I apoligize for not publishing part one of my HOW project yet. I spent last night watching the Flyers destroy the Rangers. New York, I love your city, I hate your hockey team. I'll be working on it today and tomorrow in between looking for Kolzig trade rumor articles.

In the meantime, and if you're interested, I've finished my article of how my term Technical Prowess came to fruition. It was meant to be the first chapter of the book that nobody seems interested in, but it's an interesting read, notheless. You can find it here.

Every once in a while, we all come across a magazine, newspaper or web article that we can personally don a perfect "toilet read". Not too long, not boring and relatively informative. It's been a while since I've found a good toilet read, but MCPMag has published 5 articles in one issue that meet my qualifications. Apparently, MCPMag is going to cover "Taking Control of Your Environment" articles throughout the year starting with the January issue that is at newsstands now. In the January issue, there are 5 articles that were written with taking control of your environment in mind. They are:

• Take Control of Your Network
  
• Take Control of Your Security
  
• Take Control of Your Users
  
• Take Control of Your Vendors
  
• Take Control of Your Career
  

If they keep pushing the subject all year like they said they are going to, it will be refreshing to see MCPMag going this direction. (We'll have to see how resilient they are... I know their customer support sucks... I've been an MCSE for over 7 years and the damn magazine still has never been delivered to my house even though I've tried and tried to make it happen and I've even been willing to pay for it).

One of my goals with this blog was never to reveal that I'm a Windows guy because people tend to get all caught up in that. Yes, some of my roots are with Windows, but I'm not and will never be a Windows bigot. I'm open to anything. Windows environments, however, are where I have the most experience and I refer to them on various occasions. My point with the blog, however, is that computer people are a special breed whether they are all Windows all the time or whether they worship the Linux movement. It doesn't matter. We all have users that want to print pretty documents, send emails to their friends and play solitare whenever they are bored. This blog is dedicated to supporting your network environment regardless of the chosen hardware and software.

Having said that, the 5 articles that I'm referring to are very Windows specific, but they do touch on ways to do things whether you're dealing with Windows environments or not. What's important here is that MCPMag is trying to get people to take a more proactive approach to their networks in lieu of the normal everyday reactive approach that we are all so attached to. There's not enough of this in big publications.

MCPMag gets things rolling, but the articles fail to acknowledge one glaring piece missing from the utopian network environment pie. They sidestep the HOW. We, as professionals, know that we need to be proactive. We can shove policies and rules up our users' asses until we are blue in the face, but there will always be a cute sectretary batting her eyes in exchange for the Local Administrator's password on her machine (I avoided the word "box" there on purpose). There also will always be a dorky developer type that you can't stand dealing with so much that you give him a non-standard dual monitor configuration so he'll leave you alone. And don't forget about the special treatment the high-level too dangerous for their own good executive types get from day to day. These things happen. Coming up with rules and policies and different ways of saying "no" are useless. We've been trying for over 2 decades. Give up.

What we as technical professionals need to do is build our support environment as the foundation of our existence. Rather than building our network and then supporting it, we need to build it with supporting it in mind. How we do this is the next step in how our networks will be managed now and in the future.

To that end, I'm going to spend the rest of the week publishing a 3-part article based on the aforementioned MCPMag articles. Rather than this being my critical response to these articles, I'd like to agree with most of what they say and then build on them. Add the HOW if you will. Part 1 will be published late tomorrow, so your job until then is to read the articles from the MCPMag. Keep them close to your heart and then prepare to learn how to use the advice in the real world.

How do you find the perfect network support client? I've been asked by a consulting company that I work with to come up with a list of attributes for the perfect client. I guess this is possible. Lawyers have been trying to find perfect clients for years. That's rather amusing, because lawyers happen to be at the top of my list as the most horrible clients, but that's another article. So what do we look for as technical people?

Fundamentally, you have to find clients with lots of work and who pay on time. Beyond that, there's many hidden forces involved. The "lots of work" variable should include productive work. Work as a resuilt of upgrading machines, tweaking database performance and streamilining security. Not work reviving NT4.0 workstations, reformatting 266mhz doorstops and desperately bringing SQL 6.5 databases back to life. The clients we want understand the importance of upgrading their environment. They see the value in moving forward, not in paying a consultant hourly rates to move monitors from one desktop to another.

This brings me to clients who pay on time. If a client doesn't like to part with money, that's a bad sign. If you have to give presentations on why upgrading from Windows '95 is a good thing, run the other direction very fast. The best clients are the ones that you develop a relationship to the point where if you recommend something, they buy it and in turn you can ensure them that you will never recommend anything that they don't need.

That's about it. Simple, huh? By the way, if anyone knows any clients that fit this category, let me know... they seem awfully difficult to find.

Top 10 things that I could have done instead of watching the Eagles lose to the Panthers:

10. Pick the sock lint out from in between my toes
9. Watch Double Jeopardy on CBS sans Ashley Judd nude scenes
8. Look for a job somewhere warm
7. Learn how to dance "the percolator"
6. Pick up my dog's crap from the back yard with my bare hands
5. Watch the Sony Open if only for the background scenery of Hawaii
4. See how many drops of tabasco sauce I can pour in my eye before running around the house screaming
3. Do sit-ups or push-ups or something
2. Try to get a little somethin'-somethin' from my wife
1. Nail my scrotum to a chair and then try to get up really, really fast.

The technology surrounding football is amazing. Real-time stats from more places than one even knows. Production crews running around finding out information concerning the last time a team threw 4 interceptions in an NFC Championship game and then reporting that to fans all over the country and world within seconds and with perfectly placed and aethetically pleasing graphics. Computerized cameras placed at the 30-yardlines of the field so that SportVision can superimpose the 1st down marker on the field for TV viewers without interfering with anything that is actually on the field. Thousands of lines of Delphi code developed to control the overhead camera that flies around over the middle of the field. And again the stats. The huge databases of stats. Perfectly intertwined and at anybody's fingertips. Wow. It's amazing what wads of cash can do to bring the greatest media and technological minds together in an American masterpiece called NFL football.

Hmmm, too bad the CIA and FBI can't get together to share data to help stop terrorism, huh?

What I Want for My Birthday

I can't really think of anything to say today because I'm overwhelmed by getting another year older. Since today is my actual date of birth, its probably too late to ask for anything specific. But here's my virtual wish list anyway.

• I want this blog to appear under the "Blogs we've noticed" section of the Blogger website
  
• I want to write books for a living
  
• I want a washboard stomach without having to work for it
  
• I want to meet Erika from Big Brother 4 and tell her that she's a hot piece of ass
  
• I want to learn how to do a skid stop while ice skating
  

Other than that, I think I have pretty much everything I want. A loving family, supportive parents, a loyal dog and a job in computers. What else can a man ask for? (I'll ask for the Porsche next year).

The 2 readers of this blog that I know I have (my Dad and my Uncle) can verify that we are expecting 3-5 inches of snow overnight in our area. This evening when I was helping to put my kids in bed, I quizzed the darling little rugrats on what was suppose to happen tonight. Upon asking the question, my 5-year-old daughter, Chloe, screamed, "IT'S GONNA SNOW!!" with excitement. She then proceeded to say, "We logged on to the computer today at school and the weatherbug told us about the snow." Is anybody else moved by the significance of this statement like I am? The weatherbug isn't the only thing my daughter knows how to use on a computer and I'm sure we all have stories about how our kids are wizards on the Internet but I'm after something deeper here.

My career, and it's probably safe to say at this point that many careers, in computers have started out during a time when most people were afraid of computers. Computer people, therefore were able to reap the benefits of user ignorance by demonstrating power over the seemingly intimidating machines. Because people that could tame the electronic beasts with ease were so hard to find, computer gurus were courted and paid accordingly. Now that more people are getting into this computer thing, more software is easier to use and more users are learning how easy the computer thing actually is, we're seeing a paradigm shift in the industry. Most would blame this on the economy, which is part of it, but I think the story about my daughter is an example of something that we are going to be noticing as her generation gets older and into the workforce.

Regardless of whether or not my daughter wants to be a computer person, its obvious that she's going to have to know how to utilize computers and the Internet as an important tool in her life. It's becoming a necessity and hopefully parents and teachers alike will notice the trend. My daughter's school is going that direction, but it still isn't an important part of the curriculum. When my daughter had her first progress report, they gave us a curriculum guide for every semester from grades K thru 8. Nowhere did I see anything about computers. I posted a question to a district representative about why computer skills were not reported, and her answer was, "we are exploring those avenues, but you won't see anything in the curriculum for a while." I'm not too worried about my kids because I go a little overboard on the computer thing as you may be able to tell. The thing that scares me is how little schools and parents are concentrating on teaching their children how to use computers even though its starting to become too obvious to ignore. Maybe they're still afraid.

Ron's ode to SPAM

You haunt me my friend.
You play with my pride.
You promise me money.
You say that you have naked pictures of Brittney Spears that in a weak moment I'd really like to see.

You haunt me my friend.
You come disguised with smiles.
You come as a reply, a request.
A yo! A how's it going? A this hot teen chick with supple breasts in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform wants to date me.

You haunt me.
But you don't care.
You haunt me.

As much as I've been trying to come up with some creative comparison between this weekend's football playoffs and IT business management, (especially the Eagles' heart-thumping overtime win) anything that I can come up with seems like a desperate stretch for content. But since I have a website now that all the world can see at any moment if they so choose, I do have one thing to say.... Chris Collinsworth can kiss my ass. The Eagles are a good team, Chris. Face it. Troy does and he was a friggin Dallas Cowboy. I know it's going to be tough, but try to find it within yourself to say at least one good thing about them on the air this Sunday.

Whew. Now that that's off my chest, I can move forward. I've been reading some articles lately about Change Management and the push in corporate environments toward the right people and the right processes to make Change Management work. As a technical guy, I find it a little amusing when I come across articles about this subject. First, let me say that I believe in processes like Change Management. This whole site is dedicated to processes such as these for a better working environment. What's missing, which is what's missing in most of these endeavors, is the personalities of the people that you are asking to be advocates of such processes.

When trying to inject change management into an LAN support environment, two problems come to mind. The first is how network people look at Change Management. I've long been an advocate of such ventures. The issue, however, is that network people have typically felt that Change Management was reserved for development environments. We've never realized that documenting a change in a router configuration was, in fact, Change Management. We just don't look at it that way. We look at our environments as something that we can change when we want to and that other people shouldn't change because it'll screw us up. Agreed, this is wrong, but this is how we've come to evolve as a species. Most of this is the fault of the network organizations, but part of it stems from the fact that network engineering involvement in technical projects is a relatively new phenomenon. I can remember countless times throughout my career where we, as a team of people responsible for the Local Area Network, would hear about a project coming to fruition and not one of us, including upper management, would ever say, "hey, shouldn't somebody from our group be in those project meetings?" We tended to get involved after the fact.

The other problem is more intangible and more frustrating to both technical people as well as management.

Quick... off the top of your head... what's the fastest way to de-motivate your technical staff?

How 'bout calling them into a meeting room after a morning of fighting "WAAAAHHH my email doesn't work" fires and telling them that they have to document change more so they can comply with some new Change Management initiative?

I've been in these meetings too. It's more than a coincidence that technical people gravitated to their laid back, neat, cutting edge highly challenging jobs. They like figuring things out fast... like puzzles... and then moving on to the next. They like getting into the cool new stuff and many of them hate the establishment. In meetings where new initiatives toward processes are the subject, network guys feel dejected. "Don't they realize how much I run around here and help people?" A frustrated network person might say, "documenting everything is much less important than having me in the trenches." As much as your blood might boil if you're a manager reading this, keep in mind that I'm just trying to make a point here. The tendency of management in these situations is to pull the hierarchy card. This might work as IT continues to mature over the next few years or decades, but right now, people don't see the immediate benefits of documentation and Change Management.

Is there a way to remedy this? I think there is, but it's not easy. Rather than force the issue, the only way that you can get people to respond is to make their jobs easier through a foundation of structure around the support and documentation process. Work on getting people to think that fixing a machine is important, but working with that machine as a part of the larger network, is something that affects the bigger picture. Help them see the network as a whole. Not just the machines, the servers, and the routers, but everything down to the customers and the comparison between the high-level executive computer moron to the secretary who can do anything on a computer including take your job if you're not careful. The Local Area Network is your environment. It's health depends on a technical person's understanding of every nook and cranny, or at the very least, it depends on a technical teams wilingness to care for the network by telling meaningful stories about it's existence.

Doesn't that sound better than groan-promoting words like Change Management and documentation?

I know, I know, I haven't posted in a couple of days. I've been working on an article called the Technical Prowess Framework. It's not done, but you can see what I've written so far. Keep in mind that its still just a draft, which means I haven't checked the spelling yet. Nor is it very asthetically pleasing. My plan is to use the framework to develop the chapters for my book and publish those while using the blogging updates for general, "what's on my mind" kind of stuff. I'm also working on a Book Review link. Hopefully both of these will be ready for production after the weekend. Even if they're there, keep the following in mind:

"Websites are like people, they're always under construction."

(I came up with that myself... can you believe it?)

If you've ever been able to get through the first quarter of the cumbersome, yet wildly popular book, The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, you may remember that a large portion of the beginning of the novel was dedicated to the main character, Alex Rogo, being counseled to figure out what his plant was in existence to do. Finally, after what seemed like pages upon pages of Alex Rogo thinking of an answer, he has an epiphany that is so simple yet so powerful it prompts him to make changes that drastically affect the dismal outlook of the plant he runs, the people he manages and the job he is so desperately clinging to. Alex Rogo's plant was there to make money for the corporation for which he and his employees worked. Plain and simple.

So let's do the same exercise that Mr. Rogo was asked to do for our own technical organizations. When I say technical organization, I mean support, planning, engineering, management, etc. NOT DEVELOPMENT. That's a whole nother ball of rubber bands. Why do we as technical resources exist? If we're not consultants, we don't exist to make money. We're overhead, we all know that. So, again, I ask the question. Why do we exist?

Technical environments have become an essential tool in any business endeavor no matter how big or small. We exist to put these environments together so that the tool is the most valuable to the organization in reference to the amount of money the organization is willing to spend. If we do this correctly, support is easier and the company that made the investment is saving money. We exist because when people walk into their offices in the morning they expect the lights to respond to the flick of a switch, they expect their chair to support them when they sit down and they expect their email to work when they hit Send and receive. We exist to save money. Said better, we exist so that people can get the most out of their technical investment now and into the future.

Think about that the next time you say, "hey, I just got my MCSE, where's the cash?" Think about that the next time someone tells you the company website is down and you say, "not my problem, I'm a security guy." Think about that the next time you consider hiring a guy fresh from high-school because you want to pay $25,000/year instead of the $60,000/year you're paying you're next lowest guy on the totem pole. Think about that the next time you feel comfortable with the security of your job.

After most weekends, my societal adventures tend to offer pages of stories about customer service blunders. This weekend, however, I started to think about something that I couldn't get out of my head into this morning. When this occurs, the only way out is either write about it or get drunk. Thanks to blogger and because getting drunk on a Monday morning would show some traces of a bigger problem, I shall write.

I coach indoor soccer for a team of 4-5 year-olds; one of the players being my son, Justin. One thing about kids that you can always depend on is their pure honesty. I like to watch kids in all kinds of situations to see their unrehearsed approach to the world around them. I try to learn from them, because, God knows they're not learning anything from me. This past Saturday we had a game and only 4 of my players showed up. Being a 4 on 4 league meant that all players would see a plethora of playing time. Although in instructional leagues coaches aren't suppose to judge player talent, it's not difficult to point out the athletic players from the players that are simply there because their parents signed them up for something. My 4 players this weekend happened to represent the core group of the most athletic I have.

Since coaching 4-5 year-olds is fundamentally an oxymoron, and because I didn't have to do any creative put-some-players-out-there-who-know-what-they're-doing-to-supplement-those-who-don't roster switching, I started to watch my guys in a different light and I started to learn something about my leadership habits in the process. My players were Billy, Dominick, Brennen and my aforementioned son Justin. Billy is by far the one who understands soccer the most. He's our highest scorer (not that we keep such stats) and he's our fastest. He also understands that his team is suppose to score in one particular goal and that he is suppose to stop the other team from scoring in his goal. If you've ever coached kids this age, you know how valuable that is. Billy also has some idea that he can utilize other players on his team when he needs to. Billy's problem is that he has no interest in practicing or warming up. He fools around, doesn't pay attention, does things wrong even though its a skill that I noticed he has in a game that I'm hoping all of the other kids can pick up. He's not defiant, he's just not interested in practicing.

Dominick and Brennen are stellar practicers. They both have an unteachable understanding of the game and they are fast as well. They listen very well and they perform every drill with precision. In the game, however, they have flashes of greatness coupled with stints of total confusion. They are both very smart and very analytical. You can tell that Brennen concentrates primarily on defense but if he finds the ball at his feet on a breakaway, he runs around in circles. Dominick loves to dribble the ball down the field and away from other players, but probably couldn't score if the goal were 3 times larger.

Justin isn't really interested in soccer but gets by (with most things in life so far) on athleticism and a love for competition. He doesn't listen in practice and doesn't do anything real spectacular in a game, but he stays with the pack and he understands what needs to be done. If the ball comes to him he tends to know what to do with it and if other players on his team need help, he's your guy, especially when it comes to needing a little muscle for protection. Soccer isn't what Justin is interested in. If he was allowed to take a hockey stick out on the field, he'd be Billy. But until he's 5 he's going to have to settle for soccer.

This game was interesting because, even though we aren't suppose to keep score, we were obviously losing by a whole bunch. My kids were tired and the other team had more players. Most teams in this league don't post blow-outs so our team was a little shocked with morale issues. At some point during the game, I couldn't help but relate what I was seeing to the business world. I'm no Bill Parcels, but I do understand the phenomenon of targeting and utilizing people's strengths. I just do it in a less glamorous capacity. Kinderkicker soccer brings this into a more innocent perspective.

Billy is my "go to" guy. I rarely have to manage him and although I depend on him greatly during the game, I rarely have to say anything to him. His reward for this is extended playing time (more work). I also look to him when we need a quick throw-in or a critical goal kick (cool projects). Because of his practice habits, however, I never choose him to perform a drill as an example for others (reporting or team representative in staff meetings). Dominick and Brennen hold a special place in my heart. They are wonderful to manage in practice but need a little coaxing when it comes to the real world. They are very methodical and can't multitask like Billy (better when concentrating on a few areas of expertise). They do, however, hang on my every word and I want them to succeed (management interns). I rarely have to get them to listen in practice and I always use them to show us how to do a drill (project planning). Justin is a management nightmare. He's raw skill. He doesn't care to learn anything about soccer and if he doesn't score a goal he's really not bothered. I do, however, need him (dependable in emergency situations). He's almost a "go to" guy thanks to his talent and his competitive nature, but he doesn't do some of the little things that Billy does (purely technical, no interest in management).

I know I can't be the only person that's ever made these comparisons, but remember I'm trying to run a page dedicated to technical management here. You've seen people like this in all areas of business. A team is not a team without players like this. A manager is not a manager unless he or she can notice what each player brings to the table. "But wait", you might say, "this applies to all teams not just technical ones." Congratulations, Dominick, I mean Brennan, I mean Dear Reader. You get a gold star. That's exactly my point.

Think about the "go to guy" or gal in any critical situation that you might come across in the business world. Most likely that person will have a wide range of skills. And those skills will be a little dose of everything that one would need to be placed in a critical situation.

This person would have:

• Technical knowledge of the situation
  
• Technical knowledge of a large portion if not all of the environment
  
• A relationship with the customers involved
  
• An understanding of the business urgency of the issue
  
• The ability to talk to technical people as well as non-technical people especially high-level managers
  
• The ability to prioritize under pressure
  
• The ability to take leadership of a critical situation
  

This person is someone you can trust. Someone you can depend on. Someone who can take control of the situation. Not someone with nothing other than raw technical skills, but someone with what it takes to represent your organization at any critical moment.

This is Technical Prowess. And this is what you are going to have to have to move forward as an IT person in the business world today.

As with most people that frequent fitness establishments, I am going to have to endure a month of no parking and crowded workout facilities thanks to the 100's of already doomed New Year's Resolutions that are being made throughout the night and into today. OK, I'm being pessimistic. I'm not an incredibly healthy person, but I do visit the local YMCA a few times a week. As the year goes by you start to see the same people there week after week and eventually you give each other a friendly nod or even start some conversations with each other. Then the new year begins. Those old faces are still there, but you have to fight for position with all of the newcomers. It only lasts about a month though. Then the old faces are back and things run as before... until summer.

This New Year celebration was officially my most pathetic thus far. My wife and I put our kids to bed and right before popping in a movie in anticipation of making it to midnight, our 1-year-old Nicholas woke up. My wife put him back in his crib and announced that she wanted to wait and make sure he was asleep before we started the movie. 2 minutes later, my wife was fast asleep; 9:00pm. Hell if I was going to stay awake by myself so I went to sleep too and only realized it was a new year this morning at around 5:30.

I decided to head to Dunkin Donuts before anyone woke up and while I was driving I started to think about all the hangovers I had on January 1st's of yesteryear. It's just another day isn't it? My wife and I had no intention of keeping our kids up until midnight and they woke up this morning having no idea what went on last night. It amazes me what we do to ourselves simply because of a calendar day. Our attitudes change. We feel like turning over a new leaf. We say we're going to "start the year off right". Why don't we do this every day instead of waiting for a special day, month or year?

This is taking over at work too. I can understand that financially, it makes sense to make milestones out of certain parts of the year, but how come we let things go all year until January and then have meetings about what we're going to do this year? I wonder if really successful people look at it with such finality. Because I've never been real successful with New Year's Resolutions I am going to vow this year not to make one. Instead I'm going to write down what I believe and see if I still believe it this time next year so here we go:

What I believe about 2004:

• I believe the Philadelphia Eagles will win the Superbowl
  
• I believe Tom Peters is mostly right
  
• I believe a Republican will be the new president
  
• I believe Blogging is important and needs to take the next step
  
• I believe the Philadelphia Flyers will win the Stanley Cup
  
• I believe more technical jobs will come back to the states after people realize that you get what you pay for when you send support work to India
  
• I believe the technical certification debacle will implode
  
• I believe the Philadelphia Phillies will make the playoffs
  
• I believe more technical people will find management jobs and more managers will find technical jobs
  
• I believe I'll finish a book and get at least one other person to read it
  
• I believe my wife will meet and beat Susan Dell in a triathlon
  
• I believe the Philadelphia 76ers will trade Allen Iverson
  

We'll see if any of this comes true, but if I had my choice... LET'S GO FLYERS!!!