I've downloaded 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 (well also 0.3-1.0PR1 but that doesn't count in the total). I've downloaded them at work and at home and to my laptop at separate times. That translates to 12 downloads but only two users.
Conversely, I put the Windoze installer on the server at work and everyone at work installs it from there (and it's the preferred browser of everyone at the office, even Windoze users).
This can be a lot harder than it seems at first. In the yachts I race on we have some top-of-the-line instrumentation. Sensors feed GPS info, wind speed/direction, speed-through-water, compass-heading, etc. into the instrumentation computer (black box) and on to the various displays on-deck as well as into a pc for tactics and analysis.
It's very useful info but you also learn rather quickly that it's full of errors. Consider that the wind speed and direction is usually read from a anemometer/vane at the top of the mast (often on a small pole to attempt to keep it out of the wash of the sails). Speed through the water is done ultrasonically or with a paddle wheel. All these direct measurements are converted to things like true wind speed, true wind direction, velocity made good and so on.
Damping is a huge problem. You may think that several readings a second is good but as the boat rides over waves and heels to varying degrees all of your measurements will be off. Wind due to the mast swinging (doesn't take much heel to really move things around 7 stories up - I've been there many times), boat speed due to water-flow differences at different heel angles (some boats average readings from multiple sensors to combat this issue), and even magnetic heading due to compass-dip if the compass sensor isn't gimballed or otherwise compensated. Essentially you become limited to short-term running averages of the readings.
You don't have quite as many inputs but still need to be concerned with yaw and tilt of the shell, turbulence from the oars and so on. Boat motion will be especially problematic if you are trying to directly measure acceleration.
I suspect that an appropriately designed towed speed sensor might get you the data you desire (though the data-quality will still be sketchy). Perhaps a small propellor/chopper-disk/optical sensor. You could probably build one for a few dollars. The problem then will be to convert the pulses to something you can use.
Check out Zach's Cool Stuff. You might even be able to contact him for ideas. He is doing very similar stuff. Rather than building from a kit he chooses raw materials so people get hands on experience with fabrication.
Looks like the lessons of history are forgotten. In large measures poor decisions led to previous disasters and this plan sets up a terrible situation for decision making.
In this new plan we end up with a terrible choice. Having discovered an anomaly, NASA will have to look at a that nick in a tile or little dent in a wing (things which they have just started inspecting in space) and decide:
1) proceed knowing that the shuttle might have a problem but will probably return OK though if it doesn't my ass is history or
2) bring a possibly unnecessary end to the entire shuttle program and likely my job with it.
This does not sound like a good scenario for decision making.
Seriously, this sort of regulation is generally passed in the name of "protecting" the consumer but in reality it is protecting the outrageous charges of the "registered cablers".
It happens all over. In California, IIRC, we still can't install plastic water supply lines in houses because they are "unsafe". Funny, though, that they seem to be safe in lots of other states. I'm quite sure that the donations from the plumbing contractors and pipefitters' unions doesn't come into play at all.
Our yacht club can't buy booze at Costco because the regulations require us to buy from a "distributor", not a manufacturer or retailor. At a informational meeting for club officers the ABC (alcoholic beverage control) spokesman was pestered with the question "why can't we just go to Costco?" and his rather amusing and refreshingly honest answer was, "because you didn't pay your lawmakers as much as the distribution cartel did."
Unless you have a contract that stipulates that you do and even then probably not. Often companies offer generous severance to people that they terminate to get them to complete certain assignments (assisting with completion of a merger for instance). That's a different situation. I've never heard of someone being compelled to stay, at reduced rates no less, when they are quitting.
The company cheaped out. They paid you less than your market rate and they didn't hire sufficient backup. Then they insulted you by demanding even more work for less pay. If you want to reward that behaviour then stay otherwise leave now.
Think about it. They would not bat an eye at walking you out the door without any notice or severance if it suited them. You owe them no better.
Your boss' demand that you stay really makes it sound like you made the right choice to quit. Don't cover for him/her. Leave now and enjoy a few days rest before starting the new job. Don't sign anything. Enjoy your new job. Profit.
I suppose such a course is OK but more often they infuriate me. Someone teaches a "business" class on web design. They hack together a bunch of pages in Word or FrontPage and then emerge as the sorts of bosses who wonder why they are paying so much for IT. Some people come out of these classes thinking "I can use the phone so I can probably run the phone system."
Constantly remind them of the myriad issues that you aren't covering like security, content management, error checking, reliability and failover techniques, good database design (OK, hard to do in a db with terrible bounds-checking, error reporting and such but you can try).
It would probably be very instructive to examine their apps and then show where they fail: "Look, I just retrieved all your customers phone numbers, bought lots of stuff for free and then purged your database."
You might also show your solution to the problem. It will probably be 10 times longer than theirs but will show the error-checking, user-friendly design and security features that they left out.
Finally, remind them that even thought they are doing very simplistic stuff it still requires someone to configure and maintain the network, servers and software.
On the plus side you are using open-source. The big impression you can leave the biz-school types is the cost comparison between Linux/BSD/PHP/Apache/PostgreSQL/etc. and the proprietary alternatives.
2) Insulated (my 1940s era house had no insulation and now has it in the ceiling and walls).
3) Replaced my 1960s aluminum sliders with Pella double-pane argon filled low-e-coated double-gasketed windows.
4) Replaced my water-heater with a Noritz on-demand model.
5) Ride my bike to work about when practical (about 50% of the days annually).
6) Keep my car in good repair and drive it gently. Not only directly saves fuel but also the components, all of which require energy to manufacture. For example, I've only replaced the front brake pads once, at 140,000+ miles.
7) Replaced my 20 year old fridge with a new energy-star model.
8) Got rid of a second freezer.
9) Replaced top-load washer with energy-star front-loader with high-speed spin.
10) Replaced electric dryer with natural-gas dryer.
11) DISCONNEDTED IDLE EQUIPMENT!! I got an energy meter as a present and in true geek fashion started measuring the usage of everything in the house. It wasn't too hard to kill about 100 watts of 24/7 energy use. Some of the 24/7 power-eaters (these are all idle power in the "off" state): Subwoofer: 15 watts Livingroom stereo: 18 watts TV: 8 watts 2 VCRs: 12 watts UPS: 20+ watts etc.
But does this make sense? Certainly not from an economic standpoint. I don't really get cold or spend much time at home during the week so my total energy bill before I got married was generally around $50/month. Even if I could reduce it to $0 I couldn't justify many of the purchases. Now that I have a wife and daughter (with home-washed diapers) at home the equation has shifted but energy savings still don't justify the purchases - they are mostly side-benefits of other activities:
1) Replaced all my lights with flourescent.
OK this one was intended for energy savings and easily justified on a cost/benefit basis. It's also nice to change lights a lot less frequently.
2) Insulated.
I live near Berkeley. We don't have/generally need air conditioning. I don't know if the insulation will ever payback the $1800 cost but it makes the house much more comfortable and adds a bit of sound insulation as well. The benefit is most noticable on the few very hot summer days when insulation is the only thing keeping the house from getting into the 90s like it used to.
3) Replaced the windows.
We were looking at shutters and blinds (funny thing about getting married - matching sheets are no longer acceptable window "treatments") and decided that we should get rid of the hideous aluminum inserts before spending $$ on window coverings. After much hunting we found we liked the Pella windows the best. At around $26,000 to replace all the windows and buy wood shutters and drapes we will never, ever, recover the cost on energy savings. But like the wall insulation, the double-pane windows make the house much more quiet and pleasant, both thermally and visually.
4) Replaced my water-heater with a Noritz on-demand model.
The water heater was getting old and I wanted to replace it before it broke on its own. The on-demand allowed me to put the heater in the crawlspace and free up room in the house. It won't pay for itself in energy savings but at typical construction costs per square foot it has already paid for itself in increased floor space. It is also nice to have unlimited hot water and the flexibility to leave the heater at 106 so all we have to do is jump in the shower and turn on full-hot (no adjusting necessary) but also be able to push the button to temporarily get 160 degree water to run the diapers. Of course I did all the work myself including trenching and running a new 1.25" gas line, running the power and control connections and rerunning the plumbing. The cost equation would be vastly different if I had hired the job out.
5) Ride my bike to work about when practical (about 50% of the days annually).
Sometimes I feel like John Cleese yelling, "It's f***ing seabird f***ing flavored".
I want my stereo to play music.
I don't need my phone to play a bad rendition of some tune - I want it to ring.
I want my beer to taste like, um, beer - not razzberries, lemons, etc.
Maybe I've become an old coot. But is sure saves me money.
BTW, I selected the "falling rockets" built in ring on my Nokia. Everyone hates that tone (my wife says, "your phone is crying") so I've never heard that ring on another phone. Perfect - I never have to do the "self-frisk" whenever a phone rings.
Not only do Google mail, Google maps and several of the other examples feature pretty impressive interactive user interfaces, they also work just fine on FireFox. And on Linux. And the servers aren't tied to any particular OS either.
The ability to deploy full featured apps hosted on AnyServer(tm) and usable on AnyBrowser(tm) can't make Microsoft very happy.
I've always felt that the gas tax is one of the fairest taxes around. Not perfect, but pretty good. The wear and tear you put on the roads is generally related to three things: 1) how far you drive, 2) how heavy your car is and 3) how you drive (hard vs. gentle acceleration, etc.)
In each of those three cases added road wear equals additional fuel use.
Given the government's actions to promote fuel economy and reduce air pollution (I just got a letter from the air-quality management board offering $650 to turn in my 1985 car which still passes the smog checks with flying colors) I'm really surprised that they don't do the obvious: adjust the gasoline tax as needed to pay for highway repair.
In fact, given the popularity of huge gas guzzling SUVs I find the assertion that revenues are being harmed by a few hybrids absurd to say nothing of the fact that all the money needed to install, maintain and track the devices could, instead, go toward maintaining the road.
If more revenue is needed and gas taxes have to be raised so be it. I am not going to feel sorry for the few people who have to give up their Ford Extinctions or GMC Expletives.
Yeah, I finally decided that they named the company "Promise" 'cause they kept "promising" me that the advertised Linux drivers would be available next month. They said that for 2-3 months in a row and when they finally told me that they were planning to beta test them in a month or so I sent the card back, put in a 3Ware and everything installed smoothly with no muss or fuss. Good thing I wasn't desperate for that server at the time.
True, but it is an option for me (small company, I run all the machines, company owner is a friend, etc.) It doesn't have to be work. I have friends who backup to each others' machines.
Alas, at $1K, not within everybody's budget...
And that's why you have to get your equipment requests in early when the dot-com goes bust.:)
Seriously, a couple of big drives in hot-swap carriers is a pretty attractive backup option these days.
Sure, RAID helps - go grab a 3Ware card for your machine and mirror your data. But things like RAID and dual power-supplies are really in their element when system-availability is important. Ths system keeps running and you can hot-swap the drive or schedule off-hours down-time.
For keeping your data safe, however, RAID is mostly useless - something you will come to realize when the house containing your RAID burns down or when the RAID is stolen by burglars or a human/software glitch manages to "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/yourdisk" your RAID. Power-surge, tornado, flood...the list of things against which RAID fails to protect is long.
If you really care about your data you _must_ perform regular backups and take them off site. I rsync my photos to my work machine and use a VXA tape drive for regular backups.
And I don't bother with RAID except on servers at work.
Are all divisions being pressured to cut or just IT?
You say that IT is overworked but is the IT operation efficient?
How central is IT to the companies business?
How aware is senior management of the contributions of IT?
How does your company compare to others in your industry? For example you may be profitable but if you make your investors $.01 per dollar invested and your industry average is $.10 then your company probably has a problem. Also, how does it compare in use of and expenditures for IT?
Are there indications that the company is facing problems that will require belt-tightening?
How is IT's performance perceived throughout the company?
Is IT's capability being underutilized by the enterprise?
How resistant is the organization to change?
I could come up with more but you get the idea. With some digging you will soon be able to determine what is _really_ happening.
If someone in power is targeting IT only and setting you up to fail they are probably just setting the stage to outsource. Polish up your resume.
If you find that the company is doing fine then this could be a scare-tactic method to lower or eliminate bonuses and raises. Your call whether or not you want to stay.
If IT has a reputation as a bunch of BOFHs then you have been digging your grave for a long time. If you survive in the short term, this needs to be fixed. Sure, some users can be a pain but users are the reason IT exists at all.
If changes can make IT more efficient, suggest them. Just be careful not to confuse efficient with effective. Doing an unnecessary thing efficiently is not helpful. You may even find that its time to wean remaining users from costly legacy systems.
Think like a businessman. Have you renegotiated with your suppliers? Phone time, bandwith, hosting, loop and similar charges have plumetted over the past few years. Are you paying yesterday's prices or staying with an overpriced vendor?
All the time be sure to remember to judge savings against profit, not revenue. I just dropped our DS3 loop charges by $12,000/year. That's not even a quarter-percent of the revenue of a $5,000,000 business but if the profit of that business is $50,000 then that saving just increased profit by 24%! A lot of businesses are just barely in the black if they are profitable at all. And that loop-charge saving is just 1/10 of what I saved by switching vendors a couple years ago. Costs count.
At the same time don't get boxed into "IT is just an expense". Years ago I read a story about senior managers at an auto company all discussing the painful reality of sagging sales and they started spending a lot of time trying to decide just which factories should be closed when one of the managers said, "I have an idea that will save us _lots_ of money. Let's close _all_ the factories." He got a laugh but most importantly he broke the tension and refocused the meeting.
If people keep buying your product there is little incentive to make it suck less.
If people suddenly stopped buying Windows and switched to Macs you can bet the folks in Redmond would be burning through their billions in a hurry to build a better product.
Oh, wait. What was I thinking. The folks in Redmond would allocate their billions to the marketing department to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Only if that failed would they resort to building a better product.
According to Microsoft:
"The Fingerprint Reader should not be used for protecting sensitive data such as financial information or for accessing corporate networks."
Um. Isn't "sensitive data" the reason that pages are password-protected in the first place?
So apparently the Microsoft Fingerprint reader is so insecure that even Microsoft can't recommend using it. Now that's scary.
The idea of cleaning up and testing these hundreds of tubes one at a time, selling them for a dollar or so a piece on eBay with three dollars shipping is a nightmare none of us want.
So sell the box (plus, perhaps, the tester) as a lot. There's a box full of tubes that looks like yours but the case is in terrible condition currently listed on eBay for $149.99 and another with a good case listed for $20. Both currently have no bids but keep your eye on eBay and decide if it's worth the trouble of selling them.
My dad has several boxes of tubes and we'll probably sell those as a lot on eBay.
You could also set a price and post them on Craigslist if it is active in your area and you think they might sell locally.
Managers are a great target for humor but a big part of the reason is that managing people and projects is hard and the humor and derision comes from the fact that it is rarely done well.
You might want to subscribe to Bob Lewis' IT advice line newsletter. He covers this kind of topic regularly. You can also check out his weblog.
I'm sure that his first bit of advice would be to walk around and visit everyone who reports to you and listen to them. Lather-rinse-repeat for a bit before pushing your own ideas and initiatives.
You may also want to express your concerns to your boss and ask what resources are available to help you succeed. Many companies will pay for training and even if not, you are showing your desire to succeed in your new position and will hopefully get some good input.
How about a euphorbia tirucalli, aka stick-plant, pencil-plant, pencil-cactus, etc? It's definitely different, easy to grow and a converstaion starter. Of course being an odd plant the comments range from "cool, where can I get one" to the classic comment from one of my mother's former neighbors, "What's that?", "It's a pencil plant"...pause..."Ugly f***er, ain't it." Google it for pictures. I found one picture of a
dense outdoor plant and a
newly potted one.
A monstera(aka split-leaf philodendron). They are easy to grow from cuttings and trive in an office. Given the right conditions (rarely found in an office) they will also grow a large white flower with a corn-cob sized spike in the middle and the spike will ripen and become edible if you leave it long enough (months) and conditions are right. I have a huge one outside my home and on rare occasions get a ripe spike. It tastes sort of like pineapple but not as acidic.
The trouble with all Wikis is the startup. When there is no info on it the Wiki is useless and it is hard to get people interested in it or even to give people an idea of what it is. Users only embrace them once they have become a valuable source of information.
Before ever showing it to anyone it needs to be seeded with an initial structure and as much useful info as you can find time to enter.
Of course you will have to be sure that the intended use doesn't run afoul of HIPPA. The very nature of a Wiki will give a HIPPA compliance officer night-sweats. How do you intend to ensure that no confidential data is entered and that if it is it is only viewable by authorized people?
If you plan to upgrade the firmware later to add features don't be surprised if one of the new features is support for the broadcast flag. You may not be able to get one without the other. I'd check to be sure you can downrev as well as upgrade and be sure that you have a non-broadcast flag version of the firmware on-hand and tested before performing the upgrade.
Slashdot Mirror
I've downloaded 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 (well also 0.3-1.0PR1 but that doesn't count in the total). I've downloaded them at work and at home and to my laptop at separate times. That translates to 12 downloads but only two users.
Conversely, I put the Windoze installer on the server at work and everyone at work installs it from there (and it's the preferred browser of everyone at the office, even Windoze users).
So downloads != users.
This can be a lot harder than it seems at first. In the yachts I race on we have some top-of-the-line instrumentation. Sensors feed GPS info, wind speed/direction, speed-through-water, compass-heading, etc. into the instrumentation computer (black box) and on to the various displays on-deck as well as into a pc for tactics and analysis.
It's very useful info but you also learn rather quickly that it's full of errors. Consider that the wind speed and direction is usually read from a anemometer/vane at the top of the mast (often on a small pole to attempt to keep it out of the wash of the sails). Speed through the water is done ultrasonically or with a paddle wheel. All these direct measurements are converted to things like true wind speed, true wind direction, velocity made good and so on.
Damping is a huge problem. You may think that several readings a second is good but as the boat rides over waves and heels to varying degrees all of your measurements will be off. Wind due to the mast swinging (doesn't take much heel to really move things around 7 stories up - I've been there many times), boat speed due to water-flow differences at different heel angles (some boats average readings from multiple sensors to combat this issue), and even magnetic heading due to compass-dip if the compass sensor isn't gimballed or otherwise compensated. Essentially you become limited to short-term running averages of the readings.
You don't have quite as many inputs but still need to be concerned with yaw and tilt of the shell, turbulence from the oars and so on. Boat motion will be especially problematic if you are trying to directly measure acceleration.
I suspect that an appropriately designed towed speed sensor might get you the data you desire (though the data-quality will still be sketchy). Perhaps a small propellor/chopper-disk/optical sensor. You could probably build one for a few dollars. The problem then will be to convert the pulses to something you can use.
Check out Zach's Cool Stuff. You might even be able to contact him for ideas. He is doing very similar stuff. Rather than building from a kit he chooses raw materials so people get hands on experience with fabrication.
Looks like the lessons of history are forgotten. In large measures poor decisions led to previous disasters and this plan sets up a terrible situation for decision making.
In this new plan we end up with a terrible choice. Having discovered an anomaly, NASA will have to look at a that nick in a tile or little dent in a wing (things which they have just started inspecting in space) and decide:
1) proceed knowing that the shuttle might have a problem but will probably return OK though if it doesn't my ass is history or
2) bring a possibly unnecessary end to the entire shuttle program and likely my job with it.
This does not sound like a good scenario for decision making.
It's the "accountability" part. Strict regulations on release of private patient information, securing of data, etc.
Seriously, this sort of regulation is generally passed in the name of "protecting" the consumer but in reality it is protecting the outrageous charges of the "registered cablers".
It happens all over. In California, IIRC, we still can't install plastic water supply lines in houses because they are "unsafe". Funny, though, that they seem to be safe in lots of other states. I'm quite sure that the donations from the plumbing contractors and pipefitters' unions doesn't come into play at all.
Our yacht club can't buy booze at Costco because the regulations require us to buy from a "distributor", not a manufacturer or retailor. At a informational meeting for club officers the ABC (alcoholic beverage control) spokesman was pestered with the question "why can't we just go to Costco?" and his rather amusing and refreshingly honest answer was, "because you didn't pay your lawmakers as much as the distribution cartel did."
The company cheaped out. They paid you less than your market rate and they didn't hire sufficient backup. Then they insulted you by demanding even more work for less pay. If you want to reward that behaviour then stay otherwise leave now.
Think about it. They would not bat an eye at walking you out the door without any notice or severance if it suited them. You owe them no better.
Your boss' demand that you stay really makes it sound like you made the right choice to quit. Don't cover for him/her. Leave now and enjoy a few days rest before starting the new job. Don't sign anything. Enjoy your new job. Profit.
I suppose such a course is OK but more often they infuriate me. Someone teaches a "business" class on web design. They hack together a bunch of pages in Word or FrontPage and then emerge as the sorts of bosses who wonder why they are paying so much for IT. Some people come out of these classes thinking "I can use the phone so I can probably run the phone system."
Constantly remind them of the myriad issues that you aren't covering like security, content management, error checking, reliability and failover techniques, good database design (OK, hard to do in a db with terrible bounds-checking, error reporting and such but you can try).
It would probably be very instructive to examine their apps and then show where they fail: "Look, I just retrieved all your customers phone numbers, bought lots of stuff for free and then purged your database."
You might also show your solution to the problem. It will probably be 10 times longer than theirs but will show the error-checking, user-friendly design and security features that they left out.
Finally, remind them that even thought they are doing very simplistic stuff it still requires someone to configure and maintain the network, servers and software.
On the plus side you are using open-source. The big impression you can leave the biz-school types is the cost comparison between Linux/BSD/PHP/Apache/PostgreSQL/etc. and the proprietary alternatives.
1) Replaced all my lights with flourescent.
2) Insulated (my 1940s era house had no insulation and now has it in the ceiling and walls).
3) Replaced my 1960s aluminum sliders with Pella double-pane argon filled low-e-coated double-gasketed windows.
4) Replaced my water-heater with a Noritz on-demand model.
5) Ride my bike to work about when practical (about 50% of the days annually).
6) Keep my car in good repair and drive it gently. Not only directly saves fuel but also the components, all of which require energy to manufacture. For example, I've only replaced the front brake pads once, at 140,000+ miles.
7) Replaced my 20 year old fridge with a new energy-star model.
8) Got rid of a second freezer.
9) Replaced top-load washer with energy-star front-loader with high-speed spin.
10) Replaced electric dryer with natural-gas dryer.
11) DISCONNEDTED IDLE EQUIPMENT!! I got an energy meter as a present and in true geek fashion started measuring the usage of everything in the house. It wasn't too hard to kill about 100 watts of 24/7 energy use. Some of the 24/7 power-eaters (these are all idle power in the "off" state):
Subwoofer: 15 watts
Livingroom stereo: 18 watts
TV: 8 watts
2 VCRs: 12 watts
UPS: 20+ watts
etc.
But does this make sense? Certainly not from an economic standpoint. I don't really get cold or spend much time at home during the week so my total energy bill before I got married was generally around $50/month. Even if I could reduce it to $0 I couldn't justify many of the purchases. Now that I have a wife and daughter (with home-washed diapers) at home the equation has shifted but energy savings still don't justify the purchases - they are mostly side-benefits of other activities:
1) Replaced all my lights with flourescent.
OK this one was intended for energy savings and easily justified on a cost/benefit basis. It's also nice to change lights a lot less frequently.
2) Insulated.
I live near Berkeley. We don't have/generally need air conditioning. I don't know if the insulation will ever payback the $1800 cost but it makes the house much more comfortable and adds a bit of sound insulation as well. The benefit is most noticable on the few very hot summer days when insulation is the only thing keeping the house from getting into the 90s like it used to.
3) Replaced the windows.
We were looking at shutters and blinds (funny thing about getting married - matching sheets are no longer acceptable window "treatments") and decided that we should get rid of the hideous aluminum inserts before spending $$ on window coverings. After much hunting we found we liked the Pella windows the best. At around $26,000 to replace all the windows and buy wood shutters and drapes we will never, ever, recover the cost on energy savings. But like the wall insulation, the double-pane windows make the house much more quiet and pleasant, both thermally and visually.
4) Replaced my water-heater with a Noritz on-demand model.
The water heater was getting old and I wanted to replace it before it broke on its own. The on-demand allowed me to put the heater in the crawlspace and free up room in the house. It won't pay for itself in energy savings but at typical construction costs per square foot it has already paid for itself in increased floor space. It is also nice to have unlimited hot water and the flexibility to leave the heater at 106 so all we have to do is jump in the shower and turn on full-hot (no adjusting necessary) but also be able to push the button to temporarily get 160 degree water to run the diapers. Of course I did all the work myself including trenching and running a new 1.25" gas line, running the power and control connections and rerunning the plumbing. The cost equation would be vastly different if I had hired the job out.
5) Ride my bike to work about when practical (about 50% of the days annually).
I just like bike riding and get my exerci
Sometimes I feel like John Cleese yelling, "It's f***ing seabird f***ing flavored".
I want my stereo to play music.
I don't need my phone to play a bad rendition of some tune - I want it to ring.
I want my beer to taste like, um, beer - not razzberries, lemons, etc.
Maybe I've become an old coot. But is sure saves me money.
BTW, I selected the "falling rockets" built in ring on my Nokia. Everyone hates that tone (my wife says, "your phone is crying") so I've never heard that ring on another phone. Perfect - I never have to do the "self-frisk" whenever a phone rings.
Not only do Google mail, Google maps and several of the other examples feature pretty impressive interactive user interfaces, they also work just fine on FireFox. And on Linux. And the servers aren't tied to any particular OS either.
The ability to deploy full featured apps hosted on AnyServer(tm) and usable on AnyBrowser(tm) can't make Microsoft very happy.
I've always felt that the gas tax is one of the fairest taxes around. Not perfect, but pretty good. The wear and tear you put on the roads is generally related to three things: 1) how far you drive, 2) how heavy your car is and 3) how you drive (hard vs. gentle acceleration, etc.)
In each of those three cases added road wear equals additional fuel use.
Given the government's actions to promote fuel economy and reduce air pollution (I just got a letter from the air-quality management board offering $650 to turn in my 1985 car which still passes the smog checks with flying colors) I'm really surprised that they don't do the obvious: adjust the gasoline tax as needed to pay for highway repair.
In fact, given the popularity of huge gas guzzling SUVs I find the assertion that revenues are being harmed by a few hybrids absurd to say nothing of the fact that all the money needed to install, maintain and track the devices could, instead, go toward maintaining the road.
If more revenue is needed and gas taxes have to be raised so be it. I am not going to feel sorry for the few people who have to give up their Ford Extinctions or GMC Expletives.
Yeah, I finally decided that they named the company "Promise" 'cause they kept "promising" me that the advertised Linux drivers would be available next month. They said that for 2-3 months in a row and when they finally told me that they were planning to beta test them in a month or so I sent the card back, put in a 3Ware and everything installed smoothly with no muss or fuss. Good thing I wasn't desperate for that server at the time.
True, but it is an option for me (small company, I run all the machines, company owner is a friend, etc.) It doesn't have to be work. I have friends who backup to each others' machines.
Alas, at $1K, not within everybody's budget...
And that's why you have to get your equipment requests in early when the dot-com goes bust. :)
Seriously, a couple of big drives in hot-swap carriers is a pretty attractive backup option these days.
Sure, RAID helps - go grab a 3Ware card for your machine and mirror your data. But things like RAID and dual power-supplies are really in their element when system-availability is important. Ths system keeps running and you can hot-swap the drive or schedule off-hours down-time.
For keeping your data safe, however, RAID is mostly useless - something you will come to realize when the house containing your RAID burns down or when the RAID is stolen by burglars or a human/software glitch manages to "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/yourdisk" your RAID. Power-surge, tornado, flood...the list of things against which RAID fails to protect is long.
If you really care about your data you _must_ perform regular backups and take them off site. I rsync my photos to my work machine and use a VXA tape drive for regular backups.
And I don't bother with RAID except on servers at work.
Actually, it's probably cheaper and easier to use the "color-wheel" method only instead of a spinning wheel you just cycle the three LEDs.
Too bad it's resolution falls shy of HTDV but give it time.
You need to find the answers to some questions:
Are all divisions being pressured to cut or just IT?
You say that IT is overworked but is the IT operation efficient?
How central is IT to the companies business?
How aware is senior management of the contributions of IT?
How does your company compare to others in your industry? For example you may be profitable but if you make your investors $.01 per dollar invested and your industry average is $.10 then your company probably has a problem. Also, how does it compare in use of and expenditures for IT?
Are there indications that the company is facing problems that will require belt-tightening?
How is IT's performance perceived throughout the company?
Is IT's capability being underutilized by the enterprise?
How resistant is the organization to change?
I could come up with more but you get the idea. With some digging you will soon be able to determine what is _really_ happening.
If someone in power is targeting IT only and setting you up to fail they are probably just setting the stage to outsource. Polish up your resume.
If you find that the company is doing fine then this could be a scare-tactic method to lower or eliminate bonuses and raises. Your call whether or not you want to stay.
If IT has a reputation as a bunch of BOFHs then you have been digging your grave for a long time. If you survive in the short term, this needs to be fixed. Sure, some users can be a pain but users are the reason IT exists at all.
If changes can make IT more efficient, suggest them. Just be careful not to confuse efficient with effective. Doing an unnecessary thing efficiently is not helpful. You may even find that its time to wean remaining users from costly legacy systems.
Think like a businessman. Have you renegotiated with your suppliers? Phone time, bandwith, hosting, loop and similar charges have plumetted over the past few years. Are you paying yesterday's prices or staying with an overpriced vendor?
All the time be sure to remember to judge savings against profit, not revenue. I just dropped our DS3 loop charges by $12,000/year. That's not even a quarter-percent of the revenue of a $5,000,000 business but if the profit of that business is $50,000 then that saving just increased profit by 24%! A lot of businesses are just barely in the black if they are profitable at all. And that loop-charge saving is just 1/10 of what I saved by switching vendors a couple years ago. Costs count.
At the same time don't get boxed into "IT is just an expense". Years ago I read a story about senior managers at an auto company all discussing the painful reality of sagging sales and they started spending a lot of time trying to decide just which factories should be closed when one of the managers said, "I have an idea that will save us _lots_ of money. Let's close _all_ the factories." He got a laugh but most importantly he broke the tension and refocused the meeting.
If people keep buying your product there is little incentive to make it suck less.
If people suddenly stopped buying Windows and switched to Macs you can bet the folks in Redmond would be burning through their billions in a hurry to build a better product.
Oh, wait. What was I thinking. The folks in Redmond would allocate their billions to the marketing department to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Only if that failed would they resort to building a better product.
Um. Isn't "sensitive data" the reason that pages are password-protected in the first place?
So apparently the Microsoft Fingerprint reader is so insecure that even Microsoft can't recommend using it. Now that's scary.
So sell the box (plus, perhaps, the tester) as a lot. There's a box full of tubes that looks like yours but the case is in terrible condition currently listed on eBay for $149.99 and another with a good case listed for $20. Both currently have no bids but keep your eye on eBay and decide if it's worth the trouble of selling them.
My dad has several boxes of tubes and we'll probably sell those as a lot on eBay.
You could also set a price and post them on Craigslist if it is active in your area and you think they might sell locally.
You might want to subscribe to Bob Lewis' IT advice line newsletter. He covers this kind of topic regularly. You can also check out his weblog.
I'm sure that his first bit of advice would be to walk around and visit everyone who reports to you and listen to them. Lather-rinse-repeat for a bit before pushing your own ideas and initiatives.
You may also want to express your concerns to your boss and ask what resources are available to help you succeed. Many companies will pay for training and even if not, you are showing your desire to succeed in your new position and will hopefully get some good input.
OK, how about this article from December 2002 (see diagram and description on page 4).
A monstera(aka split-leaf philodendron). They are easy to grow from cuttings and trive in an office. Given the right conditions (rarely found in an office) they will also grow a large white flower with a corn-cob sized spike in the middle and the spike will ripen and become edible if you leave it long enough (months) and conditions are right. I have a huge one outside my home and on rare occasions get a ripe spike. It tastes sort of like pineapple but not as acidic.
The trouble with all Wikis is the startup. When there is no info on it the Wiki is useless and it is hard to get people interested in it or even to give people an idea of what it is. Users only embrace them once they have become a valuable source of information.
Before ever showing it to anyone it needs to be seeded with an initial structure and as much useful info as you can find time to enter.
Of course you will have to be sure that the intended use doesn't run afoul of HIPPA. The very nature of a Wiki will give a HIPPA compliance officer night-sweats. How do you intend to ensure that no confidential data is entered and that if it is it is only viewable by authorized people?
If you plan to upgrade the firmware later to add features don't be surprised if one of the new features is support for the broadcast flag. You may not be able to get one without the other. I'd check to be sure you can downrev as well as upgrade and be sure that you have a non-broadcast flag version of the firmware on-hand and tested before performing the upgrade.