“I came up with it all by myself.” - on theft of ideas in corporate life. April 30, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Business Etiquette, Last Job, Stories , Comments
Seen this twice in my 20 years in IT. This being the theft of someone else’s ideas, and claiming them as their own.
First time I saw it was in the Northern Territory, with the Government’s IT arm, NCOM.
An IT Director published an draft e-Government proposal, lifting large slabs of the text from the ACT Government e-Government documents.
Having been a keen student of e-Government, I remember seeing some of the phrases used in the NCOM report. A short Google time later, there we go “it’s a copy of the ACT e-Government report”.
The second time was with my last employer. A colleague, rather the Powerpoint Guru, created a presentation for a Manager. Manager presents Powerpoint Presentation to Director and Vice-President of my division, to much acclaim. Much like the Dilbert cartoon excerpt, “I did it all by myself” claimed she, the Manager.
All well and good to try that on, but perhaps next time remove the 
from the bottom right corner of the slides you copy.
“You can be even more special” - by donating plasma & platelets. April 30, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Blood Donation , Comments
Don’t just donate blood, donate plasma instead!
Plasma makes up to 13 life saving products, used to treat a range of medical conditions including hemophilia, liver and kidney disease. And you can donate plasma more often, every 2 to 4 weeks, as opposed to 12 weeks for red blood cells.*
The downsides:
- I tend to feel washed out afterwards, but that is gone after a night’s sleep.
- If you get an inexperienced nurse, you end up a pin-cushion, just like regular blood donations.
- the “gottagopee” feeling, which occurs five minutes after being strapped in.
The upsides:
- free milkshakes
- free party pies.
* - yes, I have been reading propaganda at the Red Cross again.
“If you knew, you wouldn’t eat here.” April 27, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Food, Web links , CommentsHad a friend who was the manager of a Melbourne Hungry Jack (Burger King to you USA’ers), and his advice was
You wouldn’t eat take away if you knew how it was prepared Dale.
Western Australian Health Minister Jim McGinty agrees,
You’d be especially interested if you visited the Hamilton Hill Continental Bakery:
Health (Food Hygiene) Regulations 1993
Reg 7(1)(a)(i) Unclean Premises
Reg 7(1) (a) (iii) Premises in disrepair
Reg 7(1) (a) (iv) Vermin on premises
Reg 7 (1) (b) (ii) Appliances in disrepair
Reg 12 (1) (b) (a) Unprotected food
Reg 33 (3) Frozen food stored at incorrect temperature
Reg 11 (1) (a) Unprotected food
Reg 32 (1) (b) Hazardous food stored at unsafe temperature
Reg 7(1)(a)(i) Unclean Premises
Reg 7(1) (a) (iii) Premises in disrepair
Reg 7 (1 (b) (ii) Appliances in disrepair
Reg 32 (1) (b) Hazardous food stored at unsafe temperature
Reg 12 (1) (b) Stored ready to eat food not protected
You can download the rest of the Perth offenders here:
Environmental Health Directorate, and look at “Notification of Convictions”
Reason for all things April 23, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Quotations , CommentsBecause God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-interest, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.
- Quote from “The Darkest Evening Of The Year”, by Dean Koontz.
Deleting files so they can’t be recovered. April 20, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Security, Utilities , Comments
Was asked to find a secure way to delete files off a USB stick.
The way I’ve done it in the past is to use the Sysinternals Sdelete utility. It’s a command line utility, so it makes it a bit difficult for regular users to use.
Enter Eraser. Which is freeware, and a great little utility for regular users.
Here are some screenshots:
Selecting a file to be erased
Confirming it’s to be deleted:
What a deletion looks like:
You can even securely delete your Recycle Bin contents:
I’ll be using Eraser in future as well, it’s very good
And free.
Unmanaged PCs, with good reasons April 16, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Asset Tracking , Comments
There are 2 classes of PCs and 1 class of user where you should avoid installing Desktop Management toolsets.
- Production Control/SCADA equipment
- Prohibited by law
- Exempted class of users
I’m going to talk about point 3 (you can tell it’ll be a short post).
In the public arena, the judiciary and politicians may be sensitive to any desktop management software.
In the private arena, “C” users.
C-users?
CEO, CFO, CIO, CTO; and their executive assistants.
Romans 12:8 April 14, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Quotations , CommentsHad scribbled on a piece of paper “Romans 12:8″.
I expect it was supposed to go into the “Quotes” post.
“If it is encouraging others, devote yourself to giving encouragement. If it is sharing, be generous. If it is leadership, lead enthusiastically. If it is helping people in need, help them cheerfully.”
- Romans 12:8
The Case Of The First Problem April 12, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Printing, Psychic Troubleshooting, Stories , Comments… or the customer’s Postscript printer prints gibberish.
By now, you would think, that all printers would ship with Postscript as standard. After all, Postscript has been out in the market since 1985.
So I was surprised when I received my first support call in my new job, “Postscript printer prints gibberish”.
After some psychic debugging, the answer was clear.
“Your printer does not have Postscript installed!”
The why? It’s an optional extra for this particular printer model. In the end, we told the customer to buy the Postscript option if they wanted it.
Some quotes I’ve gathered April 11, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Last Job, Quotations , CommentsThe idea is not to create a crisis and then thrash about to solve it - its to avoid the problem in the first place with the best possible planning in the circumstances, as those circumstances continue to evolve.
-Simon Hackett
(in a mailing list discussion "please don’t send me these emails" message message)
To expand on your car analogy, we note that even the lowliest, most basic car comes with a manual. The problem before us is that, without exception, the manual for the car is located inside the car. Now, without commenting on the mental dexterity of the complaining members of the community, I have yet to be shown their ability to open the car door without simple, direct instruction.
This itself should not be a large problem, since the procedure for removing oneself is the same for everyone. What we don’t realise is that the people wishing to be removed are no longer reading the emails because these are the very things they are complaining about. It is impossible to tell someone something if they wont open their ears, or in this case their mail.
I am sure that if we all devote our huge collective intelligence to this problem, we can come up with a solution that the people can both understand and implement without our constant supervision.
As for quotes from Hamlet, I think the following is more appropriate :
"Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement."
Act I, scene 3
- Simon Wright
A player who makes a team great is much more valuable than a great player. - John Wooden
Sacrifice of others:
"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." - Winston Churchill
A battery hen only know’s it’s small cage, and thinks that is all there is to the world. If you try and put a free-range chicken into a battery cage, it will SQUAWK loudly, as it knows the world is better than a cage.
- Terry Pollard, February 2005
If you don’t have control of your network - Wireless Security April 7, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Networking, Security , Comments… then it’s unmanaged and open to exploit. As happened with a customer in mid-2004.
The “batphone” rings and it’s one of our desktop support guys.
“We’re detected a wireless router plugged into the customers network, what do you want me to do?”
Wait 5 while I see if it’s authorised… (it’s not)
‘Unplug that sucker!’
Customer complaint rolls in, with justification as follows:
- It’s an executive PA who’s using the link
- We’re using strong encryption (they were not, it was WEP)
- We keep the encryption key closely guarded.
In the rush to fix an Executive PA’s LAN link, the customer broke their own security model.
With the backing of the customer’s security group, we said “It’s not being connected again.”
And the original problem was fixed next day.
Further reading:
WEP: Wireless security’s broken skeleton in the closet
The Batphone
How To Build Your Own Batphone