shaver

As I type this, and I mean that quite literally, there is a nice photographer from the Globe & Mail here taking pictures of Chester. Apparently they’re doing a story on some study released today about mental health and “the tech workplace”, which clearly includes my living room. Some people’s cats are actually quite work-helpful, but ours is really just a pretty face.

I hadn’t heard from David Akin since he was at the Post and I was at Zero, but we caught up quickly on the phone this afternoon and then exchanged thoughts about depression, emotional investment, work-life balance, the dot-com boom and bust, foosball tables, the usual stuff. I’ll link to the article when it goes up on their site, I guess. Let me know if you see it first.

I actually had a very good experience — relatively speaking, of course — with the people at Zero-Knowledge when I had my last major depressive episode, but I’m sure not everyone is as lucky. The study in question was produced by Warren Shepell, which was — and may still be — the EAP adminstrator for ZKS. I didn’t interact with them myself, but some co-workers reported, uh, mixed results. Your mileage will vary, I’m sure, but I did make the point that an EAP is really not a complete solution, and that you still need in-house people who understand some of these issues. Especially because computer people are all a bunch of big babies.

Zach and Alice sent me a birthday gift, because they’re insane. I now have my very own princess hat. I don’t have a digital camera at home — thank god that the G&M photog left before the the package arrived — so you’ll all just have to imagine it.