Tag Archives: technology

Taking down the tech…

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After finishing what was left of the packing in the garage, I grudgingly turned my attention this evening to the tech. The cinema screen monitor is safely tucked in its box. The printer is surrounded by packing peanuts. The wires are unstrung and zip-tied. The office is pretty much down to a desk and a laptop – which is the bare bones requirement to make it through the rest of the week. I don’t have it in me to disconnect the cable modem just yet, though. I’ll need the high speed right up to the bitter end. Some things a civilized person just shouldn’t be expected to live without. One more step down on the long road home. Now it’s down to the kitchen, the dog’s room (yes, they have their own room). Pull the sheets off the bed, disconnect the living room TV and it’s showtime.

I’ve got to admit that this whole moving things is harder than I remember it being. Nothing goes as quickly as I think it should. Something I need is always in another room or requires one more trip to pick up more boxes, or tape, or packing paper. Then again, the last time I did it, I was leaving a one bedroom apartment. Is it Monday yet? I’ll feel better when all this gear is on a truck and headed east.

Meetings…

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It’s not an official duty day without attending at least one meeting. It is, therefore, imperative that we have an effective and efficient means of coordinating who should attend and when they should arrive. If only there was a widely available and heavily used computer program that would make that possible. Oh, yeah… Outlook does that. In theory. What setting up meetings in outlook really does for us, though, is generate mass confusion surrounding any meeting that we might ever attempt to schedule. In fairness, I suppose it’s not so much an Outlook error as it is operator incompetence.

Scheduling a major meeting at our “organization” (i.e. any aggregation of more than four people) involves a process that looks something like this:

Step 1: Set up a meeting request in Outlook

Step 2: Change the time and/or date of this meeting at least three times

Step 3: Receive one or more cancelation notices

Step 4: Get three follow-up meeting requests either the same or slightly
different than the first

Step 5: Receive a reminder email from the meeting organizer two days before the meeting

Step 6: Receive a reminder phone call from the meeting organizer one dat before the meeting

Step 7: 15 minutes before the meeting receive 1-3 automatic reminders from Outlook depending on how many of the original meeting requests the organizer remembered to cancel.

Step 8: Arrive at the appointed conference room to find it empty and the lights off

Step 9: Consider the misguided series of steps that led you to your current career.

If you’re lucky, the no one else will figure out when or where the meeting is actually supposed to take place either and you’ll at least have a nice quiet conference room to hide in for a while. Quiet weeping is optional at your discretion.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

A clean desk…

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I suppose if you’re an egomaniac, it’s easy enough to confuse your way of doing something with the only actual way of doing that thing. Usually when the boss is out trying to manage by walking around, I make a concerted effort to be on my own walkabout and thereby avoid the three or four random tasks that he wants to focus on that day. Sometimes, though, he’s on me before I can make a clean getaway. Yesterday was one of those days… and led to this exchange:

Boss: What are you doing?

Jeff: I’m reviewing the last twelve monthly reports from human resources to validate year-over-year workload and staffing requirements.

Boss: There’s nothing on your desk.

Jeff: Everything is on the network drive. I’ve got all the data I need on the computer. *gesturing weakly towards my monitors*

Boss: If there isn’t paper on your desk, you’re not doing anything. You’ve seen my desk, right?

Jeff: Uhhh… Yes. I’ve seen your desk.

Boss: Good, then. Make an appointment to talk to me about some-random-other-issue.

Jeff: *Bangs head on desk as boss walks away.*

I’ve increasingly come to suspect that the reason that an employee “goes postal” from time to time just might not be a defect in the employee.

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.

My generation…

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One of the most shocking moments of my early career was realizing the level of discomfort most of my fellow employees felt when dealing with issues of technology. On the outside, I made the (unfortunate) assumption that government was full of code breakers, supercomputers sending men to the moon, and software that could track anyone, anywhere. I suppose those tasty bits of tech may exist somewhere, but the most advanced piece of hardware that anyone in my agency has is their Blackberry (already two or three generations out of date). It’s fair to say I was shocked and appalled at the number of people in government who just don’t get the role technology is going to play over the coming decades.

We’re in the leading edge of that future now. Utilities like Facebook and Twitter may have a toy-like simplicity – I’ve heard my own leaders dismiss them as “for the kids” and nothing more than a drain on productivity – but as more traffic is driven to the web, as electronic communication in its many forms continues its rise, the fact is that this is going to largely be the way people communicate in the future. Don’t believe me? When was the last time you received an actual letter from someone under 40?

The age of instant communication and access to the sum total of all human knowledge is going to level the bureaucracy, whether the bureaucracy accepts it or not. It’s happening already – those with a little bit of savvy are using basic tools like Dropbox, Google Chat, or SharePoint to circumvent the cumbersome “authorized” communications channels that stovepipe information to “collaborate in a matrixed environment.” Instead of sending a request for information up the chain-of-command and waiting for the answer to come back down from on high, we’re reaching out directly to the person with the information we need. That person may sit a few desks away or not even be on the same continent. The beauty of the age is that location doesn’t matter. The future is going to look like the cloud, not like a hierarchical org chart.

There’s more information stored electronically than we could ever hope to archive in the biggest file room. Electrons and knowing how to use them are what’s going to be left when we as an organization realize that the old forms are no longer viable. Information has always been power. Managing and controlling the flow of electronic information is going to be the “institutional knowledge” of our time. I don’t think command-and-control model of management will ever go away, this is government after all, but we few, we happy few who know how to make the electrons hum are going to be the voices of power behind that throne… if only because the king doesn’t know how to turn on his computer.

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.

Doing it on webcam…

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I work for a guy who likes to think his time as a system administrator in the late 1990s qualifies him as an authority on issues of office technology. If those of us with a passing awareness of tech, this is a very bad situation. It means we’re in a position of being forced to agree with ideas and recommendations that are not only expensive, but also doomed to sink into the befuddled mire of advanced middle-age angst over technology that is one of the defining characteristics of our “leadership cadre.”

Two years ago, we were instructed to buy two dozen webcams and run a test with our agency’s behind-the-firewall proprietary knockoff version of Skype. The test was, as I described it at the time, less than successful and we recommended shelving the project. Most of our test bunnies couldn’t figure out how to plug in their cameras and of the ones that did, only a handful managed to actually use them. I’m pretty sure they just ate the microphones we sent them. To be fair, I should point out that this failure wasn’t completely the fault of the doddering soon-to-be retirees. The network infrastructure in our building was something less than robust enough to handle the “load” of several simultaneous streaming audio/video connections. It was sort of fun to say something, run to the office across the hall and see yourself “in real time,” but we decided that wasn’t going to be a real plus-up to our collective productivity. After the abysmal initial test, I assumed the idea was left to die quietly in desk drawers and file cabinets around the country. As is so often the case, I was wrong.

I discovered last week that we ordered 50 more webcams to be issued to all of our field offices to “improve communication” and “facilitate meeting online,” since the organization doesn’t have money for our traditional cross-country boondoggles these days. Now, if I had even the slightest notion that any of these devices was actually going to be used, I’m all for outfitting every computer in the office. It would be great to have one official feature on my work computer that I’ve been using for free from Google for years. My concern is only that we already find it nearly impossible to get our “leaders” to pick up the 100 year old pice of tech that’s already on their desk and talk to one another or call in for a teleconference. I have no idea what makes us think we’ll be able to get them to use “magic” to talk across the intertubes?

Then again, it might be fun to watch them try.

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.

The unknown unknowns…

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I like to think of myself as someone who stays relatively close to the front of the tech curve, but it seems I’m in for a bit of an education as I try to drag this little blog o’ mine screaming into the second decade of the 21st century. I started off the post-dinner education by doing a simple search for something like “blog tag best practices” (Yes, I’m well aware I’m that much of a dork). That led me to Technorati and blogmarking, which led me back to WordPress, which led me to linking the blog to Facebook and Twitter, which led me and so on and so forth. This particular post isn’t so much informative or documentary as it is a test to see if I actually configured everything correctly. If you’re seeing this as a result of Facebook or Twitter, I suppose I’m on the right track. I’m not further along on my great quest to manage my tags or make the look and feel of the site more cohesive, but I’m one step closer to success in my other current crusade to making all my social media integrated. I’m apparently still way out in left field somewhere, but with a little self-education, I hope I’m getting closer to at least learning a bit more about the unknown unknowns. It’s hard to believe that once upon a time, blogging was as simple as tossing some words on an e-form and hitting the “publish” button.

In the cloud…

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I’ve been working on it for a while now, but I think it’s safe to say that I’ve finally managed to merge almost all of my communications tools into the Google Apps environment. That means that with the exception of the WordPress platform that actually hosts the blog, I can manage every aspect of http://www.jeffreytharp.com from my Google dashboard. Sure, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but remember, I’m not a gearhead when it comes to tech. For the most part, I can’t tell you why things work, but I’m pretty good at telling when things work well and picking apart where they need to work better. With this last update of the apps dashboard, I was finally able to sync the iPhone with my hosted email/address book without using a clunky and inelegant work around that involved regularly porting my actual address book to a dummy Gmail address I had to set up just for OTA syncing. Now that they’ve fixed the glitch, I’m pleased with the near 100% integration and the ability to essentially run my life and my public voice from a single point of contact. Maybe someday I’ll take another look at Blogger and see if I can round out my reliance on the Google universe. But for the time being, I’m happy with WordPress and it seems like the place to stay until I find some strongly compelling reason to relocate. Maybe I can convince myself to take on the reorganization and facelift in the near future and close out this latest round of productivity. Until then, you can find me in the cloud.

PowerPoint Service Announcement…

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I get it. I’m a PowerPoint Ranger. I’ve got my 5000 hour tab. I can rock the old school black on white or jam it with 100 megs of media content. We can do those things. We *can* destroy the network with the sheer size of our files. We have the technology – Thought technically, I suppose I have the technology. I wouldn’t use my POS employer-issued Dell to build such a piece of work, but I digress.

Friends, my point is that if you’re not on your guard, PowerPoint will slip in and destroy you in the night. You’ll start off with version one and two. A few days later, you’ll find yourself at version 8. Out of nowhere, version 16 rises from the early morning mist… surely version 17 is only a day away. I can only warn you that no good ever came from double digit versions. Down that path lies only ruin. It’s too late for me, but you, you can save yourselves.

I urge all of you – just say no to multi-version PowerPoints. No good can come from them. Be proud of your tabs – but only use your skills for good. The path to PowerPoint glory will tempt you, but never, ever forget that with those tabs, comes great responsibility. Use them wisely.

Let it ring…

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On every cell phone produced in the last decade, there’s a switch, or a button, or a setting that allows you move almost effortlessly between notification modes – Silent, vibrate, or loud full blown dance party ring. If you work room full of cubicles with 20 other people and want to use your cellie while you’re there, you might want to consider trying out either the silent or vibrate options so thoughtfully build in to your phone. I can assure you in no uncertain terms that the laughing you hear on the other side of the wall every time your phone rings is me – and a combination of disbelief that you don’t see anything wrong with just letting it ring at any time and the fact that it takes you as much as 10 seconds to answer it once it starts ringing (yes, I’ve timed it).

Look, I’m the last person on earth to tell someone they shouldn’t be using a cell phone at every possible opportunity. I’m practically obsessed with mine. A little discretion, though, goes a long way and won’t take any additional effort on your part. I’m pretty sure that’s important to you. So how about doing us all a favor and checking out that vibrate function, ok? There are plenty of things to mock in the workplace without this needing to be one of them. Thanks bunches!

Traveling lite…

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I spent twelve days on the road over the last two weeks and it seems like a good point to make some observations on living with the iPad now that it’s had time to become a regular part of my routine. The short version is that it holds up remarkably well – Perhaps even better than expected. While I was on the road, I shifting seamlessly between the iPhone and iPad. I had even packed my MacBook Pro, but didn’t ever have cause to turn it on. For someone whose sense of wellbeing is almost defined by having a connection, that’s saying something.

On the more nuts and bolts level, battery life continues to exceed expectations and will last all day under all by the heaviest use. High portability meant that more often than not, it was riding shotgun in the truck when I went anywhere and was subject to not-quite-extreme heat when left there for a few hours at a time. I’m not exactly hard on equipment, but it’s held up to everything I’ve asked it to do and probably has oomph to spare.

The only complaint I have after a few months use is, not surprisingly, the fingerprints. Given a little OCD, they could drive a guy just short of ’round the bend. Keeping a screen wipe within reach is strongly advised. Even at that, the prints don’t really detract all that much from the screen… unless you’ve already made up your mind that it’s going to bother you. I still wouldn’t want to rely solely on a tablet for text heavy blogging or major productivity, but for knocking around the interwebs, occasional forum posts, and keeping your library with you everywhere, it’s hard to beat.