Celebrate!

Ok, well it is almost time to celebrate. End of the semester is just two days away. It will be nice to have a couple of weeks off before the summer semester starts. Actually got a quick beach getaway planned in there. But most importantly, time to reflect a little bit about this semester. It was my first semester of graduate school, and it seemed to just fly by. But overall, I think it went very well. I was able to meet some great people as part of the group projects, and I certainly learned a new thing or two. The discussions were engaging and got to see a couple of different points of view from the other students.

Going into the class, I knew where my expertise was. I had a very strong networking background with some PC troubleshooting type work. I fancy myself as a bit of a scripter, but definitely not a full fledged programmer. It was good to read about the different standards and the different ways of approaching a programming project.

The current events portion of the class was also fun. Many of the articles I found, or other students had found, made its way into my normal everyday conversations. After reading the article about about a middle schooler running the school network, I think I'm glad that I got out of that field and into another part of Information Technology.

But the semester is over, so good luck to the other students finishing their degrees. And good luck to Les with his next incoming class.

The Fun of Social Networking

So all of these social networking sites are tons of fun: Myspace, Facebook, Plaxo, Ning and on and on. Yup, they're fun. That's about it. They're not useful, in a business sense. At least not yet. Some of these are starting to pop up as a useful business tool, but I don't think it has happened yet. The first one that creates something that can be used for businesses, will really be onto something. It would almost be a phonebook of potential customers and partners. For instance, you could see that a current business associate has a relationship with someone who has a skill that your company requires.

These sites aren't at this point yet, but I'm thinking they will be someday. Where that sort of thing can be as mainstream as using the phonebook or even using google, as a more modern-day reference.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is kind of the dirty word in Information Technology (IT). At my last job, I have been around when there was some outsourcing talk. The whole situation was kind of funny, actually. Everyone was hollering and screaming that they didn't want it, because they thought they were going to lose their job. The best part was, they were just hiring the contractors to do the "dirty" work: installing new PC's and removing the old ones. This was the same work that no one else wanted to do. The contractors did come in for a little bit, and no one else lost their jobs.

Outsourcing isn't as bad as people think. A lot of times outsourcing winds up opening new jobs and opportunities. And a lot of times it gets rid of jobs that people don't want to do.

I have also been on the flip side, though. When I have to call technical support from a company that has outsourced their work. There can definitely be some communication "problems" that can make it difficult. I guess you win some, you lose some.

Ooops! This part of the class has kind of fallen by the wayside for me. Been doing all of the other assignments, and haven't posted here. I think this is the perfect week to get back into the habit. I kind of laugh when MIS/ITEC classes start talking about SDLC and programming approaches. From my experiences, there is a real division in the workforce about how this is implemented. There are the project manager/supervisor types that "invade" MIS, and want everything to be super structured and make everything look pretty. Then there are the hardcore programmers who just want to be left alone so they can code for 16 hours a day.

While I definitely fall into the latter group, I try to keep everyone happy. The organization is necessary, but I have seen times where project managers drag down things. The real problem is the project managers don't know enough about the technical aspect, and the technical people don't know enough about the "project management" side. So you kind of get stonewalled in a meeting trying to explain the gritty details to each other. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

There have been many times where I've seen the project manager report and just said "Huh?" It is really frustrating from my standpoint when the project manager offers little in the way of organization; that coupled with we have to spend every meeting minute trying to explain what the "tech" people are talking about.

One, two, three...Collaborate!

The past several years I have used several on-line tools to collaborate with other individuals, for both school and work. Some have seemed more valuable then others. For instance, I am a big fan of Wikipedia.org. The website is an extremely interesting read. Lots of good information and opinions out there. Often, I can use it as a starting point to get some general information and then start on research.

During the interview process for my present job I was asked if I had ever used a wiki. At the time, I wasn't sure how a wiki would play out in the work place. As I outlined in my posting, I have seen how it is used and it has some mixed results. One of the biggest shortcomings of a wiki is a lack of uniform organization, and that is prevalent in this environment.

In addition, I'm a huge fan of the WebEx style "meeting" environments. At a previous job, I was a network administrator so there was a lot of SSH sessions with multiple devices. All of the configurations were done through a command line interface. WebEx was huge when we had problems. We could set up a meeting and they could see the exact output from our devices real time. They could relay any commands they wanted us to try. Previously, this would have to be done in an e-mail communication, which is much more time consuming.

Here ERP, ERP, ERP

ERP's are the one system I am kind of down about. Every book I've read for school, all hypes them up like they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They show how they can come up with sales figures, do projections, and this and that. All that sounds just dandy!

However, there is always a difference between book implementations and reality. I have seen this with many different systems, like networks for example. Books will talk about how things are done this way and that way, but when it comes to the real world...it is different. The books almost act like sales people. They tout different items up, but when it comes to implementation time it is hard to get a phone call returned.

So the thing that gets me about ERP's is I have never got to see them actually in action. I'm curious how these work for some of the big organizations like IBM and so on. Going even further, how could it actually help a small business. Maybe one of these years I'll make my way up to a management position, and be afforded the opportunity to see them in action.

Identity Theft

Identity theft is kind of a funny thing; a few years ago no one cared about it and now it is all the rage. My dad had a small brush it a year or two ago; he was one of the lucky ones though. He got a call out of the middle of nowhere from his bank, saying his credit card was "compromised". The bank said they'd cancel that account (credit card number), and they would issue him a new card immediately. To this day, he doesn't know how/where the card was compromised. He is assuming that it was from some place on-line, but he doesn't know.

I had an odd brush with identity theft also. About 4-5 years ago I got a call one night. THe person on the other end says something about a credit card I applied for. Right away she is trying to get my SSN to "verify" it. All I did was ask a second question of "What credit card company are you from?" and the girl got all mad and hung up on me. It just showed up with a random 800 number on the caller ID. I still have no idea if it was a legitimate call from a credit card company, with the girl on the other end just having a bad day. Or it may have been someone phishing.

But identity theft has become big industry. THose who steal the identities are making big money. On the other side, companies are making big money "protecting" you. There are companies like LifeLock who are charging customers a monthly fee (I believe 10-20 dollars) to provide services that people can do for themselves. It mostly revolves around setting up flags on your accounts with the credit companies. This can all be done for free, they just go through the process of organizing it for you. My wife is signed up with a service that sends her credit report every couple months. It is a big industry.