Let me begin this post with the allowance that government agencies do not offer competitive salaries for technical staff. This has the unfortunate effect of leaving many government agencies with sub-par talent – people who couldn’t possibly be employed in the private sector for a variety of reasons.

My wife recently blogged about an incident at work that had her particularly frustrated (and how geeky do you have to be to actually call yourself “The Electronic Knight” in your email signature?) – Memo to the Head IT Dork

She works as a consultant to our county government and frequently has problems with their network or one of their computers.  This, of course, means she must be filtered through the IT support desk system.  Apparently this is a nightmare since, unless you “know someone”, it can take days for a response.

For me, the real fun begins when she’s actually visited by, or handled by, one of the county’s IT staff.  I find myself laughing and being mad every single time, for she always calls me for a “ruling”.  She tells me exactly what the staffer says that he’s done, or will do, and asks me to let her know what really happened.  About 90% of the time, I’m able to translate for her correctly.

She then confronts them with her new information and backs them up against a wall because somebody actually knows what’s going on!  GASP!  This, of course, pisses them off because they’re caught shoveling their bullshit by someone who can filter through it.

The complete incompetence of these people baffles the mind.  Throw in the pervasive sycophancy that is prevalent in government work and it’s just out of control. 

• They replace parts in her computer with incompatible components.
• They remote into her computer to “fix something” which invariably ends up wreaking more havoc than the original problem (which they then deny).
  
• They ignore requests for hardware support or requisitions for equipment.
• They don’t have a wiring diagram for her building.  It took 2 days to get a new computer hooked into their network.
• They have paper policies for computer usage, but fail to enforce them with user profiles.
  

My wife keeps urging me, “Please come work for the county and fix this mess!”.  They’re ain’t enough money in the world to get me to work in that environment. Ok, there is enough money. Enough so that I can retire after working there for 6 months – which is probably all I could handle before tearing somebody’s head off.

technorati tags:death, IT, humor

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I’ve finally had the chance to go through all of the photos I took while in Guatemala (over 450 photos) and select my favorites. I’ve fixed the coloring, lighting and contrast on all of them so they are more printworthy. Here are my four favorites so far.

I’m attempting to get Wordpress to make SEO compatible permalinks for my site instead of the generic http://www.fusioncube.net/index.php?p=nnn

Not sure if this is going to screw up my site completely, or if it will go smoothly. If I’m down for a while, this is why.

Welcome to anyone from the class of 1987. It’s kinda scary to realize that you’ve reached a point in your life where you have been out of school longer than it took you to graduate. I received an email from an old classmate who was perusing Classmates.com offering her help to coordinate our 20 year reunion… from Seattle!

Personally, I’ve never attended a reunion, but after 20 years I have to say that my curiosity is at an all-time high. I have a group of very close friends that I’ve had since junior high, and I count myself very lucky to have this gang with such a rich history. However, it would be interesting to see how some of my other friends who I haven’t remained in contact with fared over the years.

• How did the guys who I played football with since pee-wee football turn out?
• Did my geeky friends come into their own?
• What happened to all the girls I had crushes on over the years?
• Who are the real success stories from our class?

I don’t know any of these answers because I have never run into a single classmate of mine, except for my group, since about 1990. I actually now live with my wife in the North Hills School District, which as a younger man, never even entered my realm of possibilities – that my children would go to the same schools that I did. It actually seems a bit creepy, but I don’t know why.

I her email, my old classmate mentioned “However, I understand, given our class’s poor track record…” not sure what this means. Perhaps the previous reunions had very little turnout, or they were inadequately planned, or maybe someone got REALLY drunk and ended up puking on our prom queen (I don’t even remember who that was).

Anyway, I’m seriously considering attending my 20th if I hear any details about it. Not 100% sure yet, though.

** UPDATE **
A LinkedIn group has been created for North hills High School alumni. Open up my profile (link provided below) and scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see the NH group logo. You can click on that to join the group.

My LinkedIn Profile

While we were spending time with Sabrina, I just fell in love with her beaming smile. I told Michelle that I wished I could bottle it and take it home with me. Therefore, one day when the two of them were playing together, I took a long movie so I could capture her smiling and talking.

I’ve been editing all of my movies, pulling out all the good and getting rid of the bad (a.k.a. out of focus parts or heads cut off). This one is a great snippet.

This is also a great movie. We were all laughing so hard that Michelle had a hard time keeping the camera still.