M253 TMA01, now with feedback

Ugh. Since the last post we’ve suffered through a whole TMA, submitted it, and gotten feedback on the team half. I guess the individual half of the TMA will come at some point later.
We were awarded 31 out of a possible 50 points – equivalent to a mark of 62%. I have never had such a bad mark with the OU, and when I was reading the tutor’s feedback I was amused to find I experienced the first few PVCs I’ve really noticed in months. So very clearly stress related, stupid heart.

I particularly thought the comments our tutor made about “rosy glow” to be interesting. The question he referred to was one that three other team mates worked on – and I spluttered and wondered if I’d done the same course as them, when I read their answer. It was indeed rose-tinted. We did everything so well and worked together perfectly! I decided not to post my real thoughts, because if they really were enjoying the course this much, who am I to piss all over their cake? Or whatever the saying is. It is reassuring to know that perhaps not everyone believed the happy rosiness.

Fuckity fuckity fuck this course.

M253, approaching TMA01

I’ve been overcome with a now-rare desire to get out some thoughts in a longer format than a tweet. I’ve been doing M253 for just over a month now, and it’s done little but make me feel sick, sick, sick. It’s a 10 point course – most degree-related courses are 30 or 60 points – but costs nearly as much as a 30 pointer, which seems unfair.

It’s designed to teach you about distributed teamwork – that is, teamwork between members at disparate locations. I’ve worked in IT for the last 6 or 7 years, by its nature distributed (remote support, for example, is hardly face to face!), and I’ve yet to encounter such a demoralising and stressful situation. We’re told to sort ourselves out into team roles, establish team rules, distribute work, etc. Unfortunately no one really seems to give a flying fuck about doing this and I feel like I’m left with:

  1. Taking the same laid back stance as everyone else and hoping someone else will get off their butt and try to get work done.
  2. Doing what I’m currently doing, which is staying fake-positive in the forums, wiki, and emails, gently trying to remind people of deadlines, asking for input from others that’s never responded to, and all the while worrying that I’m making too much noise and everyone’s just annoyed and ignoring me
  3. Doing everything I possibly can myself and ignoring the lack of / very slow contributions. But there’s no “I” in teamwork, and all that bullshit.

Another worry I have is related to a section of the course literature:

Since the module aims to test the process of team working, being able to demonstrate active participation in the team is very important. The marking of this TMA may include penalties against students who cannot demonstrate active participation in the team tasks.

I’m reasonably sure that my frustratedly loudmouth tactics can’t be ignored as “active participation”, but I’m worried about some of the quieter team members. A reminder would probably just piss them off (it would me). Sigh. This course just fills me with horrible angst every time I think about it. Reading reviews online doesn’t help, at all. Like:

So far, the only upside is that it’s only pass/fail so my desire for the highest scores possible doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t finish with an exam.

Tramlines

As I’m sure you’ll know due to my extensive facebooking and tweeting of the fact, I attended Tramlines to sell my handmade jewellery.

The fee was more than most markets on that street are, and when I discussed it with Phil from Exposed magazine, who was organising the market stalls for the event, he stated that due to the high footfall (150,000+ people) it was reasonable to charge a higher fee. Fair enough…

Comes the day, I find the car park where the even is at about 8am, set up my stall beside a lovely friendly lady selling mostly handmade bags, as well as some other fabric/textiley things. And I wait. And wait. And wait. As do all of the other stallholders in the carpark. We can hear the music, we can see the people walking down the street, just over there…. but they’re all walking down Eldon Street and not bothering with Eldon Street carpark.

3pm, once we’d been there for about 7 hours, some Tramlines staff come along, and say we’ve been authorised to move the market on to the street (it was blocked off, so cars couldn’t use it) but only until 9pm, rather than 11pm as originally promised. It took nearly an hour to move and set everything back up again – the stalls had to be dismantled, merchandise packed away, then I had to rope some staff into moving the stall, since I was on my own and couldn’t carry a 3×1 meter steel and wooden stall on my own! Then there’s trying to set everything back up in the horrid wind…. argh.

The stallholder beside me didn’t bother to even move her stall, she just went home.

Once I’d gotten set up on the street, sales started to pour in! well, not quite pouring, but I’m pretty confident that I wouldn’t have made a yucky smelly loss, if only I’d not been mis-sold the footfall and lost the larger portion of the first day. I’ve tried to add Dave Healy, the Tramlines Director as a contact on LinkedIn in hopes I’ll be able to discuss the messup. I’ll give him a day or two and then try other avenues if need be.

On the positive note: I bought up lots of beads before the festival, specifically to make some of these necklaces, in leads of different colours. On the second day I was making them as fast as I could between customers, which admittedly wasn’t terribly fast – but I ran out of beads and nearly sold out of the necklaces. Niiiiiice. Bulk order of those beads coming up, kthx!

PVC update

Next steps are a bloodtest (after 12hrs fasting) and another ecg. I sincerely doubt the ecg’ll catch anything – they’re frequent, the palpitations, when they come, but they’re not always on, and can’t dependently happen at any given time. When you consider that the ecg only lasts a few seconds… oh well.

PVC is not just plastic

I am blogging, which is reason enough for anyone’s heart to skip a beat ;)

Went to A&E due to unpleasant heart palpitations on friday night (thankfully we live prettymuch around the corner from it the hospital). Was diagnosed with PVCs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premature_ventricular_contraction. They’re benign for most part, but I’ve still been told to see a GP for further investigation.

I’ve been experiencing them every day since, and it seems pretty likely to me that the trigger is Darren’s upcoming redundancy (16th July 2011). It seems pretty damn obvious to me that it’s mostly due to pure selfishness in a way that really, really ticks me off. Yesterday I remarked how much I’d have like to stop at a pub and have tea outside in the warm sun, but was sad we couldn’t afford it. Shortly thereafter I got several hours of frequent palpitations.

It’d make more sense if we weren’t pretty freaking confident we’ll be able to afford it ok if we don’t splurge. My pay is good and likely to continue to get better.

So, dear self: Please stop it.

Going to doc shortly as advised by A&E. Funny how having to miss work increases my stress levels.