IT 2.0

After working in technology since 1994, my biggest impression is this: IT costs too much.

This won't change overnight, but 50 years from now, companies will be budgeting, per user, much less for IT. And they'll get a whole lot more value.

I've very little idea of how this will happen. But for the time being, I've got a ringside seat, working for the IT department of a fairly large company.

This week, economist wrote about how AdventNet is trying to play a role in the next IT revolution:

http://www.economist.com/people/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12052307&fsrc=rss

It Depends

I live in a land of partial questions, where folks are constantly asking me how long it will take to build a web site or a page weeks or months before we've figured out what that site or page should consist of.

So my answer to most questions is some variation of it depends, usually dressed up a little, as in "we typically like to schedule this sort of change 2-6 months ahead of time, depending on the number of integration points, reliability requirements, and impacted processes." Big words like that convey the impression that I'm paying close attention (which in fact is something I try to do), and I've found with experience that if I just say "It depends" folks will think I'm one of those annoying tech types who refuses to give a straight answer.

Or maybe I'm just a windbag with a rationalization? Some of both I suppose.

Of course some of the reasons that things depend have little to do with the difficulties folks have in understanding that for me to build something, they need to know what they want to build.  For example:

http://www.webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

Because web browsers are wacky. Not in a way that I've figured out how to easily explain to folks who fall asleep the minute the gory details come up, and who never had to learn how hideous Netscape 4.7 was, or of the torture of working with  browsers from Redmond. Browsers are strange and twisted little things because they were coded by humans who had to make the best of of a bad set of options while on a ridiculous timeline.

So it goes.

Time

Somehow, this afternoon at least, there seems to be a connection between turning 40 and realizing how little time there are to attend to the myriad opportunities each day brings.

I stumbled over some nice writing on this topic today:

Accept that your workload exceeds your resources — that you are the first and last filter for what deserves your time — and you’ll already be better off than you were even two minutes ago.

Merlin Mann, http://www.43folders.com/2006/03/13/philosophy

Where am I?

Ok, windows knows where perl is now. But my htdocs is in a completely different place.  And the hostname changes too.

No idea if this will stand the test of time, but here's my figure out where I function right now, which appears to work on both my windows XP laptop and the linux host I use most often:

(my $script, my $path, my $script_url, my $script_url_path, my $host) = figure_out_script_and_path();

sub figure_out_script_and_path{
    my $script, my $path, my $script_url, my $script_url_path, my $host;

    if ($0 =~ m#^\w:#){ # should be true on a windows host
        $script = $0;
            $script =~ s#^\w:.*\/##; #remove path
        $path = $0;
            $path =~ s#(^\w:.*)\/[^\/]*$#$1#; # remove name of script
    }
    else { # assume path starts with a slash:
        $script = $0;
            $script =~ s#^\/.*\/##; #remove path
        $path = $0;
            $path =~ s#(^\/.*)\/[^\/]*$#$1#; # remove name of script
    }

    $script_url = $ENV{"SCRIPT_NAME"};
    $script_url_path = $script_url;
    $script_url_path =~s#(^\/.*)\/[^\/]*$#$1#;
    $host = $ENV{"SERVER_NAME"};

    return ($script, $path, $script_url, $script_url_path, $host);

}

Would you believe that windows live writer doesn't have a "code" option in the format menu? And I'm afraid I'm too lazy to edit the source. :)

#!/usr/bin/perl on windows

Thankyou perl monks for your wisdom:

http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=167481

I installed activestate in c:\usr, and now I can use the same shebang line on my windows laptop as on my linux box.

Life can be so extremely good!

8% slower

Breaking news, as I approach my 40th birthday. I'm slow, and getting slower:

"a 40-year-old user will take 8% longer than a 30-year-old user to accomplish the same task. And a 50-year-old user will require an additional 8% more time."

This, it turns out, is perfectly natural:

"The human aging process starts around age 25 and causes erosion of cognitive resources, loss of visual acuity, degraded reaction times, and reduced dexterity. People need more time for the same mental operations; they have less memory capacity and take longer to process the same perceptual input."

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/middle-aged-users.html