Allotments

My wife and I have a new hobby, we have taken over an allotment. Now when you think of allotments do you think of neat rows of veg maybe with some flowers adding a little colour? I wish ours was like that! Maybe one day it will be, but now its a waste land of brambles grass and very compressed soil. Last weekend we removed a seven year old Birch tree from the middle of the allotment now I love trees and will be planting Apple and Pear trees but I ask you a Birch tree. I have a feeling that our plot has not been worked on for at least seven years. But its taking shape it may take a couple of years to get it into shape but who needs to hurry

Weekend in Cardiff Millennium Magic

As well as playing badminton, all my life I have been a Rugby League fan and a fan of Wigan in particular. So this weekend I and few thousand others will be taking the trip down to Wales to see 6 games in one weekend. We play St Helens our local rivals. Its odd how things go in sport, at one time we could not lose to Saints, but now I think its 5 wins on the trot for them. But with a bit of luck its our turn to win.

Badminton or the lack of it

Well folks, I back not playing. I was still having problems with my knee, so off to the physiotherapists. It looks like I have patellar tendinosis. So no badminton for me for a while, and minimise the number of stairs I walk up and down in a day. So I have gone from 40 or more flights a day (I work in a multi story office block and I would normally use the stairs rather then the lift) I hate to think what this is doing to may my general fitness) Lots of exercises from the physio,

Badminton Part 3

On Thursday I will be going to see a physiotherapist about the my knee. Its been on the cards for a while. It will be good to see what their view is

Playing Badminton Part 2

Its the day after playing Badminton for the first time in 3 months. And How do I feel? I was right in that I am limping round work, the knee is giving me some stick. But I enjoyed playing even though I only played two games. The first game was an odd one I thought I was going on for a mixed, but the ladies who play for our first team wanted to play as a pair. So Mike who I have never seen before, never mind played as a pair were on a hiding to nothing. We should win but given I was careful about stressing my knee and Mike and I did not know who was going to play what shot. Well the women were kind to me making Mike do the running and allowing me the time to get to the shot we won, but I think they could have made it much harder by making me work. Then I went for a mens that was hard work we lost 15 -12 and the pair we were playing do play for the the C team and some times for the B it went well

Playing Badminton

Well this week I will be playing Badminton again for the first time in about 3 months. I picked up a knee injury and thinking about the time I realised it was the first time in over 40 years I have gone 3 months without playing some form of competitive sport. Like most people who play sports, time away from the game is a pain and for me it has been very odd. I have missed the challenge, the wins and the losses but most of all I have missed the rush of playing the game. So come Friday I will be limping into work no doubt, taking stick from the team but in my heart I will know it is worth it.

The role of IS managers in the brave new world

Well where do you start? As IS professionals we grow up in a rigid system with a specific subset of people having rights to machines, file stores etc while the rest have little or no rights. The PC revolution with people having “their own” PC on the desk started to weaken this stranglehold, but it didn’t take long for the system people working for Microsoft and its competitors like Novell to work out how to bring these unruly, unco-operative souls back under the domain of the IT department. We now have Group Policies running under active directory or E-Directory and we control the experience the user has. Yes some IT shops are more liberal then others; they let their users set their own screen saver and desktop, but others the corporate look and feel is king. But we are still very much in control and we feel good.

I think I will upset a number of you now, I think we are wrong. The user, the customer should be able to use the PC as they see fit. Does it worry me that Joe down the hall has Itunes installed and is listening to music while he works, or that Jackie writes excel macros that make my hair curl. Nope if it makes them happy let them do it. They are working harder, the PC becomes their tool to do their work in the way that is best for them. Sure we need to protect the PCs against virus and spyware attacks but we would need to do that anyway. Virus and spyware writers don’t care about out our group policies they attack weakness in the O/S

Ok allowing the users to do things does mean we have to monitor the software installed to make sure we are not breaking the law, but if we find out that half of our users are using Winzip evaluation edition we know we are not meeting the needs of our customers and we need to go out and buy Winzip or teach our users about the joys of uncompressing in XP. Whatever we do we have found a need. Think about it, how often have you seen a new building put up with formal pathways laid out, and how long before informal pathways develop taking the quickest or most needed route?

And now web2 with blogs, podcasts etc where the user is king how do we face up to this new challenge. For most of us we like to control, just look the systems we design and administer for examples of how we like things to be. Web2 is going to move us out of our comfort zone. Sure we can ensure they can’t do it at work, but as more of the population has access to PCs at home and broadband internet access we are in danger of having two cultures a vibrant dynamic one outside work and a conservative safety first one inside. Is this the best approach? In these competitive days we need to get the most out of our staff, harness their skills creativity and if they have a little fun on the way all the better.