September 2008 Archives

Dave and the network are both holding up well, but I am still looking for Dave II. There is this Bulgarian guy I found on the internet who is into cloning research and needs some project funding. We are negotiating.

 

There are essentially two kinds of ITers. There are those who always have the latest and flashiest technology and the real professionals, whose desks look like a cross between a museum and a scrap heap.

Up to Stirlang for a meeting of Asslic, North Britain branch. The meeting was chaired by Aloon Krikwad, a man so unlike a local government officer in appearance and demeanour that I am tempted to see in him a sign of a better future for humanity.

Anyway, I gave a talk about using IT to save the planet and they all clapped. Well most of them did anyway; though none, it has to be said, terribly enthusiastically.

Perhaps, taking their lead from their chair, they are too cool, too spaced out even, to be enthusiastic. Or maybe my accent is now so diluted by my extended sojourn "doon sooth" that they thought I was English.

Things are starting to work again. Dave, still attached to the drip, has not left his screen for 48 hours. The immediate threat to the continuity of my employment status has receded. However, I am left with a nagging anxiety. I mean, sooner or later Dave will have to take some time off. A liver transplant is not exactly an outpatient job, surely.

It worked. Half way into the fourth bottle he suddenly snapped bolt upright and asked for his keyboard. These doctors are useless. They treat only the symptom, when what is really needed is an understanding of the whole person. It is simply a matter of keeping the body's systems in balance. You know: yin and yang, drive and reflection, positive and negative, and in Dave's case, blood and alcohol.

Once we restored the balance, i.e. his circulatory system got up to around 40% proof, everything righted itself.

With young Peter and his friends' assistance we managed to spring Dave from the Priory last night. He is now locked in the basement attached to the second part of our paln - an intravenous drip. He hads just started the third bottle of 18-year old Highland Park. If htis doesn't brign hirm round, I don't know what will.

I really need to get Dave back to work. Things are bad, very bad. Our infrastructure is failing at almost every level, the council's services are in chaos and the chief executive is asking for my resignation. But that is not the half of it. The worst thing is that the Office word proccessor on my laptop has decided to add a Clip Art selection toolbar at the top of the screen and, try as  I might, I cannot figure out a way to get rid of it.

Anyway, Mavis, Charlie and I have hatched a plan.

He has people who do his e-mailing for him, but some worm-tongue must have told the chief executive about our little local difficulties and I was called in this morning.

I tried to appear calm and collected, but it must have been clear I was rattled. I do not normally sob uncontrollably. Certainly not before he has asked me a question, anyway.

Attended the annual Asslic president's dinner this evening. Tsar Richard First made a speech. Well... his blog is good anyway.

As a mature and sensitive manager I decided I ought to visit Dave in his asylum to offer him some encouragement and support. It is the least a modern manager could do.

However, I was in the place only two minutes before the Priory staff threw me out. What a lot of bleeding hearts they turned out to be! I mean, under the circumstances, my screaming, "Pull yourself together, stop this skiving and get back to your bloody terminal, you lazy bastard!" was rather restrained I thought.

Pretty much everything is down. The network can be brought up, but falls over as soon as the wind changes. Half the applications are not connecting to their data and the other half are not even loading.

Yesterday any outgoing e-mail was duplicated 1,023 times. Incoming only seems to get through if it is addressed to let-me-thru@bogcaster.gov.uk. Incoming e-mails to all other addreses are being permanently deleted on receipt, or at least they were until we took the pop down.

Doctors say Dave is suffering from nervous exhaustion. Specifically, he has Obsessive Computer Fatigue Syndrome.

There is some talk about making OCFatS a registered industrial disease as it only ever afflicts IT workers. In a techie aria, such as supporting a full-blown enterprise Linux infrastructure at Bogcaster City Council, everything is far too complex for any casually engaged person to truly come to terms with it. But anyone prepared to devote their life to it becomes indispensable.

To maintain their position this person must spend more and more time working. Eventually everything else in their life backs into the shadows and their personality becomes inextricably connected with their system.

Although they may appear in control, the pressure is buiding up internally. Then, if they start to lose even the smallest element of control, they just fall over. Dave has "retreated into a state of reduced consciousness" or, as Mavis puts it, "he's gone bonkers".

"Not been the best week of your career, has it?" I suggested.

"Flob-a-dop," replied Dave.

"I didn't catch that."

"Flob-a-dop."

"MAVIS! Come in here a minute, please. I want you to witness something."

Returning to Dave. "Can you tell me what your name is?"

"Flob-a-dop."

"And your date of birth?"

"Flob-a-dop."

"Mavis -  your assessment?"

"I'd say Dave is now a flower-pot man and therefore you are toast."

In trying to fix the car parks problem, Dave tired to raise the barriers and set their stop lights to green. Unforunately, he seems to have set all traffic lights in the city to green. So this morning those poor unfortunates trapped all night in a multi-storey could drive out, but generally not much farther than the first road junction where they were either hit by a motorist travelling cross-ways or stuck behind a blockage caused by one of many pile-ups.

Dave managed to close down the interface that was taking down Council Tax, but in doing so crashed the parking control network. Car parks across the city are still letting people in and giving them tickets, but not accepting any payments and, therefore, not letting them out.

This morning the Council Tax system fell over, apparently as a result of Dave patching it without considering his own mods that deal with our more exotic interfaces. A surprisingly large number of people have used the multi-function parking meter channel to make their Council Tax payments. They can pay their entire bill in a series of weekly instalments of small change. Several vicars do this.

Anyway, since the latest system upgrade, any use of this payment channel brings down the entire system.

These things get known. There is one meter visible from the Council Offices. No sooner have we got the application up than a little fellow appears, grins demoniacally in our direction and proceeds to attempt to reduce his current balance by 5p.

People like blaming IT for the ills of society. The recession, for example, is our fault because IT has turned banking from a real solid business into a fantasy land of hedge funds and speculation. We are responsible for international terrorism, because it is modern communciations that makes possible secret networks across continetnts.

Similarly pornorgraphy, an evil that, to hear the way some people talk, did not exist before the internet. Ridiculous, clearly. So it did not unduly alarm me when Charlie mentioned that Dave was making mistakes. He often forgets details after the third bottle.

The dubious network person has left the country. Shame. No, no... I mean she is leaving because of shame. Her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. The family has connections in Alaska, so they have decided to hole up there for the duration of the confinement.

That's one security risk out of the way then. Would not want unstable nutters like her with access to my network, no sir.

Really bad news. It turns out that one of our network administrators is a Christian fundamentalist. She believes God created the world 4,000 years ago in six days, dinosaurs co-existed with the Apple II, all socialists, geologists and those who do not own a six-litre pick-up truck are in league with Satan, and the relationship betwen Microshaft and the Office for Government Corruption is wholesome and life-affirming.

Discover that our DBA is a Zoroastrian fundamentalist. Considered alerting the security services, but Mavis talks me out of it. Apparently, he is a very nice young man.

Meanwhile, I am contacted by Stalwart Mistemall who wants to know how we CoCo and if, perchance, I know a CASP-registered consultant willing to go South of the M25 (just) for £325 a day plus concessionay parking. I don't.

Another dull day. There is really not much happening. Dave gave me an update this morning on our Coco Pops submission. This is where we have to snap to it and crackle off to the lads in central government how it is that, despite the fact it is they who keep losing whole data sets of personal stuff, we in local government must pop down to our local security consultant shop and buy a solution.

Solution to what exactly?

Well... it's called displacement. We all know that big government IT leaks like a sieve because no one cares two hoots, and anyway it's all in the hands of the private sector, which employs kids to do real stuff and turns the pros into account managers, or consigns them to more demanding clients in the City

Anyway, listening to someone drone on about the importance of getting people not to write down their passwords and making sure our DBA is not a Muslim fundamentlaist is less exciting than watching a disc defrag.

Late summer or early autumn, depending upon your state of optimism, and it's raining. Inside and out in fact.

"Mavis, call Facilities again will you please. It's dripping on my laptop."

"I sugggest you move your laptop. Facilities are still mostly on a beach in Crete."

BCS membership renewal time. Well, someone has to pay for Swindon.