Captain Kirk

Work gets its own post. Theres just so much crap that's going on. As Simon says, "it's more like disneyland here every day"

Several people at my work have entirely lost touch with reality. from the ex-boss who keeps insisting that every application we deploy must launch in a full screen virtual desktop, to the project manager who hasn't the foggiest idea how to run a team of anything besides oxen.

"full" desktop is a buzzword the ex-boss won't stop flogging. In actuality, he's "full" of shit. the obvious downsides to the desktop approach of deploying apps are this:

1. if its not full screen, users get 2 start menus. AHH! confusion!
2. if it is full screen, users lose access to all local applications. AHH! confusion!

The approach of the project has been deploying seamless applications from day 1. he has somehow brainwashed people into thinking a desktop solution is a good idea, and has no actual technical or functional backing for this.

Which leads me to the thin client devices they have at work. a limited number (25-30) of thin client devices were purchased and some were deployed to users. because of the limited functionality of these terrible little devices, full screen desktop seemed like the best solution. until they go to print, or surf the internet, etc.

windows printing subsystem is terrible. if you add drivers you can take down your servers and cause system instability. universal printing seems to work for most things, but thats still got a few bugs. the universal print driver takes the print job and directs it to the locally installed printers, on whatever client machine you're connecting with. the problem with thin client devices is that they only have 256/512mb of space on them. try to print 10 powerpoint slides and your device is toast.

Then there's internet explorer. the problem isn't internet explorer the browser necessarily. the problem is that you can put ANYTHING inside of IE. video, sound, java, javascript, activex. all kinds of bad things. not necessarily bad if any of these were used client side. but definitely bad when someone decides to surf youtube over a Citrix session, or installs some spyware rootkit, or IE hangs and pins a processor. then the user starts another session and pins yet another processor. everyone else connected to the shared server comes to a grinding halt.

So with all the problems with these terrible little thin client devices, people still haven't given up on them. they're running around wasting their time trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. we already have a good solution. a cheap PC. its less expensive, sometimes even free! you can recycle old computers into thin client devices that don't have the same problems. the idea behind thin clients was to minimize management. well its done exactly the opposite.

On the good side of my career, I won an 80gb iPod. i took my CCEA tests last november and they had a contest on for the first 200 people to get certified. woohoo! just in time for my vacation.

I've also been interviewing for other positions with compugen, the CRA, and squires resources. squires resources is the most interesting one. they specialize in staffing people in tropical climates. mostly bermuda and the carribean. the downside is that it would be full time, and I'd probably need to commit to at least 2-3 years. The upside is I'd never see freezing rain ever again.

I could go on and on about work for days. but i'm pretty sure it wouldn't do me any good, and noone else wants to listen :) I'll post more when someone at work does something exceptionally stupid. so probably this week.