Comments on: So, How Was Your Whine Free Week?

By: Juuso

Juuso — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:24:22 +0000

Never see this coming. Cool story. :)

By: Lumooja

Lumooja — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:29:33 +0000

Juuso: Everyone probably knows lots of things which don’t work, but are not in your hands to fix. Some things have been fixed several times, and they keep breaking again.

So, normally I don’t whine about those things, as I hope someone will fix them someday. But since your blog made me more aware of the situation – you know it’s like this one guy said: when you pay attention to something, then you get aware of it – I felt the whole week like I have to whine about the things which have been broken since years.

So I started to write bug reports about all kind of little things to the responsible people and made a little remark also: Once the thing is fixed, please report back to me, and indicate also if it’s fixed permanently, and if not, why was it not possible to fix it permanently.

I got many things fixed, and since they affected many other peoples work too, who probably also felt normally that it’s not their job to whine about those, I think it was a very productive week, although it was not my job.

I also think that people set their priorities not always in the most effective way. They work to fix a big problem which takes long time, and all the little things which could be fixed within a minute each, have to wait. But as they now also got aware of the situation (since they got the attention by my mails), they let my little things go on higher priority and thus they got also more things fixed that week than normally.

By: Juuso

Juuso — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 10:45:33 +0000

Lumooja: can you give some examples about what you “whined more”? I don’t understand how it was productive to you… :)

By: Chris P

Chris P — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:51:45 +0000

I whined a bit about my server being randomly DDoSed. Other than that, not much. I probably made a few joking comments that I don’t remember about something I don’t remember, but personally I don’t count that.

By: decker

decker — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:16:15 +0000

Though whinging may be a british invention, we finns have refined it through weather forecasts. Meanwhile an old adage comes to mind: ‘The squeaky wheel gets the grease’. Whinging may actually have some function, but it should certainly be moderately used, to avoid becoming a total tosser.

By: Lumooja

Lumooja — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:09:08 +0000

I whined more than usually, just because whining is productive. I feel inefficient if I don’t actively progress things to future.

But I guess Juuso’s whole point was that you should whine more, and get things fixed that way.
People who just silently accept the bugs are no of no use to anyone.

Inverse psychology at work :)

By: Steven Egan

Steven Egan — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:08:15 +0000

I tried to pay attention, but I kept forgetting to write down the things I could have whined about. Not whining is my standard, and I don’t do anything interesting, so after a couple days of completely forgetting I stopped trying to remember. It’s generally not productive to whine, and it is a behavior that leads to worse behaviors. So, as far as I know, I didn’t whine and it was a normal week for me.

For the record, you asked and I answered. Those are the facts, not whining. When you are used to everything blowing up in your face a couple times before working, whining slows way down, or becomes your life.

As for the prize, it would be cool, but I’m not yet to the point of releasing games. Though I do hope to get there. There’s always next time.

By: Juuso

Juuso — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:12:55 +0000

I’ve always said that I want more taxes…

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:54:38 +0000

Ideally you want a massive tax bill because it means you earned a lot of money. Still you want to minimise it with with clever (legal) accountancy, but once you’ve done that, if it’s still massive (and you’ve saved the money for it as you’ve gone along) then it’s great news.