Forums
Microsoft Vissa (from Mike Cook)
A couple years ago, after trying nearly everything to get my new Dell to work, I did the unthinkable. I called Dell's tech support. After giving the service tag and all that other jazz, I explained the problem to the technician.
"According to the BIOS," I said, "my computer has 4GB of RAM installed. But Vista Ultimate only shows 2GB."
"I write these SOPs for a reason," Ken barked, "and that reason isn't just so you can violate them!" Ken had the attitude of a drill sergeant from basically any movie with a cliché terrifying drill sergeant. In a previous career, Ken was a naval officer, and his rigid adherence to well-defined procedures was unshakable.
Ken was working for a clinical research company's central office in Ohio, where he struck fear into the hearts of his team, most of which were in a satellite office in Arizona. They frequently violated procedures, generally because they were unaware of the procedure being broken – and Garrett M. was the one that Ken watched most closely. He'd get his team following SOPs to the letter or die trying.
A little more than a year ago, Jason M. visited a small company named Jera Co. to write a proposal for wiring-up their office network. Michael, the office manager, described their environment as being a "simple arrangement with a handful of users." Upon inspection — boy oh boy — how simple it was.
It turned out that the office had only two PCs. One was laptop with Windows 95.A and the other was a Franken-puter sporting an AMD K6-2 Inside badge and Windows NT 4.0. File transfer between the machines were done through a floppy disk, unless of course the file was more than 1.44 megabytes, in which case, it was emailed from one computer to another. It was a kludgy solution to be sure, but that's why they were bringing in Jason.
In the spirit of "dead A/C compressor at the office" day — which, as it turns out, is not really a fun day to celebrate — I thought it'd be a great opportunity to revisit this classic. I'm Sure You Can Deal was originally published on July 9, 2007.
Not too long ago, there was a small furor in the local media about a major disaster at The State's Technology Services Division. The details were a bit sketchy – mostly because The State was “unable to comment on an ongoing investigation” – but what was reported was that, for two full days, employees of The State were unable to logon to their computers or access email, and that this caused business within The State to grind to a halt.
When it comes time for month-end, quarter-end, and year-end, accounts will tend to display a wide range of emotions, from cranky to flustered to downright belligerent. Nothing – and I mean nothing –is more important than getting than getting accurate financials out on time. After all, without those reports, the executives would have no idea whether they should take credit for a good period or if they need to find someone to blame for poor performance.
As a financial systems developer for a mid-size company, Mike L had come to learn that there are times to be chatty and friendly with the folks in accounting and times to avoid even thinking about stepping foot in their area. Fortunately, since he dealt primarily with back-end data aggregation, he was never in a position to get in the accounts’ way and, therefore, never had to face the wrath of accountant. That is, until some serious miscalculations occurred in WBL01GLP.
When I do my research for "What the Ad?", I see a lot of glitz, a lot of meh, and a lot of everything in between. For starters, this one from American Small Business Computers is a an example of how to get straight down to ...well...business.
On the left, you have the Cameo Connection bringing its 5 megabytes of fixed and 5 megabytes of removable Cartridge-Type Disk Drive to the party. Suave, smooth, classy.
Owein R. knew that security at the government facility was going to be a big deal, but it wasn't clear how big a deal it was going to be until he started his job.
To get anywhere in the facility, you needed a pass, and these were granted on a least-permissive basis. Even if your clearance was high enough, you still needed a pass to get into certain areas. To be granted access to a restricted area, you either had to have a pass, an appointment, or to be escorted at all times by someone with a pass – this included lunch and bathroom breaks.
Adam never really had a lot of faith in those "Professional Networking Social Luncheons" that were hosted by his university's career advising office. Despite their seemingly good intentions, there was an air of the events being a safari for smarmy headhunters. But Adam couldn't pass up their latest offering: The Mobile and Telecom IT Ice Cream Social.
Hoping to break into the wacky, wonderful world of mobile IT telecommunications, Adam did his best to "bump elbows" with IT professionals in the mobile and telecom field. Armed with a stack of resumes in one arm and a bowl of strawberry swirl in the other, Adam was able to pass out all of his resumes and meet a few interesting people. Over the next few days, he received a few callbacks for interviews and, in the end, was able to land a gig at a large mobile provider on a small team lead by a senior developer named Carl.
Picture this. A completely empty room. Now picture this. A large pile of candy — a crapton to be exact — in the middle of the room and the door creaking open to reveal a class of hungry preschoolers, drooling over the goodies. And, as they walk through the door, each of them are given a sippy cup full of Red Bull.
That's basically how the electrical engineers and CAD designers were acting at the Fortune 500 hardware company where Jack works. Since the sales guy from EE-Graphix came in touting the features of their PCB Designer Enterprise Edition 2009 — and brought with them a pile of Krispy Kreme and Starbucks — the engineers and designers were bouncing off the walls. But it wasn't just sugar and caffeine that was making them jittery; they were experiencing a "feature high".
David's phone was ringing as he walked in the door, and there were four voice mails on his phone already. Before sitting down, he scooped up the phone. "G'morning, this is David."
"Yeah, hi David, this is Jan. I'm sure you're already aware of the intranet issues?" He listened idly to her description of the issue while he opened Outlook, seeing several new emails popping into his inbox. The subject lines were troubling.
Jul 09