I am currently gainfully employed as an IT Manager. The only issue I have with this is that I do not really manage anything, I have no underlings. However, I am responsible for providing solutions to problems, finding efficient ways of performing similar tasks that improve overall business process, and performing minor miracles with a zero budget. When company take overs happen, I am then left with the task of performing major miracles without any decent information. Presented with this, I toss everything and instead focus on something more interesting: code.

A good friend of mine gave me some information on a new languages, Groovy on Grails, which I spoke about briefly last week. This week I have been looking through some other items, and stumbled onto a podcast by an associate of mine, Marie Wessels, who works for 3Fifteen. She has a podcast on themossshow.com about Sharepoint. Which got me thinking about Sharepoint, Active Directory and SQL servers again. I’m spread a little thin I think. Regardless, it made me think of something Bunny said to me: “Why are you in the IT industry if it irratates your so much?” Why indeed?

Because it is still something that makes me feel all gooey inside. I am probably one of very few people who thinks it’s awesome when I read a statement about hosting sharepoint server farms using SQL as the structure and active directory to perform authentication. I think: “Coooooool!” It’s the Geek in me. I know it. I’m not ashamed of it either! I like complexity and simplicity in structured solutions. I like infrastructure and databases and systems and computer hardware. It rocks! I just wish I had a money machine and a time machine so that I could properly play with my hobby.

But this does return down to the topic of todays post; which is what do I spend my time focussing on. Obviously I cannot know everything, and I have been able to get by knowing something about just about everything, but perhaps it is time I pick and choose which items to follow religiously and which I need to put into a small basket somewhere near the back of my mind. Mookity wants me to use Java. I am a VB fan boy (until .Net). I want to program in C++, but it looks awfully boring. C# sounds kinky, but isn’t, and PHP is something that looks yummy but, well, isn’t. The simplicity of VB over the complexcity of C strucutre. At least that is where I was floundering until I considered a simple fact: Java, PHP, C++, C, C# to a degree, JavaScript, and a lot of other languages all share similar (very similar) structure. They look mostly the same and follow the same syntax structure. they’re not exactly the same (except for Java and Groovy which you can port from Java to Groovy just by renaming the Java file), but they do offer a certain degree of similarity.

Learning Java, and Groovy with Grails, gives me the oppertunity of being able to catch up on C and PHP relatively quickly as they are basically the same, just with different naunces. So surely it is the logical decision to learn it? Yet how will this fit into the environment and infrastructure of companies that run mostly Windows based architecture? Having a Groovy based Intranet is grand and all, but how does it fit into a Sharepoint Server Farm with SQL 2008 Servers and a Windows Active Directory? Would it be pointless of me to study this language if only to find that it doesn’t fit into my infrastructure?

Well, as it turns out, Java is an old hand with LDAP. Great. I had a look at two articles, here and here, but I must admit that they didn’t make much sense to me. That doesn’t matter however. I haven’t even started learning the Java language yet, which means that over time they will begin to make sense. Bonus for me. The real question for me, however, is: does Groovy have any tools for LDAP support and authentication? Enter our friend Google. A quick search popped up a couple of articles, such as this one, by Michael Szklanowski, and this one by Phil. The lasty article pointed out something a bit odd, however; how does this integrate with Grails? Well, there is a Grails plugin which is documented here on Spring. So, there is no question that Groovy on Grails can access LDAP and Active Directory. Awesome.

The same is pretty much true for accessing the SQL server infrastructure. You can find more information about it here.

Therefore my arguments against using Java, Groovy and Grails have weakened to such an extent that I am having a small problem trying to justify the putting off of it. Then Mookity sends me an email with a challenge in it:

challange

create a product catalog
must include images
colour
number item in stock
price
basic description
etc

no ordering function just yet

Awesome. So, somewhere between all the programming projects I have made for myself I now need to make this as well. But i recognise that as an excuse. Mookity has the advantage of being an actual programmer for his daily wage and having worked with Java for a long time. So I am at a disadvantage, which means that for me to do this, I have to do it better than he might do it, and perhaps faster. How that will happen is beyond me at this point. The time line given is two weeks from Wednesday last. So I’d better get my arse into gear.

Why the sudden itnerest in Groovy, Grails and Java? The company that I have been working for, for the last couple of years does not have a programmer or a proper IT infrastructure. They outsourced the majority of their work to other companies. Because of that they were not able to identify places where solid infrastructure is required, and were unaware of where a programmer can help them. As issues were identified solutions were delivered. The problem comes in that te vast majority of these solutions are written in ancient VBScript ASP 3.0 with only a handful in VB.NET. Some of the applications date back to VB 6.0! There are a smattering of PHP web pages, but all in all, some of this, and some of that.

The company has been bought out, and the larger company will probably want things cleaned up a bit. More so, I want things cleaned up. Which means a re-write of a lot of code. Migrate it to JAVA using Groovy on Grails, keep the Windows infrastructure, and tweak the stuff that is using PHP. Do away with the .Net because it sucks, and see where it takes me. Most of it is logisitcs process and warehouse management, which is not where I saw myself going when I started with the whole IT thing a decade or so ago. But that is where I am now. So take it, and run.

I have a very good friend in the IT industry. He is a programmer by trade, and we call him Mookity. He and I have fundamental differences when it comes to the IT world. He is a fan of Apple and Java and so forth and so on, and, well, I am not. Yet, today, I have had to put my opinion in my pocket and have listened. I have identified that I don’t like change in certain fundamental aspects of my IT world, and that Linux, or Unix, any form of ‘ix is going to be my own personal bugbear; but that isn’t going to stop me from learning something new, and something that seems, according to this website, something popular and a little future proof.

I enjoy programming. Not really as a career, as I have considered it before, but as something that allows me to express my own little creative flair along with rubbing my god complex lovingly. It began several years ago with simple Basic programming with the Commodore 64, but only really came into its own when I began work in a corporate environment and was put in charge of developing the local intranet in order to allow helpdesk functionality and general sanity in a company that was inundated by German Corporate Policy.

Eventually time wove on in its unusual stream, and I ended up in a company where I had the power to develop my own policy, and, much to my surprise, free range in what languages and systems we would be installing. What I didn’t realize, at the time, was the swath of destruction our production system was about to lay upon the component of my life called sanity. Within a few months I realized that I would be spending more time developing than anything else. Because of time and resources I was pretty much forced to use what was one hand; this meant deployment of new applications in languages that haven’t seen the light of day in a while. The cast majority of the software that I write is in VBSCRIPT, version 3.0 to be precise. That’s right, I write in ASP and IE. Hate me if you must.

Mookity decided to demo something new, and something vibrant. Groovy. No, not a sense of appeasement or status of enlightenment. The programming… language, if you can call it that, is called Groovy. And it runs on something that they call Grails. Not the holy kind either. If some out there are thinking that they recognize the lingual phonics therein, they might associate it with Ruby on Rails. Well, guess what, you’re right. Groovy on Grails is Ruby on Rails, only it’s for the Java platform, and it’s Groovy on Rails (with a G to make it Grails). I’m sure someone spent a lot of time on that one.

I purchased a book on VB.Net 2005 in order that I can upgrade what I knew, and make the transition from VBSCRIPT to VB.NET and ASP.NET. Well, the short version is that it didn’t happen. The long version is that I spent so much time swearing at VB.NET that I lost the enjoyment of it. I found that it had become overly complicated and was trying to be something that it wasn’t. It was trying to be an enterprise level programming language instead of a language that weekend warriors could use. The ultimate fall of VB.NET for me, was when it came to database functionality. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

In ASP using VBScript, I can create a function to allow for on the fly database connection with a couple of lines of code and a handful of minutes. In VB.NET – unless you’re using the professional edition or have thorough knowledge of the IDE, well, you’re screwed. It’s lines and lines of code, and still doesn’t actually get you anywhere. And that, my friends, sucks. So I fell back to VBScript on ASP pages and looked longingly at PHP and MySql. I was going to get there, I just didn’t know how, where or when.

The here comes Groovy. And for the first time I must admit that Java code has actually looked pleasant. That’s another thing for me. Code must look good. Sure, functionality and all that, but those numskulls that think that it’s better practice to place sixty five billion commands on one line using single letter variable names and arcane looking hieroglyphs for their code. You can kiss my heinie. You, obviously, haven’t had to fix someone else code six months after they’ve left the building. Who needs comments? I do. Who needs indentation? I do! And if you don’t do that, I don’t want your code. Go flog it off on some poor bastard that doesn’t know any better.

So there it is; my opinion of Java (and C/C++/PHP/Etc) has had to go into my back pocket. I have had to look at taking direction from the people I know and trust and weigh it against the people who are in the business. It’s odd how somethings turn out. But what does all this mean in a personal sphere?

It’s a recognition that personal opinion isn’t always right. Be it the result of misinformation, ignorance or some other aspect of the human failure, one must always, always be willing to alter their opinion. One can never state with utmost certainty that their perception is the one true perception. There is always going to be a situation or scenario whereby ones opinion is flawed. Despite ones own inherent need to be right, one must recognize the observations of others and either find a way in which to incorporate other perceptions into ones own perception or to find logical proof of the correctness, validation, of ones own perception upon the perception of the other. Ergo, maintenance of the self perceived purpose of being is at all times a variation of the experience and perception of the other incorporated into the perception of the self or as imposed upon the other for the edification of the self.

It is important, and it is something that I am slowly training into myself, that I am not, despite evidence to the contrary, right. Well, on obscure occasions at least. I am learning to place my opinion in my pocket in order to learn something new. Sometimes we have to listen to those around us because they may very well know more about a given situation. And this is what I seek, to be aware of this, and to listen, consider, and apply. Let us hope that those in positions of power learn the same thing.

Got an email from Paizo – it’s coming! The Pathfinder Core Rules are finally being released, and here is an utterly awesome video of Eric Mona with the book:

There’s a few things that the very few people who read this blog may notice; I’m cleaning up my act. Namely more structured posts, and more often posts. I’m thinking of essentially having a two post a week schedule. Further, I’m going to categorize the posts more accurately. Hence the titles and sub-titles.

This isn’t a very interesting post, it’s pseudo-experimental as I go through the process of re-categorizing things. I’m considering categories such as Personal Space about personal thoughts, The Office with regards to items pertaining to my work, with a sub category of programming and IT hinged therein.

Ultimately, however, there is the question of what brought this about, why now, and am I actually going to be able to stick to it this time? If you were to spend the time going through my blog, thereby proving that you have far too much time on your hands and are in desperate need of a life and / or a sexual encounter, you’ll notice that there have often been times when I have said that I am going to do X, or Y, or even Z, but haven’t gotten around to doing them.

Things change, life changes, and I think that my life is changing, and that it is for the better. Our consciousness isn’t exclusively ours, methinks, and often our ability to interact with other people, complete our functions, and be productive hinges on the attitudes and relations that we have with those around us. How’s that for a thought out of my arse?

I guess it also shows that I am moving away from having pretty posts and posting what is actually on my mind. No more avoidance of poor language and swearing, if it comes up, it comes up. If not, then it doesn’t. After all, who am I trying to please? My readers? I have readers? I doubt it. The importance of this blog is for me to express my opinion. For me to allow my aggression and frustrations to spew forth in rhetoric. It makes me feel better!

Why have I entitled this post Cleaning Up the Act? It’s because my life is in a mess – not in the sense that it is crumbling all around me, oh woe is me, but more in the sense of, “Honey! Where the hell is my insulin pen?” Yes, that kind of mess. My bookmarks in my browser is a mess. My desk is a mess. My other desk is a mess. My roleplaying notes are in a mess. Everything is in a mess. My hard-drive, good god, don’t try and find shit on there – it’s a freaking mess!

So, it is time to clean up the act. Bunny has been the greatest source of assistance and realization in this. And it started with her cleaning up my finances. I’m useless with personal finance, and I think that it is because I have this bad habit of not saying No. But that is changing too. I am learning. With cleaned up finances, I’m starting show a profit on my work. That in itself is an amazing thing for me. I’m still in debt, however, but it shouldn’t be much more than 6 months before I am above the red line.

Finances are clean, health is okay; but far from great. Exercise is a bitch. It is something I want to do – the flesh is willing, but the spirit would rather be playing Oblivion, or sleeping, or watching Heroes, or… well, you get the idea. Categorization of life and time is becoming a series of priority over desire, and desire over requirement. This means that some hard decisions have to be taken, and they’re being taken. I’m changing roleplaying groups – leaving a group I’ve been with for 15 years or so, and moving to a group I’ve known for less than a month. I have more fun there.

The same applies with work. The seam between work and private life is becoming blurred as I consider working for myself and working at things that I want to do; writing books, articles, making scripts for movies, designing web pages and figuring out how to make money from it. When I updated my About page the other day, I mentioned eating Humble Pie. There’s a lot of Pie for me to eat – but in doing so, I’m also learning about what is important to me, and where I need to go from here.

So there is this really long list of things that I need to do to clean up my act. It encompasses all spectrum’s of my life. From my work to my relationships, to my health and finances. Thankfully I have Bunny. Without her I would be so screwed.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I had an epiphany, I’ve been thinking about my life with serious intent for the last six months or so, so it’s hardly an Ah-Ha! moment. When thoughts of raising your own minions (children) start to cross your mind, and you begin seriously looking at houses in mags thinking, “Hey! I could afford that!” I guess it is a sign that the priorities in life are changing. Or maybe I am beginning to feel old and want to create a legacy. Nah, didn’t think so either.

As always, I am faced with the question: where do I begin? There’s so much to do. Bunny makes lists, that helps. I need to create a schedule so that I can get into a habit. That helps too. Ultimately, it is the realization that my life is shared. It isn’t mine alone anymore. I have someone in it and she is the most important aspect of it. Coupled with that, I have began to truly learn what marriage is, and how to shape and evolve it into something more than a ball-and-chain. This is getting soppy, but it is the truth. Bunny is my wife, my best friend, and my rock in the stormy oceans of life. Without her, I feel that I am nothing.

She has helped me start the cleaning up of my life, and now it is up to me to take that start and run with it. So I am going to. I need to find that balance of work and play. Ultimately I want play to be my work. I need to clean up all aspects of my life before I can achieve that goal. What I need to remember is that it is not a case of where do I start; I have already started, now I need to pick it up and run with it.

Only great things will come of this.

What the hell happened to the last few years? I recall quite vividly a time not so long ago when I didn’t have stress; at least nothing like I have now. I guess I had to put on the big girls panties and deal with the crap that comes with responsibility. Peter Parker, you had it wrong – the responsibility comes without the need of great power, although often the effects of showing great responsibility deliver great power thereafter. Not so long ago I was a techie. I can’t even recall the last time I looked at a half decent technical website. Tom’s Hardware! Anandtech! Wherefore art thou?
Officially my title is Information Technology Manager. I suppose that means that, technically, I work with IT equipment. The Operations Manager has been away for a couple of weeks doing his thing up country and trying very hard not to murder someone in a mercy killing and trying exceedingly hard not to have an aneurism. I still am unsure how he is managing to do so without his heady exploding. Regardless, the general morale at the work place is one of apathy. This means that when something happens, well, no-one seems to take the responsibility and deal with it. So I decided to do something about, and I stuck my foot out – and said to the company that has recently purchased the company that I was acting plant manager until my boss returns.

Bully for me.

One might think that this would result in me learning something about how the mechanics of the plant works. I guess I did learn something. In ZA, human resources is the most important division of any company, and, quite often, the most useless. For the last week and a half I have done more HR related work than anything else. From dealing with mistakes in operators time sheets to resolving issues where possible retrenchment employees are refusing to work and ensuring that production, no matter what, continues.

It’s an odd feeling. Knowing that there are staff members that are not interested in working to help the company, since they’re on a short list to be retrenched, not actually having the authority to instruct the staff to perform any actual task, learning that they have been misinformed, and somehow convincing another department to actually cosy up and explain the reality of not only their rights, but their obligations. In the end, I got what I needed, and I hope that they learnt something more of their rights.

This brings me to the uselessness of some HR departments.

Retrenchment processes are never pleasant. When someone is staring the unexpected expiration of their income, there is no nice way to say “Hey! You’re out!” It sucks. Period. As such it is the duty of the HR representative to ensure that the people are properly counselled and that the entire process is handled professionally and sympathetically. Trying to shirk those responsibilities is really a poor, poor showing. As I said to the one operator representative – “Don’t let him push you around, and demand to know when the next meeting will be, and at what time”. This is a simple freaking courtesy for fudge and pickles sake!

Anyway, that’s one tirade done; the reason that I actually wanted to write about is that I no longer see myself as an Information Technology Manager, I haven’t for a while. I see myself, instead, as a Solutions Provider. I have stepped away from managing systems and changing backup tapes. Although, I suppose I have simply changed one electronic system for a more holistic view of systems. Our production process is a system. Our logistics process is a system, everything is a system. It has become my job to examine the system, analyse and identify the variables and improve it. Sometimes, that involved writing new code. Sometimes it is changing the way in which things are done. Sometimes it means shouting at people who lack brain power.

The reason that the title has become Inundated is because I have a problem saying no to more responsibility. Maybe I need to prove something to myself, maybe I’m just a sucker for punishment. It came as a surprise the other day when I realized that I was the youngest person in the office, and I was the one telling the other people not only what they should be doing, but how they should be doing it, and being right. I’m losing that annoying lack of self confidence. It’s about bloody time. I have my boss to thank for that – he gave me some simple advice which I am now applying. It’s working.

So, I have a plant to migrate from one company to another, I’m investigating the possibility of going into business myself, trying to dial up old contacts, and trying to keep a production plant functioning. It’s massive responsibility, but it has brought a certain level of power with it. I have been faithful to myself and I have decided to take anything on. It’s working for me. Doors are opening. This is good.

Enough rambling already! I need to post something on HeroFactory and on Kae’edra.

G’nite!

Stumbled upon this while browsing the interwebs. It’s a music video by a group called No More Kings. It’s quite amusing. If you know your Karate Kid.

Came across this little gem on pcdoctors.co.za, one of the forums I lurk on. This is what happens when you ask what can only be a truly uninformed question on a technical board: Hard Drive Weight Gain

This must be some kind of joke, surely? Ars Technica, a web site that keeps track of events in the technology world, reports that a woman in the states has been convicted in a civil case for pirating 24 songs. For this, the jury awarded the music company a $1.92 million payout. That’s in the region of $80,000 per song! What the hell?! (External Link to Ars Technica Article Here)

The person in question is guilty of pirating 24 songs. The article doesn’t specify where she downloaded the songs from, but the Music Company was able to provide evidence showing her username, IP address and MAC address. A MAC address is the unique number assigned to your network card when it is manufactured by the OEM. Each MAC is unique to that card, although it is possible to spoof these addresses. From what I gathered from the article, the user in question does not dispute that the songs were downloaded onto her machine, but disputes that she downloaded them.

The jury awarded the Music Company $80,000 a song. Before I thought that was insanely ridiculous, it turns out that the minimum awazrd is $750 and the maximum is $150,000. Technically the jury were within their rights to place a middle line figure for the award. We won’t discuss the insanity of it, or the fact that the songs, no matter how amazing, are worth that considering they can be downloaded for $0.99 from just about any music website. I won’t go into the insanity of costs that this whole thing must have borne to actually get to the courts and the fact that, should the Music Company force the guilty party to pay, that they would not be able to.

I do not believe that the Music Company can show real loss, and to force a person to pay $ 1.92 million would probably end their financial security for the remainder of their lives; lest they already be millionaires of course.

There are a lot of concerns with this case. As owner of the equipment, she is held liable. Despite their being doubt and a lack of concrete eveidence of her wilful infringement, the jury still found her liable, showing that, as the article states, serious doubt has to be given. It is, after all, not a criminal proceeding? It concerns me, that the possibility therefore remains that should an unprotected computer be hijacked, or zombied, to act as a download agent before re-directing the download to another site for download by the actual cyber-criminal, that the owner of the computer would be held liable, as this precedents.

Concerning.

A friend of mine is starting a nre blog: http://herofactory.wordpress.com/

I connected up with an old friend via facebook; turns out he’s an illustrator (which isn’t surprising considering his school career), and I was amazed to recognise some of his work, especially in magazines like Men’s Health.

I see that he does a cartoon with his brother, awesome. Here is one that I really enjoyed: http://www.thewesternnostril.co.za/page/7/