[Yes, its another Friday (honest) post from TCP Towers. In this case, it] [really *is* a Friday... technically anyway. The problem is that I still] [think that its Thursday [sigh] ]
We've been suffering from problems with tension in TCP Towers recently. Whilst tension in things like the razor wire that surrounds TCP Towers or the crossbow strings is a good thing, tension in the TCP Trolls is another matter.
It really has been one of those weeks[1], well, one of those months. At the beginning of this month, we had put into place higher taxes on the TCP lusers. Not only that, but we also put into place the thumbscrews of usage limits[2]. Implementating those two caused me just a insy-bitsy bit of stress. However, the higher taxes have made our king a little happier. The threat of the usage thumbscrews also seems to have helped. Whilst only one or two lusers suffer from being able to point and drool between 6pm and midnight, other lusers have cut back their usage. It seems that they are afriad of being cut off for even a single day.
Thankfully, I managed to get a day out at SunSoft's expense and have a nice lunch at a London hotel. Oh, there was this conference thing as well, an alleged "technical exchange". Whilst most of the conference was of some interest, I was quite impressed by the bit about connecting up to the Internet. The person who presented the talk was a little bit of a luser. Following the advice he gave would have left the poot system it was allied to a little ill. The fun bit of the conference was meeting up with a follow BOFH (Hia Tony :)
After that lot, came work. And more work and more work and.... You get the idea. This week it was the "let's learn lots about Informix" time. Lots of fun. Not. I mean, it only comes with a 2ft stack of manuals to read. Nothing at all. Now all I need is some climbing gear to get up the learning cliff. Its not as bad as it first seems as I'm not the one doing the actual interface work to the DB. I just have to take the programs that an outside contractor has written and write wrappers for them so that the DB will have a nice point and drool interface on the web.
All of this so far has been survivable. Not nice, but survivable. What really caused this post was the actions of our boss today. Now, at one time our boss may have had a clue. He used to do work with micro-electronics, program, etc. Okay, so this doesn't mean that he had a full clue, but I hope that he had at least part of one. Our boss doesn't seem to have a clue at all now. He has turned into a buzzword compliant, money grabbing, single-minded salesdroid without a clue from hell suffering from visions of grandiose schemes.
Now, I'm starting to be very impressed at how buzzword compliant our boss is starting to be. I don't think I've had any conversations with him recently were he hasn't mentioned at least 2 or 3 buzzwords. He really comes into his own when dealing with clients. I've seen him manage several sentances speaking only in buzzwords with just enough english around them to make the sentance vaguely understandable (and sometimes not even that). Naturally, clients love hearing all of these buzzwords as they assume that they will get a really impressive, all singing and dancing solution. Yeah, er, right. Whilst he is talking in buzzwords, any techs around have that look on their faces. You know, the one that says "WTF is he talking about" and "Oh, uh. We may have to implement this".
I could get along with this buzzword compliancy if it wasn't for the other traits he has. Being tight-fisted on the purse strings is sometimes a good idea. Our boss has gotten where he is thanks to doing that. However, this can go too far; especially when the hidden costs of a purchase by far out-weigh the gains made by going for cheaper kit. We had a wonderful case of this today. TCP Towers is currently in the process of getting a link dedicated to Usenet from another local site. We've gone through all of the hassles of getting the line itself installed[3]. Its just making use of the line. As part of the deal with the other site, we're providing a router for their end. Our end is no problem, it can use a free port on one of our current routers. The problem is with the remote end. We can either go with a low-end Cisco or a Telebit Netblazer thing (TBNT)[4]. Now, we'd prefer the Cisco. Phil the peeved can get one of those up and running in no time at all. However, the TBNT is about YYY GBP cheaper than the Cisco. This means that the boss wants the TBNT. Phil the peeved has seen a number of problems with this Netblazer thing, including:
Now, Phil outlined all of the problems above, along with a few others. The only argument our boss gave for going with the TBNT was "but its YYY cheaper than the Cisco".
| PtP: | "What about..." |
|---|---|
| Boss: | "Its YYY cheaper..." |
| PtP: | "But it'll...." |
| Boss: | "Its YYY cheaper..." |
| PtP: | "It isn't going..." |
| Boss: | "Its YYY cheaper..." |
| PtP: | LART LART LART |
| Boss: | [weakly] "Its YYY cheaper..." |
| PtP: | LART |
[sigh] and this is the boss who also has several grandiose schemes that he wants us to implement at some point. Naturally, this will be added to our workload. Never mind the fact that we've got far too much work as it is.
[sigh] da boss is also starting to ask about the new accounting system (aka BORIS and NATASHA. BORIS is the "Boring Old Retrival of Information System" and NATASHA is "Not Another TCP Accouting System which Hates Accounts". BORIS is the front-end to NATASHA) that I'm supposed to be writing. If it wasn't for all of this other work that needs to be done that is.
| [1] | I know, it always seems to be "one of those weeks" at TCP Towers. Whilst we have a lot of bad weeks at TCP Towers, we have been know to have some good ones; about 2 years ago before we had any customers was one such week. Other weeks have been know to be good; however these weeks frighten me. When we are having a good week, I have to wonder what is around the corner to make up for it. |
| [2] | As detailed in "Another friday at TCP Towers (part the first)" |
| [3] | It took Videotron 3 months to install a nice and simple 128Kbit link and they would have taken a lot longer if we'd not have push them every now and again with a cattle prod. |
| [4] | A Netblazer LS if you really want to know. |
Posted on 14th Jun 1996