I bitch a lot, but what can be done about it?

I bitch a lot about how slow my computer is, but what can be done about it.

First, my job is to make computers faster. I am working on one aspect of speeding this up - but I am frustrated that executives do not perceive that this is a problem. Probably because they have faster, newer, computers than me.

Second, I wish that my IT department would give me a desktop PC rather than a laptop. The point of my bitching is that my laptop is becoming less and less useful with these slownesses. My productivity at work would be sped up having a desktop, that did not need to go slow as often.

Actually, I would rather have a Linux PC than a Windows PC. All I really need is an X Windows terminal on my desk that I can open up on some interactive compute server. Such a configuration probably saves money. Or, if you have desktop PCs, the desktops can be used for "cloud" computing.

I wish that my IT department would allow me to "dial in" to work using my own PC. Anything to avoid the slowness of a Windows PC with an IT load of software coming out of standby.

Third, I would like my IT department to seriously consider giving me a device like a BlackBerry. Many of my supposedly quick attempts to access my computer are to check my calendar, with checking email a little bit less frequent. Something like a BlackBerry would help (at least until BlackBerry gets lots of virus scanners).

Since my IT department does not want to spend the money for me to have a BackBerry, I wish that my IT department would allow me to purchase a BlackBerry, and allow me to spend the money, circa 50$/month, to have it connected to the corporate network.

Finally, again on a personal level, since my employer's IT department doesn't seem to be willing to do anything to resolve these slownesses, at some point I am going to have to follow the adage "If you can't change your organization, change your organization." I want to see my current project to an end, but after this (which may be 5 years from now) I will go looking for a new employer unless this IT stupidity is resolved. Criterion for such a new employer, apart from the usual interesting work, and sufficient money, will definitely include IT support:
* "instant-on" mobile PCs
* dedicated desktop screen access to compute servers
* ability to dial in from a personal computer, not a corporate laptop
* remote access to calendar (and email) from a SmartPhone
* willingness to upgrade my PC more than once every 4 years

This economic downturn is probably not the time to be ranting, in public, threatening to leave my job. But this IT situation is driving me crazy!!!!!

I don't want to leave my job before the end of my current project. I like seeing my projects through to completion. But it is almost ready to roll on its own - it no longer needs the original inventor and architect (me), to drive it along.

So, if a recruiter and headhunter wants to contact me about some other company --- well, if you can promise me a better IT situation, I will seriously consider it.

However, although I get a headhunter circa once a week, I doubt very much that any of them will google me this much. And I will probably scare off any mediocre hiring exec, who will read this public bitching. So be it! I do not want to work at such a company anyway.

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But, overall, I hope that my project, and others, will improve this crappy situation.

More slowness coming out of standby?

Meetings all morning.

At 12:08 start trying to use laptop - bring it out of standby.

I can't read Outlook email until 12:36.

@8 minutes. No rebooting, no patches (that I know about). Just slowness.

So much for "quickly checking my email".

Yet another tale of IT upgrade woe

I got into work at 9:05am - late for me.

5 minutes to boot my notebook PC. Then I see "There is a client optimization pack..."

Not a security patch. Not urgent. But the last 2(actually, first 2) "client optimization packs" took 5 minutes to install, and ended up giving me an on-the-fly degfragger, Diskeeper 2008 Pro Premiere. It's not clear that the defragger really helps performance, although one would hope that it has; but the defragger has removed IT's standard time-wasting excuse when I complained about PC performance "first defrag your disk", adding a day or so to getting any problem resolved (i.e. enough time for IT to deem me unresponsive, and decide that my problem has gone away). I.e. the on-the-fly defragger has been a win, possibly a real win, but certainly a win in accountability.

So I figure "I can waste 5 minutes; I hope this optimizationm pack is as good as the last".

1.5 hours later, I am finally able to work once again.

At least I cleaned my desk; read the economist; brushed my teeth; read some slides that I had printed for my exercise bike; cleaned up my personal cellphone voicemail.

Unfortunately, I got no real work done. I have no access to a second computer. I can't even clean up my company voicemail, since that is no acessible only from my PC.

Back when I had my long-lamented but fragile AT&T Tilt SmartPhone, I would have cleaned up my personal, Google, email. And maybe web browsed a bit. But that phone was fragile, although great up until it broke.

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This is just the usual sort of computer problem:

* I cannot rely on my PC to start up in a timely manner

* the time to apply patches and upgrades also needs to be taken into account in benbchmarking startup.

I.e. from my, the user,point of view, it is the time to being able to do useful work. I don't care if what is stopping me from getting work done is coming out of standby, virus scanning, thrashing as multiple applications wake up and perform timer based actions, or security upgrades: they ALL get in the way.

Heck, add to these the frustration that impels me to spend two minutes blogging about my frustration. That's another 2 minutes wasted.

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More and more I want to have a second computing device, so that I can work on the second when the first is blocked, and vice versa.

I want to have all of my data on the network - NFS or, better, Google apps -so that I can migrate machine to machine without loss of access. It's ironic that I say this - I, the often disconnected one, who wants to work where there is no Internet. But when I have Internet, I want to use it.

I want to have a desktop PC at work, and not just carry my laptop back and forth. I want thedesktop PC to start doing all of this startup crap overnight or, to save power, just before I get to work -so that it is ready to work when I am. E.g. I want to be able to remotely power it on when I start driving to work.

If I am forced to use alaptop as my primary device, I want to be able to have the laptop boot, come out of standby, while I am driving to work and walking up the stairs. I don't want to have to park its disk when I am moving. THIS may be the big benefit of solid state disks.

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I want to stop wasting time and get to work right away.

Frustrating Evening of Webcams

My daughter wanted to take a photo of her gingerbread house and attach to a school report.

Normally I would use my cell phone camera. But it was full, and I could not find a mini-USB cable to offload. And I am too cheap to pay for a data plan.

But, hey, there are 3 PCs at my house with (almost-never-used) webcams.
Let's try to use them.

Actually, only 2 types of PCs, since 2 of them are OLPC XOs, almost identical.

We quickly took a photo with the OLPC XO. But I made the mistake of closing the clamshell while walking back to a printer. Photo lost.

Sophie took more photos, and walked back to me un-closed-down. But, 1 hour of poking around on Sugar, and I could not figure out (a) how to save the photos, either to a Linux file or to a flash drive, or (b) print.

Probably I need to upgrade the OLPC XOs' software. But, in case it needs saying, the OLPC XO's Sugar user interface is one of the worst in the world. The OLPC XOs were part of my "year of stupid and useless computer purchases", along with my Toshiba M400 tablet PC, and my AT&T Tilt cell phone. he computers sucked; the cell phone was okay, more useful than the computers, but the screen broke, wasn't covered by insurance or warranty, and I don't want to spend the money to replace it.

OK, how about my wife's HP Pavillion tx1420us? We print from that all the time. We even use the WebCam.

However, the only capture tool I could find was HP Quickplay. This gives every sign of being a lousy vendor provided minimalist multimedia player, to which somebody had the bright idea "Hey! We need to have a way that the customer can test their webcam, without having to pay for any useful software. How about adding video and still capture from the WebCam to Quicplay? After all, it's just media."

I hate software provided by manufacturers like HP, Dell, Toshiba, IBM. I think that I would rather have a totallyt vanilla Microsoft Windows system. The vendor provided software is nearly always junk, like this QuickPlay, yet you are never sure of you should delete it, because it seems to be used, or recommended, by some of the tech support.

Anyway: QuickPlay captured the photos. But, where the hell did it store them? How do I print them? No way that I can tell from inside QuickPlay. Why do these media players have to have completely non-standard user interfaces? Where is the "file" pull-down?

Eventually I use Vista's search. I find the webcam files, in a non-standard place. And I print.

Did I mention that my daughter long since gave up on me,
and went to bed?

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I often worry that I have handicapped my daughter by getting her an OLPC XO. It is such a useless box, and the user interface is so non-standard that she doesn't know how to use the Windows PCs at school.

Laptop slow to come out of Standby

Allen:

You were disbelieving when I told you that my laptop sometimes takes 5 minutes, up to half an hour, to come out of standby and get to the point where I can do useful work.

Here is an example:

Today I sat at my desk at 8:33, and brought my laptop out of standby.

This is my first email. I started writing it at 8:47.

i.e. 14 minutes to come out of standby, and get to the point where I can do useful work, like sending email.

(I often see much worse.)

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Most of the people involved in "speeding up standby" measure time, e.g., from hitting the "Come Out of Standby" button, to displaying your desktop. As a result, people have optimized that "first response", doing things like displaying a stale and out-of-date bitmap of your desktop, because seeing something is better than seeing nothing. Unfortunately, many such optimizations actually end up delaying time to actually being able to get work done.

Many of the problems that need to be overcome relate not so much to actually coming outr of standby, as to processing time-based work that has been queued up while in standby.

But, to a user, it doesn't matter.

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I now actively try to avoid using my laptop at home. It so often takes so long to come out of standby or hibernate, and get useful work done, that I can no longer use my work provided laptop PC to "squeeze work in" - e.g. I can't check my email in the 15 minutes before supper, if it takes 15 minutes to go from standby to being able to read my email. I'm not going to bother even if on average it only takes 5 minutes to start up, if it frequently takes 15 minutes or more.

I would lock my laptop and leave it on my desk at work, except that my employer provides no other way that I can work at home. I can't connect to work from my home PC, IT does not allow it. So, I lug my laptop around, but do not even try to use it unless I have a 2 to 3 hour timeslot available at home, in the morning, in the evening, or on weekends.

I wonder if I should move my resume t...

I wonder if I should move my resume to Google docs?

It won't get a nice URL on Google docs.  On the other hand,  Google docs is a lot easier to use than other sites, such as geocities, where you have to upload the document.

I would rather have it on a wiki, but Google doesn't seem to have a wiki.

Google docs' editor supports inserting links - but it is a bit of a pain to use, almost as bad as creating links on SharePoint.  Not like a wiki, where creating links is the easiest possible thing.

Is it better to be persuasively wrong than non-persuasively right?

With respect to an issue

a) one may be wrong or right

b) one may be able to persuade those with power, or one may be unable to persuade those with power

For good measure

c) one may be able to persuade those with knowledge but not power, or not.

Alhough this last point, c) may not matter much.



It is nice to imagine that it
0) is best to be right, and able to persuade those with power. Best for both you, and the organization you belong to.

What is next best?:

1) to have been wrong, but to have been able to persuade those with power to follow your incorrect recommendations

2) to have been right, but to have been unable to persuade those with power to follow your correct recommendations

I am sure that anyonme with experience of business or politics realizes that 1) is better: it is better, for your career, to have been perusaively wrong, than non-persuasively right.

Particularly if you are able to be promoted and transferred away before the bad effects of the incorrect recommendations have been felt.


But what about the organization? Is the organization better off rewarding persuasively incorrect people? Or should the organization try to recognize non-persuasive correct people?


Heck - if the consequences of an incorrect decision are felt late enough, there is no benefit to the individual to have been correct: all that matters is that the individual was persuasive. Nevertheless, and organization that does not favor correct over incorrect decisions shoud not last long.