Author: spierzchala

Skip Angel has a great post describing the concept of a Leadership Barometer.
The Low Pressure description is a very accurate portrayal of management climates I have worked in. A number of managers I have seen in action, in a somewhat misguided attempt to keep us informed, tell the team about the battles they have lost, the projects they have been forced to do, and share their personal opinions of senior leadership.
I don’t need to know this. I need to know how things are getting better. The battles we are facing. And how a manager is going to motivate us to achieve great things.
I want straight talk; but sometimes, I don’t need all the details.

Ummm…wow. This points to a catastrophic failure in the backup power systems in this hosting facility. [here and here and here]
TDavid makes a very good point: when your systems become large enough, the power consumption alone would stun most people. One article points out that in 2001, a new Qwest facility in Sunnyvale,CA would require enough power to drive 1.2 million families. Another http://www.masselec.com/news/spring_summer_2001/News5.htm about a hosting facility in Billerica, MA talks about having six (6) 1.5 MEGAWATT backup generators.
You have to imagine what the power demands of Google’s 100,000 servers must be, even distributed worldwide.

1. The organization moved to Exchange 2003. Chaos abounds. Work e-mail should return to normal in about 3 days
2. We finally got the money out of the CRA for the sale of our house in Canada in October 2003
3. We finished preparing the house for the arrival of the grandparentals tomorrow
4. I think I have started a discussion in my organization about talking to our customers like family. I even translated some of their “buzzword” copy into plain English

Bedtime for the shift supervisor here at the NI Factory…

Get it while it’s hot! [here]
Via Gizmodo!

After pounding through a number of incredibly clearly written books in the last week, and being completely absorbed in brilliantly written blog posts, I have decided that it is time to start translating the jargon at my company.
From today on, I refuse to speak the buzzwords. I want to have genuine conversations with our customers. I will tolerate their need for buzzwords, but I will translate them into a real conversation, not into a lingusitic power game.
I will challenge my company to dissect its Web site, white papers, and other press material to see if they are spouting empty and meaningless words. I will ask how they would explain the importance of the idea to their grandmother.
I want to take everything and throw it in the trash. I want to start again.
I am starting again.

Guerilla Marketing for Consultants links to their latest newsletter where they tee up the myth of Best Practices and drive that meat-flavoured golf ball right into the crocodile water trap.
I hear this from companies and from peers and I want to slam both groups when I hear it. It is an empty, meaningless term. In my business (in most businesses), every consulting engagement is unique. There are certain core concepts that everyone should adhere to, but the solution for each company is unique.
Throw Best Practices out of your vocabulary. Now.

Groovy! An entire blog dedicated to the effects of my favourite addictive SSRI! [here]
Go team!

I finally powered off my old (Red Hat 9) Web server after nearly 2.5 years of continuous operation. The Web server databases have been moved over to the other old and clunky machine, which happens to have a bigger drive and more RAM.

I will miss the bizarre quirks of that old clunker, but I will re-build her with a massive new hard drive so that she can become my repository of media files.

Eventually. When I get some money.

By then, it should be 4 generations behind the most modern machines.

Sigh…

I migrated the database for the blog to a new machine. Took all of about 15 seconds to complete the transfer.
Let me know if you see any weirdness.