everything is.

> Isn't there a saying: in a carpenter's house, no shelve is straight?

Nope - it's "shelf"...

[as opposed to !]

"When one door closes, another one opens".

And that's why my grandfather was voted the UK's worst cabinet maker in 1907.

"When one door closes... open it again! It's a DOOR! That's what they DO!"

I apologise for not being a native speaker.

I guess my mind was hesitating between a sentence with shelf or shelves and got stuck in the middle.

10000000000 time THIS ^^^^^^^^^^^

I am very very detail focused when I work. [But cannot type :)].

I will check things over and over before hitting the 'GO' key !!!

I have stopped people before when they have 'quickly solved something' that was NOT solved if you looked closer !!!

I always deliberately slow down starting to type the 'Answer' as I often re-think the solution just before I commit the action.

My Study at home is visually untidy (understatement) BUT I know where everything is !!!

I DO meltdown when my Study is tidied by someone else being 'Helpful' [who shall remain nameless !!!].

Re-arranging things by 'geometric shape' or visual symmetry is NOT HELPFUL !!!

:)

Mrs Anonymous Coward, by any chance?

You might think that ... BUT I could not possibly say !!!

:)

My office was arranged in several piles of paper. The rule was: 1 inch per month. I could always find what I wanted but the clean desk patrol was not happy. We once had a security audit and they checked every box including "passed." They must have been flustered - I found this report card when it surfaced a month later.

The boss' mantra.. "Tidy desk, tidy mind"

No, tidy desk indicates someone who doesn't have enough to do!

The boss' mantra.. "Tidy desk, tidy mind"

Smart worker reply: Empty desk, empty mind.

A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.

Years ago the company I worked for were having a visit from the American corporate C Suite and the instruction went out that all desks, cupboard tops, etc. must be clear, everything must be tidy, etc.

Being IT this was never going to happen - too many bits of kit awaiting me dealing with them and little storage space so my office was tidy but certainly not clear. The CFO wandered in, had a quick look round, and immediately said, "Thank God somebody does some work around here!" We got on quite well after that the few times I met him, even sharing a few beers after a meeting in the States, although he never forgave me for the fact I had a Range Rover* and he hadn't been able to afford one with his bonus.

*An old a fairly beaten up Range Rover, not a brand new one by any means.

Mrs C used to work at a company that believed this, so when the cutback cull hit they targeted one particular individual based on that (unsound) metric. Problem was, that particular individual was very good at his job and also very focused on keeping everything tidy. Week or two after he was "let go because policy" they ran out of stock for producing their main product line (did I forget to mention he was the raw material buyer) and they had to shut the works down until the supplier could expedite delivery (at premium price)...

Moral of the story - judge the person on how well they do the job, not how well they fit your (prejudiced) profiles.

I have a colleague who uses his piling system on the desk. He knows where everything is which is great if he's working in the office. Not so good if the rest of the team needs something he has been using.

"Piling System" Love it. Have an upvote.

Common areas tidy, except when untidy children have made food - usually not at normal meal times!

Two bedrooms and one of the bathroom (shared by the owners of the two bedrooms) where you can't see the floor for clothes (clean/dirty - no idea) or towels!

Rest of the house spotless.

If you look at the fashion magazines showing how to furnish the room. The book shelves are always ordered, by height, or colour. (or an absence of books) These people clearly do not read their books.

Most people arrange them by author. I've got a row of books for an author by one publisher, plus another book in the series by a different publisher, which is a different size and colour scheme.

The books in Samuel Pepys' library in Magdalene College Cambridge are ordered by size. Apparently Pepys left strict instructions that this should be done.

As long as it is SOME system it doesn't need to be alphabetic - it needs to be something someone using it (Pepys in this case, presumably, if he wasn't just having a last laugh on everyone in his will) knows.

I used to be a club DJ and we almost exclusively played everything off 12" singles. We had them sorted by beats per minute (with a label with the number written on it stuck on them) not alphabetically by artist or song. That was easier for us - when you're beatmixing you're typically going to want a song that's a few bpm higher or lower than what you're currently playing so you just look in that area either for a specific song or just "lets see what strikes my fancy to play next" (which is a terrific way to discover songs that go together really well that no one would have thought if not for that serendipitous discovery)

The numbers were perhaps a bit arbitrary - when we bought a new single we'd guess the bpm based on beatmixing with another song marked with its bpm so they might have been one or two bpm off the "true" number but it was close enough. But the great part was when we had people visiting us in the booth if they took it upon themselves to try to find some favorite song they wanted us to play they had NO CLUE how to find it. The lack of organization as far as non-DJs meant no one was messing with our music because it would be like someone trying to find something in Pepy's library.

In hand press days, books were of specific sizes, big folios, smaller quartos, then octavos, then duodecimos, than weeny ones. So you would have shelves to take the specific sizes, typically in uniform leather bindings.

If you can fit your books on shelves, you don't have enough books. I have too many for shelves and keep them in boxes that come up to my chest. Each box is numbered and the contents of all the boxes logged. The place looks like a warehouse, and parts appear messy, but I know where everything is.

The messiest person I ever knew was a (superb) GP. I'm surprised her PC still worked as there was about 3" of dust and pet dander for the processor fan to cut through. It's the first time I've felt the need to ask someone if they had a hoover before offering to clean their PC. If AI is any use, it should remind/beg users to give them a clean sometimes. There were crumbs in the bed and life, Jim in the hot tub.

Academics are notorious for having stuff everywhere, but knowing where every single slip of paper is. They are not paid enough for a big enough house, but have loads of stuff and projects to track.

The people I've met that have clutter everywhere, tend to be interesting people with lots happening. If you are interested in things, you tend to accumulate stuff. I really don't get the minimalist thing.

I'm also a big fan of having lots of pockets. I fill all of them too.

Not sure if most people organise by author entirely.

Ours (different peoples books on bookshelves) sorted by approximate subject area and then by Author or sometimes Subject (e.g. a book on Dali by Dawn Ades, would be under D for Dali, as although she is well known in her field, the "Art section" of bookshelves is mainly organised on the artist name*)

So very much like a library, by subject, and then by author.

* Though some of the books are big, so separate shelves for the more oversized (generally image heavy ones), so often have to check the "normal" height shelves & the "oversize"** shelves to check.

**Though our oversize is not as oversize as some peoples as sadly do not have e.g. an original elephant folio size copy of Audubon's Birds of America*** (though have been able to leaf / look through one many years ago, the Portland copy at Welbeck, before it was flogged for big money as it was on the tax exempt artworks list so us plebs had right to see it after jumping through hoops to get a visit organised & approved)

*** To add to complications, in our subject based shelving approach, our non original, non elephant but still quite big Audubon copy, is shelved in the wildlife -> birds oversize area rather than the art oversize area

ISTR an eccentric old lady used to own a famous London bookshop - it might have been Foyles. She insisted all of the stock was arranged by publisher.

The late New England Mobile Book Fair was once organized that way, everything shelved by publisher. Fortunately, they changed that.

I grew up shopping at NE Mobile Book Fair (a wonderful discount book shop). I learned to use "Books in Print" to find the publisher(s) of an author, but that was only for fiction. Everything else was sorted by subject.

Beat me to it...

Yes, it was Foyles of Charing Cross Rd. The computer dept was sorted by publisher... Microsoft here, Mcgraw Hill over there...

You took your book to the desk, you got a receipt, you took the receipt to the cash desk to pay, you returned to the desk with your stamped receipt and collected your book in a plain brown wrapper

It appears the practice wasn't Y2K compliant and was modernised after Christina Foyle died in 1999

My grandfather Dewey Decimalled his personal library.

(Mine, on the other hand, is total chaos, with the vast majority in boxes, not even on shelves.)

Hard to see the point.

I have one shelf that's organized by size. The books are lying down (stacked) and 5 mass-market paperbacks precisely fits the width. No books of a different height nor width will work, but different thicknesses are fine.

I have chucked all books and CD/DVDs away decades ago. If it is not digital on a HDD of my server then it is not worth keeping.

You need to be flogged, burned, drawn & quartered just as a 'start' !!!!

Books ... real dead-tree style information storage are SPECIAL ... never throw them away ... give them to someone who appreciates 'BOOKS' !!!

The feel, smell, the covers and the bindings are 'Wonderful' .....

The information inside is 'ALSO' of use !!!

I like books and treat them as works of art ... made by artisans through the ages ... never write/deface them or break the spines to make them 'lay flat or other abuses !!!'

Digital data is ephemeral and too easily lost ... either because of accidents, deletion or media formats becoming old/out of date.

I am old fashioned and still like books, for which I do not apologise !!!

A library is still a place of joy for me !!!

P.S.

I have and collect CD's & LP's. I like to 'OWN' my music and like to have music that has been recorded contemporaneously with the artist.

The old recording techniques / quality is part of the enjoyment.

I will accept 'GOOD' transfers to CD from LP's etc BUT do not like the constant 'upgrading' of old recordings by processing them to so called 'Digital' quality IF it changes the feel and character of the original performance.

Sometimes the original with all the 'faults' is BETTER !!!!

:)