At Trilogy's End?

I keep hearing that "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" is the final installment in the Pirates trilogy; however, after seeing the movie, it's quite clear that much is left open for a possible next installment.

I didn't see "Brokeback Mountain" so I can't say "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" is THE worst movie ever made; however, it is one of the top two worst movies ever made.

Networks Are The IT Plumbing

We can best understand how networks (switches and routers) work by comparing them to plumbing. The pipes of plumbing are the links that connect the network infrastructure and equipment like water filters, pipe joints, water heaters, boilers and circulators are the network equipment. End user devices are faucets, showers and toilets.

We can compare users and applications to people that live in houses, which represent enterprise networks. A poorly written application (person), one that is fed bad data (beans and burritos) tries to interface with the network (via the toilet) and literally craps all over it. As applications (people) are planned and added (via births) and haphazardly piloted and allowed to leak into production (sometimes via births and in-laws outstaying their welcome) the network interfaces and pipes become overloaded. You can add a new network interface (toilet) to deal with fault tolerance and high availability; however, unless the pipes are upgraded you may have a problem with your Storage Area Network (SAN), which is represented by your septic system.

Your options here are to move to Network Accessible Storage (NAS) in the form of city sewer for scalability. This of course outsources your and offshores your data (crap) storage requirements.

Presence 2.0

In April 2005, I wrote a white paper describing how presence can help develop the case for a converged network. Looks like it's time for an update.

With location based networking - using wireless access points to triangulate signals on RFID enabled devices - companies are able to track assets throughout their physical spaces. The next logical step is to track the RFID enabled ID badges that all employees must wear. Thus, the simple buddy list with green and red balloons that is getting "smarter" can be improved one thousand fold by changing the person list interface into a map layout that tracks people's movements throughout the wireless enabled campus.

MBA = Massively Brainwashed Arse

Is it just me, or does it seem like the whole IT supporting and enabling the business strategy has become more like business people talking about business things that have business implications, oh and go do something technologically impossible to satisfy the business stuff we just talked about in our business meeting. Without some tech savvy folks in the respected levels of business, companies are heading for IT disasters as they role out complex systems they have little understanding of and then outsource the management of those systems.

Take for example an effort to control costs in IT spending driven by haphazard user requests. The business solution is to sit the users down and get them to forecast their requirements for the year and then create a single IT budget. It sounds like a good solution; however, without some technical knowledge, the budget is a shot in the dark and the initial problem is not solved.

If your child asks for money for a bicycle do you just give him $500 to buy the bike? What if he buys a $100 bike and spends the other $400 on pot and while he's high riding his cheap bike, he crashes it into a tree and breaks it. He comes asking for money again to repair the bike because there was no initial accountability; no assumption of risk on his part that the bike he wanted to purchase was of sound quality and would work as advertised.

Instead, use an approach that shares responsibility for financial and technical decisions throughout the stakeholders. Ask your son to do some research. He doesn't know anything about bikes, but of course, neither do you. However, when he gets a bike, you can teach him to ride it.

End users don't know the first thing about storage and network requirements, just as we in IT have no insight into the latest and greatest piece of specialized vendor software that the user must have to increase his department's productivity. Put the onus on the user to develop a plan by researching the vendors and preparing a proposal for the IT budget committee. Allow IT staff to flush out the technical details so a comprehensive plan (not a detailed design at this early phase) is developed so money can be intelligently and accurately assigned.

If a user has an IT budget request that simply demands an application rather than provides a 'plan' for adoption, the IT department needs to make a lot of assumptions on behalf of the requester and I believe that will end in a disappointed customer and a poorly implemented solution. Instead, if some of the due diligence - which I call planning (not design), but simple due diligence planning and research - were pushed back to the customer so they made an educated and informative presentation request to the IT budgeting process, the end product would more align with the end user's vision and ultimately be more supportable since the end user was a stakeholder from the onset.

As managers move more and more towards business and further away from technology, it seems they fail to realize that ultimately, technology drives all business. You don't need to know how to configure a router or deploy a Storage Area Network, but you better damn well know the application whose deployment you just authorized will require both.

US Leads Worldwide PC Movement

Today, I overheard a colleague talking with his counterpart in Germany. My colleague asked the German gentlemen who a name was that was CC'd on an email. The German man replied with: "She's the group secretary, I mean administrative assistant, whatever you call them."

With this post, I wanted to let all you liberals know that your efforts are working.

Your Welcome 93 Commuters / I'm Sorry 128 Commuters

I would like to say "your welcome" to my fellow South Shore commuters who travel into and out of Boston each day via Interstate 93. I feel the multitudes of unsung praises directed towards me for your prompt and timely commutes during this week. This is no doubt due to my temporary alteration of commuting habits to accommodate a training course in Burlington necessitating my travel via a popular stretch of Interstate 95 North - commonly known as Route 128. Of course, all incompetent motorists hell-bent on crashing their vehicles into guard rails and other commuters have followed me - as they always do.

This of course forces me to express my heartfelt condolences to those long standing Route 128 commuters who day in and day out travel a not too busy, yet also not too open expanse of highway. For this week will surely be fraught with commuting woes beyond your worst nightmare as inept travelers follow me whilst desperately trying to derail my greatest ambitions of arriving at my destinations at a predetermined hour.

Alas, this short repose for my fellow Interstate 93 commuters will come to an abrupt end whereupon next Monday, my triumphant return will no doubt be met with an absurd amount of careening jackasses whose sole purpose in life is to forfeit theirs to destroy our open highway system.

United Airlines Sucks

After navigating phone menu hell in search of a person to update me with the status of my lost luggage, I felt it necessary to document the United Airlines lost baggage telephone menu options for those of us that are not content with getting spoken to by a machine.

First, don't dial the lost baggage line at 1.800.221.6903. This is a farce. It does not work. After guiding yourself through menu hell and finally breaking down (or if you decide to go right for the jugular) and asking for an "agent", you'll promptly be transferred to a non working number. If you insist on dialing the lost baggage line as you are looking for your lost baggage and it seems to make the most sense to dial the lost baggage line, lie to the automated machine. He won't know the difference. Instead of saying "delayed bag", say "other baggage questions". Before he starts in on you again, you can say "none of the above". From there, answer "no" to the question about whether your travel is within the 50 states. It is imperative that you answer "no" to this question even if it is a lie. Answering "yes" will lead you back to the non working number.

After answering "no", you'll be transferred to an international operator. After waiting on hold for quite some time, you'll be connected to an international booking agent. That's correct - a booking agent; as in reservations, not lost baggage. At this point, if you are speaking with a foreigner, you may as well hang up and dial again or risk being sent to India call center limbo. Ask about your bag. You'll be told you called reservations. Apologize and ask to be transferred to a baggage agent - specifically say "agent". With any luck, the reservation agent will bypass the menu for you and put you into a baggage agent answering queue (exactly where you need to be spending your precious time on hold).

Alternatively, you can try to call United reservations at 1.800.864.8331. From there, use option 2 and then 2 again. You'll hear the same smug bastard that recorded the baggage call menu but this time he's petering on about reservations. Say "agent", although I've found that sometimes he doesn't understand this and saying "customer service" jogs his memory. Again, answer "no" to travel within the 50 states. You'll get directed to an international agent and you can pick up from the middle of the previous paragraph.

Please note that getting frustrated and asking the reservation agent to escalate to their supervisor sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I've also found that for some reason, calling during the day directs my calls to India call center hell while the later I called (after 9PM), the more I got in touch with actual English speaking people who understand what good customer service is all about.

United Airlines - f-ing you in the friendly skies! (And I don't mean flying.)