I'm a racist too!

Gee whiz... anyone see that cartoon in the New York Post? I'm not going to bother describing it much further here, but Google can help you out. Briefly, a couple of police officers are portrayed in a cartoon having shot a chimpanzee, and saying that they'll have to find someone else to author the stimulus bill.

Sigh.

Today, one of my colleagues approached me with a problem that I created. For those of you who don't know, which is pretty much everyone, I made a trivial mistake at work. I support an electronic Lab Notebook and part of my job is to create "notebooks" for scientists to record their data. Requests come in, and I create the notebooks.

So, these notebooks have identification, and it's based on two things... a number that describes its place in a series, and an alphanumeric sequence that identifies the scientist. We have a group of scientists that all use the same alphanumeric ID sequence. I'm not that into the contents of the notebooks, but I assume we just farm out chemistry assignments of some sort to this group. They're in another country, and their names are somewhat recognizable, and could probably identify their ethnicity.

Here at "the company" each scientist has their own unique alphanumeric sequence that identifies them. However, some of them have names that might identify them as a member of this same ethnic group that we farm work out to.

I created a notebook for a person with the wrong identifier. I used the identifier that is common among the scientists we farm work out to, and their name probably would place them in that group, but their location is here at "the company".

Honestly, it was a mistake, but it looks pretty bad. The error is fixable, and I don't foresee any negative consequences, but I feel pretty bad, especially after seeing something that has so many people upset about groups of people being portrayed as ape-like.

Seriously, what kind of editor doesn't say, "dude... this might not go over well..."? Probably all of them, but they've gotta sell papers. I'm not much for censorship, but "censure-ship" probably should have kept this out of the spotlight. Somebody, somewhere, should just said to themselves, "um... no."

People are never eager to read any sort of high-level satire into something like this. We're looking at the most base, opportunistic interpretation, so that we can say something about it. Perhaps it is time to look at why we say what we say, as much as we study what is said.

Microsoft SharePoint

In a previous job, I was a Project Manager, and one of my assignments was to try to implement Microsoft SharePoint... more specifically, to convince people to use it for things that they already had non-Sharepoint methods for. Needless to say, I learned a lot, but the job was kind of pointless because I didn't have any authority or resources.

Fast-forward to the future, and I'm working in at a huge organization that has implemented SharePoint, but calls it something else. I made the mistake of demonstrating my knowledge, and now I get lots of random questions, sometimes from random people, that have questions like, "can I do this?" and "can you do this?".

Today, I got a "can I do this?" question, and for some reason, I wanted to post about it. I like answering these questions. The person who asks is always pleasant. The "can you do this?" questions are usually masks for "do this because I don't want to learn how, but I want credit for it." and those kind of suck... a lot.

More to the point, SharePoint is something that Microsoft got right, at least after several iterations. The harder barrier seems to be to convince people that they should put their files in a "website" rather than a spreadsheet on a network drive, and that they can actually drive more functionality by utilizing SharePoint than maintaining 50 spreadsheets.

WWJD? Yea, verily, I say unto you, "Stop using Excel and the network drives." Too bad that's not in the Bible, or even that most of the people in this organizations wouldn't care if it were. They cling to those spreadsheets and network drives like they mean something. I guess in a sense, they do. Lots of people's jobs are based entirely on managing spreadsheets and updating them on shared network drives, and they aren't exactly looking to do their jobs differently. More likely, they see a mandate like that as a threat to their jobs.

No wonder the job of that mandate gets pushed down so far... Nobody's interested in putting themselves out of work these days. I wonder what's up with my colleague who asks me questions, and seems at least eager to learn, or ask me if I have any tips on how to do something she's been asked for.

Oh well, on to my work.

Long Time No Blog.

Lots of people ask "how was your weekend?" on Monday... this past weekend was Valentine's Day, so usually the conversations are a bit more interesting.

Mine was pretty cool. We went to a baptism of a family friends young daughter, and attended a Saturday Church service right afterward. A few specific things about the sermon struck a chord with me, but that's not unusual when you get to hear the Word. My wife and I went out for Mexican with no wait, and I watched my 5-month-old niece for a few hours on Sunday.

I ran this morning (it is Monday) and I officially started the "two mile" mark. I talked with my Dad and told him I could run two miles... I had only run 1.5 at the time, but hey... it isn't like he reads my blog, or was gonna go to the gym with me. But it was nice to hear him say I was doing better than him, since he's always asking about how I am (physically, emotionally, etc.). I skipped out on any kind of healthy power breakfast, and forgot several items in a morning rush that involved my kids waking up and being slow-risers. I really, really, need to figure out what I'm going to eat if I keep this running crap up, because I almost died. Scarfing down a few slices of left-over whatever isn't going to cut it. Like, protein, energy stuff.

I'm going to go ahead and invest in a heart-rate monitor and some gloves. It seems we're serious enough about the gym activity that I should allocate something to get as much as I can out of it, and quit cheating/abusing my body just to say I went.

Twitter is my friend today... I think I tweeted, like 10 times, about random crap that wasn't really important, but mostly just stuff that popped into my head while listening to my mp3 player. Speaking of which, I like my Zune. I hate using Windows, but I tell you what... that stuff mostly works. I'm so, so, so, tired of messing with Linux crap. I don't have the time like I used to... and since time and money are on some sort of exchangeable medium scale, I'm definitely going to have to cut back on the "oh, I can get this to work for free..." and "my Freedom has value" rants. I got too much crap to do.

Apple, sorry, I'm not paying for another "workstation" and I'm not really a Laptop guy. Value for my money is still a priority, and your stuff is cool, but I got a family to feed, and my clothes ain't fittin' anymore. Maybe I'll decide that used stuff is cool and go iPod on myself, because I hate inconsistent interfaces... but "good enough" is going to have to get it.

What the heck? I'm rambling... and I'm at work...and I have a doctor's appointment before I get home. I guess I had better finish this work. Peace out. Mo' better blogging is coming... I promise.