Apr 12, 2006 | blog
Our Disaster Recovery test starts mid-morning tomorrow and runs for 48 hours, and I’m going to try to blog as much of it as I can. What I plan to record here are my experiences, observations, and opinions.
In addition to me blogging DR, we created a DR Blog for the team. Suffice it to say, we will be running the “DR Blog” as proof-of-concept, and will review the usefulness at a later date. Future endeavors will be determined by the positive/negative feedback that this last-minute “test” will provide. As our DR Team blog is unique to this test and is proprietary to my employer, I’ll not post the URL here, but I will blog here about that blogging exercise and my opinions of it.
To me this is a huge step for our IT team, its the first time we have used blogging for a specific purpose, and the neat thing about it is that it was able to be put into play with a suggestion and 30 minutes of effort on my part to set it up on one of my own blogging accounts out on the ‘net.
That really underlines the impact of a blog. You can set one up in minutes, and get an entire team organized and ready to provide feedback, take notes, record problems & resolution, communicate status, share jokes, ask questions… the list of course is infinite, only confined by ones creativity.
More to come…
Apr 12, 2006 | blog
Today on through the end of the week will be a busy time – may not have time to post. Or, I may have a lot of posts over the next few days.
The company I work for will be performaing a “DR” or Disaster Recovery test this week, and I’ll be participating. We always learn a lot about what a small group of dedicated people can do when we run a test like this, and we manage to have fun doing it.
So I’m going to try to “Blog DR” this time, just for fun.
Mar 22, 2006 | blog
If not at home, then most definitely at work. So I’ve got a lot going on at work, getting a VPN upgrade ready to move into pilot phase, participating on a revision to our project methodology, wrapping up 14 updates to our standard Windows Image, disaster recovery planning, documentatin, trying not to start on our BlackBerry project, and various other pieces of this and that. No wonder I can’t seem to find the time to keep up on the news, read my favorite blogs, and of course, blog on my own site. Never enough time, guess we’ll have to try and make some :).
Mar 14, 2006 | blog
RIM’s BlackBerry supposedly offers a BlackBerry Connect for Windows Mobile software component. What I need to figure out is where do you find this elusive software? Do you get the software along with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, a separate offering, free download, WalMart, at the bottom of my favorite cereal box – where?
The dissapointing thing for me on the BlackBerry front is that there are so few real sources of information and solutions on the Internet. For Windows Mobile, there are thousands. This is the difference between a closed system like BlackBerry, and an open environment like Windows Mobile.
I’m not going to debate the supiority of the BlackBerry push email system – that is obvious, but what I have trouble with is the lack of acceptance of customer choice. The company I work for is planning on rolling out BlackBerry services, for a number of reasons. But what I see is a true lack of choice for our users. What do you tell a senior exec when they come back with a spiffy new Windows Mobile device and you tell them that they cannot use it with our new push email system? With the rates charged for the support contracts, you would think they want to cover all the needs a corporate customer may need.
Come guys where is the customer choice?
Mar 5, 2006 | blog
So some people may ask what I do… In short I’m something of a misfit in corporate IT departments in that I have never settled on one specialty in IT over another. I’ve worked on most technology platforms that have surfaced in the past 25 years to one degree or another, liking most & hating some few. Some have been in-depth, some I’ve barely scratched the surface on.
My current corporate title is “Sr. Client Technologies Analyst”, but thats a cover up for saying I look at everything and figure out how to integrate whats best for the company at a given time. Of course that time may be in the future and not now. I keep thinking it means “don’t know what I want to be when I grow up” as well.
Its interesting how after spending 15 short years in IT that I’ve not found a specific specialty niche, instead, the niche is still what it has always been for me – Information Technology as a whole. I won’t and can’t pretend to be a specialist in any one aspect from technical to managment, from financial to administrative, but that is what I am eventually responsible to understand. When a technology comes along, how will it fit into the company/corporate culture of the moment or future – its really a crystal ball experience.
Whatever comes along next, it’ll still inspire, thrill, frustrate, and reinforce my notion that IT crosses all business boundaries, social boundaries, both good and bad. In short – I’m one of those old-fashioned, original Geeks that is all about technology.
