Jay McGavren's Journal

Have you heard about the TPS reports?

Seeing the Vogons and their triplicate authorization forms in the Hitchhiker’s Guide last week has me keenly aware of the bureaucracy within my own company. Just got this e-mail…

> We have found an opportunity for improvement! Our Change > Management process states you should not modify a Change > Request (“CR”) after it has been approved. There are cases > where CRs have been modified after they have been approved, > and the result has been unsuccessful changes. This is > problematic for our customers, our employees, and [company name]. > > Please be aware that if you modify a CR after it is > approved, you invalidate your CR approval because your > modifications are not necessarily read. If you modify a CR > after it is approved (other than to update the worklog with > status during/post change), you must reset it for approval. > There are no exceptions to this requirement.

“Opportunity for improvement”? Gag. This must be the person who suggested that all employees put “Capitalize on our opportunities” as part of their e-mail signatures. (Which I refuse to do.)

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I need to participate in some bare minimum of all this (change request documents, release management documents) to be able to get my job done. What I have to watch myself for, though, is to ensure that the need to cover my ass doesn’t turn me into a bureaucrat myself.

New Halo 2 maps tonight! Yay!

I should be on about 7:30 PM Arizona time (9:30 Central), with Diana joining me shortly thereafter.

Which OStan are you? <p align="center"> You are Windows 2000 Professional Edition. You are the most stable and reliable of all the Windows girls. Of course, since your main comparison is with ME, that’s not saying much. You’re popular with some, but you’re being replaced with XP. You often help take care of your sister ME.</p>

Sigh… Yes, I caved and did a survey…

Google Search History

Yeehaw! This will be a treasure trove for personal data mining: Google has added a search history. When you use Google as often as I do (several times daily), this could generate a very rich map of the topics you’re thinking about. And since Google saves everything to your account and maps it to a calendar, you can actually go back in time and see what you were working on for any given date.

Privacy advocates needn’t fret (much); it’s opt-in, and you can “pause” the search logging at any time.

This is a very cool feature that I didn’t know I needed until now. :)

Diana and her mom are sharing a PC, and they’re starting to have “roommate problems”. (Judy doesn’t like the apps I install for Diana, etc.) Since it’s Judy’s PC anyway, Diana was going to be the one kicked off. Time to do something.

We’re on a tight budget, I set up an eBay automated search to find cheap laptops. To avoid being outbid all the time, I configured it to only report auctions ending in less than an hour.

The problem with that, I have since figured out, is that it leads to impulse purchases. We got a laptop for a measly 80 bucks (shipped), but it’s only a Pentium, so I doubt it can run anything later than Windows 95. Not only that, it has no Ethernet port. I have to hunt around and see if anyone still sells adapter cards.

I think I may have just wasted 80 bucks, and the thing hasn’t even arrived yet. Now I have to decide if I’ll waste even more of my time trying to make it work (Linux? Thin clients?), or if I’ll bite the bullet and go buy her a real PC. Lenny might be getting a laptop for his birthday.