Leaving Stuff on the Train

As every week brings new stories of civil servants leaving disks, usb keys and laptops in inappropriate places, I don't know about you, but I'm getting a whole lot pissed off about this. No, that's not what it is, I'm getting frustrated and perplexed.

The latest story to cross my path was in our local free newspaper, and talks about a chap who was actually fined £2500 for leaving some important documents on the train. It turns out that he'd inadvertently picked up these documents as he was leaving work, whilst scooping up his paper to read on the train journey home. So far, so sympathetic. Fair do's, it was a mistake. So the guy realises he's made this phenomenal blunder, and decides to take the documents back to work in the morning. Again, I'm with him at this point. Genuine mistake, guv, was just about to put the back, no harm done.

But this is where it becomes perplexing. He's realised his error, and he's working on correcting it. He's on his way back to work the next morning, with the documents, and he manages to leave them on the train. What? How has he NOT got these things handcuffed to his wrist, knowing that there will be all sorts of shenanigans on his return to the office when it's discovered that he has lost them?

I get pissy with my girls when they manage to lose things. Here I am, assuming that at 9 and 10, they should be able to look after their own stuff - I mean, if it's important to them, they mustn't assume that I'll just replace it when they lose it. Don't you think? It's not as if their stuff is important to anyone else, but since it's important to them, surely it's not much to ask them to take care of it. Actually, the 10 year old does fairly well, despite being a little daffy, and since we don't use the train that often, we've not had THAT much loss yet. But this chap in the paper is 38 years old, for crying out loud.

So, am I the only one who's beginning to wonder if there isn't something a little more sinister going on than just plain carelessness? Maybe the £2500 fine is a drop in the ocean compared with what he's getting from the opposition for delivering these "lost" documents into their grubby little mitts. It just seems to me that there is SO much publicity about these so called losses, that people MUST be aware of what they are carrying, and therefore, they're either incompetent to the point of stupidity, or they're working for the enemy.

"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

Web Cam

Some time ago I discovered a wonderful tool, LogMeIn, which allows me to remote control another computer onto which I've installed it. This, as you can imagine, makes my support easier, because it's often possible to remotely control a PC, find out what the problem is, and fix it without having to trawl all the way over to Woking.

I've already used it on my home computer today, and have made valuable use of it in the past, to check how something reacts when it's not hidden behind the barbed-wire-and-concrete of my work ISA server.

So you're getting the picture that it's a very useful thing to have. It's like having a window into your own home.

As I strolled back from lunch this afternoon, I was struck with a sudden desire to have a similar thing attached to my Freezer. I planned to use some of my lunchtime to place my shopping order online, but I really wanted to find out if I have any mince in my freezer.

What I want is the ability to log into my freezer remotely, and find out what I've got in there.

Black

Wearing black one always looks mysterious and Gothic.

Until one has to move old computer equipment, after which one merely looks rather dusty and sad.

Communication

How is it, do you suppose, that we cannot communicate with those we love the best?

So there you are, madly in love with someone new. This isn't just a physical lusty thing, it's a true meeting of minds, and you can talk about anything and everything. Your nights are spent together in a dizzying whirl of lust and deep, meaningful, philosophical conversation. This isn't just chatting, it's real communication, and this person is obviously the person with whom you're going to spend the rest of your life.

All is fabulous until the day you make that little throwaway comment which makes your new and exciting partner look at you as if you've just bitten the head off a puppy. And not just any puppy - this was their favourite puppy whilst growing up - the one they played with and walked every single day until the beast died in their arms of old age. That puppy. The one they mourned with a passion abated only by your very own arrival in their lives, with your complete, utter and perfect connection to them.

And just so that you never have to see that look of total disappointment on their wonderful face again, you tuck away inside, that little part of you which made you say that oh-so-hurtful thing, and a tiny part of you dies just a little bit.

The sad thing is that this goes on, every year brings another look from the puppy face, and in time, the perfect communication you shared during those long, hot, passionate nights is a whisper of a memory, replaced by small talk of those subjects you know, from long experience, don't elicit that bittersweet expression.

And then comes the melancholy day that your flawless love, for whom you killed such a lot of your own personality, moves on, because they are no longer able to communicate with you. But they've found someone new, and this time it's perfect. Again.

Y2K Disaster?

Even now, 8 years after the millennium, I keep reading that the only Y2K disaster was the fact that so many companies bought into the issue, and piled hundreds of thousands of pounds into fixing it. I remember that for quite some years afterwards, there were many articles jeering at these so-called "morons" for buying into the hype, and sending their money gurgling down the drain of the consultants pockets.

What I don't see is anyone actually defending much of this spend. OK - yes, there were some jokers insisting that your washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher and even your toaster were going to be affected by this move from '99 to '00. Thankfully most people were above such panic (although there were sad, sad stories of people actually "upgrading" their white goods because they had been suckered into believing that they'd stop working at midnight on 1999!) and were able to see that it wouldn't matter what year your white goods thought it was, because it'll function just as well in 1900 as 2000.

What did matter were many database systems where the year information had been stored as a two digit number instead of a 4 digit number. It's very simple, but there was a hell of a lot of data out there with just that problem, and the companies who had such databases paid to make sure they were up to date by the end of 1999. There were other systems where the year mattered, and these were updated too. The reason the "millennium bug" failed to bring the world to its knees was because so many companies had paid so much money to ensure that systems would NOT cause problems.

I worry, in retrospect, about claims that aircraft would fall out of the sky because they'd suddenly stop working on the dot of midnight 1999. Even now, I just can't see how this could possibly have been an issue. HOW would this have worked? If I change the date in my PC back to January 1900 (actually, the internal clock wont let me go back further than 1980), is my computer going to suddenly think - "Oh my God! They didn't have computers back in 1900! I can't work any more."? Well, let's look at this logically - I'd be thrilled if my computer started thinking at all! But computer systems don't, as yet, have any kind of awareness save what we've programmed into them, so, no, I think it unlikely my computer would worry about the fact that computers hadn't been invented in 1900. Similarly, I'd be prepared to bet that no aircraft would have any kind of programming which would give said aircraft cause to worry that no-one was able to fly back in 1900, so it shouldn't be able to fly either. I can see no reason to have year information in the programming of an aircraft at all. That said, I bet Airforce 1 has some pretty fancy software!

Has it ever occurred to these people who now dismiss the whole Y2K bug theory as having been a load of old hokum, that the reason it didn't hit us nastily was because it was part hokum, and part preparation.

Windows 7 Wish-List

My copy of PC Pro arrived last week, and I fell on it like a vulture onto the carcass of a lamb! Inside there's an article about the forthcoming new operating system from those boys in Redmond, Windows 7. I was rather disappointed to find that there's no interesting code-name for the beast. Within the article, however, there was a section where a few people had put in their wants for this new OS. Let me detail what I'd like, with a few reasons.

1. I want to be able to set the program defaults for every user who logs into the machine - like the ability to configure IE without the end user having to think it through. Working in a school one becomes aware of how the younger children are completely lost when presented with the "Now let's set up how you search the internets" page on first starting IE. All they want to do is to find their favourite games sites, and having to talk every single year 3, 4 and 5 student through the decision on which internet search engine they want to use is seriously eating into my support time.
This also goes goes for WMP - I want all the machines to behave the same.

2. Sound. Why, for the love of Mike, is Windows configured to play a little tune on login? Can you imagine a room of 20 computers, many of which don't have functioning headphones (because children are tiny little vandals) all logging in at the same time? 10 times a day? After the first time it becomes REALLY annoying - the kids aren't allowed to use the control panel, and thus cannot configure this. And if they could - remember these are children. They're going to choose something which grates even more. So on the wish list for Windows 7 - make the default sounds settings as No Sounds.

3. For pity's sake stop hiding things. I've spent ages learning how to be damn good with XP, and I know where to find most things (although I do have some problems with registry entries). But in Vista I'm completely lost. I want to check my network connections - I head to Control Panel, Network Connections. Where do I head in Vista? Sadly this is not a rhetorical question, because I've not yet worked that one out :(

4. Stop swamping me with messages. Apparently a recent study of popups found that most people will do anything except actually read the message in front of them in order to get rid of those annoying messages that Windows (and loads of other programs) pop up onto your screen to tell you something. It's not even that people are idiots - it's just that there are TOO DAMN MANY of these dumb messages. I don't need to know that I have unused icons on my desktop. I suspect more people would read them if there weren't so many which are completely information free. Or if the information had anything to do with the real world. You'd almost think that all programmers were, in fact, elitist sons of bitches.

5. I'd like to be able to set a default printer for a machine, which will override any network settings. So if a PC has a printer attached, I can say that this is the default printer for every user who logs on. While I want to be able to restrict my users from doing things I don't want them to do, I'd like to be able to make their lives easier, by providing the most useful set of defaults. There are some settings which can't be set by group policies.

Actually, this is much more of a DO NOT WANT list than a wish list of new functionality. I do want more control over new accounts than I have at the moment, and I really do want to be able to set more defaults, more easily.

So, Microsoft, are you really listening to your customers?

Finding a Higgs Boson Particle.

I know. They're going to turn on the LHC tomorrow, and we're all going to be sucked into a black hole. Very scary.

However, assuming we DON'T get sucked into any kind of black hole - in fact, assuming that no black hole is actually created, I worry about this search for the Higgs Boson particle. What if, contrary to Stephen Hawking's expectation, they do, indeed, find it, but it turns out NOT to provide unlimited understanding of our universe?

What, are they going to say it's not actually a Higgs boson at all, but some other particle (and they need only look as far as Star Trek for some damn fine particle names if they get stuck)?

I just feel that all those nice scientists are going to be so very disappointed!