A deaf man walks into a bar... stop me if you've heard this one.

I just returned from a visit back home to Montgomery, and suffered from some ride related injuries. One of them was a persistent ringing in my ears that sounded like a low reverberating bell. This was probably a result of all the wind noise from the ride back combined with the recently installed helmet speakers that I got from Aerostich for $15. The other injury was some neck pain from the constant wind buffeting and leaning over the tank and highway speeds, forcing me to keep my head tilted upward.

To combat the potential for hearing loss, I purchased some 26dB ear plugs at The Walmart. They really do a good job of cutting down on the noise level, especially at above average highway speeds.

To fix the wind problem, I have two solutions. The first is to find a taller replacement windscreen for my bike, which shouldn't be hard to find, considering the popularity of the XJ600 globally. The 2nd solution would be to buy a motorcycle with a taller wind shield.

Insurgent IT departments, and how to really deal with them.

Slashdot just recently posted a link to a great article that CIO magazine wrote about how unresponsive and/or repressive IT departments create insurgent shadow IT departments. CIO's advice to CIO's is to embrace and adopt the shadow IT departments. Out perform, or meet them halfway. The most important messages from the article are:
*Messy but Fertile beats Neat but Sterile
*No one jumps through hoops, they go around them.
*If the default answer is no, people will just stop asking.
*People who think outside of the box are not troublemakers, they may just know what they are talking about.

Why do I think this is important? Not too long ago, I got into trouble because apparently, I wan't supposed to have admin rights on my work computer, and got fussed at for syncing appointments between Outlook and my Sony Erisson P910. The only reason the PDA sync was bad was because there was a policy against non-government provided PDA's being connected to my laptop. I was doing things that made me work better and more efficiently, and the only thing I got was the riot act for violating policy, and creating potential security holes. No one cared that I was working better. Realizing the perils of going into details about work on a public blog, I will leave it at that.

All I will say is that this article is great advice for anyone in charge of a enterprise level information system. It will help them find a good balance between user efficiency, and complete lockdown.

My paid vacation just got better

My wartime deployment has been to Panama City, Florida. I've been down here for a little of 30 days now, and I've been living out of a 2 star motel room with wifi slower than the GPRS on my cell phone. I've been moved on base to an old dorm room with a shared bathroom, and NO Internet access. I have to go to the main office to use their wireless router.

As far as my job goes, I just sit around and monitor a few conference calls on the old legacy phone system. This office is staffed around the clock, and uses around 8 personnel to essentially baby sit old telco equipment. This could easily be replaced with VOSIP phones, but then they wouldn't be able to waste money on all our paychecks. I basically sit around and watch TV, work out at the Gym, or, when the proxy server is down, surf the Internet. I am not being used for my abilities, or skills. I am being used for my security clearance, and it sucks, because I am not being challenged, and I do not have a chance to excel.

Now, this "deployment" is getting better because I have been allowed to move off base, provided I can find somewhere for $27/day. Along with another guy from my base, we are moving to West End Harbor condos in Mexico Beach. This is the floorplan, with 1791 square feet.

If anyone has a boat, they are welcome to come down and park it in our boat slip. We are a stones throw away from the beach.

Terrorist Conspiracy in Bean Town