The Lone Sysadmin

It’s always a trade-off.  Anybody who says otherwise is selling you something or clueless.

Also see: scissors.

(compliments to my friend Steve Tanner for whipping up a slider in Visual Studio 2008)

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Good post over at marco.org on why Microsoft Windows Vista hasn’t sold well. The most striking paragraph:

Our industry has collectively taught average people over the last few decades that computers should be feared and are always a single misstep from breaking. We’ve trained them to expect the working state to be fragile and temporary, and experience from previous upgrades has convinced them that they shouldn’t mess with anything if it works. They’ve learned to ignore our pressures to always get the latest versions of everything because our upgrades frequently break their software and workflow. They expect unreliable functionality, shoddy software workmanship, unnecessary complexity, broken promises from software marketers, and degrading hostility from their office’s IT staff.

It isn’t just average people that fear computers. From what I’ve seen, the general IT staffer fears them, too. Hiding behind the mantra of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” they refuse to patch, ignore service packs, eschew firmware updates, and deliberately keep their systems two to three years behind. It’s really no surprise; it’s exactly because of the unreliable functionality, shoddy software workmanship, complexity, and broken promises from vendors. VMware, Red Hat, Oracle, IBM — you name the vendor and their software sucks. So people find a combination where the problems are a known quantity, where the house of cards doesn’t fall over every day, and they don’t touch it again for years.

I’m not saying it’s right, or a good idea. I’m just saying I get it.

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I’m looking for a portable way to boost cell phone signals when I’m in places that I only get a bar or so of reception and can’t maintain a connection. By “portable” I mean I’ve been considering going as far as mounting an inexpensive repeater in my Jeep. ThinkGeek sells a “USB Cellphone Booster” which looks intriguing, and I’ve seen other versions of it specifically for in-car use. Has anybody used one of these? Do they work? They’re out of stock, which is probably a good sign.

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Everything Sysadmin has an interesting post that ends up talking about the whole “underpromise and overdeliver” strategy.

I’ve always had a rocky relationship with that strategy, mainly because I really think people just need to stop acting like they’re heroes on Star Trek and get better at time estimation.

Certainly when there’s doubt about how long something will take it’s better to overestimate, because that way the promises your customers made to their customers, coworkers, or boss aren’t lies because of you. It also helps to give yourself a little breathing room, so that if something urgent comes up you can deal with that and still deliver. The trick is just not to overdo it. People aren’t dumb, and consistent “underpromising” to the same set of people means that they will start expecting it. Do you really want people disappointed that it actually took you two days to do something when you said it would take two days? Of course not. You also don’t want them heading to your boss and complaining about how long something might take, just to discover that you weren’t completely honest with them at other times (or now). What are you, lazy? Exactly how are you spending that extra time?

In my opinion it is better to make consistently accurate time estimates and follow through on them. And, if you discover that your estimates might not be right, be honest about it, but also figure out what made you wrong and remember it next time.

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“An architect knows something about everything. An engineer knows everything about one thing.”

- Matthew Frederick, “101 Things I Learned in Architecture School”

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