Mood: So... damn... tired...
Currently listening to: KL

Just got back home from Singapore with Al two hours ago and... dammit, i'm tired.

I'll talk about the trip tomorrow.

Gleefully surfing the net and checking my email at the moment, but just for the sake of sticking to my promise to a certain cretin out there i figured that i'd post something for their early Monday morning stuck-at-work-while-yours-truly-sleeps-on-sweet-jeebus-i-need-a-distraction blues.

So here y'go, some links of interest to idle your time away:

Blue

I'm currently waiting for this short animated feature to finish downloading... A couple of friends back down in Melbourne sang its praises to me the other week, its won a whole swag of awards and, hell, its a free (legal) download.

You can download it here (size is 238MB for DIVX). Bit-Torrent is required.



Blogging About Work Can Get Risky

Full article here.

Under the pseudonym of Sarcastic Journalist, Rachel Mosteller wrote this entry on her personal Web log one day last April:

"I really hate my place of employment. Seriously. Okay, first off. They have these stupid little awards that are supposed to boost company morale. So you go and do something 'spectacular' (most likely, you're doing your JOB) and then someone says 'Why golly, that was spectacular.' then they sign your name on some paper, they bring you chocolate and some balloons.

"Okay two people in the newsroom just got it. FOR DOING THEIR JOB."

This post, like all entries in Mosteller's online diary, did not name her company or the writer. It did not name co-workers or bosses. It did not say where the company was based. But apparently, Mosteller's supervisors and co-workers at the Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun were well aware of her Web log.

The day after that posting, she was fired.

Bill Stagg, managing editor of the Herald-Sun, said he could not comment on a personnel matter. But Mosteller, 25, said the blog was one of the reasons she was given for losing her job, and she is still in shock. "Considering I treated the blog as a smoke break, I didn't think of it as a problem."...

...Usually the blogger has little protection. "In most states," said Gregg M. Lemley, a St. Louis labor lawyer, "if an employer doesn't like what you're talking about, they can simply terminate you."

And that is happening enough that there is even a word for it -- getting "dooced." Blogger Heather B. Armstrong coined the phrase in 2002, after she was fired from her Web design job for writing about work and colleagues on her blog, Dooce.com.

Although workers have been writing blogs for years, companies have been slow to create policies to cover them. "Most employers as of now do not have blogging policies, just as 10 years ago they didn't have e-mail policies and now they do," Segal said.

E-mail and Internet policies that have been developed were created to deal with improper employee usage during work hours. Very few companies have rules governing employee computer habits outside work...

You have been warned! ;)

As an aside, i just find it interesting to note that even Google (the owner and innovator of blogspot.com) has run afoul of this... As noted in the same article:

Google Inc., the search engine company, has a blog for employees that shares such things as stories about the company dog and the person who creates the holiday art at Google.com. "It sort of turned into a very informal access to the public," said Biz Stone, a senior specialist at Google and author of "Who Let the Blogs Out?: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs."

But Google had its own controversy recently when a blog by employee Mark Jen suddenly went dark, sparking a flurry of speculation on what had happened to him.

When he returned, Jen explained his absence by saying, "I goofed and put up some stuff on my blog that's not supposed to be there" but that Google had been "pretty cool about all this" and adding, "thanks for and sorry for the frenzy of speculation."

Then the site went dead again. Yesterday, Google confirmed that Jen is no longer an employee, but the company would not discuss why. Jen could not be reached, but in a posting Wednesday, he said he would be back with more details.

By the next morning, about 50 people had written in, wondering if he had been dooced.

Despair Inc.

Awesome site that does an about face on those annoying (yet occasionally thought-provoking) 'pearls o' wisdom' pictures that uncles and aunties - not to mention the occasional idiot friend - would give to you as birthday gifts...

Maoist International Movement

It ain't no spoof site...

This website is pretty loaded on the ideology, but what you HAVE to check out are the reviews (especially the Video Game ones).

To wit:

Red Alert is 100% pure grade ruling class propraganda and serves as an excellent example as such. The ruling class perspective is the only education this game will provide. Sadly, for many Western teens, games such as Red Alert will be among their only education about the USSR and communism. "Command and Conquer: Red Alert" revels in violence. In effect, it is fascist-sympathizing, as it assumes that the removal of Hitler (and fascism) would be a negative thing. This attitude is similar to the sick people on the internet who populate a variety of forums and ask "Why didn't the Western Allies and Nazis team up to defeat communism?" as if it would have been the most desirable result.

Oh. Yeah.


Right, time to fall unconscious.