Maybe we need to add some drupelets!

Really, the picture says it all. As the Patent Wars continue to make me Always Grumpy, the Apple seems to have the Little Green Man by a very sensitive part of his anatomy while Windows is just background. On careful inspection you can see that this makes the Android very sad. Yes, my colleague Simon and I were busy at our desks again!

 

With the great reviews BB10 is getting (see here in IT World Canada and here in The Register), maybe we need to add a fourth ecosystem to our little dioramas.

Jonathan Gladstone is alwaysgrumpy at jbglad59@sympatico.ca or follow me on Twitter @jbglad59.

Is Googorola trapped? What does that say about our society?

Back in April I wrote a post about What Googorola Needs. At the time, I suggested they needed an Android Accelerator, which a colleague of mine and I designed and photographed. They never took us up on our offer to sell our device, and by June it had become obvious that they needed more. Commentators were observing some of the reasons that development of apps for iOS had continued to outpace that for Android: see this article in IT World Canada, for example. In a fit of premonition between bouts of throwing small objects at one another, my colleague Simon and I repurposed the parts of the Android Accelerator. Since then, the events of the Patent Wars have made it obvious that Googorola’s little man is locked in an Android Prison, pictured here:

The Patent Wars. Ah, now that makes me Always Grumpy!

Innefluctual Karmunications, whuzzat?

That’s “ineffectual communications”… if you use your spell-checker and maybe, just maybe, engage your brain.

Earlier this week I rejected a document at work. I rejected it because the grammar and syntax, the spelling, the punctuation and the general composition were so poor that I had to struggle to guess what the writer meant. So what am I, someone’s fourth-grade teacher? No, I’m just Always Grumpy.

That’s right, it’s me; I’m back after a long summer hiatus: Frequently Happy, Sometimes Sneezy, Often Dopey, Rarely Bashful and always, Always Grumpy.

As a cube-dweller in a sometimes sensitive position in a large corporate environment, I review documents all the time. I reject them when I feel I need to. When I do, it slows people down, delays their projects and makes them work harder.

Gimme an L! Gimme a U! Gimme a D, D, I, T, E!!!

If you’re chanting along with that, the volume and pitch should rise to a demented and enraged scream towards the end, accompanied by the sound of machine-gun clatter and mortar fire / shattering glass as some device flies through a window  / a rude thump as I pound on my desk and shatter the calm of my fellow cube-farm inhabitants.

Panamania! Part 2.

So there we were in Panama, way back last winter. In a previous post I explained how we decided when to take a family vacation and where to go, and described how we got there. Travelling makes me Always Grumpy, but arriving helps! We’d arrived on time, starting with a harrowing journey from boyz’ high school term exams to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport but proceeding uneventfully through check-in,  security, the flight itself, luggage pick-up and the bus ride to our resort on Panama’s Pacific coast in Cocle province. As the excellent tour operator reps from NoliTours had explained to us when they met us at the airport, our luggage was sent to our rooms separately – we were sent to have a free drink and check in. We wave our goodbyes to the friendly couple we’d met on the plane and talked to more on the bus – let’s call them Sue and Dan. They’re here to attend one of three weddings the resort will host this week.

Hello, all-inclusive resort!

These are a few of my favourite links

Every now and then I run out of things to say. (Really, I do!) But when I want to keep up with the news or I need inspiration or sometimes just a break, I usually go to the interwebs. I’ve gotten pickier over the years, and the interwebs have changed. At many sites, the articles you see are barely even teasers. At those sites you don’t get any real content unless you pay for it either by sending dollars or by receiving ads. Those sites make me Always Grumpy, so I won’t tell you about them. But these sites on the interwebs make me Frequently Happy instead: I can usually go to them and learn something or crack a smile or both . I’ll start with I/T sites and move on to other stuff:  

Panamania! Part 1.

 

As we’ve heard, lots of things make me Always Grumpy. And after a long week at work I’m Often Dopey and a drink or two on Friday evening makes me Quite Sleepy. Spending time with my family helps me be Frequently Happy though, and a few months ago I got to spend a solid week with my wife and our two giant teen-aged boyz.

Our taller and elder boy is much taller than Dad – that’s me, and maybe that’s why I’m All Seven Dwarves. Taller Boy is finishing high school this year and planning to head off to live in residence at university next fall. Our shorter and younger boy is now only a little shorter than Dad and catching up fast. Shorter Boy will still be in high school, but if he gets his way he’ll be in residence at a boarding school that’s more than a handful of time zones away from home. So we thought we should take the opportunity to get in at least one more full-family vacation this winter. Carpe Diem, as they say!

We talked to those boyz about what kind of vacation we wanted. The first decision: cold weather or warm? The vote went unanimously to somewhere warm. Next decision: land or cruise? Since three of the four of us have issues with motion sickness, a cruise seemed risky. Land it is. Now: beach or adventure? We were a little torn about this. All of us wanted some relaxation time, but we all lack the lassitude it takes to sit in a plastic lawn chair for a week, no matter how good the passing bipedal scenery. J So we needed some sort of activities. But where? There are so many choices.

Dedupe, deprint… dewarm? How TCO is related to Global Warming.

Sometimes I have trouble keeping up with the world of IT. The constantly changing technology makes me Frequently Happy, Very Surprised and Always Grumpy… sometimes all at once, which is more than a little confusing!

Take this article from ZDNet UK, which is one of my favourite sources for fairly straight-up news and reasonably unbiased analysis of all things IT. Deprinting? What on earth is that? And why?

It turns out that deprinting is laser-based technology by means of which one can remove baked-on laser toner from printed pages. And it’s being touted as “environmental” or “green” technology because it could allow people to re-use sheets of paper up to two or three times. Really?!? Come on now.

Deming says you have to anyway. Suck it up and manage!

At least once every few weeks or so someone trots out a certain old saw that helps keep me Always Grumpy. “You can’t measure what you can’t manage,” they’ll say. I ran into it most recently just this past week, in a presentation on computer systems measurement. To be fair to the presenter, in that context it was exactly appropriate: he was talking about computer systems management, for which the measure of success depends largely on computer performance measurement.

But I hate this adage with all my heart! Many bosses and bureaucrats in all walks of government, industry and academia use it in all sorts of inappropriate ways. They use it to proliferate processes and drive busywork to collect useless numbers; they hide wrong-headed and often preconceived decisions behind statistics that are often only tangentially relevant at best; and worst, they sacrifice good management practices on the altars of mediocrity and/or self-interest.

Up until a few months ago, I used to curse W. Edwards Deming whenever I heard this phrase misused

Always Doc reprise / surprise

The picture-in-my-blog-post thing seems to be becoming a bit of a theme. I’ll just ride with it for now…

One thing that keeps me Always Grumpy is being kept in the dark. We spend so much of our times there that it’s no wonder everyone knows what I mean when I say I’m kept like a mushroom! And it’s no surprise that other people feel the same way as I do about it.

But I learned something new last week.