What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on November 8, 2012 by jdtharp

1. Fleeing to Canada. Despite the ferocity of your Facebook or Twitter conviction, face it, no one is actually going to move to Canada as a result of this week’s presidential election. Even if you did, you’d find a high tax rate, national health care, and an entire province that wants to break away and form its own country. So all you’d actually accomplish is swapping out one dysfunctional political system for another and paying a hefty moving bill for the privilege. Can we all give the hyperbole a rest and start talking about changes we can make here in the real world to start undoing the mess we’ve collectively made over the last 60-odd years?

2. Antique Technology. Using Internet Explorer 8 is pretty much like driving around in a 1979 Dodge Omni; sure it’s technically transportation, but its reliability is questionable and its style is pretty much non-existent. Like the idiot lights on out fictitious Omni, IE8 spends most of its time throwing up security certificate errors, blocking content, and generally making it unbearable to use for anything other than the most basic tasks… and even then it’s slow as Moses in a minefield. It’s always a comfort to know that here in the most technologically sophisticated arms of government, we insist on plodding along with antiques from the last decade. That’s a sure path to effectiveness and efficiency.

3. Mary Jane. If the people of the great state of Colorado want to toke up for recreational purposes, I say God bless. Given this country’s outstanding record of success at enforcing morality laws, my advice to the DEA is just let ‘em go. We can argue all night about pot being carcinogenic, addictive, a gateway to the wild world of opiates and other drugs, but I have a hard time seeing how it’s all that much different than cigarettes or alcohol. Regulate it, tax it, and then let the states decide how, when, and by whom it can be used. Carrying pot as a Schedule 1 narcotic, with heroin, meth, and LSD strikes me as dishing out a $1000 penalty for a $10 crime. In the grand scheme of shit that’s important, sorry, this just doesn’t make the cut for me.

Shelf life…

Posted on October 23, 2012 by jdtharp

From the moment you buy any new bit of technology, the clock is running. Call it shelf life, planned obsolesce, or corporate money grubbing, the only great truism in high tech, is the next great thing is always just around the corner. Another, more or less unspoken truth has always been that Apple released it’s new and improved products about a year after the last model came out. Amortized out over a period of 12 months, even a $700 iPad could almost be considered a yearly purchase, especially when you account for its relatively high resale value. By the time it was said and done, the total cost of ownership of my first two iPads came out to something like $20 a month… or one vinti vanilla latte a week.

In rolling out the iPad 4 just seven months after the 3rd iteration launched, Apple has thrown my TCOO calculation all out of whack. The device got a serious spec bump and I would love to have the additional processing power/speed, but the fact is there’s nothing the 4 does that the 3 can’t do (almost) as well. This time around, I’m just not seeing the typical “killer” feature that would usually drive me to switch to the latest and greatest model. Of course that explains why that iPad 3 has been discontinued rather than simply sold at a lower price point. The specs and performance are just too close to the new flagship. I know there are plenty of people who will be up early on Friday to drop in their order, though. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t strongly consider it if for no other reason than to be able to use the same charging cable for my phone and my tablet. Unless you’re in that position, it’s hard to describe just how annoying that actually is. Still, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be a buyer for iPad 4.

Having ruled out full sized iPad out of the equation still leaves me to consider the iPad mini. Since I many use my iPad as an e-reader, I have to admit this one is tempting. I like the idea of a smaller/lighter device, but don’t think I can get past what feels like a “downgrade” in specs going from iPad 3 to iPad mini, by which I mean losing the retina display and not gaining anything particularly impressive in terms of overall performance. I’m really going to have to hold on in my hand before I’m ready to pass judgment one way or the other.

Don’t take any of this as a slam against the world’s most valuable company, because it’s not. I think Apple rolled out a truly ridiculous number of new, improved, and magical devices today. If there’s any of them that I’m super desirous of at the moment, it would be the new retina 13-inch MacBook Pro, but with its 2008-model ancestor basically still running like it was new out of the box and a Mac mini doing all of the heavy lifting in this house, a $1700 bill from the Apple store just isn’t on the table at the moment.

It seems I’m at that uncomfortable point in product life cycles where there just isn’t much incentive to change what’s currently working. If I weren’t already sitting so close to the state of the art, though, any of the new toys Tim and Company spent the afternoon showing off would be a pretty damned impressive addition to the collection.

Limited (dis)agreement…

Posted on August 9, 2012 by jdtharp

So let me get this straight. You want me to sign a “limited telework agreement” that basically says management can tell me to work from home any time it’s convenient for them (i.e. whenever the office is closed due to some outside condition like snow, hurricane, or wildfire). In return, they may possibly consider allowing me to work from home a few days a year on days when I would usually take some kind of leave (i.e. dthe cable guy coming to fix the TV). I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t jump at the opportunity to sign on for something that’s a whole lot of upside for management, but that gives me pretty much nothing in return.

Oh, and just in case you were considering signing up for the program, you’re signed agreement will give your employer the right to come into your home to inspect for “safety”. Sure that will probably never happen, but even knowing it’s possible is more than a little creepy; a creep factor that I’d be willing to deal with if it were for a regularly scheduled day where I’d get to read memos and build PowerPoint decks while wearing my fuzzy slippers and sitting at my kitchen table. It’s not a creep factor I’m willing to get onboard with just to have the privilege of working the next time we get snow deep enough to make the roads too hazardous to get to the office. Honestly, if it’s so bad that I consider coming to work a hazard to life or limb, I’ll go ahead and exercise the unscheduled leave option if the powers that be are too hardheaded to close up shop for the day.

For me, it’s a simple fact of living in the 21st century: Telework is either a good program or it’s not. It’s something worth doing right or it’s not. For an organization that does business in 100+ countries to say that individual productivity depends on sitting in a cube so people have physical access to them is farcical… or it would be farcical if they weren’t so serious when they said it. I’ve been at it long enough to know that you don’t gain a damned thing from swimming against the tide. I’m not going to wage war for the sanctity of telework and I’m certainly not going to fall on my sword for it, but the chance of my signing a “limited” agreement are somewhere between slim and none.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Explorer…

Posted on April 13, 2012 by jdtharp

Until the arrival of the new computers, the fact that many of us installed Firefox as our default web browser wasn’t quite officially sanctioned, but wasn’t banned either. I’d have still rather used Chrome, but that wasn’t even considered worthy of being an option. Now look, I’m all in favor of network security, but that doesn’t have to mean we get stuck using antiquated software – and yes, even a three year old browser feels antiquated after you’re use to using one of the other available options – you know, the ones that have been released in the current decade.

Hey, I’m super excited about getting a new computer. It’s swell that I can now unplug the machine and not have the battery die immediately. It’s just on this one little point of software where we’re having a real problem. I’m sure Internet Explorer works just fine for most people under most conditions, but on a machine that’s already bogged down with metric tons of security software and on a network that no one would call speedy under the best of conditions, IE pretty much adds insult to injury.

We’re a nation that prides itself on technological innovation, so please, for the love of God, his saints, and all things good and holy, can we find a way to look at the interwebs that doesn’t involve dragging out this old warhorse of a program? We’re seriously not doing ourselves any favors here. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and ask about the nine times I had to force quit Explorer before I went to lunch this morning.

And while you’re at it, can you please stop resetting my default homepage. I know our web address and I find it a lot less useful in my daily work than Google is. Sigh.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on March 1, 2012 by jdtharp

1. FM Radio. I’ve had a satellite radio account since back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the state of the art was a receiver mounted to the air conditioning duck and an antenna wire snaking out the window to a magnetic antenna. After the better part of a week tooling around in a car without Sirius, I can honestly say that normal radio is actually worse than I remember it being. Constant commercials, bad reception, God awful “morning zoos” on just about every channel, there’s clearly a reason that broadcast radio is a free “service.” If nothing else, this brief time off satellite has proven to me the value of being able to toggle between the BBC, any genre of music I can even think of wanting to listen to, a dozen news/talk stations, and the need to get an occasional Howard Stern fix. I’ll try to remember that the next time I notice the bill come in.

2. The Network. Reliable 24×7 high speed internet isn’t a luxury item in the 21st century. Sure, maybe if you’re a moisture farmer somewhere in the third world, dial-up is good enough but if you’re a knowledge worker who trades in ideas it’s like trying to make a phone call with duct tape over your mouth. Unless “I’d love to do whatever random task you want me to handle today, but can’t because I can’t see the interwebs” becomes an legitimate excuse for falling off timelines, it’s really falls to the employer to ensure network availability on more than three days out of five. Sure SkyNet might have destroyed civilization, but at least it didn’t collapse into an unusable mass of Network Errors every couple of hours.

3. #FirstWorldProblems. I’ve run across a spate of articles lately decrying the fact that so much of what we Westerners b*tch and complain about are “First World Problems” and wanting us collectively to me more attuned to ongoing plights like famine, pestilence, war, and plague. Let’s go ahead and get one thing straight right now. As a rule, I am opposed to most of the aforementioned issues. However, since I happen to live in the developed world, the things that annoy me on a regular and recurring bases are going to tend to be, by definition, first world problems. And here’s the kicker: I’m OK with that. I’m just a guy trying to do a job and have some semblance of a life. Every now and then I do my bit for the poor, downtrodden, diseased, or hungry by kicking out a check to the charity of my choice. So stop trying to lay down a massive guilt trip on everyone. There’s nothing anyone can tell me that’s going to make me feel compelled to go wandering around some backwater village in a part of the world not even the State Department has heard about on a quest to stomp out GonoHerpiSyphilAids.

Old school victory…

Posted on February 28, 2012 by jdtharp

For three hours this morning, I waged my own personal holy jihad against our email servers while trying to force through an message with half a dozen small Word documents attached. I tried every trick, tip, and bit of sneakiness I’ve acquired from years of working with less than current technology that we use to do the people’s business, but alas, failed miserably in my efforts to transmit six pages of text to a guy who sits thirty feet away. It seems my efforts were not going unnoticed by my esteemed colleague, who has me in the age department by the better part of three decades. After watching my valiant fight to make the tech work, he smiled sheepishly and said “You know, you could just print it out and give it to me.” I’m pretty sure he was trying not to laugh maniacally when he said it.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been thunderstruck before, but for a few seconds I truly stood slack jawed in the middle of the room. The idea of just printing the documents had legitimately never even occurred to me. I really have no idea when I stopped thinking of printed paper as a legitimate option for the transfer of information from Point A to Point B, but there was its moment of fulfillment; the first real and undeniable sign that I had transitioned completely into the digital age. Left to my own devices, I could have gone on that way for hours before managing to find a way to get the electrons to play nicely together. In this one extraordinarily rare example, I’ll concede that old school won a tactical victory against the forces of new and shiny. I don’t, however, recommend that it get use to such easy wins.

Type…

Posted on September 29, 2011 by jdtharp

As a technology organization, there are a few things that should pretty much always work. I’m past belaboring the importance of keeping the network up and running, though. The things that you need to focus on are apparently more basic. Like a keyboard that doesn’t drop every fourth or fifth letter while you’re typing.

Without this pretty standard piece of kit, you end up with sentences like “Norma people souldn’t be expected to wrk under thse conditions.” Which is all well and good until you actually start working on something, you know, that needs to get done in a reasonable amount of time. So now instead of actually being productive, I get to put on the editor hat and spend the day correcting everything that I’ve written. I shudder to think what tidbits got past me before someone bothered to point out that I was writing like a small retarded child.

I don’t know why I still hold out hope that someday basic office equipment issued by my employer will actually works as specified. Personally, I’d rather pony up my own equipment and have something I knew would work than continue to bend my spear on the underpowered and ill-repaired hand-me-downs we subsist on. Honest to God, this isn’t work, it’s just the vague illusion of being busy.

Networking… or not…

Posted on August 22, 2011 by jdtharp

The network is my single point of failure. When it goes down, basically I become an astronomically well paid paperweight. Sure, there is a way to do everything I do manually, but because I wasn’t raised in the horse and buggy era, I don’t know what that way is because it was never covered in training and I’m certainly not old enough to have ever had to do it that way myself. And since everyone around me is in the same boat when it happens, after the initial bout of consternation and annoyance, the whole place takes on a bit of a snow day atmosphere. Which is great… for a while.

As fun as officially sanctioned down time is, it does highlight an issue that I don’t think any of us have spent enough time thinking about: What, exactly, is an army of technology workers supposed to do in the event of something more than a temporary outage? If we can’t email, can’t access the cloud, and can’t call out over VOIP, we’re pretty much just a bunch of people hanging out. What if it lasts for a day? Or a week? What if a network outage became the new normal?

Ninety nine percent up time sounds great until you realize that means you’ll be down for at least 3 and a half days every year. That’s annoying if you’re a dedicated gamer. It’s potentially catastrophic if you’re managing the world’s financial markets, running a war, or trying to manage the nation’s air traffic. Our reliance on computers and networks isn’t going to decrease in the future, so if we’re going to be so dependent on the network, redundancy and failover should be the standard. If the powers that be can’t manage that, they should at least spring for a cell booster for the building so we can play Angry Birds while we’re just sitting around.

Listening in…

Posted on July 27, 2011 by jdtharp

One of the many downsides of life in the cube farm is that it’s impossible not to listen in on conversations at least occasionally. As hard as you try to avoid it, you’re going to pick up way more than you have any interest in knowing about the people you’re sitting in close proximity to for eight hours a day. You’ll come to know everything from health and personal life to bathroom habits and carryout preferences (my personal favorite is when they’re trying to have a quiet argument with their spouse over the phone). Being a bit of a tech head, I always seem to notice when someone brings up the topic.

This morning, I overheard someone ranting quietly about people sending him text messages, as in “I’m 47 years old. People got no business sending me text messages. If they want to talk to me, they need to pick up the phone.” Why hello there 1954, it’s nice to meet you. This kind of attitude is troubling in someone who has access to every modern communication technology, up to and including A/V via satellite. If he’s this resistant to something as basic as a text message, what are the chances he’s going to be open to anything that really changes the way he gets his job done?

This post has served as nothing more than a reminder that flexibility is important in life. It’s no less important as a professional. If text messaging is enough to stress this guy out, I hope I’m not around when a real stressor comes along. I’m pretty sure scrubbing blood out of upholstery is outside the scope of my job description.

JEFFREYTHARP.COM

A voice of sanity in a world gone mad…

Tag Archives: technology

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Shelf life…

Limited (dis)agreement…

Explorer…

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Old school victory…

Type…

Networking… or not…

Listening in…