Phil Factor's Phrenetic Phoughts

Simple-Talk columnist

Publishing to the multitude.December 21 2008

'And The Lord  spake unto Moses face-to-face as a man speaketh unto his friend'

Exodus XXXIII: 11 JKV
 

It wasn’t the cool wind on top of Mount Sinai that caused Moses to shiver, it was panic. As the smoke that engulfed the summit briefly cleared, Moses had anxiously looked at the stone tablets.  They were blank, just as he’d left them.

He'd had to make all sorts of promises to the stiff-necked multitude, who were pitched below in the wilderness, pining for the fleshpots of Egypt. They’d started getting more and more attracted by  Aaron’s Open-source Golden Calf project, and so he He'd countered by committing  to the publication of a definitive  prestige guide to the true religion, Mosaic Law  in a Nutshell.  With great rapidity, Aaron was able to outmanoeuvre him with the announcement of the imminent release of the rival GravenImagesTM Visual Quickstart.

When Moses, in some desperation, had first mooted the idea for a Dummies Guide to Monotheism, God had been so enthusiastic. "Yes!" he said, "I've always fancied myself as an author. I've had several ideas floating around for a while. I'm sure I could bash out a book in no time.” But then there was delay after delay, with several different plausible excuses. When reality kicks in, the art of instructional writing doesn’t look quite so easy.

"So" shouted Moses, clapping his hands

The Institutionalisation of the Chair ManDecember 6 2008

”Ere mate,” came the voice from behind me, “you’re sitting in my chair. I want it back.” He looked at me, red in the face and indignant.  He didn’t actually say it, but the look he was giving me spoke volumes. You are pissing on my lamppost.

I looked around. Within a few feet, there were a group of identical office chairs, all empty, congregated in a little group.

I was visiting a client’s office and talking to one of their database people about a problem. It was a complex explanation, and I’d given my slightly arthritic knee a slight rest by sitting down on the nearest empty chair to hand. The owner had returned, and started a reenactment of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 'Who'se that sitting in MY Chair?'. I had inadvertently invaded his personal space.

I looked up at the protesting office worker.  It is a worrying sign when the disease of institutionalisation has progressed to the point where the sufferer must have his own chair.

I should explain that, if you spend too much time in any one workplace or any communal space, particularly if your life is unstimulating, you are in danger of institutionalization. Amongst other symptoms, the chair you sit on becomes increasingly psychologically important. The great poet and author Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien, in his book 'The Third Policeman',

The art of lifting thingsNovember 30 2008

As part of the mystical ‘induction’ process for my latest job, I was given instruction on how to lift weights. I admit to being puzzled by this. Has today’s youth managed to survive to adulthood without grounding in this simple art? Old codgers like me are forever looking hopefully for signs of degeneracy in youth but the lifting of weights is an easy one. The maximum acceptable liftable weight has halved to 25 Kg from 1 cwt over the past thirty years, and it used to be twice that. Evidently, from the inspection of a video, the whole method of lifting and carrying weights has changed.

Why should a DBA lift weights? Tush! I once hired a  champion amateur weightlifter-turned-DBA mainly for his weightlifting skills, though he turned out to be an excellent Production DBA who struck terror amongst the developers merely by marching into the open-office area, looking like a dysfunctional Marvel superhero, and mildly asking who was responsible for the long-running query that had locked the main table of the production database and brought it to a halt. I shall never forget the frisson of panic as he menacingly cracked his knuckles. Until, the large production database servers used to be reassuringly solid steel boxes. He could pick them up with contemptuous ease. The servers in the server-room were rearranged with speed and vigour. Being a DBA used to be quite a physical job.

The guy on the video who was demonstrating the acceptable new-labour way of lif

The Devil's manual for IT Managers: Part 5. Looking busy.November 23 2008

The Devils Manual for IT Managers

Part 5: Looking Busy

This is the fifth in my series of hints for aspiring IT managers. Here, we tell you how to look busy and efficient,

Note the previous four blogs in the series

1. Part 1: How to prevent Initiatives
2. Part 2: Irregular verbs for IT managers
3. Part 3: Phrases with which to discourage ideas.
4. Part 4: Writing a 'one-pager' strategy document.

The most important thing for an IT manager is to look busy. In fact, it is a technique that dominates the management of the public sector, where whole office blocks are filled with people earnestly engaged  in nothing more than sending emails to each other full of positioning papers, strategy documents, directives and plans. Looking busy is one of the primary skills that is required in a manager, and one looks in vain for sage advice on this in the manuals on management that are sold in airports. to fill a crying need, I offer the following tips.

• Be crea

The Devil's IT Manual: Part 4 - Initiating a project with a Strategy one-pagerNovember 14 2008

The Devils Manual for IT Managers

Part 4: Initiating a project with a Strategy one-pager.

This is the fourth in my series of hints for aspiring IT managers. Here, we give you the template for the one-page strategy document required for initiating an IT project in a corporate setting. This will turn a lengthy process that hitherto has required much thought, into a simple cut n' paste exercise.

Before we give you the templates, I should make a few points clear. One pagers' are not written to inform the reader but to protect the writer, so, in order to understand the reality of what is being proposed, you have to read between the lies. 'One pagers' should be obfuscated. to this end, they have a beginning, a muddle, and an end, and should have more bullet points than the St Valentines Day massacre.

The 'One pager' should not mention anything that could possibly arouse anxiety. There are no problems, only benefits. Costs should not be mentioned, and infrastructure, maintenance, and resilience planning should not be alluded to. The paper should present a soft-focus flattering picture, much like a bra advert in a women's magazine.

A special word about Grammar. Sentences should be clipped of pronouns, prepositions and other trivia. Every paragraph should start with a bullet point.