Over the weekend, I was helping Norman Junior III with a C programming exercise (a wordsearch puzzle). I had rather hoped purchasing him the original and definitive text ‘Kernighan and Ritchie (Second Edition)’ would enable him to become a C wizard without any further intervention from me but no. In a flash of inspiration, I had introduced some symbolic constants for each of the eight possible directions. When I asked him - ‘Can you remember how to specify a constant in C ?...
Last year, I visited a customer in Swindon. When I arrived at the office, I noticed some water dripping from the underside at the front of my car. I didn’t have time to investigate or get my hands dirty so I subconsciously hoped it was just condensation from the air conditioning unit and tried to forget all about it. After work, I managed to navigate Swindon’s world famous roundabout of roundabouts and finally locate my hotel....
My two favourite typos of all time, which are guaranteed to bring a smile to my face, are: ‘Stationary Cupboard’ ‘Principle Consultant’ Until yesterday when I received an invite to: Date: 8 June 2009 Time: 16:30-17:00 (BST) Location: G27 Subject: Warp up meeting I opened the meeting with a summary of the day’s progress and my findings: ‘I have completed my analysis of Siebel performance, the Oracle configuration, the I/O infrastructure, the hardware specifications, application usage and my conclusion is as follows:’...
Last night, I flew home to London from Hamburg, near Germany. The flight was punctual and uneventful enough apart from the fact I was sitting next to a blind man. When the seat belts sign extinguished, he got his laptop out, booted up and started typing into a completely black screen. So, I assumed he must be blind and using a braille keyboard. However, this gentleman wasn’t blind. He had been reading ‘High Life’ while we taxied onto the runway....
Thank you for your email. I am currently working in a bunker deep underground in the heart of Brussels (near Belgium). I would normally say ‘Please call me directly on my mobile’. However, this secure facility is so secure that no mobile communications are possible. I would normally pledge to replying to your email on my return. However, I am not quite sure precisely when (or even indeed, if) I ever will return....
Many years ago, a customer thanked me which was a pleasant surprise and quite unusual. Most simply ask ‘When will your report be ready ?’ This particular customer remarked on my ’logical and methodical approach’ to understanding this long standing complex problem, proposing a plan of action and, on this rare occasion, resolving it. I was interested by his choice of the words ’logical and methodical’. As an aside, I was convinced I heard a surly DBA murmur ‘slow, laboured and hopeless more like’ which hurt terribly....
I always smile whenever I receive an email that opens ‘I heard that Stephen Hawksworth Smithers-Jones in ABC division gets…’ Over the years I have heard the following myths about the delights of working in the completely fictional division ABC. Unlimited broadband paid for by the company. Mandatory business class flights on short-haul. Complimentary chauffeur service from your house to LHR/LGW. Expenses automatically paid via psychic medium with no need for receipts....
I am interested in IT, technology and gadgets. Not obsessed but interested and curious. Recently, I find colleagues making increasing use of technology in the workplace to try to help distributed teams to communicate more effectively. Or maybe they’re just geeks who are afraid to pick up a telephone. People use Web conferencing to share desktops. This is an excellent use of technology. For example, I recently tried to help a customer in Copenhagen by remotely accessing the servers over the network from my kitchen fully equipped home office....
Knowledge management presents a difficult challenge particularly when you work in a relatively small department of highly intelligent, technical consultants who are scattered around the globe and travel a lot. I just started another blog as an experiment to see whether we can try to improve the way in which we share knowledge and communicate with each other. Searching email archives is so 1990’s, don’t you think ? The blogging interface and the set of CMS features isn’t as rich as WordPress (or alternative Content Management Systems) but that’s not really the point....
Many years ago, in a parallel universe not far from here, I was involved in a CRM ‘proof of concept’. This involved producing a demonstration of a callcenter application accessing customer and product data from disparate legacy systems in a polished, unified, modern user interface. The scenario was pretty standard fare. A motor insurance company where a customer calls in to renew his motor policy and the callcenter agent walks through a standard ‘question-answer-retort’ guided dialogue....