Last Night’s Dream and Today’s Reality

Last night, I had a wonderful dream. I saved a child from a building that was about to collapse. Some of the details are a bit fuzzy, it was a dream after all, but I remember standing outside the building with a feeling of happiness and peace. Well, that is until my cat started scratching at the door to be let out…half an hour before I usually get up. Ah, the joys of cat ownership.

Well, the cat did not really ruin my morning, and neither did the chaos of getting ready, despite the best efforts of my wife, my son, and the new puppy. I was a little late for work, but that is fairly normal.

I work for a state agency, in the IT department, and ever morning from 8-10 I man the helpdesk. My first call of the morning?

“I can’t get my password changed.”

That’s an easy one, and a good way to start the day. Now, password changes are a common problem at our agency. There are only about a dozen places that employees have to log on to. Fortunately, most don’t have to log on to all of them. Unfortunately, almost no one can keep track of the half-dozen or so that they do have to log on to. We often get calls saying they cannot log on to their PC, when in fact, they have been logged on to their PC for hours, and now cannot get logged into the subsystem where they actually do their work.

Well, rather than ask a dozen questions trying to find out what they are trying to log in to, I just asked for the number that we use to connect remotely. Connecting in remotely allows us to do things on the user’s PC, rather than relying on the user to do what we tell them to. I used to work at Dell, and that was a major problem. Once I get connected, I quickly see that it is a problem with the mainframe password that is the problem, again, an easy one to start the day. I walk the user through changing their password and everything goes smoothly, until….

“Why does it work when you do, but not when I do it?”

I bite my tongue, hard, and answer politely, “I don’t know, technician’s luck.” Then I hang up, before my sarcastic nature gets me in trouble.

Boy, I just want to answer a question like that honestly sometime.

“It works when I do it, because I do it the right way.”

I can just imagine the conversation that follows that.

“Why does it work when you do, but not when I do it?”

“It works when I do it, because I do it the right way.”

“But I did it the same way you did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you didn’t, because if you had done it the way I did it, the right way, then it would have worked.”

Oh well, I can always dream, and maybe write about it in my blog.

Thinking Outside the Box

When I started Dell twelve years ago they kept hammering one idea into our heads.

Think outside the box.

At the time Dell management was convinced that thinking beyond the accepted limits would make us better support techs. It was a noble thought which they abandoned a few years later as they tried, with limited success...very limited success...to build scripted tools that would allow less-than-fluent-in-English foreigners to answer US tech support calls.

But, my purpose today is not to dwell on Dell's dismal failures in the field of customer support. My purpose is to bring up the dismal failure of the computer industry to think beyond the box.

What box?

This one!



I am just using Dell as an example, everyone who makes computer cases is guilty of the same crime. The most significant appearance change in computers is that the cases that house them have gone from boring beige to boring black and finally to a few colors.

But it is still just a box.

We have entered the 21st Century and yet most computers are less visually exciting than a model T. Okay, there a few that have taken baby steps away from the box.

Acer



Alienware



And even Dell (kudos where kudos are due).



The problem is that these are still just boxes, admittedly fancy boxes, but just boxes. There is no reason why the computer has to be a box. The parts don't have to be arranged in any specific shape. Yes, the motherboard is a certain size, and the CD or DVD drive cannot change size. You have to have a power supply and fans are going to be important, but it does not need to be a square edged box.

I have been looking for a new computer case lately, and all I find is boxes. The computer industry has less creativity than the average bricklayer. They seem to think that slapping a few geegaws on the outside creates style. There are very few variations on the layout of an automobile, but we are bombarded with an abundance of styles of cars, trucks and vans. I wish that as much thought were put into the computer case.

At this time, there is only one computer case that I consider to be truly stylish...



It may still be a box, but at least this is a Stutz Bearcat to the rest of the Model Ts on the market. I hope that the future will see someone put some thought into computer cases and see that it takes more than add-ons and paint to make a beautiful computer case.

And if you don't know what a Stutz Bearcat is.....