Posts in category "IT"

Over the weekend, I was helping Norman Junior III with a C programming exercise (a wordsearch puzzle). I had rather hoped purchasing him the original and definitive text Kernighan and Ritchie (Second Edition) would enable him to become a C wizard without any further intervention from me but no.

In a flash of inspiration, I had introduced some symbolic constants for each of the eight possible directions.

When I asked him - 'Can you remember how to specify a constant in C ?', he replied 'Oh yeah - I know, I remember. Hashtag define'.

Sigh.

Last year, I visited a customer in Swindon. When I arrived at the office, I noticed some water dripping from the underside at the front of my car. I didnt have time to investigate or get my hands dirty so I subconsciously hoped it was just condensation from the air conditioning unit and tried to forget all about it.

After work, I managed to navigate Swindon's world famous roundabout of roundabouts and finally locate my hotel. When I parked, I noticed the temperature gauge was reading high - very high. Sure enough, I got out of the car to see steam pouring out of the bonnet and was greeted by the familiar smell of anti-freeze.

I still didn't want to get my hands dirty so I opened the bonnet and just stared at the problem, hoping that would miraculously fix it. Then I checked in to my room and rang the AA. I introduced myself to the operator as 'Hi - my name is Norman and I'm an alcoholic.'

The AA man duly arrived before 'The One Show' had even finished. We both stood looking at the engine knowingly before he asked: 'Now, Sir, what seems to be the problem ?'

'Well, I think it's pretty minor and easy to fix. It's just the top hose has perished and needs replacing.'

'Oh I see, Sir. Why do you think that ?'

'Well, when the engine was running, steam was pouring out of the top corner of the radiator - right there where the water hose joins.'

'OK, Sir. Thanks for that. Please could you just turn the engine over for me so I can take a look myself ?'

Engine on. Water and steam billowing out. Smell of anti-freeze. Temperature gauge rising.

'Whoa ! That's fine, Sir. Engine off now, please. Well it's not your hose, Sir. The problem is over here. It's your bleed screw, Sir. Look (flips the screw from the middle of the radiator). This bleed screw has sheared off in half. Quite a common problem on this model. Seen it a couple of times now.'

I felt a little sheepish (but very relieved that a solution was in sight) and the man from the AA, James, filled the radiator with 13 pints of cold water and I followed him to a local garage where we parked and he kindly drove me back to the hotel so I could wash my hands.

The next morning, I walked into the customer's offices to be excitedly greeted with 'Oh good - glad you're here. We have got problems. Serious problems. Performance problems. On production.'

'Ah OK - what seems to be the problem ?' 'Well it's the database, you see. It's the hard disk - 99% busy. Partition 27b on logical volume 7 is overheating. Oh and another thing that might be relevant - the hit ratio is right down at 72.7%'

'OK - thanks for that. Do you think you could just start the system up for me and I'll take a look myself ?'

My two favourite typos of all time, which are guaranteed to bring a smile to my face, are:

• Stationary Cupboard
• 'Principle Consultant'

Until yesterday when I received an invite to:

Date: 8 June 2009
Time: 16:30-17:00 (BST)
Location: G27
Subject: Warp up meeting

I opened the meeting with a summary of the day's progress and my findings: 'I have completed my analysis of Siebel performance, the Oracle configuration, the I/O infrastructure, the hardware specifications, application usage and my conclusion is as follows:'

'She simply cannae take any more, Captain. She's gonna blow !'

Last night, I flew home to London from Hamburg, near Germany. The flight was punctual and uneventful enough apart from the fact I was sitting next to a blind man.

When the seat belts sign extinguished, he got his laptop out, booted up and started typing into a completely black screen. So, I assumed he must be blind and using a braille keyboard.

However, this gentleman wasn't blind. He had been reading 'High Life' while we taxied onto the runway. Oh and he also had a complimentary copy of the Financial Times.

There was only one conclusion - this was a security measure to stop inquisitive neighbours peeping at his screen and reading confidential documents and email correspondence.

This could only mean one thing - the gentleman worked for a Government agency, probably MI6 or was the CEO of a FTSE100 company.

Although it killed my last three cats, two hamsters and seventeen tropical fish, curiosity got the better of me and I painstakingly reverse engineered all of my neighbour's typing by analysing his actual keystrokes in real-time.

Here is the exclusive transcript...

To: Sebastian Browning (VP marketing) Cc: UK Marketing Subject: logistics for Partner Golf day

Due to the current 'difficult and challenging times', the Partner Golf day at The Old Course, St Andrews has been cancelled. However, as I know a lot of you had customers booked and after my pledge to do 'anything it takes', I am delighted to tell you an alternative, lower cost venue has been found.

We will now meet at Solihull municipal Crazy Golf course at 2pm on Friday 28 November. Looking forward to meeting you and your customers. Alan will send handicaps and pairings out next week.

There now followed a 5 minute lull - no typing - just a frenzy of trackerball activity punctuated by various muttered expletives. The most likely cause was the poor individual trying to resize a picture within a Microsoft Word document. Then back to the 782 messages lying in 'Inbox'.

To: Bernard Barnstormworth (Director Fins) Subject: status on Megabank opportunity

Megabank is dead. The client was expecting to be hosted at The Emirates to see Arsenal versus Manchester United followed by dinner at The Ivy. What they got was a mini-bus to Leyton Orient against Hartlepool and some cockles and mussels at half-time. The CEO just called me to say the deal is off.

Another pause for thought to consume a cheese sandwich and a glass of water.

To: Hannah Brown (IT security) Subject: privacy and security

Hannah - As per your recent memo, my two hard disks are now fully encrypted and I have affixed the privacy screen overlay to my laptop. I must say it is absolutely fantastic to be able to work without idiots gawping at my screen, trying to read my email and watching me visit those dodgy Web sites.

PS. Please can you order me a new 4GB USB memory stick ? I can't find it anywhere. Must have lost it in Hamburg.

Thank you for your email. I am currently working in a bunker deep underground in the heart of Brussels (near Belgium).

I would normally say Please call me directly on my mobile. However, this secure facility is so secure that no mobile communications are possible.

I would normally pledge to replying to your email on my return. However, I am not quite sure precisely when (or even indeed, if) I ever will return. While I am not literally chained to the desk, the security officer is holding my passport which fills me with a sense of unease and practically equates to the same thing.

The working environment is not ideal. Massive ceiling mounted fans in a server room make for a cool, uncomfortable and noisy environment. Still, this is my punishment for living in an ivory tower far divorced from reality, waving my arms about and drawing architecture diagrams on a whiteboard and I must accept it.

This particular customer insisted that, as a followup to a recent architecture workshop, I return in person to install, configure and test what I foolishly claimed was 'straightforward and trivial'.

Many years ago, a customer thanked me which was a pleasant surprise and quite unusual. Most simply ask When will your report be ready ?

This particular customer remarked on my logical and methodical approach' to understanding this long standing complex problem, proposing a plan of action and, on this rare occasion, resolving it.

I was interested by his choice of the words 'logical and methodical'. As an aside, I was convinced I heard a surly DBA murmur 'slow, laboured and hopeless more like' which hurt terribly.

Anyway, I don't believe that I have a 'logical and methodical' approach to problem solving. My approach is born from laziness.

For example, if you have 27 users synchronising 176 objects of 5 different types between two IT systems, there is a lot of data to analyse. When you increase the logging on both systems at all tiers, you get even more data to analyse. So much data that your head explodes.

Reducing the number of synchronising users to 1, the number of objects to be synchronised to 1 and limiting the direction of synchronisation to one-way isn't necessarily logical. It is laziness and merely reduces the amount of log files to a manageable volume so you are merely left with a splitting headache.

Sometimes, it may appear like wasted time and effort to stop staring at a monitor and painstakingly review yet again all the previous history, ask the same questions again and possibly repeat test scenarios that have already been executed many times by miscellaneous disgruntled parties. There is simply no substitute for seeing the evidence with your own eyes.

Similarly, many years ago, I used to quite literally get a detailed trace of a working system and a broken system ('let's look at the good versus the bad') and look for divergence. Occasionally, I still resort to this technique which can still prove to be effective.

This approach can be viewed as a little undergraduate-esque by non-technical people who expect expensive consultants just to waltz in and say 'Oh yeah. I saw this very problem last week in Kazbakistan. You just need to set the undocumented, unsupported and mythical parameter: _firewall_auth=trusted. Right, anyone for lunch ?'

Making use of other resources could also be viewed as lazy but never underestimate the knowledge and experience of the available technical resources who may have different backgrounds and areas of expertise and hence a contrary and valuable view on the underlying problem.

People (myself included) often limit their analysis to the areas they know most about.

Right - anyone fancy a walk to that Copenhagen sports bar for England versus Spain ?

I always smile whenever I receive an email that opens I heard that Stephen Hawksworth Smithers-Jones in ABC division gets...

Over the years I have heard the following myths about the delights of working in the completely fictional division ABC.

• Unlimited broadband paid for by the company.
• Mandatory business class flights on short-haul.
• Complimentary chauffeur service from your house to LHR/LGW.
• Expenses automatically paid via psychic medium with no need for receipts.
• No need for approvals for anything from anyone.
• Prawn volavons with a garlic and tomato sauce brought to their desks at 12 noon precisely (even when onsite).
• First shout on the airplane toilet when the seat-belts sign is extinguished.
• Free laundry and ironing service when onsite for more than one night
• New laptops every quarter (subject to stringent personal, divisional and corporate performance goals). Every month otherwise.
• Complimentary invites to the client's Christmas bash and summer BBQ (free bar and partners included).
• Secret inclusion in the company car ('Gold - Level 3') scheme with access to a brand new model every 3 months.
• A massive incentive payment to not to desert to main rival during any (rumoured) takeover.
• 2.6 million shares, 1.2 million stock options and 876,542 FlexPoints. Index linked.
• Contributory pension scheme; Company contributes 24 times salary. Employee contributes nothing.

It always reminds me of the advert: 'Carlsberg don't run an IT consultancy, but if they did, it would be like this...'

I am interested in IT, technology and gadgets. Not obsessed but interested and curious.

Recently, I find colleagues making increasing use of technology in the workplace to try to help distributed teams to communicate more effectively. Or maybe they're just geeks who are afraid to pick up a telephone.

People use Web conferencing to share desktops.

This is an excellent use of technology. For example, I recently tried to help a customer in Copenhagen by remotely accessing the servers over the network from my ~~kitchen~~ fully equipped home office. The speed was slightly sluggish and the experience was a little frustrating at times but certainly much better than laboriously dictating ('l' 's' 'space' 'slash' 't' 'm' 'p') over the phone or getting on a plane.

I have also used Web conferencing using VOIP which was fantastic as it freed up the fingers to do the actual typing as well as pleasing the financial director.

People also use chat conferencing either instead of, or curiously in conjunction with, the ubiquitous (and much loved) telephone conference calls. I am always a little nervous here in case I direct the wrong words to the wrong person, particularly with my sense of 'humour'.

People also have a increasing tendency to use instant messaging rather than email to communicate internally.

This last development is the one I am slightly uncomfortable with for reasons I find it hard to articulate but I'll try:

• The opening line 'Hi', 'Hello' or 'Are you busy ?'. It's like a blind date. What do you say without sounding idiotic ?
• Sometimes, if you are busy, this interruption and context switch can be unwelcome. Setting your status to 'Busy' doesn't always work.
• The person initiating the conversation normally wants something. It is easier to ignore or defer an email. I find it impossible to ignore an IM indefinitely.
• Sometimes the conversation is so long winded and interactive, a simple phone call would have been 10 times more effective and quicker. Waiting on tenterhooks, with baited breath, in suspense watching 'Alan is typing...' for 2 minutes.
• The termination of the 'conversation' isn't always clear. Have we finished ? Is the dialogue over ? Are they still thinking ? Or are they waiting for you to respond ? Can I close your IM window yet ?
• And finally, the real reason, I suspect - using Instant Messaging conjures up images of angst ridden, spotty teenagers messaging away in txt speak together. You feel slight soiled by the experience. In fact, I am sorely tempted to address #5 by signing off 'C U L8R, M8!'

Knowledge management presents a difficult challenge particularly when you work in a relatively small department of highly intelligent, technical consultants who are scattered around the globe and travel a lot.

I just started another blog as an experiment to see whether we can try to improve the way in which we share knowledge and communicate with each other. Searching email archives is so 1990's, don't you think ?

The blogging interface and the set of CMS features isn't as rich as WordPress (or alternative Content Management Systems) but that's not really the point.

Oh and another thing. Unless you happen to work for Oracle Corporation, you can't actually see this embryonic blog. Sorry.

Many years ago, in a parallel universe not far from here, I was involved in a CRM proof of concept. This involved producing a demonstration of a callcenter application accessing customer and product data from disparate legacy systems in a polished, unified, modern user interface.

The scenario was pretty standard fare. A motor insurance company where a customer calls in to renew his motor policy and the callcenter agent walks through a standard 'question-answer-retort' guided dialogue.

The demo climaxes in a superb cross-sell to add the customers son who has just turned 17 as a named driver to the existing policy (the pre-sales guy was positively orgasmic about this addition) with a substantial discount as part of some campaign.

Now, choosing names is very important so of course the demo initially used dead pop stars, politicians, historic figures, alternative comedians and footballers. This was mainly because the marketing guy thought TEST USER wouldn't impress the CEO's of blue chip companies.

The initial novelty of using celebrity names soon wore off as we struggled to make the software components actually do what we wanted. In fact, we were desperately tired of the endless repetitions of the dialogue ('Take 369'), that we were completely oblivious to the names appearing.

We were just hoping and praying just that the demo behaved and ran through to completion without an hourglass, a blue screen or an unexpected 'cross-sell' opportunity emerging from the 'Home, Buildings & Contents' division.

Finally, the proof of concept was finished, we were exhausted and the demanding marketing man was (finally) happy.

Imagine our surprise, a few weeks later when he returned with two complimentary CD's. 'Great job guys. The Sales MD was absolutely delighted and thinks this collateral will really help us make that breakthrough into SME in Q3. I thought you might be curious to see the fruits of your labour.'

So we thanked him, waved goodbye, then sat down to watch the CD. We were both genuinely dumbfounded when the following words, spoken in best BBC English, came out of the tinny PC speaker:

'Norman Whiteside of Manchester is looking for a competitive quote for his car insurance. '