"The Zone"

A post yesterday (by a lady called Anja) on a bulletin board I belong to resonated with something in me - so much so that it kept cropping up in my thoughts throughout the day yesterday.

Quote:

...... the best feeling is when i emerge from the fog, victorious. when i was a kid, at school, we would get this assignment to write a story or essay. i would map it out in my head and then dive in there, all sounds would fade around me and it would be like magic, i would get it down exactly like i thought i would. that was the biggest magic in the world to me, the fog ....

Now, this is exactly how I do my best work, how I find solutions to perplexing prolems - how I need to work to get anything done. I need to be able to immerse myself in that fog - unlike Anja, I can't summon it at will, I have to have no interruptions.

Thing is, I was always told I was strange needing that. I should be able to concentrate through whatever - and be able to return to full concentration after any interruption. "look at... if they can do it, you should be able to." Whether doing my school homework, or later in life, working in an office - open plan! Satan's invention - I was expected to be able to answer any stupid question or request and maintain the same level of concentration throughout. I felt very inadequate.

That why when Anja shared this with us it created such ripples in my thoughts.

And then, this morning, through one of those coincidences, while web-hopping, I encountered in two separate articles the zone - a concept very similar to Anja's fog.

Quote:

We all know that knowledge workers work best by getting into "flow", also known as being "in the zone", where they are fully concentrated on their work and fully tuned out of their environment. They lose track of time and produce great stuff through absolute concentration. This is when they get all of their productive work done. Writers, programmers, scientists, and even basketball players will tell you about being in the zone. The trouble is, getting into "the zone" is not easy. When you try to measure it, it looks like it takes an average of 15 minutes to start working at maximum productivity. ........ The other trouble is that it's so easy to get knocked out of the zone. Noise, phone calls, going out for lunch, having to drive 5 minutes to Starbucks for coffee, and interruptions by coworkers -- ESPECIALLY interruptions by coworkers -- all knock you out of the zone. If you take a 1 minute interruption by a coworker asking you a question, and this knocks out your concentration enough that it takes you half an hour to get productive again, your overall productivity is in serious trouble. If you're in a noisy bullpen environment like the type that caffinated dotcoms love to create, with marketing guys screaming on the phone next to programmers, your productivity will plunge as knowledge workers get interrupted time after time and never get into the zone.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articl...000000068.html

Another article, How to Shut up and Get to Work references the one I quoted from above

Quote:

When you have a long stretch where you aren’t bothered, you can get in the zone. The zone is when you are most productive. It’s when you don’t have to mindshift between various tasks. It’s when you aren’t interrupted to answer a question or look up something or send an email or answer an im. The alone zone is where real progress is made. Getting in the zone takes time. And that’s why interruption is your enemy. It’s like rem sleep – you don’t just go to rem sleep, you go to sleep first and you make your way to rem. Any interruptions force you to start over. rem is where the real sleep magic happens. The alone time zone is where the real development magic happens.

http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/webapps/how-to-shut-up-and-get-to-work


I feel vindicated.

Flo, her expensive computer - and Tiscali

Flo (name changed to... well, you know - names are always changed in these kind of things, aren't they?) well, anyway, Flo called me one day to ask me about building her a new computer and installing her a wireless network. New client at that point, she'd pulled my name out of the local directory.

Unlike most clients, she wasn't looking to get the cheapest deal she coud - she wanted a relatively high spec box, and she was aware it would cost. So I costed one for her.

For those who are interested, here are the spec:

• Asus K8V-MX SKT754 motherboard;
• AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64bit 3000+ 512kb L2 Cache 754pin;
• Corsair memory, 2x512MB matched pair, DDR 400 CL2.5;
• Seagate Barracuda Plus 200GB 7200RPM HDD;
• NEC dual layer DVD writer;
• Sapphire Radeon 9600 AGP X8 256MB DDR DVI TV-Out;
• Internal floppy/ media card reader;
• Good quality silver with black trim case, 350W PSU.

Nice case, isn't it?

With that, she wanted a 19" Neovo glass fronted monitor and Canon Pixma iP5200 printer.

Done. Delivered. Installed.

We had hassle with that computer. Flo thought she knew about computers. She also had a "knowledgeable" mate (there's always one of them, isn't there) who castigated her for getting an Athlon instead of a Pentium IV (never mind that in independent tests, Athlon beat the laggard P4 hands down, especially in multimedia apps, which she intended to run.) Faults were found, faults were rectified or pointed out not to be faults. I spent extra hours on installing her software as she had it on her old computer, then upgrade her old computer to WindowsXP so that her 10 year old son could use it for his homework - cos the little tyke couldn't possibly do his homework on Windows 98 now, could he? - and didn't charge. Just so's I end up with a happy customer.

Anyway, all that aside - she also wanted wireless networking, so that her son could access the internet from his own computer - for his homework. So, I got her a Linksys modem/wireless router and a wireless network card, went there to install it.

Found Flo tearing her hair out - her broadband connection had failed and would not reconnect. So she got on the phone to -
yes, Tiscali customer support.

According to Flo, she spent some two hours on the phone to them - various "technicians" put her and the computer through their paces. Eventually the advice was - yes, "reinstall Windows" (see my post about ntl "customer service" below.) So she ended up with two instances of Windos XP on her computer, a confusing choice of Operating Systems at boot ("please select your operating system: Windows XP or Windows XP") and no internet connection.

I looked down at the modem - ADSL light was flashing; the modem wasn't trained. I asked her whether she told Tiscali that and whether she asked them to check the line. Yes, she had, and they assured her the line was just fine. Had she suggestd to them the modem had developed a fault? Yes, she had - their answer was, no, it's a Windows problem. OK, I said, let's try the router.

Installed the router, it trained without a problem. Her internet connection was up and running in less than 15 minutes.

This time I did charge her to sort out the mess of two XP installations.

Found on the web

on the site of an interesting young man. (I hope he updates it more often now...) His site is called siteaboutnothing.

The following was really emailed to a prominent ISP in the year 2000:

> Incidentally, have you ever visited your Tech. Support?  I have
> this image of a room full of Bermudan pyjama clad folk, swinging
> gently in hammocks, sipping from a glass of iced mango, pineapple
> and durum juice, with umbrella, reading Socrates's Elegy to a Roman
> Churchyard, listening to Beethoven's "Tech Support Blues" whilst
> all around them computers quietly hum.  When a problem arises that
> is not coffee down the back of the server or a loose wire, they
> heroically struggle with incomprehensible faults from indecipherable
> software that refuses to do what it says on the box until some
> inspired genius does something truly novel which for no particular
> reason, cures the fault.
>
> It is like that isn't it ?  Not just a call centre with subcontracted
> technicians?

NTL Customer Service

Background: I do PC repairs, upgrades, new builds and general problem solving in and around a small town in South-East England. Most of my clients are private individuals, a few (very) small businesses.

One Friday afternoon I was in London, seeing a friend off at Euston. I get a call from a new client - he's just had NTL cable installed but can't get on the 'net. He does have TV and phone, no internet though. He really needs me to come straight away. OK, I say, I'll stop by his place on my way back from London.

Got there, get to his computer. They've rigged a network connection between the computer in the bedroom and the cable modem in the living room (not an unusual setup.) What is unusual is that he has 2 operating systems installed on his computer - both Windows XP. He says that NTL customer service told him to reinstall XP, because his XP was corrupt and that's why he couldn't go on the internet.

/right.

Apparently they talked him through tweaking a series of settings and when that didn't work they decided XP was corrupt. They also talked him through the reinstallation process and that's how he ended up with two identical OS on his computer. He was also pretty upset that he lost some stuff that was pretty important to him. No, they didn't tell him to back up before reinstalling.

//ok, so maybe he didn't quite understand what and how exactly they were telling him to do...

I spend the rest of the evening backing up his old files (they were still there, he just didn't know how to find them), formatting the hard drive and doing a completely fresh install. At the end of it, still no connection. I tell them I'll come back the next morning with my laptop and a network cable and see if that connects.

Next day, I set up my laptop with my network cable. No connection. But, the cable modem also has the option of connecting through USB. Try USB, still no connection - although, this time I can see the modem and its IP address assigned by NTL. Time to call NTL.

After holding for what seems like en eternity, the call is answered by "Maria", who has (I think) a Polish accent. I explain the problem to her. She proceeds to talk me through a series of steps, most of which I'd already done. From previous experience with various so-called customer support services, I figure, they've got a script, they've got to go through it, so be it. Any comments of mine are - as expected - ignored. I get the feeling she doesn't even understand what I'm talking about. Maybe she doesn't understand my accent.

At the end of the process we're right where we started - that is, no internet connection.

Here I've got to recap the situation - we had a new cable installation; two separate computers could not connect to the internet through it; one of them running XP, the other Win98 (ok, so it's an old laptop); we do have TV, we do have phone, but no internet.

So, at this stage "Maria" tells me I've got to reinstall Windows. It's corrupt.

I tell "Maria" that I had accessed the internet via the same laptop, at my home that morning. Through my network. It doesn't matter, she says, you were probably accessing a normal internet page, we need you to access a secure NTL site to validate your sign-in as a new customer, and if you can't, that means your Windows installation is corrupt. There's a file in Windows that is used only when you acees a secure SSL site, and it must be corrupt. You need to reinstall Windows. I tell her I did actually access a secure site that morning, my bank. Ah, she says, but the NTL SSL site is a special site, which needs that file. You need to reinstall Windows.

I try to reason with her. Look, I say, we've got two separate computers, one running XP, one running W98. It doesn't make sense that both have the same corruption, especially since one of them functioned perfectly well just a few hours before. It must be the modem, please send your engineer to reconfigure the cable modem - or replace it if need be. "Maria" repeats that I have to reinstall Windows.

At this point I ask to speak to a supervisor. She won't put me through. I argue. After a few long minutes of back and forth arguments, she finally relents and puts me through to a supervisor.

The supervisor's obviously been told I'm a difficult customer and is very curt. He takes me through the same steps I've been through with our "Maria". I tell him we've done that and ask whether we can skip it and move to diagnostics from his side. He loses his temper and shouts at me. I ask him whether he's irritable that morning and would he like to pass me to someone less stressed. He calms down and decides to skip the rest of the steps - after I reiterate that two separate computers on two separate network cables can not access the internet and it can't be both have developed the same fault. Yes, he says, on the face of it, looks like you have a point there.

To cut the rest of the story short, he checked the modem settings from his side, found where the configuration done by the NTL engineer the previous day was wrong and reset it. We then had internet connection through the USB cable, but not through the network cable. He promised to send an engineer on Monday to check and fix the network connection.

The final end to the story: on Monday afternoon the client called to tell me that the engineer had come and replaced the faulty network cable he had installed the previous Friday and they finally could access the internet through their computer.

So, the NTL engineer installed a cable modem and configured it incorrectly; installed a faulty network cable; did not check either connection; and NTL customer service steadfastly maintained the customer's Windows files were corrupt and that they had to reinstall Windows. I wonder, had I not insisted on speaking to a supervisor and held my ground with him as well - I wonder how many times NTL would've made these people reinstall Windows before they decided to check their own cable installation. I also wonder how many other people had similar experiences with them - and others, because this is a problem that's not confined to this ISP only.