Yes, the New Icons Stink

I'm generally not a hater, and generally not one to fear change, so I tried to keep an open mind on the things I was hearing about the new ship icons.  Every patch brings out a wave of forum angst directed at CCP. It's usually a case of the 3 bears conundrum: The patch is too big, too small, and rarely does CCP get credit for doing something "just right." I heard the angst on icons brewing and shrugged it off as "business as usual."

So I was caught off guard when I actually didn't like the new icons.  "OK," I thought. "You'll get used to them." So over the course of the past couple days I did some explore sites in the Zealot and then ran some lvl4's in the Golem and ... The icons still suck. 

I find myself picking my primary targets not from the icon, but on the target's name. I'm effectively ignoring the new feature. I catch myself and try to force my eyes to the icon column, but they just won't stay there.

Now, a few of them aren't bad. The sentry gun, MTU, and accel gate are fine.  The beacon icon is OK, but needs to be a different color or something.

But the differences between ship icons are too subtle.  It is too easy to miss an important ship that might have a web or scram equipped, or a lurking little bastard that will shoot up my drones. On my screen, I have trouble telling between battleship, BC, and cruiser icons.The wreck icon is also particularly hard to use ... Filled or unfilled was so much easier to see.

And krikey, drone icons are supposed to be X's. What they've done to my little mechanical friends is just unnatural.

I agree with those that point out that making the UI easier to read by adding a huge variety of icons is a move in the wrong direction.  It's called an overview (as opposed to a detailed view) for a reason.  Making the overview more complicated while striving for simplicity is like saying I'm going to fix your flat tire by letting the rest of the air out.  CCP continues to talk about new player retention and getting folks up the learning curve ... How will this possibly help?

I am almost never on the bandwagon of rolling back features, but in this case I'd be in favor of a classic mode.

Please.

How Spreadsheets In Space Saved My Job

About 11 years ago, give or take, I started my empire building Merlins.  I graduated to Moas and Apocs and Tempests.  I built all kinds of things, and like most spaceship industrialists I had an excel sheet.

It was nothing fancy.  Ship name, raw materials per run, cost for each material, and how many you wanted to build of each item.  The outputs were simple - projected profit and how much trit/pyer/iso (etc) I needed to buy and haul.

It struck me tonight while making dinner that the old EVE build sheet might have saved the jobs of 35 folks I work with and avoided much stress upon their families.  It was such a simple yet powerful model that I've been using the same fundamental layout for all kinds of things over the years.

Long story short, yours truly built a labor model not unlike the old EVE sheet.  Put "Sr. Engineer" in for the Merlin, extrapolate how many heads we want over the next 5 years instead of accounting for trit/pyer/iso, account for some labor rates, and the math flows from there.  Repeat the recipe for the entire team and start summing costs by fiscal year at the bottom.

It's not rocket science.  Far from it.  But my model was detailed enough to hold up under scrutiny, and sophisticated enough to show that the "move all the work to California" option being pushed by my boss's boss (aka "little boss") was actually several million dollars MORE expensive than leaving a perfectly good team right where it's at.

We had a series of big meetings this week.  So, after a break, we put the numbers on the screen.  My numbers disagreed greatly with little boss's hand calculations.  He all but attacked me and the temperature of the room began to rise steadily.  I sidestepped and parried his verbal barrage and politely refused to remove the content from the screen.

Meanwhile, from where I stood, I could see the boss's boss's BOSS (aka "Big Boss") absorbing all the content with a squint and a sly little smile.

"Keep reading, please, please keep reading..." I thought to myself.

With some help from my coworkers, we bought enough time and distracted little boss long enough that the Big Boss started asking questions.  Victory.  We had a 20 minute conversation about my rationale and assumptions, and I sent him home with a copy.  Little boss was pissed, and I caught hell the following morning.

I'm sure I had an insolent little smirk on my face during his little rant.  Doesn't matter.  The damage was done.  Internet Spaceship Spreadsheets have, I hope, kept the little bastard from screwing 35 people with half-truths and a blatant power grab.

And if it doesn't pan out... at least now he'll have to work for it.

Work Sucks

This is the obligatory post where I say that work sucks and I'm busy.

I wish I could say that everything here is fine, and I'll get through it, but I have suddenly found myself leading the team that will be responsible for saving the jobs of 35 of my teammates and friends.

These are the people that hired me as a fresh out, and they have been my peers for the past 17 or so years.  In my current assignment, I am their deputy team lead, mentor, marriage counselor, and sometimes priest.  

We have one last gasp of hope that will largely decide if the jobs stay or go.   That meeting is next Wednesday, and we are pulling out all stops to get the data together that will make or break our satellite site's future.

And after that, the real work begins.

Jump Fatigue IRL

Okay, I'm back from from a business trip that consumed most of my week so that I could attend 6 hours of meetings on Wednesday.

The place I was visiting is approximately a 9 hr drive from my home.  It's located in a reasonably large metro area, but happens to be in a part of the country that is surrounded by large airport hubs, and is overshadowed by them, i.e. there are very few flights servicing the exact airport I needed to get to/from.  The corporate policy I deal with ties my hands on travel, resulting in wasted time and energy for the sake of appearances.

To be clear - as a mid-level manager in my organization, I have almost free reign over programmatic issues.  I can make million dollar decisions with a phone call, and my daily responsibilities include making decisions that can take human life (in a very dramatic fashion) if there is ever a failure of our product.

Yet on the administrative side I am hamstrung by one-size-fits-all policies that (for example) include a large bias towards NOT driving for routine travel.  The corporate goons can't and won't ever understand my programmatics, and therefore don't even try to intrude (thank God).  But they will argue with me about $50 decisions to take Airline X vs. Airline Y (even though with bag fees it's cheaper to fly Airline X).  Or they'll tell me by edict that I can't possibly drive 9 hours and that it "looks better" if I simply conform and spend 12+ hours in the airport to reach the same destination.  I can't, (again by edict) fly into Las Vegas (because of "appearances") even though I can get a direct flight there and drive (total door to door time of 6 hours), vs. being forced to take a connection and THEN drive from a less provocative airport (total door to door time of 12 hours).

So, on Tuesday, we spent about 12 hours getting to our destination instead of driving for 9.  On paper it looked a lot better - I should have been onsite by 2 in the afternoon.  But, first flight was delayed 20 minutes, meaning we missed our connection after a mad scramble from gate C24 to gate A1-G, through tunnels, up escalators, down escalators, and even a friggin' train.  We missed our connection by 5 minutes.  Instead of waiting for another 8 hours for the next flight (or hahaha, taking another flight that sent me to Dallas and THEN back to my destination), I grabbed a rental and drove the final ~120 miles to the endpoint.  The additional rental car cost was $177 to add the 1-way route, and I fully expect to get reamed on Monday over it.

Yesterday, likewise, included every dumb thing an airport can do to you and I spent a tad over 12 hours fighting airports, mechanical delays, missed connections, TSA shenanigans (complete with squad cars and a men-in-black suburban surrounding our embrair commuter plane just before we pushed back).

Bonus points was the redneck 3 rows away from me with incredible body odor (dude, you may be wearing full camo so we can't SEE you, but we sure as hell can SMELL you).

This is a rant, I know. I really started typing to try to explain why the posts here have been quiet.  The meetings themselves were productive, and I got to spend quality time (i.e. schmooze, hobnob, brown nose, pick your verb) with one of our offsite bigwigs that sends us $$.  Had I to do over, I would still attend the meeting.

And I really love my job.  I do.  Apart from some arcane admin policies, we're not that bad.  We have a great local team and the things we do have lasting impacts.  We do cool things on a cool product with very little adult supervision.  It is by far the best job I've had in a 15 year career, and it's a job that I hope to retire from in another 15-20.

But dammit, I'm about to go to my doctor and complain about an "inner ear condition" so that I can get a note that lets me drive instead of fly.

So yes, this ... this is what Jump Fatigue looks like in real life.  More posts to follow, I've had plenty of down time lately to ponder topics to write about.