Breaking the Code

The Red Pill or the Blue Pill?

As a sponsor of Cloudcamp Why Aye and Cloudcamp Och Aye I was asked whether we wanted to include something in their respective ungoodie bags when I met up with MrsBoogie and  CloudIQ yesterday.

Because these are unconferences (which makes us an unsponsor?!) MrsB said it would be cool if I could come up with something a bit more original than the usual corporate giveaways.  So that would be ungiveaways then?  I said.  (This was just as well, I thought, since we don't have any corporate goodies and have no plans to inflict Cloudsoft® pens, stress balls etc on punters anytime soon.)

So after a great deal of unresearch I've come up with an idea that appeals to me at least: let's make it interesting and put a little red pill in half the ungoodie bags and a little blue pill in the other half and have some fun.

Then attendees have a 50:50 chance of remaining blissfully happy (blue) or having a painful dose of reality (red).  I think I've got that the right way round at least according to Wikipedia.  For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about check out -

According to Morpheus the choice is yours - You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I've spoken to Red at M&M who in keeping with the philosophy of Cloudcamp unreliably informs me that their sweets have no such effect.

Therefore I'm now on Lexington and 125th waiting for my man with 26 dollars in my hand -

So what is it going to be - the red pill or the blue pill?

You'll have to come to Cloudcamp in Newcastle on March 24 or Edinburgh on March 25 to find out what I've managed to source as ungoodies and to learn about Cloud Computing (or not!).

Intelligent Design My Ar*e!

So the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Management Summit is winding down.  It's been a hectic few days.  You know that end of conference feeling when everyone is de-mob happy and you really feel for the guy on the graveyard shift (I know I've been there!).  Well this time it is David Williams flying the flag for IT Process Automation so I'd better be there!!

Talking of automation one of the recurrent themes of the conference has been that blindly automating an existing procedure isn't much use - you've got to understand the process you are trying to implement holistically.

I'll give you a great example -

I travel a lot and last Friday I found myself at Heathrow en route to Edinburgh for a stopover to see my family, remind them I exist etc.  Anyway I pitched up at T3 and because I was changing airlines I had to collect my baggage then make my way to T5 rather than stay air side.  So I got the train and when I came out of the underground station I went up the escalator and ended up in arrivals by mistake.  No problem I thought and I followed the signs until I found the lift (elevator) I should have taken from the station to departures.

Instead of a pair of up/down call buttons there was a  sign saying "Lifts stop Automatically" which had been crudely sellotaped to the panel.  Bit tacky I thought but hey its early days and at least they've implemented a smart lift.  So I waited.  The first lift arrived and the light above the doors indicated it was going down so I waited for the next one.  This happened a couple more times so I took a closer interest in the lifts.  Since these were in a funky glass & steel housing I could see lifts going up but for some reason not stopping automatically on my floor.

Eventually I figured that for some reason there was a bug in their system so I got a lift going down and sure enough it then went up automatically to the departures level bypassing the arrivals floor altogether.

As I got out I bumped into a BAA staff member and said "I think there is a problem with your lift.  It doesn't appear to be stopping on the intermediate level going up".

She said "No. There is no problem.  It is designed to take people from arrivals down to the underground station and from the underground station to departures.  Look there is a sign in the lift that explains this." 

Sure enough there was another crudely sellotaped sign on the panel in the lift with a diagram illustrating that the lift went from floor -1 to +1 then from floor +1 to 0 and on to -1.

When I had the temerity to point out that being stuck on the 0 floor I would have to have got into a lift going the wrong way to see this sign she shrugged her shoulders and said "That's BAA for you!" and walked off.

In the words of that redoubtable character Jim Royle from the Royle Family, "Intelligent Design My Arse"!!