IT Run Amok

When I started at my current company 9 years ago, we were a 20-person company. I was person #20. We ran things in a way typical of a small, freewheeling entrepreneurial company. Life was pretty good.

But now we're not a 20-person company. We're up around 120 people and growing quickly. And we're going through growing pains. This is not unusual. We don't do business the same way we did 9 years ago because we can't. In an tightly regulated industry and a world that is concerned about high-tech security, our clients expect more. And they deserve more. This makes it more crucial to have a good IT staff that can have policies in place to assure those clients that you are, indeed, a world-class global company capable to meeting their security needs.

But there's a fine line between being a responsible company and being over-controlling Type-A jerks.

We've endured a lot in the last few months. A new password policy that makes us change them every 90 days and meet certain criteria. Fine. Limits on email retention. Okay. No installing unauthorized software without permission. Great. Don't connect personal computing equipment (laptops, iPods, hard drives, etc.) to the corporate network. Okay. These things I can deal with, because I can see a real reason for them.

I even limited the grumbling when we started using a web filter to block access to certain categories of web sites. After all, who really needs to read porn or gamble at work? But last week, the tiniest thing happened; something you wouldn't think would set me off, but it did.

They changed my web browser home page - and I can't change it back.

My home page used to be my department's portal on our Intranet. This was useful to me. That portal contains files, tools, and resources I need to do my job on a daily basis.

The new home page is the main page of the Intranet. Not nearly so useful. It's cluttered. It's filled with information I don't need. I think it's lovely that somebody won the close-to-the-pin contest at the company golf outing, but I simply don't care. I don't even want to have to bypass this crap on my way to the important stuff. I subscribe to the page so that I get an email alert when a new announcement is posted. This email subject let's me decide if I want to go read the whole story and that is good for me.

At first, I thought maybe IE was malfunctioning (because that's not exactly an unheard of phenomena you know). After four days of struggling to reset the home page, I finally emailed the Intranet administrator. "Oh, that's a new policy from eServices. You can't change the page. But you're only one click away from your old page."

"Only one click"? WTF?

I pressed for a reason for this seemingly unnecessary policy change. I also said it would have been nice to hear about it before it went live. "I don't need to announce policies," our CIO told me. Oh really? You don't think changing my work environment, even in a small way, warrants an announcement? I'm not asking that you put it up for a vote, I'm asking that you have the common courtesy (there's that word again) to frickin' tell me you're an anal-retentive control freak who needs to control my web browser.

But even more inane is the reason for the change. At first, they tried to tell me this was so everybody could have better access to information and we'd all be standard. But what it came down to was that they didn't think people were reading all the emails they've been sending out on various things. So now they are posting everything to the main page of the Intranet and forcing people there when they open IE to "make" us read their crap.

I'll give you all a moment to stop laughing.

But it's no joke, it's the truth. "We send out emails and only 8 people read them, and then people complain they don't know what's going on." Tough shit.

1. If somebody decides not to read an email, and misses important info, that's their problem. They are an adult and they should deal with the consequences of their decisions.
2. If IT thinks every piece of communication they put out is of "critical importance," they have an over-inflated sense of importance.

Just so you don't think I'm crazy, the last two emails I received from the CIO were about a change to the company cell phone policy and a notice about storing copyrighted materials (like movies and music) on corporate computers - or attaching hard drives containing such materials to corporate computers. I read neither email, and for two very good reasons. One, I don't have a company cell phone so I really couldn't care less about the changing cell phone policy. Two, I don't store any personal files on my work computer, nor do I listen to my iPod through the computer.

When I politely pointed out that merely changing someone's browser home page was not going to guarantee reading the information, the CIO said, "For your information, hits on that home page have doubled since we implemented this."

No shit, Sherlock. In a company of 120 people, all of whom open a web browser at least once a day, you are bound to see a dramatic increase on hits! Duh! For cripe's sake - our time sheet application is web-based and 3/4 of the company has to use it! Just because somebody hit the page doesn't mean they spent any time reading what was there! I'm just a project manager and I know this.

Another member of the IT department said, "Well, we could make the announcement the first page you see and you have to click OK to get to the rest of the Intranet." Well first, that doesn't guarantee I'll read anything either. It just means I'll click OK to get you off my ass. It does, however, guarantee that I will be in the COO or the CEO's office to complain vociferously.

And to add insult to injury, when accused of "tampering" with the system I replied I had done no such thing. I had sent an email to the CIO voicing my dislike of the policy. The next day, my home page reverted to the department portal page. I assumed the CIO had modified something. "Not me," he said. Okay, whatever. Point is, there's the home page, and the box to change it in IE is completely inactive. I point this out.

"Well, probably some smart-ass developer hacking the system instead of doing his job," snipes the CIO.

Excuse me???? Now you're going to insult the members of my team? I'm sorry, but no way buddy. I hope and believe I enjoy a good working relationship with every developer we employ. I do not think so much of myself that I believe these folks would hack our IT infrastructure just for my personal gratification.

The thing that torques me off completely is this: I am our IT department's customer. Part of their job is to ensure that I have the hardware and software necessary to do my job. This policy does not help me - it gets in my way by taking the information I need most and moving it one layer away from me. And they just don't friggin' get it.

They also apparently think I'm stupid, because I can think of at least three ways around this. The simplest are just typing the direct URL in the Address bar of the Windows task bar or creating a short-cut on my desktop. Yeah, I can't use the little Quick Start menu button any more, but hey, I'll deal with it.

I won't win this battle. I don't expect to do so. But I will not sit by quietly and let some Type-A control freak take over the company that I helped create. And to the extent that I can exercise a little corporate "civil disobedience," I will. Because I'm a non-conformist, at least to policies I consider about as useful as a frontal lobotomy.

So, IT department, stick that in your floppy drive and smoke it.

Remember courtesy?

Pittsburgh has the second-most courteous drivers in the US. True story. Heard it on the morning radio recently - some study by a national driving organization (not AAA).

I don't know how they judged "courtesy," but from what I can see on my evening commute I can only say this: If Pittsburgh has the second-most courteous drivers, I shudder to think of what cities lower in rank are dealing with.

Although I travel a four-land highway for the better part of my drive home, it can take a long time. Part of the reason are two on-ramps very close together and a stop-light at the nearest bridge. If people are feeling sensible, you get a my turn-your turn approach to cars coming down the on-ramp. But every once in a while, some jag-off (that's Pittsburgh-ese for jack-ass), decides to squeeze into oncoming traffic. Of course, this brings the well-oiled machine to a halt. Think of those Visa check card commercials where everything is going so smoothly, then some dork tries to pay with cash. Exactly.

Then there's the two-lane road that runs parallel to the highway up to the bridge. Sometimes I take this route, as I did yesterday. But as I'm sitting waiting for my light, there are cars coming from behind me, driving a few feet to a hundred yards into oncoming traffic, and making an illegal right on red at the light. Big sign "No turn on red." I even saw one joker make an illegal right on red from Washington's Landing, then make an illegal left on red onto the bridge. In one car (a big, honking SUV), a perky young blonde leaned out the passenger window, yelled "Sucker!" and laughed as they make their illegal turn.

And here I thought that double-yellow line had meaning! Silly me.

All of this time I spend in the daily driving survival of the fittest led me to a more profound thought. Whatever happened to common courtesy? Like its cousin, common sense, it doesn't seem to be so common.

Big things, little things - the lack of courtesy is astounding. I went to college at a small Franciscan university. One of the things you learned very quickly as a freshman was to hold the door for the person behind you, even if that person was a few feet away - and especially if that person was handicapped, on crutches, or carrying a heavy load. Failure to do so would be met with a very loud, "GEE THANKS FOR HOLDING THE DOOR!" Very embarrassing.

This small behavior has carried over to my adult life. It's such a small thing - hold the damn door. Thus I am appalled when out at the mall I see my fellow shoppers not only fail to hold the door for the woman with the double-stroller, they let the door close on her! My five-year old runs to the door and manfully struggles to pull it open for her while the big hulking guy pushes right around. Nice. Who'd have thought you could learn courtesy from a kid who can't tie his own shoes?

When you get right down to it, courtesy is about respect. No courtesy, no respect. No respect and you can justify almost anything: failure to hold a door, road rage, cussing out someone who doesn't give you what you want, bad table manners, talking during movies, beating up a black guy in a white neighborhood, shooting someone, going into a pizzeria and blowing yourself up. Big things are made of little things.

Just stop and think about it. Imagine a world where everybody respects everybody else. Racial tensions evaporate. Terrorism plummets. Anti-gay sentiments disappear. If you can respect the outer differences, you can get past them to the internal commonalities. Fail to respect them, and well, the world's a mess.

Big things are made of little things. So as you go about your daily life, stop and think about it. How can I be more courteous today? How can I, in whatever way possible, show I respect my fellow humans.

In other words, hold the door.

God I hate waste!

This thought occurred to me at 11:00 last night as The Hubby and I were finishing watching "Psych" on USA Network (great show, by the way). The next step for the basement remodel is to scrape and paint the walls. So the hubby is talking about how he's got to put plastic up so the scrapings don't fall into the new interior french drain and clog it.

"Okay, put up the plastic, scrape, move the plastic, scrape, etc. Tedious, but not complicated," I say.

He looks at me in wonderment. Seems he was planning to ring the entire perimeter of the basement with plastic and then scrape. "But you're way just seems less..."

"Wasteful?" I supply. Uh, yeah.

To me, waste is an affront to God and Nature. Think about it. What other animal on Earth is as wasteful as humans? No other animal kills more that it can eat, or drives ginormous vehicles, or builds ginormous houses that cost hundreds to heat, or throws away food the way humans do. It's disgusting.

Throwing away food is actually emotionally painful. While I've never actually used the "There are starving kids in {fill in a third-world region}" on my kids, their habit of taking two bites and announcing "I'm full" drives me crazy. This disdain of waste is what keeps me eating the spicy fries that came with my Smoked Turkey wrap long after I'm still hungry. (Okay, you've got me. That's not the only reason. I'm a sucker for good french fries and these were really good.) It just seems so wrong.

Pulled up to the pump at my local gas station yesterday. The previous customer had racked up $50 in gas. Fifty bucks! And I thought my $25-$30 every 6-7 days was a lot. What kind of vehicle sucks $50 in gas? And just what is the practical purpose of a Hummer or a gargantuan SUV? Contractors with large F350 pickups I get. It's a business expense; how else do you haul around equipment and materials? But soccer moms driving H3s? Give me a break. Now those who know me might say this is the pot calling the kettle black. And in a way it is. We drive a Dodge Grand Caravan and a PT Cruiser, neither of which can be described as "excessively fuel efficient." But they get better mileage than a Hummer. And the van is up for replacement within the year. One of our criteria is that the new vehicle must get at least 30 mpg. So cut me a little slack; we're working on it.

Look at a new housing development. How much gas does it cost to heat those monsters? And come night time, every light bulb is on. My kids, young as they are, are already familiar with the "I'm not a stock holder in Duquesne Light - turn off the lights when you leave the room!"

And money. Oh God, don't get me started. One of the most annoying things about this whole car debacle (oh, and somehow my reservation got botched, so I have no idea when I'll ge the rental - that's topic for another post) is that my kids will now miss swimming lessons today. I paid $80 for the two of them to take lessons this summer. They were going to miss at least two, but that's because we are going on vacation, and I was cool with that. But now they're going to miss a third! I think there are only 8-9 lessons total! Argh!

(The Hubby, by the way, does not feel this way about money - at least spending or wasting it. He will have nightmares about writing the $8,000 check for the basement, which I will not, but he'll think nothing of spending $4 per day for a pastry and a coffee on his way to work, or $15 for a lunch out. Meanwhile, I'm eating homemade grilled chicken salads that average $3/each. Then he asks, "Where did all the money go?" Grrr.)

But waste goes beyond physical things like money, natural resources, or food. Think of the astronomical amount of time and effort we waste on a daily basis. Meetings that go on for-freaking-ever and nothing gets done! I am a Doer - I need to be accomplishing things. Ask me how many meetings I spend doing nothing but doodling hearts, moons, stars, and flowers on a piece of paper. (Side note: I do not draw these things because I am cutesy by nature. I just can't draw anything else. My best friend is a terrific artist. I can't draw a stick figure.) A co-worker of mine was stuck in a 3+ hour one of these time wasters yesterday. I'd rather slit my wrist with a butter knife.

Does this sound familiar? You spend 3 hours and a lot of effort tracking down information or a decision for someone. And as you report your findings/progress/whatever, the person on whose behalf you are expending all this effort says, "Oh, I changed my mind. I don't need it anymore," or "So-and-so got that for me 2 hours ago." Gee, thanks for telling me. Because you know I have nothing better to do than spin my wheels for you.

I guess at my current age this should not surprise me. After all, it's human nature and that hasn't changed in millions of years. But it still seems so fruitless. Think of what we could accomplish if we'd just stop and think about the impact of our choices and activities. We could have solved world hunger, global warming, AIDS, and cancer by now.

God I hate waste.

Introduction to Blogging

So here I am. I've hit the 21st century. Blogging. The new journal. Except now the entire world can read my useless thoughts.

I suppose I should state a few things up front. I'm married (let's call him, The Hubby) and have two kids: one girl (The Girl) and one boy (The Boy). Oh, and I'm not really a housewife; I work as a project manager for a software development firm. But something just appealed to me about having "Disgruntled Housewife" as my byline. Because while I'm not really a housewife, I am often disgruntled.

That's why I'm here, really. I need an outlet. I figure a blog is cheaper than therapy. And my real-life friends are probably sick of hearing me bitch. And The Hubby is always saying I need to write more. Did I mention I'm a frustrated writer? "Frustrated" because it's really hard to write when you have kids pulling on your elbow saying "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" from the minute you get home to the minute you go to bed. And oh yeah, The Hubby gets annoyed when I spend too much time on the computer. Go figure.

So as I said, here I am. My most recent frustration is home renovation. We have an old house, built about 1920. We've done a lot to it - built bookshelves, put in a wood stove, painted, new bathroom, it's all good. The newest project is a basement remodel. This one will either turn out brilliantly or turn me into an incoherent pile of goo.

First, I endured a week of no hot water. Yes folks, you read that right. A week - 5 days - of no hot water. Not only did this mean no hot showers, it meant no laundry, no dishwasher, we boiled water on the stove to wash dishes and bathe the kids. I cold-showered the first day. That sucked. Not even The Hubby, Airborne though he is, could stand that. The rest of the week I showered at my office (fortunately, I work for a nice company that provides fairly luxurious locker room facilities). The upside was that I had hot water. The downside was the water pressure was pathetic and I spent the first 30 minutes of my work day in the locker room (fortunely, I have an understanding boss). But this is okay.

So they finally finish the concrete floor, and The Hubby and a buddy go to reinstall the hot water heater. Great. They turn off the water. Then they need parts. Swell. This at least gets me dinner out. Then the buddy calls and says, "I've taken my shower, lets do this tomorrow." Um, okay. The Hubby tries to turn the water back on.

Turns out 80-year old plumbing does not like being shaken. At all. Not a bit. Things leak. Wonderful. So now I have zero water. This is not an improvement.

Saturday morning I take the kids to swimming (I have not showered). Cell rings - hot water is back on. Yay! Take kids to Target. Cell rings - hot water tank is leaking, need to turn water off. Boo. Take kids to McDonald's. Cell rings - hot water back on. Yay! I finally get a hot shower Saturday night, six days after the water went off. I am a happy camper.

Fast-forward a week. Friday night washer and dryer were supposed to go back in. But the buddy disappears. So now it's Saturday. Washer and dryer are in the basement. They might get installed tonight. Who knows.

And falling into the category of "Why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it"? my car failed to pass inspection today. The Hubby was supposed to take it last Saturday. I told him, let me take you to drop off the car, I'll run the kids, and we'll pick it up later in the day. But he refused; showed up at the mechanic's at 11:30, and he closes at noon. So now I find out I won't have use of the car tomorrow (when I have three times as much running as last Saturday) and The Hubby will be working all weekend. Lovely.

I call Enterprise. They open at 9:00, but won't be able to pick me up until 10:00. Kids have swimming at 9:30. Wonderful. And all The Hubby can do is say, "I don't know why you're complaining to me. I'm stressed too." Yeah, but he's taking off for work at 6:30 tomorrow.

I hear lots of banging downstairs. Keep your fingers crossed - because my kids are out of underwear.