Spaghetti Testing | Peter Smith

WTF?

Here’s the story from Monday’s Citizen. I read this,

Mr. Cashman said the introduction of BlackBerry (and other portable devices) into PSAC’s bargaining is something PSAC workers are crying for.

“They are the ones saying that this little machine takes over their life,” he said. “We are telling them, ‘you don’t have to answer your e-mail at night’.”

… and my first thought was that this makes PSAC members look stupid. Like we (yes I pay my dues — not like I have a choice!) can’t handle the technology.

Mitch Joel sums it up well:

I manage my technology – I don’t let my technology manage me (feel free to re-read that statement).

I like to think I do that also – I can turn it off if I choose.

But here’s an example of why I would not want to give up the connectivity we get from Blackberries and whatnot: yesterday I was feeling halfway rotten, recovering from a nasty stomach bug that laid me out the day before. So I chose to work from home, using the Blackberry and web access to my network via my laptop. Without these tools, I would have just taken a sick day.

So what did I do with myself? I was able to write some stuff that I had been meaning to get to for a long time, but just never quite got around to due to all the distractions and demands on my time at the cube farm. Office drones of the world, I’m sure you can relate — it’s bloody hard to do work that requires concentration when the hive is buzzing.

And you know what? The stuff I came up with, it was pretty good. Better yet — thanks to the ‘electronic tether,’ I was able to shop it around and incorporate improvements recommended by my colleagues too, without having to wait to shop it around when I would be back in the office.

So rather than lose a day of productivity, I was actually able to turn my somewhat but not fully impaired state to my advantage. I was also able to save a sick day for future use when I might *really* need it.