IT humor

Soon-to-be-ex-Senator Norm Coleman’s next job: Network engineer?

We don’t spend a lot of time talking politics on The Network Hub, but I can’t resist this one.

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who lost his re-election bid to comedian Al Franken and who has spent the last six months litigating the election results in Minnesota’s courts, was caught on tape at some Republican shindig talking about how the GOP needs to do a better job of using new media to organize itself. He tells an interviewer in the clip below that his party needs to compete on “the Ethernet.” These poor politicians. They spend all their time glad-handing campaign donors and making appearances on cable news networks and no time actually sitting at a desk working with a computer. The entire Internet thing has completely passed them by.  Just as former Sen. Ted Stevens demonstrated his complete lack of understanding of the Internet by saying it is a series of “tubes” that you can’t drive trucks through, Norm has revealed that he probably hasn’t spent much time surfing the web either.

Or perhaps I’m rushing to judgment. As blogger Josh Marshall points out, maybe Norm, whose teeth are disturbingly white in this video, meant that the GOP needs to brush up its skills on local area networking.

IPMan fights Jitter in latest tech-themed webcomic

This week at ITExpo West 2008, SIP trunking providor Broadvox debuted their addition to the world of IT-themed webcomics: Adventures of IPMan.

According to Broadvox’s press release, “IP Man and [his sidekick] Metoo were conceived to captivate and entertain telephony experts while they battle the enemies of IP Communications: the evil Mr. Bellhead, Noise, Jitter and Echo.”

While the three episodes of the comic available on the IPMan website are all obvious pitches for Broadvox, there is a pretty amusing Space Invaders-style game (dubbed “Tele-vaders”) — and episode two of the comic strip, especially if read aloud, offers several opportunities for Michael Scott-esque “that’s what she said” quips.

But it’s not all fun and games — if your boss walks by, you can quickly navigate to the “shields” page and read about fundamentals of IP service delivery, such as QoS and network reliability.

The IT Guy: Geek courtship ritual

> Check out the classic xkcd referred to here, “Useless,” or the latest xkcd webcomic.

> View all our IT Guy cartoons on SearchNetworking.com.

The chronicles of an awful manager

A new blog popped up this month that any IT pro who has ever hated his manager can relate to. “Where is Bob? Tales of an absentee manager” appears to be a clever blend of fact and fiction. I guess it’s up to you to decide just how real it is. The blog is ostensibly written by “Anna Shore,” a Windows engineer with the Small IT Group (SITG) at at Big Private University (BPU) somewhere in New York City. Anna tells the tale of a small IT team that had gotten by without a manager for several months after its former competent leader moved on.

Then Bob arrives. Hired as the university’s new IT manager, Bob is a slovenly creep who says something inappropriate or offensive to just about everyone. Here is Anna’s first interaction with him:

“So, you are the girl at the office,” he uttered with a smirk. “We had a girl at the office at my last job. She made the best coffee! Better than Starbucks!”

“I am in charge of the Windows environment,” I replied, deciding to give him another chance. Sexual harassment could be charming, if done properly.

“I know a guy at Microsoft. VP,” he said definitively, and looked away. Our first conversation was over, and I immediately began to resent the fact that it wouldn’t be our last.

Beyond being a cretin, Bob also seems pretty clueless about technology. And not long after he takes over the department he begins playing hooky from work quite frequently, citing transparent excuses like car trouble and food poisoning. Anna’s descriptions of Bob’s incompetence and his absenteeism are deliciously well written.

Some of the details in this blog are too outrageous to be true, which leaves me thinking this is based pretty loosely on reality. Somewhere out there is a university IT department with a lousy manager. And whoever is writing this blog is definitely working there. Well, after writing that last sentence, I think there are probably scores of university IT departments with lousy managers . If I include corporate IT departments in that estimate, it probably ranges into the hundreds, maybe the thousands. Just read some of the comments readers have posted on the blog.

“Mike D.” wrote:

It makes me laugh…and, sadly, it makes me cry……I also have worked for a “Bob,” although not quite as bad as yours….thanks for sharing! Keep it up! Can’t wait to read more.

And “Bunny wrote:

Anna: I’m Bunny and I work at Huge Private University (HPU) and I’m an IT technician here. About four months ago, my uberboss hired Mike, the new manager. Your stories are disturbingly similar to what we have encountered here thus far … down to the sexual harassment and the technical as well as personal incompetence. And of course … the absence. At least, our Mike has the good graces to never give an excuse or even write us an email. We are thinking of starting out own blog about this … you have been a source of inspiration.

Today’s entry about Bob’s resentment of his predecessor (Jim), might be the best entry I’ve seen yet. It’s all about how Bob feels insecure about Jim’s legacy as a popular manager, so he makes a series of pathetic attempts to erase that legacy. All of them fail, including this particularly delicious one:

But that wasn’t enough, and Bob launched his foolish attack on our quips. The quips are a database of short quotes that Jim began to accumulate since the early days of SITG. Over time, each staff member made a lasting mark on the quips database. Our collection is eclectic, with selections from Mitch Hedberg, Rita Rudner, Jason the Intern, and many others. The quips are a happy addition to our day. They pop up on the pages of our ticket system, so whenever you start getting bummed out because your work queue is so very large, you can be cheered up with an amusing sentiment from Douglas Adams or Yakov Smirnoff.

And because about half of the quips were entered by Jim, Bob saw this as a direct threat, which had to be dealt with immediately. So one day, Bob stayed late, and manually (oh, yes indeed) deleted every single quip entered by Jim (about 1500 of them). This could’ve been done with one brief line of SQL, but Bob, of course didn’t know that. The following morning Dave noticed that the quips database had shrunk, and assumed that there was some sort of corruption or malfunction. So, he promptly restored the original database from the previous night’s backups. That night Bob stayed late again, clickety-clicking his way through 1500 records. This continued for a week - Bob’s futile deletes, Dave’s unassuming restores.

Recommendation: Rands in Repose

Last Friday, I held a conference call with a small group of network engineers to discuss some of their job challenges and interests. One topic that came up was the challenge of managing people in a technical job context. Someone recommended that we all check out a blog called Rands In Repose.

So today, I spent the better part of my afternoon reading some of the various essays on the blog, including The Nerd Handbook and a promo for his book, Managing Humans. I found out that I, along with many of my friends and co-workers, suffer from N.A.D.D.

It’s good stuff, and I’ll now share the recommendation with you as well. I just ask that you keep The Network Hub open in a separate browser tab; you’ll probably need to do that anyway if you have N.A.D.D. too.

The IT Guy: The TARDIS hub has only four ports

“The disappointing thing is there should be more ports, considering it’s so much larger on the inside.”

> View all our IT Guy cartoons on SearchNetworking.com.

Is there a gap between those who are tech savvy and those who are not?

When I finished up my taxes online some months ago I laughed a little when I saw a button that said “If you do not have an email address, click here to get your tax receipt mailed to you.” I found it ironic because someone tech savvy enough to complete their taxes online would almost have to have something as basic as an email address.

I tried imagining the type of person who would have to click on that link. “Who in this day and age does not have an email address who uses the Internet?” I thought.

Although I’m embarrassed to admit, I couldn’t help but think of someone of an older generation. A thought persists that those who have not grown up around technology are somehow out of touch with the modern world. It seems everyone has a great aunt or uncle who refuses to go online, has been taken in by a phishing scam, or at least is still stuck using dial-up.

From my own experience I know plenty of recent retirees who have not only used computers during their careers but are more tech savvy than myself. So who would have to click on that link?

Not long after I asked this question did I receive a phone call from a long lost pal. We met up and reconnected, and despite the differences between gender, geography and race, the only time I felt disconnected from him was when he told me he could count on one hand how many times he had ever even been on the Internet.

Needless to say he did not have an email account. He was not over the age of retirement. He was not Amish. He had nothing against computers or technology. This person was 24. It blew my mind how someone my age had barely even surfed the Web, let alone been without an email address. Come to think of it, I think he was one of the last few in Generation Y who had a land line and no cell phone.

So I found examples of those close to me who had overthrown the statistics and stereotypes. When it came down to it age didn’t tie directly to one’s amount of tech-savviness or lack thereof, but I wondered whether being technological made someone more connected not just with society but with other people.

How sexy is your network diagram?

What, you don’t know a precise number? Then get over to RateMyNetworkDiagram.com and find out exactly how pretty your peers think your network diagram is on a sliding 1-10 scale. It’s HotOrNot.com for the networking set.

My favorite diagram overlaid the components and locations over an outdoor picture of the building, although another which explained Godzilla’s position in the network was helpful when planning my home setup.

Speaking of which, you can browse and rank diagrams by size and purpose: Small, Large, Home, Rack, and Funny are all options, so no matter what your need you can find a little diagram inspiration … or at least a laugh or two.

Via Cisco blog.

MacGyver challenges network pros at Interop

One of the more entertaining exhibits on the Interop Las Vegas 2008 show floor this year was Mazu’s “MacGyver Challenge,” which pitted attendees against timed puzzles which could be solved with the help of the “Mazu Profiler.” Mazu tweaked some kids’ games to represent network problems. MacGyver sported a great mullet. Check it out.

Lost in Translation

So I’m not going quit my day job and run off to The Onion anytime soon, but my recent efforts at spoofing a Cisco announcement did at least fool someone, some of the time. The article stated Cisco was planning on replacing current “carbon-based” layer 8 appliances with sturdier, less fault-prone, and less human counterparts. A confused reader with an India Times e-mail address (reporter?) sent a follow up e-mail to me:

***Kindly put some Lights***
Dear morisy,

I read the artical from tech target on Cisco re-thinks Layer 8 networking with green components . But its diffcult for me to understand what actually u are going to tell us.

The only thing that i understood is that cisco is going to launch T-Series products which are based on layer 8 . And which are environment friendly. Kindly can you put some lights on the same in brief….

Regards,
–Name Removed–

The “layer 8″ I was referring to, of course, was a reference to the 7 layer OSI model, though even some experts think users should count as an eighth level, given how many problems they cause in the network. No BitTorrenting! No streaming music! If only there were a way to patch and re-boot …

Fake news aside, if you ever have questions about an article, really wish we’d cover something, or think my writing is unclear, wishy-washy, and unfit for print, e-mail us! I love hearing from readers, and the more feedback we get the more on target we can make our coverage. I can be reached at mmorisy at techtarget.com.

If fake news is more your thing, though, check out Alex Howard’s blog post recapping yesterday’s April Tomfoolery.