I got a new car

A red one. A Holden one.

It has more frippery than I can list, including a trip computer, Leather (Heated Seats) and a connector for a MP3 player.

It also apparently has a fuel consumption guide listed as 8.5 Litres per 100 Kms.

HA! I laugh at you. I've managed a 9.4 so far. And I'm not exactly Schumacher - and I'll tell you why.

The OCD part of me wants to (needs to) have some clarity and objective. So when the tip computer says my fuel consumption is 10.2 I need it to be 10.1. Then I need it to be 10.0 and then 9.9 and so on. Currently it is 8.9, and it's also saying I have enough go juice to go 648Kms.

I drive 30-odd kms to work and the same 30-odd kms home. Mostly in heavy traffic on the motorway. Alarmingly the fuel consumption at idle is horrific (I base this on the way the L per 100km figure keeps getting bigger, not on any scientific basis.

As I get nearer empty the chances of me getting the current 8.9 figure down -as an average to 8.5 diminishes - woe is me - this is stressful.

Still as I ponder this whilst sitting in my comfy warm heated leather seats I wonder how in earth they get to an urban cycle figure of 8.5 which seems improbable. Short journeys - such as I take on the weekend - seem to be very punishing, lots of stop signs and car-parks.

The only thing I can think of then is to go the long way to get the magic 8.5 figure - which means leaving earlier and spending more on petrol overall.

I may just give up.

BUT on the other hand it does have a connector for my MP3 - just a simple thing not a flash usb one, but I'm working on it. This has allowed me to listen again to some goodly music in the car. Which in the last week has included things like Gary Numan, Siouxie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Stranglers, Sex Pistols and other stuff like Massive Attack, Gorillaz, Pheonix Foundation and Fat Freddy's Drop.

Not all of this music is memorable or indeed much good, but I remember a goodly amount of the words so that must make them classics right ?

So there I am comfy in the aforementioned heated leather seats singing away - which is awesome but not as legendary as singing on the bus. I must be a sight to behold to the travellers - but I figured out if you wear a blue-tooth ear thingy you can at least pretend you're on the phone :-)

Social Media - Only for the masses

I'm lucky to have a  Manager that is keen on Social Media, and allows me some leeway in discovering and investigating the whole Social Media construct.

The corporate 'We' - have a Twitter Account, a Face-Book presence and a Blog Page at Square-Space, and a LinkedIn group.

What I'm coming to realise is, is that this stuff is ok, but it really is useful if you are in a business or service that is frequented by the end-user type. That is to say it's not useful for a distributor company,  such as the one I work for, that is in essence representing brands that already have their own Social Media presence.

For example? Air NZ and the Air Points Fairy is held to be one of the big NZ success stories. How would this go, or would be as successful  if it was a service being offered by say Flight Shop (just to name a name).

Telecom and Vodafone and Microsoft have a twitter presence in NZ too.

I've yet to see a success story, or a way to be successful story, for a company such as the one I work for.

Sure we can become a twitter presence and present information as it comes to hand to the market- but garnering followers for information that may already be available from the source appears to be the the missing bit that no one can offer up a solution for.

Many twitter"experts" are quick to offer the same pithy advice on twittering, that is you have to be in to win, listen and interact. What they fail to tell you is how to connect to the audience, especially if you are not the company directly responsible for the product being commented on.

Sure twitter is good and closing down or interacting with complaints/complainers, but given that we have interactive (real people) contact with those likely to complain then our twitter presence appears to be just lip service, for us anyway.

Recently out Australian parent company ran a daily twitter based comp, that frankly had #fail all over it. Basically because the "build it and they will come" ethos does not apply, or did not materialise.

Very generalised I know, I bet dollars to cents that there are niche distributor type business to business companies that are successful - these I would pick though are seen as brands in their own right, and not being representatives for the goods or service they offer.

What I am saying is that Business-to-Business type Social Media is a different game to the Business-to-End User customer one. And I can't find a play book for the B2B model.

More than my jobsworth

I've always been a fan of encouraging people to know as much about their particular job as possible. Firstly to get them to understand what they are doing, and what effect it has on them and others, Secondly because it makes the job more enjoyable. If you understand what you are doing, why you are doing and why what you do does what it does then you have a better understanding and ability to change things.

So it comes as a disappointment that a long time staff person is really struggling to understand the basics of what they do. They are reaching for a promotion to take on more responsibility and to be a "player" however it's clear they are pretty clueless.

So then for him doing this new stuff means a lot of people who can do this stuff are doing the stuff for him, and that means they are back to pushing a button and waiting for a response. Clueless as to how A gets to B.

And they ask four different people the same question.

And yes this bothers me, because despite the rhetoric and always promoting themselves they are a disappointment to me. Setting themselves aside as not needing any mentoring/training/motivation and talking up their always being early (and yet not doing anything) they are a clock-watcher.

We call then Levi. as in 5:01

What's possibly worse is that they work in a square of "my job" and that anything else is a chore, believing that seniority grants them immunity or respect from criticism.

I'm glad they are not on my team. I'm mifffed that they will want an inordinate amount of my team's time, well heck they will want a lot of time from everyone and I am so looking forward to the day when one of two things happen. Either they have to work late to resolve something, or they find someone else to do the work as part of a core responsibility set. Oh and I know that the demands for equipment are pending "now I'm doing X I need Y"

Bring it.

I also find that this is a bit unlike me, then I justify it by saying that there are doers and sayers. I know what I think I am and I know what I think they are not.

More than my jobsworth

I've always been a fan of encouraging people to know as much about their particular job as possible. Firstly to get them to understand what they are doing, and what effect it has on them and others, Secondly because it makes the job more enjoyable. If you understand what you are doing, why you are doing and why what you do does what it does then you have a better understanding and ability to change things.


So it comes as a disappointment that a long time staff person is really struggling to understand the basics of what they do. They are reaching for a promotion to take on more responsibility and to be a "player" however it's clear they are pretty clueless.

So then for him doing this new stuff means a lot of people who can do this stuff are doing the stuff for him, and that means they are back to pushing a button and waiting for a response. Clueless as to how A gets to B.

And they ask four different people the same question.

And yes this bothers me, because despite the rhetoric and always promoting themselves they are a disappointment to me. Setting themselves aside as not needing any mentoring/training/motivation and talking up their always being early (and yet not doing anything) they are a clock-watcher.

We call then Levi. as in 5:01

What's possibly worse is that they work in a square of "my job" and that anything else is a chore, believing that seniority grants them immunity or respect from criticism.

I'm glad they are not on my team. I'm mifffed that they will want an inordinate amount of my team's time, well heck they will want a lot of time from everyone and I am so looking forward to the day when one of two things happen. Either they have to work late to resolve something, or they find someone else to do the work as part of a core responsibility set. Oh and I know that the demands for equipment are pending "now I'm doing X I need Y"

Bring it.

I also find that this is a bit unlike me, then I justify it by saying that there are doers and sayers. I know what I think I am and I know what I think they are not.

Changing Places

We live in a nice community of a  hundred or so similarly designed and coloured houses, but as time does you have to make some maintenance steps

As its a plaster sided house we had to have the small cracks repaired, it's not a leaky house, but the fact is that the construction style does not suit New Zealand with it's harsher sun and Cooler winters.

So the plaster man came, and alarmed us all with his angle-grinder, and just by the number he found that we'd not noticed. The house then looked a bit patch-work and would have frightened the neighbours to all heck - leaky home syndrome being what it is and that. The house opposite who is having some similar work done the chap used a glue gun!! I know what I'd rather pay for.

Then the house washer came, water blasting his way around the roof and the walls

Then the painter. And do you know how hard it is to choose a paint. Like I said each of the houses are a similar design and colouring, so you really feel obliged to kind of stick near that same scheme.

Resene must love us. I think we tried 10-12 colours, and then finally settled on a colour recommendation from the actual painter of a colour called JOSS

With trepidation we agreed and he's painting now, slowly so slowly, up and down his ladder doing the eves and the cedar barge-boards. But the bit he has painted in JOSS seem to be magnificent

Real estate sharks have been popping letters in the mail-box "are we selling" and the little old ladies in the street are stopping him working to discuss the colour. He, the painter, tells one story where in Herne Bay (Auckland) he painted a house in SISAL, the neighbours were very keen to know what color etc etc. Six months later they painted their house the same much to the annoyance of home owner #1. Flattery huh

I don't expect a flood of house painting anytime soon in our street, but who knows