Well lo and behold…  The kids got talent.

I just learned that a fellow co-worker is also a cartoonist.

Check it out over at WeakCity.com, some are actually funny.

http://www.weakcity.com/

The theme quest continues.

Regular Updates should return soon.

Go figure…

We are however on the hunt for a new and improved ‘theme’ as we’re starting to grow tired of this one.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6314251.stm

Wow, I can’t really remember the last time I used one of our ‘Universal Boot Floppies’, I refuse to touch Win98 (any edition), and backing up anything from NT/2000 or newer to floppy was just stupid anyway.

Long live BART PE for installs

From the Old:

To the New:

Apparently someone has from Fisher Price has been added to the marketing team.

Not sure when this was released or how I missed it. But this is pretty much the ultimate color/theme tool.

FREE at http://kuler.adobe.com/

Simply wow.

Now, since I’ve closed all applications I could possibly close, including all task tray related items, just what do you think they could possibly need access to that they can’t get?

Ignore didn’t work so well, that’s why I’m back here again and taking a screen shot.

Excellent…

We have COLORS COLORS COLORS COLORS COLORS COLORS

Support for Tables?

Find and REplace, as well as spell check…

Looks Like Linked Images ONLY though.

Very well done… Ad-hock posting from afar. Just provide your credentials at the time you need to post.

I like.

http://writetomyblog.com/

If’ ya need t’ learn t talk like a Pirate, then click yonder link and partake of the bounteyful lesson.

The fine folks at Global Knowledge are giving it out if you want to give them a little contact information here (or not, seems like they don’t verify much info).

My opinion of this has always been that the numbers represented in this thing are a tad, shall we say, high? But they give you something to use as a reference point.

Tags: Robert_Half, Salary, Guide, 2006

First, fix the naming of all of these products. Unified this, express, that. It’s still all too confusing. Holy shiznit.

I attended this session today because we have reporting needs and to be blunt, CAR and Cisco Historical Reporting are a heaping pile of pooh.

Sure they give you some nifty reports out of the box, but chances that they are the reports you need are almost nil. Customizing those reports is a royal pain in the nether region.

I attended this session today because I wanted to see what Cisco had in store for us. Just what they were working on to make our lives easier. If all of what Mr. Chambers had talked about in his Key note is just around the corner, then by golly, there’s going to be some serious reporting needs on the back end.

To give you a little background. Cisco IPCCX and Call Manager, and I know those may not be the “Proper” names these days but that’s what I’m sticking with for now. Have used some form of bundled/canned crystal for a while. Version 8.5 and in 4.x you get to use 10.

But it’s still too awkward and cumbersome to customize to get the reports you need.

Can it be done? Sure. Heck they are kind enough to give you the database schema. What more could you ask for?

I tell you what I can ask for, something user friendly along with a process that isn’t 72 steps long. You shouldn’t have to write a stored procedure for basic reports. Nope, that shouldn’t be necessary.

I happened to show up to this class a little early and took the opportunity to preview the slide handouts. I could see that the bulk of the material was about customizing these Crystal reports. Ugh.

When we first installed our Cisco Phone system, let it run for a couple weeks and ran a few reports, some of our people didn’t even show up in the ‘canned’ reports. Yes, you read that right, a big WTF?

So we dipped into the database and took a look. The data was there. So we wrote our own.

At the time we were evaluating Business Objects. Don’t get me started on them. We couldn’t even buy that product or get pricing when we had money in hand to spend. So we did the next best thing. We looked at what else was out there. To that end we stumbled upon Microsoft SQL 2k5 Reporting services.

Within a day or two we had the reports we wanted, on the web, for any one of the mangers to run ad-hoc as needed. Guess what? The could print them, export them to Excel, and even subscribe to them and have them emailed. Something that even today Cisco says is on the feature list.

Before the lecture, I asked the two Cisco folks if they had given Reporting services a look. They asked what I was referring too and what it was about. I explained it comes with Microsoft SQL Server 2k5.

They said; “Oh,no, Our road map is to move away from Microsoft products towards *nix, so we wouldn’t look down that path. Well excuse me. But you still have a windows based product and damnit you ship SQL server so update that to 2005 and you’re problems go away.

But I let it go.

As I sat through the program, I watched in awe as I saw NO improvement to the customization process over the way it was a year ago. It’s still too damn complicated. It shouldn’t be this hard. It is NOT user friendly and doesn’t promote innovation or data mining.

I hung around afterwards to show them what we have done using SQL Reporting Services and managed to show a few of them. They appeared to be impressed. No templates, no stored procedures, no command line updates, nothing hard. All easy and much nicer than the current crazy ness that’s being shipped today, then it was like I was invisible. All of a sudden nobody was talking to me except someone from support. I gave him my business card in case they wanted to discuss it, but I don’t think he grasped the scope of things.

There is a lot broken in the Cisco administration and user experience. Reporting is only one part of it. But it’s a big part.

There is a huge opportunity for a 3rd party to step up. I know some have already, but even they seem to make it harder than it is.

During the session we talked about things like Outbound Call modules, and Email Queuing and reporting. Things that will be in the 5.x train (the *nix flavor) and will be merged with the 6.x train (the Windows flavor) but that won’t happen until end of year 2007. If they are saying that NOW, then they still have a relationship with Microsoft and Reporting Services should be a part of that.

By end of calendar year 2007 reporting services will be huge. Now, don’t mistake me for a Microsoft advocate. They certainly screw up more than their fair share, but this is one product that is really right.

C’mon Cisco make something easy and fun to work with would ya?

John Chambers and the Magical “Baseball and Technolgy” Demo.

Uhm, John, put the crack pipe down please.

First you talk about all these wonderful technologies. These vaporware things running across the ‘Network’, which is now the ‘platform’, and on the 2nd day; we Networker attendees couldn’t check our schedules or reliably log into the provided wireless network. That’s a big oops.

The entire Networkers scheduling infrastructure was down in the Hilton end of the conference before and after the keynote. *Most* of them were down in the Conference center as well too. Now granted this was an impressive thing to pull off, but this is “The here and now”, and that’s what the 10,000 attendees are hear to deal with, and Cisco and the partners failed to deliver that at the conference.

Mr. Chambers started off strong, explaining how Cisco was right in 1996 when nobody else was. So basically we need to listen to them now. Setting the stage so that when the demo commenced and we watched all the nonsense, we could reflect back and say, “Well, they were right 10 years ago, so they must be right now”. But now isn’t 10 years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot right in what Cisco is doing. Being hell bent on video though, just drives me crazy. I’m happy for you Mr. Chambers that you find video conferencing a great productivity enhancement. That for you it’s a wonderful tool. But most of the world doesn’t want it, and/or isn’t ready for that just yet. A lot of people just don’t want to be seen. Especially when dealing with strangers. But that’s another point and I don’t want to get off topic.

This crazy demo…

Let me set the stage first. In order to bring into focus something we can all relate too, Cisco chose baseball.

It starts out with a guy (baseball is a guy thing), who’s on his way to a game, but he’s late of course… But since all devices are now part of the ‘platform’, and assuming since he already has tickets to the game, and magically MLB knows this, he can start getting the streaming video of the game directly to his magical Jack Bauer CTU issued PDA. (but these are mainstream now so don’t worry, everyone has one.)

While watching this video of course, he doesn’t run off the road, or crash, or anything else because it’s perfectly safe to drive and watch TV. On the way he picks up his buddy and they head to a restaurant. (They are running late but what they hey, it’s a demo). While in the restaurant, they just happen to have a table in front of this HUGE High definition TV screen. On the table is a Cisco phone or device of some sort. He logs in and decides to have the screen emulate that he’s in a Sky-box. Magically he’s getting a High-definition feed of the game he’s supposed to be attending but isn’t there yet.

Pretty cool eh? No. The cost of this would make that $50 steak cost $250. I don’t want that. Of course, that screen will have advertising all over it too. User specific, personalized advertising, because as we learned yesterday that TIVO is evil. Yet Cisco has its own TIVO device(Another pos coming later).

After they eat, assuming there’s still some time left in the game, they make it to the stadium, whereby his $99, everyone has one PDA, with built in RFID changes LCD displays as he walks through out the ballpark changing advertising that’s targeted to him.

He decides he wants to upgrade his seats and meanders to a kiosk who, through the power of RFID, and WiFi, knows who he is and where he’s supposed to be sitting and just how many tickets he has. It magically offers him some alternatives, as well as the opportunity to buy some fan paraphernalia. Joe end user upgrades his tickets and used his credit card information already on file with the vendor, in this case MLB or the team at hand. The tickets are automatically updated to his PDA/Cell phone. (remember he’s still watching the game on this device if he wants to be). I assume it has its own nuclear power plant that comes with it.

When they get to their seats, there is someone waiting with food and popcorn, etc, because they ordered that on their way to the seats. (OK).

But in front of them because of course they upgraded to high end seats is a Micro Laptop or nice handheld (an upgrade from the standard PDA) that lets them score the game, and get replays on demand, etc, etc.

Better than that, they can surf the web, watch movies, email the replays (with the consent of MLB I assume), shop on-line or do what ever. Basically the ballpark becomes an super-sized internet-café with a baseball optimized front end for those actually interested in the game.

Nice, until someone spills a beer on it, drops it, breaks it, etc. etc.

This is the future no doubt. Chambers is right. We’ve all seen Star Wars, Blade Runner and every other Sci-Fi movie out there. We will get there. But It’s not happing during my IT career.

First, generally speaking I can count on both hands the number of people at a ballpark who give a crap these days about keeping score. Those that do keep score, don’t want to do it on anything electronic.

Second, you have to consider the consumer these days. The generation that will use this type of technology and will easily accept it, hasn’t been born yet.

The current consumers, the baby boomers, the ones out there in droves are my parents, and my parents parents don’t want this stuff. They are just now embracing cell phones, and they don’t use any of the stuff that’s on them other than basic call functionality.

They can barely use their digital cameras, and attaching photos to an email is a major ordeal.

The worst part about all of this is the software, the end user software is where Cisco sucks the most. They are great at building robust, back end solutions. Things you can burn into hardware, but when it comes to end user experience, they simply don’t have a clue. Just look at any of the administration software for any of the devices. It’s getting better sure. But give me a break John.

There are so many holes in your demo, that I’m embarrassed for you. We looked and talked about this stuff in the 90’s with Apple technology and the Newton. None of what you’re proposing or talking about today wasn’t talked about then. Certainly Cisco networks can enable it in the future and that’s great. But we all work in the here and now.

Video has its place there is no doubt about that. But it’s not necessary to be shoved everywhere. Voice/audio is adequate in most situations. One thing we consumers hate is being pushed into things we don’t need or want.

Cisco is clearly beating the Video drum, loud and clear. But I think you’re way ahead of the curve, especially when it comes to portable devices.

As for Cisco direction? How about cleaning up the messes in the current products like the voice products before we go and hang a bunch of other less than ideal systems off of it?

Tags: 2006, Cisco, Cisco_Networkers, Demo, Demo_Ware, IT, John_Chambers, Opinion, Startups, Vaporware