Category: grumptacular

Stamp Out Business Speak

So when I wandered over the fun Theme Thursday page, I noted that this week’s theme word is: Cloud

Whenever I get the weekly word, I always take a moment to sit back and think about it. What are the first impressions that come to mind? What hits first?

So I did that this week. Cloud…cloud…what does that say to me….?

First thought: Freaking cloud! “In the Cloud” and “Cloud computing” and “it’s all about the cloud.”

RAAWWWWRAGH!

I haaaaaaate the ubiquitous use of the word “cloud” in today’s technical jargon.

This concept isn’t new. It isn’t bold. It’s the same old bullsheet that’s been tried several times with mixed results.

Once upon a time they called it hosted software. And then they called it application service provider or the more hip ASP. Back in the really golden old days they called it a Key Server. Even older than that was the not-very-PC term “dumb terminals”.

It’s all essentially the same.

I think “the cloud” is a dumb topic. Damnit, it’s not new and it’s not anywhere near as cool as the marketing would have you believe.

Here’s what those cloud providers want you to do….they want you to save nothing on your own local machine. They want you to put every single dingle bit of your information on their servers. All of it. All your letters to gramma. All of your negative balance bank statements. Your high school diploma. That email to your doctor about the funny bump on your rump. ALL OF IT.

And in return they promise, cross my heart and hope to die, that they’ll keep ALL of your data safe, tidy and secure.

Umm hmm.

Here’s where my skepticism comes in. I’ve worked in data centers. I’ve been a part of some of the most sophisticated and well regarded data centers in the world. And you know what? Sh%t happens.

Here’s a real world example: Very big data center in a very well regarded Fortune 50 company. My team had racked and stacked a large number of servers and storage devices. We were providing a for pay service to our customers with extraordinarily high expectations and high SLA’s.

Some of the best and brightest database admins, network managers, technical support, and engineering minds maintained this environment to very tiny tolerances.

One evening, the cleaning crew was doing their work in the data center and they plugged their vacuum into the power strip carrying the very, very delicate power balance for that entire row.

And they blew the circuit.

Now, we’d engineered the environment to fail over, and it did….but it was about a week to get all of those servers and storage devices brought back up, data restored and back to running in the production environment.

I suggested we put baby proof socket covers on the power strips, and my suggestion was immediately adopted.

Then there was the time the maintenance crew pushed a cart down the aisle and knocked the Ethernet cable out of every machine at about three feet high level. It took us a LONG time to sort out what happened there.

And then one New Year’s Eve, a new security guard opened a wrong door and set off the alarm. In his haste to shut off the alarm, he hit a button by the door. The button was marked EPO. So he pushed it hard.

EPO means “emergency power off” used in the case of something catastrophic. An alarmed door is not catastrophic. The entire data center went dark and knocked a several million dollar a day online store to go off the air.

Yeah.

My point? If you entrust the cloud, back up your data locally. There are a million yabos in the world who can mess things up, even in the best of circumstances.



Down with the cloud!


Photo by username joegus74 and used royalty free from stock.xchng.


Did You Ever Have The Kind Of Day Where….

Did you ever have the kind of day where you are going ninety miles an hour at your work desk, cranking out the emails, spreadsheets and taking phone calls left and right, all while balancing the Greyhound bus stop that is the chair in front of your desk….

And despite all the chaos and kerfuffle, just in the nick of time, you manage to whip out your one page, beautifully wrought, easy-to-read table that contains the cheat sheet you’ll need to answer every question that will be machine gun fired at you at your 3:00 meeting.

So you send that sumnabitch to the printer and grab your notebook, hike up your pants, run to the copier, and grab that thing off the machine so you can make it to your meeting at something less than five minutes late.

Then you squeal around the corner into the copy room and you are heartened to hear that the machine isn’t working. It’s done. It’s printed your copy.

Only it hasn’t.

The screen reads “out of paper, load tray three.”

Inside your head, you say, “I can deal with this.”

So it’s one of those big industrial machines and to fill the paper tray takes not one, not two, but three reams of ecologically friendly 50% post-consumer lily white paper.

Being a good office citizen, you could throw half a ream in there and call it good, but you don’t. You fill it up to the top, slam the drawer and the machine fires up.

Sweet sound of the Gods!

And the machine begins spitting out page after page after page…..

After page.

After page.

And you realize the guy in front of you must be printing like a hundred copies of his forty page slide deck and it’s HIS FAULT that the machine was parched for paper when you arrived.

Nothing you can do now but watch that machine like a bird dog after a duck, all the while not-my-copy, not-my-copy, not-my-copy shoots out of the machine, perfectly stapled and collated and tidy as you please.

“Ok,” you say to yourself. “I can deal with this.”

Then the machine stops again. The engine winds down.

“Thank god!” you think.

But wait, your copy isn’t there.

“WHAT THE [EXPLETIVE DELETED]!!!” You may or may not shout.

The LCD screen on that machine says “Replace Toner” and provides helpful animated arrows to guide you through the process.

“Ok,” you think to yourself, “I can deal with this. It can’t be that hard.”

So you find a box with a new toner tube and you follow the bouncing arrow on the screen and the old toner comes out and the new toner slides in and now you may or may not have black toner dust peppering your arms.

But you slam closed the toner door and the machine begins to make a noise.

“Warming up,” it tells you.

And you wait for what must be an [expletive deleted] eternity while the machine “cleans the wires” and “recalibrates” itself at the pace of an anemic snail.

Then holy mother of Xerox, the machine starts spitting out copies anew and more and more of not-my-copy of someone’s presentation comes out.

Then, most miraculous! The single sheet that you desperately needed finally exits the machine!

Victory!

So to be helpful you pull the other copies off the machine to lay them aside in a nice, neat stack.

And because you are nosy by nature, you look to see exactly what is the document that held up your progress and made you irretrievably late for a very important meeting, and you come to realize that it is…..

Handouts for someone’s upcoming Cub Scout meeting.

You ever have a day like that?

No way, right? Because that story just *has* to be made up. Unless truth really is stranger than fiction.





Photo by Alex Furr and used royalty free from stock.xchng


Wednesday’s Got The Blues

The rain has returned in earnest here in the Bay Area. At this moment, there are swirling black clouds and wind driving rain into my office windows.

It’s sort of tough to take, though not unexpected, after the wonderfully sunny weekend we enjoyed (see flower photos a few posts down).

While on a conference call yesterday during which both my team and I roundly chastised a supplier, while on mute for a bit, I had occasion to vent my feelings about the return of winter to my empty marker board.

Herewith, my latest doodle.

Click to see larger size. In case it’s tough to read, the umbrella says “Spring”






What’s The Point?

It’s a cold rainy day in the Bay Area today and the ubiquitous “they” seem to think we’re going to have snow today, maybe even in the middle of San Francisco.

Snow? Here? Gah! The Bay Area will lose its ever loving mind.

But that’s not the point.

Today I’m angry, pissy, hostile and downright grumpy. My right wrist still hurts so much it wakes me up at night. I took my gimp to the doctor lady and she fitted me into a wrist brace. This @$%#ing thing limits my movement (doing its job, I suppose) and it is frustrating!

When I rip the thing off then my wrist hurts double. And I get angrier.

I don’t like being weak and showing my weakness. I’m the gazelle that the lions will go for first! The limping one!

But really, neither my gimpy wrist nor my offbeat psychosis are the point.

Apparently I’m a brute when I write. I love using felt tip pens but mush them to nothingness within a week or two. All of my Sharpies are not a bit sharp. I just threw out a whole handful.

I am anal about only using pencils that have a very sharp point, but they either break or go nubby within a few sentences. And mechanical pencils! Sheesh. Anything less than a sturdy .5 size and I’m snapping the lead off left and right!

My kingdom for a good sturdy point!

But the point isn’t really the point either.

I’ve been watching the complete Boston Legal series lately. The Good Man got the set for Christmas and we both adore the show.

I love when Alan Shore goes on a riff and a judge cuts him off with a “you’ve made your point, counselor.”

Once, in the middle of a somewhat terse discussion with The Good Man, when he was Alan Shore-ing me, I dropped that phrase on him. In a snotty tone.

Needless to say, that didn’t go well.

I’ve not used it since.

My “you’ve made your point” isn’t really the point, either.

“It’s rude to point” you hear, ad nauseum, when you are a kid. I mean, when you are pre-verbal isn’t pointing sort of the only way you can get your meaning across?

Besides, is there anything cuter than a little baby exploring the world and pointing one chubby hand at something fascinating and looking to you for your response?

I think not. So I think it should be amended to “it’s rude to point, unless you are under two and awfully adorable, then it’s all good.”

Rules: made to be flexed!

But talking about pointing isn’t really the point.

So, what exactly IS the point?

Today’s Theme Thursday is point, and while I’ve got a lot of quick thoughts, none of them are very coherent.

I guess my point is…this is an entire blog post that doesn’t really have a point.

Cheers to my pointlessness! For the vague shall inherit the Earth.






Photo found several places on the net but unable to find attribution. Will include attribution or remove at the request of the owner.


I’m So Pulling out my Textbooks

Back in 1890, they passed into law this little ol’ thing called the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

From the wiki: “The purpose of the act was to oppose the combination of entities that could potentially harm competition, such as monopolies or cartels.”

Yes, this is a good thing. Boon to a free economy and such.

Well I’m ready to invoke that act on a little institution known as Getty Images.

If you look around the web and you see an image you like, look closer…odds are Getty already owns it. And don’t both trying to “borrow” it, Getty wants their money and they want it bad.

Oh, and they are large enough to bring a whole passel of lawyers along for the ride.

Getty owns most shots from any professional sporting event. Getty owns the photos of most individual players too.

Getty has hoovered up many of the great images on Flickr, too. In many cases, photographers *gladly* gave over rights to their photos in hopes of making a little money or at least getting a little exposure.

Understandable, but I don’t have to like it.

Ever visited iStockPhoto, a place where you can find a lot of for-pay great stock images? Getty.

And now, oh now, my fave royalty free photo site, stock.xchng is under new management.

You guessed it, Getty has booted the original team (ok, they probably received a nice sum for their time and trouble) and is now in charge.

I’ll betcha some cold hard cash that many of these formerly free images will no longer be free. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that stock.xchng will soon be blended entirely into iStockPhoto and s’long high quality royalty free photos.

This make Hulk maaaad.

I’m just a little personal blog. I don’t make big ad bucks. I make no bucks from my blog. I do it for the satisfaction. And oh so sorry, can’t pay for high quality photos with just my sense of satisfaction.

Bah!

Photo below, found by searching “greedy” on stock.xchng.








Photo by Svilen Milev and used royalty free (for the time being) from stock.xchng.