-
Archives
- February 2020
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- July 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- January 2015
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- November 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- April 2006
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
- July 1996
- June 1996
- May 1996
- April 1996
- March 1996
- February 1996
- October 1995
-
Meta
Monthly Archives: March 2004
Bottleneck
Alice and I giggled at her. We three live in this space. And we all take blood pressure meds.
Posted in Bureaucratic Whimsy
Leave a comment
The Joy of Numbers
Except that the consistency is, itself, interesting. This program took about three months to ramp up, but found its natural customer base very quickly and they’re very loyal to it. We offer a half-dozen ways to handle renewal transactions, and all of the others generate more income, but for this one set of customers we’ve found the right way to interact. That’s interesting, and worth knowing.
Posted in Bureaucratic Whimsy
Leave a comment
Margie Wins One
IT’s renewal policy clearly assumes all contractual relationships are inherently unstable. The short-cycle renewal process assures that we’ve got current information about the actual staffers supporting our products. I’ve known support teams where such caution was appropriate, but such precautions are not always appropriate. Margie’s case was that the policy needs more nuance, and she convinced ’em. How this will work out for the rest of IT’s customers remains to be seen, but she’s got a commitment through the end of our vendor’s contract. Good work.
Posted in Bureaucratic Whimsy
Leave a comment
UCE: gone?
They haven’t told us about it, but about a week ago IT apparently put a spam filter on our email system. I know this because only one piece of true junk made it to my mailbox last week–down from 80 or so the week before. I certainly don’t miss the unsolicited mail, but I’m a little wary because I don’t know how the filter works, and I don’t know what mail it stops. Odds are pretty good I’ve been cut off from some email source I value–but who knows what that is? I’m a little concerned, as I said, but apparently not enough to follow up….
Posted in Bureaucratic Whimsy
Leave a comment
Witty
Witty seems to have been an orchestrated attack, albeit using an opportunistic method. The paper argues convincingly that we’re using the wrong security model; if we don’t change, the bad guys are gonna take down a lot of computers. Doesn’t matter if it’s a prank or something really malicious, it’s going to be costly regardless.
POPFile on PowerBook
I resisted installing POPfile for several weeks–partly because I wanted to be more familiar with the Mac environment before installing something so far out of the ordinary, and partly because I wanted to give mail.app’s junk filter a test. By January’s end, it was pretty clear that the Junk Mail filter doesn’t work as well as I’d like, and I missed POPfile’s more general mail sorting capabilities. As I’ve mentioned before, I sort incoming mail into a couple dozen categories. Teaching POPfile to recognize those categories lets me get by with two dozen rules, rather than a couple hundred. Much better.
Millie Jeffrey
Millie was a key player in Michigan and national politics before I was born, and remained active pretty much forever. Her friends and her causes will miss her. We all owe her for a life well lived.
Posted in Passing On
Leave a comment
Stitchings
It’s an unholy mess, but we make progress. I wouldn’t say we’ve got a strategy, exactly, but we’ve got a consensus that we need to get to this place, and that there are tools which can help build the department we envision. We’ve made some mistakes. We’ve learned that you can’t just buy stuff and expect it automatically to work with everything else, and that IT’s not blind to the shortcomings of the legacy systems. Systems have both inertia and entropy, and neither ever works to our advantage. The endeavor’s worthwhile, and needs to be made. Our customers–Michigan’s citizens–deserve our best efforts.
Posted in Bureaucratic Whimsy, Semi-Geekery
Leave a comment
Siebel Sorts
Meantime, we’re still waiting for upper management to decide how to implement the upgrade. We have a couple vendors’ bids in hand, neither of which is particularly attractive. We expect this to be resolved within a month. There’s every reason to expect my role to be reduced to Subject Matter Expert. That’s OK.
Posted in Bureaucratic Whimsy, Life's Stories, Semi-Geekery
Leave a comment