Has anyone in your organisation ever questioned why you need 5-6 layers of management??
In a big company, this isn't unusual. But I also may not have been clear in my statement. In order to get a shared boss with IT, I have to go up several levels of management. In fact, I think that I'd have to go all the way to the top. I don't think
that the CEO of my company wants to worry about my IT problem.
Tell me, do the IT staffers get to comment on you and your performance??
Sure, if they want. Not like they have any idea what I do, but if they want to complain to my boss about my work performance then they're free to do so. One thing though - they don't have a dependency on my work performance like I do on theirs.
Most little stuff like this I don't need approval for. To solve the problem I just went and bought a $13 adapter and submitted an expense report. If I'd gotten $100 bill from IT for the fix then there probably wouldn't have been any question.
This is why I think that every IT call should be billed. Then if my group wants to make a call a priority to meet our business objectives, we can. It takes the job of prioritizing calls out of the hands of the IT department and puts it into the hands of the business. I guess that I have to wonder, however, if the IT department doesn't like having this control. All you have to do is read some of the threads attached to this article to see that IT folks like to tell people what they should or should not be doing with their systems. Instead, they should tell them what they are capable of doing and let the business decide what is in its own best interest. Of course there are always going to be rules that need to be followed (e.g. security), and I'm sure that we can live within those boundaries.
Because no non-IT business unit will accept the invoice from the IT Dept for such a service
This is really lame. That may be the case, but it's no excuse for not offering the service. If you tell me that it's going to be $1,000 to fix a problem that I think is going to cost $100 to fix then it becomes my problem to find a cheaper solution. But I'm not getting that option.
It _can't_ be that high
It's sad that you assume that everyone is an idiot. And isn't that how this whole thread got started? I fully understand burdened labor costs, and you should be able to publish a schedule of what those costs are for IT. Then I can decide which option is cheaper, or faster, or whatever metric that I want to use and go from there. Just by making that statement you make it appear that the only people who understand burdened labor costs are IT people. Actually, this is one of the reasons that I like our contract labor force, because they *can* tell me the actual cost of fixing my problem.
But the true cost can't be admitted, so the costs are buried...
And whose problem is that? If you're providing a valuable service to the company then those costs shouldn't be a problem. I think that the reason so many IT departments get pushback on costs is that the bosses at the top see them purely as an expense. But as anyone in IT will tell you, there are a lot of contributions that IT can make that will bring dollars to the bottom line. IT needs to seize on these opportunities by offering better internal service. Here's one example - I once worked for a multi-billion dollar company that did a lot of custom pricing. One day, one of our guys had the idea of getting the data off the mainframe and on to the desktop so that customer proposals could be done in Excel. The idea was sheer genius (for its time), and it not only shaved countless hours off the time it took to prepare a customer quote but it also made for more accurate quoting. It also made my company much more competitive. That single idea, from an IT staffer, made a huge difference in this one area and helped grow the company sales. IT was no longer just an expense to the bottom line, and we got a lot of support from those who benefited from our ideas.
Trying to bypass channels in a hurry has to be done politely and preferably enough authority to back it up or it is unprofessional
Even though my company is big, we routinely bypass five or six layers of management. In fact, going "through the channels" is considered a waste by most everyone in the organization unless there is a problem that can't be settled at the bottom layers.
Your client does not matter to these people - you have to convince somebody it is in the interest of the company or find somebody that already knows about the issue.
Or I just fix the problem myself and move on. But when IT comes around looking for extra money then I push back on service levels. Several people have commented on how unpaid IT staffers are. I agree, so long as they're helping me take care of our customers, which means helping me with my problem.
I know of no company at all that does that kind of billing.
I've working in both the private sector and academia, and in both of these the copy center bills by the job, yet they still support some sort of "public" infrastructure where expenses may or may not be tracked. (In my job as a teacher, all copies were billed to my department, even those I made myself.) So why is IT any different than the copy center? Build out an infrastructure that works for most everyone, and support the "oddballs" with billable service.
If this was a concern for them then they should have said so. I agree that non-standard configs can create security problems, and it's not my goal to cause new problems. But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that my config did create new issues. It still doesn't get around the fact that I'm trying to support my customer and need the help of my IT department. If, after exhaustive analysis, they told me that they couldn't work around the problem then I'd try to come up with another solution that met the needs of the customer. Without that, we (our company) just look like we're clueless.
So you have different needs than the average bear...
Not really. I needed a cert for the wireless network installed on my machine. What's so "different" about that? It's something that they do every day. The OS is supported by the company and the hardware was not at all unusual, with one exception. As I stated earlier, I would have been happy to pay for the exception, which cost me $13 to work around by buying the part that I needed down at Frys. (Before you tell me how much it would cost to procure that same part through normal channels, remember that it took me at least 30 minutes to buy the part myself and another 15 minutes to fill out an expense report that was then reviewed by my boss and someone in Accounts Payaable, which means that the real cost for the part was much, much higher than the $13 that I quoted.)
Given that, IT can disclaim everything on your side of the ethernet port if you're a normal user.
So this is the root of the problem that most people have with IT. Why should they be disclaiming anything? Shouldn't they be doing what they can to help, especially when the problem that I'm trying to solve is due in part to the fact that they're the guys who set up the infrastructure that I need to talk to in the first place?
Like I said before, there's really not much of a customer service attitude that I've seen coming from my IT department, because they usually drop my call like a hot potato at the first sign of trouble. I know that the complaint is that IT people don't get paid well, and I'd suggest that better customer service might help that problem. My experience is that the more service you offer, the more people value that service. Take my car dealership for one. I do everything at the dealership because they offer good service. It costs me more for an oil change than dropping my truck off at the Jiffy Lube, but I also get excellent service. For example, I recently had to have a yoke replaced on one of the front wheels (4WD). The yoke was bent and needed to be replaced, so it was going to take an extra day to repair. The dealership then gave me a car, free of charge, to drive until my truck was repaired. They could have just said "Hey, getting to and from your job isn't my problem, so there's the bus stop." Instead, my dealer values my time and understands that I can afford their service so long as I have a job. So doesn't it make sense that offering better service is ultimately going to yield happier customers and subsequently a higher level of income?
I realized while replying to another comment that IT departments should work more like my copy department. If I want the standard service (say B/W copies) then I get it for free from the public copy machine on my floor. If I want a banner or some other oddball copy service then I have to pay extra to have someone handle the job for me. I can get virtually anything that I want from my copy department (including books) as long as I pay their bill. IT should work the same. Set up basic service for those who want it (equivalent to putting a public copy machine on every floor of the building) and then charge for the fancy stuff. I'm totally ok with that model because I still get what I need but it serves to deter me from setting up special configs that don't have a business justification.
You end up with a stressed out IT that can't support you anyway, and is probably neglecting something _everyone_ wants supported
So why don't you just sell me the extra service that I need then? I can see somebody telling me "Hey, you got a goofy config and it's going to take extra time. Mind if I bill you for the extra effort?" I'd say "No problem. I have extra budget for that and I don't have time to fix the problem myself." Instead, I get told to screw off. Sure, I could try to hire someone who works privately for my group, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of having an IT department in the first place? It seems to me that the best way to get IT upset is to have your own staff doing work that they consider to be a part of their domain.
As for pleasing customers, if you went into an auto dealer and asked for chewing gum and they didn't have any, would you say they didn't care about the customer?
One of the seat covers in my truck is going bad, so when I was last down at the dealer getting my oil changed I asked where I could get a replacement cover. The guy gave me the name of someone who could fix my problem. The difference between my dealer and my IT department is that the dealer understands that I have a problem and will do what they can to help me fix it, even when it's not a "supported config". My IT department says "not my problem" and hangs up the phone. If I thought that my IT department gave a crap about my problem then maybe I'd cut them some slack.
For what it's worth, I have a policy that when someone asks me a question, I do my best to answer it and then say "... but if you don't get a resolution then come back and talk to me and we'll see what we can do next." I don't care what their issue is - if they've engaged me in the discussion then I have an obligation to do what I can instead of kicking them out the door. That doesn't mean that I solve every problem, but I do what I can to help. There are times when I have to tell people that I can't help them, but not after spending at least a little time doing what I can to steer them in the right direction.
I bought the box through our corporate procurement department from a list of equipment that they provided. It's for a project that I'm doing that's sponsored by my boss and supported by the business. What about this config do you think makes it rogue?
Let's just say for a minute that it was a random box. As I stated earlier, my job is to bring new stuff into the company so that we can support our customers. These are not "my" customers, because their revenues pay for my salary plus the salary of everyone else in the company. If I don't make them happy, we both suffer. If this is the case, shouldn't I expect some extra effort from my IT staff? Why is IT any different than my copy department, that will make up virtually anything I want virtually on demand, as long as I'm willing to pay for it?
I'm assuming from your self-richeous point of view that you take that attitude whenever dealing with IT too.
It's not self-righteous to try to get things done on behalf of my customer. I have people asking me to do things, and in turn I need the support of IT. If you don't like the fact that I'm trying to do things for my customers then you should take it up with them.
I'm sorry if that angers you, but either you want to do it yourself and should be expected to support yourself, or you want us to support it for you, and you need to use what we provide.
I don't think that you really want me doing everything myself. Seriously. In the case that I cited, I needed to connect to our corporate wireless network that requires a special cert to be on the machine. Can I do it myself? Sure, but if you're really telling me that I should do whatever I want then I'll just plug an unsecured wireless access point into the network in my office and solve the problem that way. I don't think that that's the right solution to the problem, and I'm sure that's not how my IT or security people want the problem fixed.
What I don't understand is why this has to be an "either-or" problem. Sure, IT is going to spend time fixing a problem that my configuration creates, but if they don't then I will. From a perspective of which is cheaper for the company, it's probably much less expensive for the IT department to at least be involved in helping me fix the problem than it is for me to be fixing the problem all on my own.
Did you stop to wonder why they called you "unprofessional"?
To be honest with you, the only reason that I can conclude is that they don't care about their customer. I didn't call the guy that I was talking to unprofessional because I've tried really hard to understand where IT is coming from. I understand that supporting untested configs costs them a lot of time and energy. I understand that it often costs less to push everyone into the same solution. What I would appreciate from IT is a little understanding in return. I need my IT department to understand that my job is to push the envelope and come up with new ways of doing things. It is what my customer demands.
This is the biggest bunch of nonsense that I've heard in a long time. Virtually every time I try to get help from my helpdesk on anything beyond pulling a cable or rebooting a server, I'm told that they can't help me, even when what I'm trying to do is required by policies that the IT people have put into place in the first place. My favorite reason for not helping is that I don't have a "supported configuration", even though I'm running name-brand hardware and software. My feeling about my IT people is that they're really great at running the network and server farms, but beyond that they don't care about their customers. The last problem I had I pushed up the management chain (outside the vendor that we hire to do the work) and was told that I was being "unprofessional" in my communications because I was pushing a customer-centric point of view. That being the case, why should our IT people get paid more when their contributions to the company are limited (or in this case, negative)? I'd be happy to support higher level of pay for them if they'd be willing to help tackle some of the real problems that their users are having.
Apparently you don't know much about how land measurements, street numbers, and postal addresses revolve around imperial units. These would be extremely difficult to convert. In fact, a full conversion to something sensible in the metric system would require every street in the US to be ripped up and put back down someplace else, and every building to get a new address. I personally like knowing that it's exactly a mile from 240th to 256th street.
I have an EU1000i and they're fantastic units. Took mine to the races last year and powered the trailer for >24 hours on just a couple of gallons of gas. Honda also makes larger units, up to the EM7000is, which still consumes very little fuel (~.25gph @ 1/4 load) given its power output rating.
Actually, the letter was to close all my accounts at that bank since I had problems with them doing simple stuff like transferring money between accounts (which had to be done with a phone call). I listed each account with it's account number, and all but the credit card was closed. I think part of the problem was that the bank used a third party credit card processor, but since my card had my bank's name on it then I should be able to do anything through their teller.
I did this once, and my bank conveniently lost my request to cancel the card, even though I delivered a written, signed request to a teller at my local branch. About a month after I thought that I had cancelled the card, I had an ISP bill the card for year service (which I no longer wanted), and when I called the bank to dispute the charge they asked me why. I told them it was because they (the bank) didn't cancel my card. The customer service rep was totally confused when I tried to explain the situation. Sadly, the bank didn't have any way of dealing with their own screw up, so as far as I know they put a chargeback through to the ISP. If they did then they were totally unfair to the ISP, who would have been billed a chargeback fee. The moral of the story? Call back to confirm that the card has been cancelled. It's real easy for requests to get lost in the system, even when they're in writing.
My local newspaper - http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/ - is going out of business in a couple of weeks. I think that all newspapers are headed in this direction and it's just the smaller ones that are going belly up first. You should go into some other line of business, like car repair or computer programming.
I agree, at least in principle. Let's say I run a calendar service and I miss an appointment for a multi-million dollar deal because my service lost the data. I can't sue for the lost business because of the EULA. But it's unclear to me from the EULA that I don't have the right to demand the recovery of the actual data that represents the calendar appointment.
A well polished beta to be sure; but as long as it says beta on it, you should have no expectation of it remaining static or being 100% stable.
So are you saying that when Gmail leaves beta that there will never be any lost email again? If you aren't then this comment is meaningless since a user never has a right to complain about something that they got for free.
someone takes a lot better care of those, or so I'm told
In a world where everything is free, I sometimes wonder. In cases where you've paid for a service, you have every right to demand that your data is restored if lost. Not that the company is guaranteed to help you, but at least you can insist that they do something. If they don't, you always have the option of a lawsuit. So what is the consequence of Google losing all your data? Apart from some bad press, there doesn't seem to be any.
I'm not suggesting that everyone store everything on their PC, but you do have to consider that with virtually every free web service that you're handing complete control of your data off to someone who could pull the plug at any time. One exception to this rule is Yahoo. They offer Intellisync, which does an acceptable (though not great) job of syncing their service to your desktop so that you can make backups. I would never put all my contacts, calendar, and tasks on a service that I couldn't back up or take with me somewhere else.
I always wondered if Nixon's resignation was a negotiated deal...
I was watching Donald Rumsfeld being interviewed on TV this morning about Ford. When the interviewer asked if Ford miscalculated the impact of the pardon, Rumsfeld said that you couldn't apply the word "calculating" to Ford. I agree, and don't think that Ford was part of any deal.
That being said, let's just say hypothetically that Ford did make a deal. If this were the case, he still did the right thing. One of my first political memories was from the night that Nixon resigned (I was 11 at the time) and I remember my dad saying before Nixon's address that he was hoping that Nixon was planning to resign. This was quite a shock to me because my family had always had Republican leanings. By the time Nixon left office he had been disgraced, had few remaining friends, and paid a heavy price by giving up the Presidency. The country needed to move on, and the best way to do it was to clear Nixon out of office. Did the Ford's pardon provide justice? Maybe not. But it cleared the way for the country to get on to more pressing issues.
It's attitudes like this that keep Linux from being broadly adopted. What really gets me is the arrogance of this statement. What if auto enthusiasts built cars this way? After all, why should a car be "dumbed down" so that all you have to do is turn a key and put it in drive to get to the store? According to Linux advocates, you should be forced to build your car from the ground up, but only after you've first earned a degree in mechanical engineering.
If Linux is to compete seriously on the desktop then it has to be inclusive. That doesn't mean that you still can't make it as configurable as you want. You just need to make it easy to use for the masses. Until you do, you'll never see any serious market share.
I never really identified with anything after TNG.
What, you didn't like Deep Space 9? Or how about it's cousin Atlantis from the world of Stargate?:-)
Seriously, most sci-fi sucks because it's all about pushing buttons and closing broken steam valves on whatever ship you happen to be flying around on. I find it ironic that in most "adventure" series, the group searching for "new life and new civilizations" rarely ever leaves the set. TNG had a couple of good episodes where the crew actually left their chairs to explore, and I really like the first five seasons of Stargate because they're always out in the woods somewhere. (Yeah, I know, every planet looks just like Vancouver, B.C., but that's a discussion for another day.) Of the few DS9 episodes that I watched, they were so hard-up to get off the space station that they introduced a space ship so that they could fly around to other places. But in my mind, that isn't exploring. And by the way, when the guys running the station were out on the ship, exactly who was in charge back at ole' DS9?
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In a big company, this isn't unusual. But I also may not have been clear in my statement. In order to get a shared boss with IT, I have to go up several levels of management. In fact, I think that I'd have to go all the way to the top. I don't think that the CEO of my company wants to worry about my IT problem.
Tell me, do the IT staffers get to comment on you and your performance??
Sure, if they want. Not like they have any idea what I do, but if they want to complain to my boss about my work performance then they're free to do so. One thing though - they don't have a dependency on my work performance like I do on theirs.
Most little stuff like this I don't need approval for. To solve the problem I just went and bought a $13 adapter and submitted an expense report. If I'd gotten $100 bill from IT for the fix then there probably wouldn't have been any question.
I totally agree. I'd never heard of this before a few weeks ago.
This is why I think that every IT call should be billed. Then if my group wants to make a call a priority to meet our business objectives, we can. It takes the job of prioritizing calls out of the hands of the IT department and puts it into the hands of the business. I guess that I have to wonder, however, if the IT department doesn't like having this control. All you have to do is read some of the threads attached to this article to see that IT folks like to tell people what they should or should not be doing with their systems. Instead, they should tell them what they are capable of doing and let the business decide what is in its own best interest. Of course there are always going to be rules that need to be followed (e.g. security), and I'm sure that we can live within those boundaries.
This is really lame. That may be the case, but it's no excuse for not offering the service. If you tell me that it's going to be $1,000 to fix a problem that I think is going to cost $100 to fix then it becomes my problem to find a cheaper solution. But I'm not getting that option.
It _can't_ be that high
It's sad that you assume that everyone is an idiot. And isn't that how this whole thread got started? I fully understand burdened labor costs, and you should be able to publish a schedule of what those costs are for IT. Then I can decide which option is cheaper, or faster, or whatever metric that I want to use and go from there. Just by making that statement you make it appear that the only people who understand burdened labor costs are IT people. Actually, this is one of the reasons that I like our contract labor force, because they *can* tell me the actual cost of fixing my problem.
But the true cost can't be admitted, so the costs are buried...
And whose problem is that? If you're providing a valuable service to the company then those costs shouldn't be a problem. I think that the reason so many IT departments get pushback on costs is that the bosses at the top see them purely as an expense. But as anyone in IT will tell you, there are a lot of contributions that IT can make that will bring dollars to the bottom line. IT needs to seize on these opportunities by offering better internal service. Here's one example - I once worked for a multi-billion dollar company that did a lot of custom pricing. One day, one of our guys had the idea of getting the data off the mainframe and on to the desktop so that customer proposals could be done in Excel. The idea was sheer genius (for its time), and it not only shaved countless hours off the time it took to prepare a customer quote but it also made for more accurate quoting. It also made my company much more competitive. That single idea, from an IT staffer, made a huge difference in this one area and helped grow the company sales. IT was no longer just an expense to the bottom line, and we got a lot of support from those who benefited from our ideas.
Even though my company is big, we routinely bypass five or six layers of management. In fact, going "through the channels" is considered a waste by most everyone in the organization unless there is a problem that can't be settled at the bottom layers.
Your client does not matter to these people - you have to convince somebody it is in the interest of the company or find somebody that already knows about the issue.
Or I just fix the problem myself and move on. But when IT comes around looking for extra money then I push back on service levels. Several people have commented on how unpaid IT staffers are. I agree, so long as they're helping me take care of our customers, which means helping me with my problem.
I've working in both the private sector and academia, and in both of these the copy center bills by the job, yet they still support some sort of "public" infrastructure where expenses may or may not be tracked. (In my job as a teacher, all copies were billed to my department, even those I made myself.) So why is IT any different than the copy center? Build out an infrastructure that works for most everyone, and support the "oddballs" with billable service.
If this was a concern for them then they should have said so. I agree that non-standard configs can create security problems, and it's not my goal to cause new problems. But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that my config did create new issues. It still doesn't get around the fact that I'm trying to support my customer and need the help of my IT department. If, after exhaustive analysis, they told me that they couldn't work around the problem then I'd try to come up with another solution that met the needs of the customer. Without that, we (our company) just look like we're clueless.
Not really. I needed a cert for the wireless network installed on my machine. What's so "different" about that? It's something that they do every day. The OS is supported by the company and the hardware was not at all unusual, with one exception. As I stated earlier, I would have been happy to pay for the exception, which cost me $13 to work around by buying the part that I needed down at Frys. (Before you tell me how much it would cost to procure that same part through normal channels, remember that it took me at least 30 minutes to buy the part myself and another 15 minutes to fill out an expense report that was then reviewed by my boss and someone in Accounts Payaable, which means that the real cost for the part was much, much higher than the $13 that I quoted.)
Given that, IT can disclaim everything on your side of the ethernet port if you're a normal user.
So this is the root of the problem that most people have with IT. Why should they be disclaiming anything? Shouldn't they be doing what they can to help, especially when the problem that I'm trying to solve is due in part to the fact that they're the guys who set up the infrastructure that I need to talk to in the first place?
Like I said before, there's really not much of a customer service attitude that I've seen coming from my IT department, because they usually drop my call like a hot potato at the first sign of trouble. I know that the complaint is that IT people don't get paid well, and I'd suggest that better customer service might help that problem. My experience is that the more service you offer, the more people value that service. Take my car dealership for one. I do everything at the dealership because they offer good service. It costs me more for an oil change than dropping my truck off at the Jiffy Lube, but I also get excellent service. For example, I recently had to have a yoke replaced on one of the front wheels (4WD). The yoke was bent and needed to be replaced, so it was going to take an extra day to repair. The dealership then gave me a car, free of charge, to drive until my truck was repaired. They could have just said "Hey, getting to and from your job isn't my problem, so there's the bus stop." Instead, my dealer values my time and understands that I can afford their service so long as I have a job. So doesn't it make sense that offering better service is ultimately going to yield happier customers and subsequently a higher level of income?
I realized while replying to another comment that IT departments should work more like my copy department. If I want the standard service (say B/W copies) then I get it for free from the public copy machine on my floor. If I want a banner or some other oddball copy service then I have to pay extra to have someone handle the job for me. I can get virtually anything that I want from my copy department (including books) as long as I pay their bill. IT should work the same. Set up basic service for those who want it (equivalent to putting a public copy machine on every floor of the building) and then charge for the fancy stuff. I'm totally ok with that model because I still get what I need but it serves to deter me from setting up special configs that don't have a business justification.
That's a reasonable assumption.
You end up with a stressed out IT that can't support you anyway, and is probably neglecting something _everyone_ wants supported
So why don't you just sell me the extra service that I need then? I can see somebody telling me "Hey, you got a goofy config and it's going to take extra time. Mind if I bill you for the extra effort?" I'd say "No problem. I have extra budget for that and I don't have time to fix the problem myself." Instead, I get told to screw off. Sure, I could try to hire someone who works privately for my group, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of having an IT department in the first place? It seems to me that the best way to get IT upset is to have your own staff doing work that they consider to be a part of their domain.
As for pleasing customers, if you went into an auto dealer and asked for chewing gum and they didn't have any, would you say they didn't care about the customer?
One of the seat covers in my truck is going bad, so when I was last down at the dealer getting my oil changed I asked where I could get a replacement cover. The guy gave me the name of someone who could fix my problem. The difference between my dealer and my IT department is that the dealer understands that I have a problem and will do what they can to help me fix it, even when it's not a "supported config". My IT department says "not my problem" and hangs up the phone. If I thought that my IT department gave a crap about my problem then maybe I'd cut them some slack.
For what it's worth, I have a policy that when someone asks me a question, I do my best to answer it and then say "... but if you don't get a resolution then come back and talk to me and we'll see what we can do next." I don't care what their issue is - if they've engaged me in the discussion then I have an obligation to do what I can instead of kicking them out the door. That doesn't mean that I solve every problem, but I do what I can to help. There are times when I have to tell people that I can't help them, but not after spending at least a little time doing what I can to steer them in the right direction.
Let's just say for a minute that it was a random box. As I stated earlier, my job is to bring new stuff into the company so that we can support our customers. These are not "my" customers, because their revenues pay for my salary plus the salary of everyone else in the company. If I don't make them happy, we both suffer. If this is the case, shouldn't I expect some extra effort from my IT staff? Why is IT any different than my copy department, that will make up virtually anything I want virtually on demand, as long as I'm willing to pay for it?
Why yes, I am.
I'm assuming from your self-richeous point of view that you take that attitude whenever dealing with IT too.
It's not self-righteous to try to get things done on behalf of my customer. I have people asking me to do things, and in turn I need the support of IT. If you don't like the fact that I'm trying to do things for my customers then you should take it up with them.
I'm sorry if that angers you, but either you want to do it yourself and should be expected to support yourself, or you want us to support it for you, and you need to use what we provide.
I don't think that you really want me doing everything myself. Seriously. In the case that I cited, I needed to connect to our corporate wireless network that requires a special cert to be on the machine. Can I do it myself? Sure, but if you're really telling me that I should do whatever I want then I'll just plug an unsecured wireless access point into the network in my office and solve the problem that way. I don't think that that's the right solution to the problem, and I'm sure that's not how my IT or security people want the problem fixed.
What I don't understand is why this has to be an "either-or" problem. Sure, IT is going to spend time fixing a problem that my configuration creates, but if they don't then I will. From a perspective of which is cheaper for the company, it's probably much less expensive for the IT department to at least be involved in helping me fix the problem than it is for me to be fixing the problem all on my own.
Did you stop to wonder why they called you "unprofessional"?
To be honest with you, the only reason that I can conclude is that they don't care about their customer. I didn't call the guy that I was talking to unprofessional because I've tried really hard to understand where IT is coming from. I understand that supporting untested configs costs them a lot of time and energy. I understand that it often costs less to push everyone into the same solution. What I would appreciate from IT is a little understanding in return. I need my IT department to understand that my job is to push the envelope and come up with new ways of doing things. It is what my customer demands.
This is the biggest bunch of nonsense that I've heard in a long time. Virtually every time I try to get help from my helpdesk on anything beyond pulling a cable or rebooting a server, I'm told that they can't help me, even when what I'm trying to do is required by policies that the IT people have put into place in the first place. My favorite reason for not helping is that I don't have a "supported configuration", even though I'm running name-brand hardware and software. My feeling about my IT people is that they're really great at running the network and server farms, but beyond that they don't care about their customers. The last problem I had I pushed up the management chain (outside the vendor that we hire to do the work) and was told that I was being "unprofessional" in my communications because I was pushing a customer-centric point of view. That being the case, why should our IT people get paid more when their contributions to the company are limited (or in this case, negative)? I'd be happy to support higher level of pay for them if they'd be willing to help tackle some of the real problems that their users are having.
Apparently you don't know much about how land measurements, street numbers, and postal addresses revolve around imperial units. These would be extremely difficult to convert. In fact, a full conversion to something sensible in the metric system would require every street in the US to be ripped up and put back down someplace else, and every building to get a new address. I personally like knowing that it's exactly a mile from 240th to 256th street.
I have an EU1000i and they're fantastic units. Took mine to the races last year and powered the trailer for >24 hours on just a couple of gallons of gas. Honda also makes larger units, up to the EM7000is, which still consumes very little fuel (~ .25gph @ 1/4 load) given its power output rating.
Actually, the letter was to close all my accounts at that bank since I had problems with them doing simple stuff like transferring money between accounts (which had to be done with a phone call). I listed each account with it's account number, and all but the credit card was closed. I think part of the problem was that the bank used a third party credit card processor, but since my card had my bank's name on it then I should be able to do anything through their teller.
I did this once, and my bank conveniently lost my request to cancel the card, even though I delivered a written, signed request to a teller at my local branch. About a month after I thought that I had cancelled the card, I had an ISP bill the card for year service (which I no longer wanted), and when I called the bank to dispute the charge they asked me why. I told them it was because they (the bank) didn't cancel my card. The customer service rep was totally confused when I tried to explain the situation. Sadly, the bank didn't have any way of dealing with their own screw up, so as far as I know they put a chargeback through to the ISP. If they did then they were totally unfair to the ISP, who would have been billed a chargeback fee. The moral of the story? Call back to confirm that the card has been cancelled. It's real easy for requests to get lost in the system, even when they're in writing.
My local newspaper - http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/ - is going out of business in a couple of weeks. I think that all newspapers are headed in this direction and it's just the smaller ones that are going belly up first. You should go into some other line of business, like car repair or computer programming.
I agree, at least in principle. Let's say I run a calendar service and I miss an appointment for a multi-million dollar deal because my service lost the data. I can't sue for the lost business because of the EULA. But it's unclear to me from the EULA that I don't have the right to demand the recovery of the actual data that represents the calendar appointment.
So are you saying that when Gmail leaves beta that there will never be any lost email again? If you aren't then this comment is meaningless since a user never has a right to complain about something that they got for free.
In a world where everything is free, I sometimes wonder. In cases where you've paid for a service, you have every right to demand that your data is restored if lost. Not that the company is guaranteed to help you, but at least you can insist that they do something. If they don't, you always have the option of a lawsuit. So what is the consequence of Google losing all your data? Apart from some bad press, there doesn't seem to be any.
I'm not suggesting that everyone store everything on their PC, but you do have to consider that with virtually every free web service that you're handing complete control of your data off to someone who could pull the plug at any time. One exception to this rule is Yahoo. They offer Intellisync, which does an acceptable (though not great) job of syncing their service to your desktop so that you can make backups. I would never put all my contacts, calendar, and tasks on a service that I couldn't back up or take with me somewhere else.
I was watching Donald Rumsfeld being interviewed on TV this morning about Ford. When the interviewer asked if Ford miscalculated the impact of the pardon, Rumsfeld said that you couldn't apply the word "calculating" to Ford. I agree, and don't think that Ford was part of any deal.
That being said, let's just say hypothetically that Ford did make a deal. If this were the case, he still did the right thing. One of my first political memories was from the night that Nixon resigned (I was 11 at the time) and I remember my dad saying before Nixon's address that he was hoping that Nixon was planning to resign. This was quite a shock to me because my family had always had Republican leanings. By the time Nixon left office he had been disgraced, had few remaining friends, and paid a heavy price by giving up the Presidency. The country needed to move on, and the best way to do it was to clear Nixon out of office. Did the Ford's pardon provide justice? Maybe not. But it cleared the way for the country to get on to more pressing issues.
It's attitudes like this that keep Linux from being broadly adopted. What really gets me is the arrogance of this statement. What if auto enthusiasts built cars this way? After all, why should a car be "dumbed down" so that all you have to do is turn a key and put it in drive to get to the store? According to Linux advocates, you should be forced to build your car from the ground up, but only after you've first earned a degree in mechanical engineering.
If Linux is to compete seriously on the desktop then it has to be inclusive. That doesn't mean that you still can't make it as configurable as you want. You just need to make it easy to use for the masses. Until you do, you'll never see any serious market share.
What, you didn't like Deep Space 9? Or how about it's cousin Atlantis from the world of Stargate? :-)
Seriously, most sci-fi sucks because it's all about pushing buttons and closing broken steam valves on whatever ship you happen to be flying around on. I find it ironic that in most "adventure" series, the group searching for "new life and new civilizations" rarely ever leaves the set. TNG had a couple of good episodes where the crew actually left their chairs to explore, and I really like the first five seasons of Stargate because they're always out in the woods somewhere. (Yeah, I know, every planet looks just like Vancouver, B.C., but that's a discussion for another day.) Of the few DS9 episodes that I watched, they were so hard-up to get off the space station that they introduced a space ship so that they could fly around to other places. But in my mind, that isn't exploring. And by the way, when the guys running the station were out on the ship, exactly who was in charge back at ole' DS9?