Old Boar's blog (Old Boars blog)

Maybe my expectations are too high. If so, then I guess I'm going to be doomed to disappointment. The reason for the short break in transmission is that I've moved to the other end of England again. I've been spoiled by working in cities or places near the British Motorway network. But other places exist, and I'm in one of them now. Coming from where I do, and living where I do I really do understand what remoteness is all about. To make matters worse I've been having problems (silly, but practical and real ones) connecting to the phone network. I'm living (and)in the 21st Century and my recent experience of transportation and communication is probably little better than I would have had at the beginning of the 20th or end of the 19th.

(and if you haven't heard this scream of anguish for the modern
world (written and performed in 197? by King Crimson), I recommend it as one of the all time classics)

As I write, I'm waiting to be summoned to a meeting with the Customer. That sounds very ominous but actually it isn't. The most convenient way of setting up this particular meeting meant that the person I want to meet (in person, in the flesh etc) isn't sure exactly when they will be free (but we both hope that they will have time to meet me). In order to accomodate this situation I've made a trip to London-town and am doing other things while I wait for a telephone call. Then it's into the taxi and off we go.

(actually, some of the above should have been in the past tense. I was "summoned", the meeting happened and I'm now in somewhere completely different (certainly not
London!))

The last few days have been a little frustrating. I'm waiting to meet up with the (real) customer but I've been prevented from doing so by "contractual issues". Well, it looks like all that is over, tomorrow's the day! The waiting will be over very soon.

I had an unexpected bit of good fortune last night. The carpet is up in one of the rooms in "The London Office". The new carpet is due to be fitted at the weekend. While the opportunity is there I thought I would wire up an extension phone socket. First there was a bit of good news and then a puzzle. I knew there was a socket but I also knew it didn't work. I thought it had not been wired (people do that sort of thing sometimes!). When I took the faceplate off, it was wired (correctly) but still not working. I was all set to re-run the wires when I decided to fit a replacement phone outlet. Guess what? It worked! A job that was scheduled for an hour (or more) of hard work (lifting floorboards and struggling on the floor)was over in 15 minutes. Hooray! I don't often get lucky, but I did this time.

I've been working through my admin (and main tasks for the day)and the differences between the networked and physical world struck me.

• The day before yesterday I send an eMail to an long-term acquaintance of mine. I used the address in my (computer) address-book. The note was about setting up a meeting between us in early December. The note bounced. Fortunately the "bounce" message gave some advice about changing the domain. I followed this and...


• Today I got a message back from him. This made me wonder about how close I got to losing one particular valued contact. In fact I didn't get that close, as I have his, and his mother's snail-mail addresses and telephone numbers (but I had to check).


• Anyway, said acquaintance lives in England, and has a girlfriend who lives in the USA. This made me wonder about the difference between the networked and real world.


• Another of my action items was to allow my Manager's secretary to set up a (physical) meeting between the Manager and me for around the end of the month. The problem is that, I don't know where I'm going to be (plus or minus 250 miles). The solution is: we've set up the meeting anyway but I will have to manage the consequences and may have to reschedule (or do it by phone, which in this case would be a poor second choice). This set me thinking about the difficulties of managing "physical world interactions" in an organisation which, most of the time, works through the network.


• And then there are the 'phone messages, which a representative of a "Financial Services Organisation" keeps leaving for me. The problem is, we did some business a few weeks ago, and he couldn't print some papers out at the time. He sent me a package in the post (with some stuff for me to sign) and, to cut the story short, he made some mistakes which we've been correcting since (and I'm only in the correct location to pick up the snail-mail once a week). So here we have a problem with dealing using paper when I think both of us are used to using the net.

I guess my conclusions about this to far are:

• "The net" may be ubiquitous, but it isn't everything.


• Physical location is important (especially to physical beings, like me!)


• You can have problems when "network" creates expectations, but things have to work using the physical world (and I suppose vice-versa).

Hmmm. I'm not going to spend too much time worrying about this.

I spent the weekend at home in Kanturk. It's really nice to spend some proper time with the family. This particular time I managed to get a lot of things done. My wife presented me with a list (she always does) and I had finished all but two of the items by the time I went to bed on Friday (and no, there weren't only two items to start with!).

The two best parts of the weekend were:

• Going to watch "Home on the Range" at the Cosey cinema in Kanturk. I wouldn't rate HOTR as the greatest film I've ever seen, but it was fun and the real customers enjoyed it. I'm still amazed at the speed at which they consume popcorn. One little observation about HOTR, is that the animation had simple drawings. It would appear that Computer Generated images (or at least images that look like Computer Generated Images) haven't taken over yet


• Helping one of my daughters construct a model of a fairground from cereal boxes. I was cast in the role of "structural engineer", which was pretty hard as some of the things she wanted to do placed enormous demands on the materials.
  I guess I really am a "family man".

The single thing which took up most of the time was chopping some logs ready for the winter fire. It seems a shame to be burning oak, but it's all from limbs which the tree surgeons took off my trees and isn't suitable for woodwork (actually, you can tell from the weight, or lack of it, that some on the branches are pretty rotten inside, so it's a good job they were taken down).

No news at all on the "bats" front. My wife tells me that they are still in residence, but it was cool at the weekend so we couldn't hear them, and I didn't stand outside to observe them making their exits.

...and Cork won the hurling, so that was good as well.

I know, I've been away for a while. Last week I was getting established with a new customer. I wish I could say that I was confident that I'd succeeded, but I can't and I'm not.

The location is pleasant enough and the people are OK, when I get to meet them. The problem is; I'm having difficulty getting started. I've overcome all the immediate problems like: how to get here, where to park and where the coffee machine (or in my case water-cooler) is. I've still to really tackle the vexed question of security, but at least that is underway.

No, the problem I have is that I need to talk to the people who are involved with a particular system, both the business which commissioned it and uses it and the IT people who created it and maintain it. I can't seem to find the people I need. I know there are problems but I'm left sending eMails, reading documentation and feeling a bit frustrated.

This is where the "structure on chaos" comes in. I'm sure the documentation isn't really chaotic but I don't have a "start here" instruction or a table-of-contents. The result is like jumping into the middle of a novel (and not being sure whether you're reading the final version or a draft as well!). Still, enough whining, back to the grindstone.