ReBlogging

Hello folks!

As regular visitors to koffdrop.com will have noticed, there’s been a flurry of posts in the last few days. In fact, we’re talking over 50 posts.

What’s going on? Has Koffdrop turned into some news-posting junkie?

The answer is no. I’ve been playing with some things behind the scenes that allow me to provide a huge content-boost to this site.

Many of the posts, in fact all of the posts under the reBlogged category, are not of my creation. On my server, there is a rather clever news aggregator. All my favourite feeds are in there and I read through the news and flag anything that I find particularly pertinent to me and my interests. With a push of a button, these flagged news items get sent to the front page of koffdrop.com. The origin of these posts is always shown at the bottom of each item.

If you wish to subscribe exclusively to these cherry-picked news items you can do so by adding this address to your news/rss collector. You’ll find this address at the very bottom of every page on koffdrop.com.

If you are subscribed to the R|Mail distribution of koffdrop.com (to do so, simply enter your email into the box at the top of the sidebar on the right) then you’ll not be blitzed with 40 or so emails every time I publish my day or two’s worth of news items. Only items personally crafted by yours truly will appear in the R|Mail deliveries, reBlogs won’t appear.

Also, due to a bit of tweaking, you can expect to stumble upon streaming content in some of my posts. Any videos that I personally add (as opposed to ones added via reBlogging) will be placed under the video category so you can always find them quickly should you ever want to.

And that’s about it for now. If you have any questions, criticism, suggestions or recommended newsfeeds then I’m all ears.

Cry Engine 2 footage

I’m liking posting streaming video šŸ™‚

Just like God of War 2, this footage was presented at the Game Developers Conference. It’s unclear precisely which platform this is running on but, either way, it sure is pretty.

I’m not dead

Hello.

It’s been a while since koffdrop.com was updated in any way. I typically write posts when IĀ’m at the office between bouts of work and boredom. I’ve touched on my workload in older posts. Well, recently the workload has become totally ridiculous – and not in a good way. To summarise, the system I cater for used to be covered by four people. It’s now covered by me alone. The reason for this is that staff keep leaving our team of eight due to the poor salary. The result is a constant cycle of training new staff and watching them leave. The thing is, we’ve been shedding staff for the last six months and are now down to three members (myself and two others) and ‘company policy’ has been quoted as reasons for my employer not getting their act together to solve the situation.

Things had got to a point where I’ve been losing sleep and unable to relax in my free time – affecting me and those around me. Recently, a director saw fit to add to my already impossible workload on the basis that their “isn’t a processing capacity issue”. It’s nice to know that I, apparently, am not a factor in overseeing this Ā£7 million a year system for my employer.

Things got so bad that I have had to consider what immediate action I can take to benefit myself – it is painfully apparent that my employer doesn’t see any need for urgent action and I have absolutely no confidence in them supporting me in my work. Part of this action has been to see my GP who immediately signed me off work for a starting period of two weeks and insisted that I do all I can not to think about work. It’s helping to some degree, but I still have grave concerns about my work environment which I fear won’t go away just because I’m not there.

I’ve worked in some pretty interesting environments. I’ve had numerous instances of the need to do all-nighters and all-weekenders. Hell, I’ve even had times when I come to work on a Saturday and not leave the office until Friday. In the context of that particular job, I can accept that. Years ago I worked for a family-run businesses which, frankly, I would never ever recommend unless you’re part of that family. I’d seen many rules broken in those days. But my current employer, without question, is the worse of any I’ve found myself with. For a company that likes to quote “we’re not a blame culture” it’s telling that a good 80% of my work goes under the heading of “covering my ass”. I’ve not worked anywhere else where I’ve seen my team mates moved to tears by the insensitivity and unprofessionalism of other staff. I’ve never worked so hard for such an underpaid role and I’ve never seen management as shoddy or disinterested with the needs of the actual workers as this one. My employer proudly proclaims it is Business of the Year for the second year in a row. It is one of the largest employers in my city. It has offices worldwide.

Whilst I have not signed any contract of non-disclosure it is not my policy to burn any bridges. However, my employer seems to have a serious lack of understand of the needs of some of it’s employers and a tendency to rebuff many queries with “it’s company policy”. For example, I have unused holiday and the end of the financial year approaches. I have no interest in using this holiday as, with my current workload, it will be counter productive as my absence will create significantly more work for me on my return (after all, there is nobody else to look after my work when I am not there – my colleagues all have impossible workloads). So I am unwilling to take holiday due to the environment I find myself in as a result of the (in)action of my employer to provide support for me. My employer, adding fuel to the fire, likes to remind me that if I don’t take this holiday it is “company policy” not to carry it over to the next financial year nor is it “company policy” to reimburse me for it financially. The result? A lose/lose situation for me whilst the company ignores the exceptional circumstances it has put me in and quotes the “company policy” line. There are countless other instances like this that have taken moral to all new depths and I look forward to getting the chance to speak to my employers directly about each one during my exit interview when I eventually find another job.

I feel a battle with my employer is looming. Although my work is professional and my methods thorough and dutifully keeping within all the company’s many, many policies I am confident that the company will try to claim some moral high ground or accuse me of misconduct. I can only wonder what might happen if I was forced to play some of the aces up my sleeve.

Normal games-ranting service will be resumed shortly.