The Pond

I’ve often blogged about the unfortunate loudness that is my everyday working environment. Or really, I should say the crazyness that is my everyday working environment.

Today, I come into the office and it’s generally quiet, all of the aforementioned Sales Drones are in their gopher holes trying hard not to be clobbered over the head by the furious game of Corporate Whack-o-Mole being played on the carnival fairway over their heads. Little did I know, that while burrowing through the piles of paperwork on their desk they were collectively planning a performance of which a Bose Audio Engineer would fine the utmost impressive.

It all started innocently enough.. One Speaker Phone in a cube next to me is used to Dial an 800 number and enter a Pin to our conference call bridge. “You are the first caller.. Please hold of additional participants.” echo’s quietly from across the room. Then some peaceful hold music plays in an attempt, i suppose, to sooth the caller into a somber and agreeable mood before the call. All is well.

Then it happened… A broken symphony of Speaker Phones, Dial Tones, and Sales Moans. Each and every one of of the Drones had dialed in from their respective assigned cubes and created a surround sound field of hidden speakers. The effect was astounding, within minutes I was 100% convinced that I was in the middle of a whirling Sales Vortex. Being thrown around the room in a drunken stupor. Problem was, I wasn’t drinking… i was.. attempting to get some work done.

An hour later, the symphony ended in much the same way it started. Phone bridge exit tones bounced off all the walls of the office. I poked my head up over my cube to take advantage of this lull and said to one of the participants on the Call:

“Speaker Phones were invented almost exclusively for the purpose of having other people in the general area participate in a conversation. While it might be slightly exciting to have your con call’s in full surround sound throughout the Suite, I don’t feel it appropriate to be using speaker phones on a regular and continual basis in this environment. I use a Headset on my phone when on calls that require use of hands or computer, I would kindly request that you consider much of the same. It’s simply not fair to have to attempt to quietly carry on my everyday work while you are all conducting yours so needlessly loud.”

She paused for a slight moment, said she was sorry but “I have alot of work to do and can’t be fumbling with a headset.”

Indeed.

I take solace in the fact that I’ll be out of this office in a few short months (or long if they continue this way) before they get done building a new DataCenter facility where a bunch of us engineers can go and hide and not be distracted by the glamour and glitz of all things sales….. mmmmm….. But for now:

“Hurry! Hurry! Step right up. Come See The Greatest Show On Earth!”

Indeed.

It was bound to happen, Sooner or later the Government was going to find a very public and very loud way to embarass Microsoft into.. doing… something.. what.. i’m not sure yet.. but on Thursday The Despartment of Homeland Security warned Windows users about a virus that can infect systems without warning just by visiting a compromised web site. Hackers have been breaking into sites running Microsoft’s IIS web server and appending hidden Javascript to pages. When users visit the page, the Javascript code loads malicious code hosted on an “Axis-of-Evil” server. Ok ok.. i added the Axis of Evil part… But it sounds like something that would come out of our Administration or one of it’s departments.

There’s quite a bit of panic over this particular exploit. CERT is telling users to turn off Javascript. “US-CERT recommends that end-users disable JavaScript unless it is absolutely necessary. Users should be aware that any web site, even those that may be trusted by the user, may be affected by this activity and thus contain potentially malicious code.” According to the Internet Storm Center several major sites have been compromised. It’s also higly possible your own work IT Lan is compromised at this point (Seeing that many companies pay the MS Tax to keep their networks secure *ahem*) There is currently no patch for the exploit, however you should update your anti-virus software immediately. Most AV software will detect the infection as the JS.Scob.Trojan.

Should you get out that duct tape and sheets of plastic that they asked you to buy last year and create a bubble of saftey around your computer so no one in your house hold catches this nasty flu? Afterall, CNET quotes the chief technology officer of NetSec, “I told my wife, unless it is absolutely necessary and unless you are going to a site like our banking site, stay off the Internet right now.” When a PHB for a Security company suggests something that drastic to his loved ones, is is wise for us to do the same? Afterall, the PHB’s did such a great job navigating the .com bubble, and seem to keep turning their heads away from solutions to secure their employee’s work environments by looking at alternatives to MS’s ageing self proclaimed standards.

My suggestion is if you are hyperventalating at the thought of your computer being infested with little nanomites to go get some fresh air… and when you return to a focused mindset just to use Mozilla. Or Firefox. Or Opera. Or Safari. Or anything but Internet Explorer. And by the way, IIS ain’t such a hot idea either.

As many of you know, yesterday there was a rather large failure of the power grid affecting almost the whole of the NorthEast of the United states and also some of Canada’s Bordering Cities.

While I can see what happened as just life going as life goes for the most part, i’m not quite sure why it is that NYC out of all Cities in the world, doesn’t have a generator to get subway cars and trains and elevators to their next stop, so that people can easily get to a safe place in an easy and orderly manner. Yesterday went well… but it could have been much worse.

I’m also not quite sure why Water Pumps in Detroit aren’t powered by a backup generator. You would think, that in todays society where more and more things are relying on large amounts of power, that backup systems would be put in place to make sure that in the event of a failure people would still be able to use Life Line Services.. Like Water and Telephone.

Which leads me to alternative power issues. Many people in Massachusetts have been dead against putting a Wind Farm out in the Nantucket Sound. Honestly, I’m not sure what their issue is. From the coastline, it would barely be visable from what I understand. *shrug* I just hope that what happened yesterday gives our government a chance to look at our aging electrical distrobution and generation plants, most of which were built in the 50′s and do something to bring them not only up to date in the Plant.. but also help us not rely on Fosil Fuels to generate our power.

We need to make sure that the Blast Radius of any Failure of our Life Line Services is as small as possible. It’s more important now than it ever was, I’m sure many people who would love to do harm to us saw what happened yesterday, and how easy it would be to wipe out power to the grid and then do their normal horrible attacks. This combination could be a disaster.

I overslept today, so i’m behind the 8ball already… Not quite sure how it happened to tell ya the truth. Some monster like beast must have not liked the sound of the alarm and just turned it off… cuz I seem to remember it working at some point….. Oddly enough the furry spawn of satin that sits next to my bed……. didn’t wake up either. Which is odd, cuz it seems to be a piss and poop machine in the AM. Not today…. no.. today, he’s just like everyone else….. trying my patience… which….. needless to say, doesn’t seem to exist.

A wise man once coined the phrase “getting out of the wrong side of the bed” and really…. I wish they would label these things.. cuz I most definitely stumbled down the wrong path this AM.

On the way to work, I totally misrouted myself around to get my normal Iced Coffee… so missed that…. life. just isn’t a stable being for me today……… .once i get here.. i send out a reminder for my weekly conference call.. and well.. what happens.. there’s another call that takes 1/2 my people away.. scheduled at the same time. So i move my call… and well….. turns out the call that clobbered mine.. is a call that doesn’t end…. EVER.. well.. at least.. not today.. from the sounds of it..

So i’m off to move my call to sometime tomorrow.. hopefully this call will be over by then.. if not… my ear will rot off, and you’ll find it for sale on ebay.. cuz.. everyone loves these things.. or so i hear..

Indeed, what i have here… is way too much fun for one person to truly ever enjoy!

Yes. I know i haven’t updated this in a long while.

No. I don’t know how much you long to read this.

Yes. I understand that sometimes people just need to be nosey, and i’m not pulling me weight for keeping ya’ll full of fun info to chew on.

No. I really don’t care