Withdrawal symptoms

I did pretty well on Monday at work with the withdrawal symptoms ...

My actual boss and I are both sport nuts, so we tend to swap latest score info between us and natter on analysis too. She's got a keen analytical mind that's very into cricket, so you can probably imagine how in depth we can go on that.

(As a lunchtime conversation of course!)

Anyway - those swapping of Stuff Has Happened, plus the typical First Day Back From Leave hecticness let me avoid thinking too much of Olympics. That didn't really hit until Tuesday, when I was really missing the Olympic TV combined with watching several streams via the desktop.

What's been the salvation ? The London2012 Android app is pretty darn good. I can't remember what the info feeds were like from Beijing in 2008 but for this Olympics, the dissemination of information has been incredible. Top notch. And I don't think that's from improvement in technology (cricinfo has been doing ball by ball commentary at a similar level for many years), it's just been done in a simple, seamless way.

Check it out while it's there : www.london2012.com

It's simple, yet efficient and remembers what web pages should be - lean & clean. I wonder if the rise of the smartphone has something to do with that ? Are they making web designers go away from cluttered pages and back to simpler ones ? Not a bad thing. It's backed up by the Android app, which has up to the minute live score info for all events plus there's a Voice Of The Games which gives short paragraph updates for events that have just completed.

What they seem to have got cracked now is the process of pulling the information in and distributing it to the web, in near real time.

So some of the sting of that withdrawal has been taken away by Just Enough info being available via the Android app. Plus with the explosion of social media, more and more updates are coming across that way.

I do get another type of withdrawal symptom though from a leave period. I thrive on interaction with other people. I get horribly bored when I'm on my own. Things like games are too predictable, stuff on telly is often a repeat, memory means I'm struggling to keep the music library fresh.

Being around people is completely different. The interactions around an office defy prediction. Especially in larger offices like the floorplates at our work. (The buildings are Big). We keep a good sense of humour going too. Offices that keep a sense of humour get more done, even if that humour is sometimes very dark ...

Oh and if someone smiles at me in the office, I know that it's because of something I've done rather than some scripted thing that would happen anyway. Even better if someone chuckles at something I say. Oh and games don't randomly award you with real cake for no good reason.

Cake is life.

Oh and it's a huge bonus when the Cake attracts more smiles. We had a visitation from the BM mob from the old team. Talking of interactions that defy prediction - lol :-) That mob was always just one half comment away from breaking into something : Silly, Scary, Outrageously Amusing. I only tended to pick up on it halfway through and it tended to be way past my understanding (think caveman!), which is where the scariness comes in.

Oh was I talking about withdrawal symptoms ?

Olympics - I'll definitely miss the games when they're over
Cake - diets are evil but cake brings smiles
Old team people - scary ! And awesome to see them come up for the cake

PS I devoured my donut so fast this morning that it appeared to have been inhaled.
PS2 Scary can be wonderful too. Especially when it is that special brand of female scary where you have no clue whatsoever as to what they're going to be getting up to next.