February 26, 2009

Sneak Preview - Fallen Angel - Alternate

Xannon enters the temple and kneels before the statue of Bast. Having only recently been reopened, the marble floors and alabaster lamps still reflected the evening light from the nearby windows. The newly rebuilt statue welcomed everyone with open arms, including Xannon. He feels a presence behind him.
"Rise, Xannon. What is it you wish?"
Xannon stands and turns to see the beautiful figure of Bast. He catlike eyes glowing slightly in the night. He is momentarily entranced by her beauty but quickly regains himself.
"Why did it have to be this way? Why the years of war, death, pain, and suffering? I was ready to fight for you, to end the war. I could have done it. I feel it in my bones, my heart, my soul. I know I've asked you many times since my return but you have never given me a straight answer. Either I'm not ready, or I wouldn't understand, but you never give me a chance to understand. You never tell me when I'll be ready. What would have happened if Sarah hadn't died? If I would have stayed with you?"
Bast ponders this while strolling over the the statue of herself. It stood over twice as tall as a normal person, nearly 15 feet.
"You were always my favorite student. Have I told you that? Celeste thought the same way. She knew things about you. Things she shouldn't have known, couldn't have known, but still knew. She knew deep down you would return. That's why she did what she did that night you came to visit. She sacrificed herself for you."
Bast stops for a moment and stares off into the night.
"So many sacrifices. So many lost for the greater good."
"What greater good? 400 years of war? The loss of hundreds of your followers? Most of them as a result of my actions? Even Gatomon fell to my blade."
"Life," Bast states simply. "The continuation of life."
"Would it not have been better to extinguish the forces of Kardis when we had the chance? What was gained by extending the war? Tell me, Bast. Explain it to me so that I may understand."
She stops and looks into his eyes.
"Yes. You are ready. But you may not like what you hear. If Sarah had not died, if you had stayed with me, there would have been wonderful glory and heroic death for you."
"Doesn't sound too bad so far."
Bast turns back toward the open window.
"You would have left the temple as a full Mage Knight of Bast. The best we have ever seen. You would have led my armies in a valiant and heroic assault on the forces of Kardis. You would have won the war in only a few short months. But you would not have killed the High Priest of Kardis nor his apprentice. They would have escaped back to their temple in the southern mountains where they would wait and rebuild. They would have still found the book of ancient magics, broken the seal and brought about the apocalypse."
"Which is exactly what I did."
She turns toward him. "Yes, but he would not have stopped. He would have confronted you one on one in the battlefield. You would have fought valiantly and you would have lost. Killed by the High Priest of Kardis. Once you were defeated, the best of the best, the army would have crumbled faster than their morale. The forces of Kardis led by an unstoppable menace would have swept across the lands killing anything and everything. Gatomon would have made a last ditch effort to stop him, but even with the combined powers of the archangels of Gaia, she would have failed. Her and the archangels would have all perished. The forces of Bast and Yehova would have fallen leaving the world to slowly wither away into nothing, eventually every living creature on the planet would have died. Kardis and Rinous would have achieved their ultimate goal."
Xannon lowers his eyes to the floor and thinks about her words.
"Was there no other way?" he finally asks.
"There were, but you must understand that you are special. By yourself, you are the most powerful sorcerer on the planet. Any other path we would have taken would have resulted in your death. By giving you over to Kardis, you would live. As long as you were alive I had a chance to get you back. As the years passed, your anger grew and it became harder and harder to feel you.
"You felt me the day you died. Yet you felt cursed. You felt me every time Sarah's spirit touched your heart. Yet you felt angry. It was then I knew the only way to get you back was to create for you a way to relieve your anger, your hate, your sorrow. That was the reason for the final conflict. That was why so many of my followers were put to the sword. We needed you. I needed you, Xannon.
"From the very moment of your birth I knew you were special. I touched you, nurtured you, loved you. It tore my soul apart to send you away. Just as it tore apart Celeste's. You could see it in her eyes, couldn't you? The day of your trial?"
Xannon turns away from Bast and looks out the front doors of the temple. He wipes away the tears forming in his eyes.
"Enough. I understand everything now. I know why you did what you did. But I do have one more question."
Bast walks up behind him and wraps her loving arms around him in a mothers embrace.
"Where do I go from here? Do I return to Sarah and try to live a normal life. Or do you have bigger plans for me?"
She squeezes him slightly.
"Always bigger plans for you, Xannon. Always."

February 11, 2009

How to Manage Geeks

How to Manage Geeks

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

When the geeks at NCR in Australia threatened to go on strike, it was a move that could have paralyzed ATMs, supermarket cash registers and airplane check-in. This underlines the fact that IT has become so central to almost all corporations, that any disruption may cost a lot of time and money, which again means that keeping the geeks happy at work is an absolute requirement for a modern business. Happy geeks are effective geeks. The main reason IT people are unhappy at work is bad relations with management, often because geeks and managers have fundamentally different personalities, professional backgrounds and ambitions. Some people conclude that geeks hate managers and are impossible to lead. The expression “managing geeks is like herding cats” is sometimes used, but that’s just plain wrong. The fact is that IT people hate bad management and have even less tolerance for it than most other kinds of employees.
So where does it go wrong? Here are some top ways that managers can lead geeks effectively and respectfully.

Steps

1. Value training. If a boss thinks that training is a waste of money and expects you to teach yourself, you feel pretty demotivated in any job. Training matters, especially in IT, and managers must realize that and budget for it. Sometimes you get the argument that “if I give them training a competitor will hire them away.” That may be true, but the alternative is to only have employees who are too unskilled to work anywhere else. Also, if you pay them well and have good benefits, they won't go somewhere else.
   
2. Give recognition. Since managers may not understand the work geeks do very well, it’s hard for them to recognize and reward a job well done, which hurts motivation. The solution is to work together to define a set of goals that both parties agree on. When these goals are met the geeks are doing a great job.
   
3. Keep overtime down. Avoid taking the approach of wringing as much as possible out of IT employees just because you figure they don't lead a normal life. Wrong! That’s a huge mistake and overworked geeks burn out or simply quit. It's a complete myth that long work hours are good for business.
   
4. Avoid using management-speak. Geeks hate management-speak and see it as superficial and dishonest. Managers shouldn’t learn to speak tech, but they should drop the biz-buzzwords. A manager can say “We need to proactively impact our time-to-market” or simply use plain English and stick to “We gotta be on time with this project”. The latter makes total sense to everyone involved.
   
5. Don't try to be smarter than the geeks. When managers don’t know anything about a technical question, they should simply admit it. Geeks respect them for that, but not for pretending to know. And they will catch it - geeks are smart.
   
6. Act consistently. Geeks have an ingrained sense of fairness, probably related to the fact that in IT, structure and consistency is critical. The documentation can’t say one thing while the code does something else, and similarly, managers can’t say one thing and then do something else.
   
7. Don't make the mistake of ignoring the geeks. Because managers and geeks are different types of people, managers may end up leaving the geeks alone. This makes leading them difficult, and geeks need good leadership - the same as all other personnel groups.
   
8. Include them in decisions. Never make decisions without consulting geeks. Geeks usually know the technical side of the business better than the manager, so making a technical decision without consulting them is one of the biggest mistakes a leader can make.
   
9. Give them the tools needed. A fast computer may cost more money than an older one and it may not be corporate standard, but geeks use computers differently. A slow computer lowers productivity and is a daily annoyance. So is outdated software. Give them the tools they need.
   
10. Tools come in many forms. Caffeine is considered a standard tool among Geeks. The more wired they are, the longer they work.
    
11. Remember that geeks are creative workers. Programming is a creative process, not an industrial one. Geeks must constantly come up with solutions to new problems and rarely ever solve the same problem twice. Therefore they need leeway and flexibility. Strict dress codes and too much red tape kill all innovation. They also need creative surroundings to avoid “death by cubicle”.
    
12. Recognize the outcomes of not treating geeks with respect as outlined above. Happy geeks are productive geeks, and the most important factor is good management, tailored to their situation. Doing the opposite to what has been outlined in this article has serious consequences for your organization, including:
    
    • Low motivation
      
    • High employee turnover
      
    • Increased absenteeism
      
    • Lower productivity
      
    • Lower quality
      
    • Bad service
      
    
    

Tips

• Caveat: not all geeks are the same; geeks are wildly different people and this article does generalize dangerously. And this article is not saying that all IT-people are geeks. Some are, some aren’t.
  
• This advice would work well with most employees, not just geeks.
  
• The word 'geek' in this article is not used in a derogatory manner: "definition 3: an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity ."[1]
  
  • The word geek is normally derogatory, but it is thought of as meaning a person with skill and knowledge in the computer arena.
    
  
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Be a Good Manager
  
• How to Be an Effective Project Manager
  
• How to Deal With a Weak Human Resources Manager
  
• How to Develop an IT Change Management Program
  
• How to Improve Your Change Management Skills
  

Sources and Citations

• Original source of article, Alex Kjerulf, How NOT to Lead Geeks. Shared with permission. Thanks Alex, The Chief Happiness Officer!
  

1. ↑ Merriam Webster Online Dictionary

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