[Possible spoilers for several TV series below]

I think it’s a problem of expectations. Good programmes are continually advertised and hyped. American programmes are reviewed, trailed and fanfic’d for months before we see them in the UK. Eventually, my expectations are so high that I’m almost sure to be disappointed. A series will be cancelled just as I’m beginning to enjoy it, a favourite character will leave, writing will decline, or the show will eventually become bogged down in over-complicated story arcs or characters’ personal problems which detract from the original concept. The X-Files, Spooks, Alias, Seven Days, Andromeda, Without a Trace and West Wing all suffered from one or more of these problems, and while they might not be an issue for most viewers, they have often been enough to make me turn off for good. Of course it’s unreasonable to expect that scripts are always perfect, or that actors stay with a show forever, but I’m an unreasonable person! I like things to stay the same. I want House to diagnose bizarre medical conditions and be mean to people every week; I don’t want him to engage in job-terminating wars with investors and police officers. Life has enough unpleasant surprises without spending my time worrying about what’s going to happen to people I don’t know, people who aren’t real, but who I like and sympathise with regardless.

Unfortunately, even if I do get involved with a series, sooner or later, it’s likely to do something which will really annoy me. I stopped watching all of the CSI flavours at the beginning of the most recent series of each: the enormously stilted relationship between Mac and the English woman in CSI: New York, the almost vomit-inducing thought of Gil and Sara romantically involved in CSI: Las Vegas, and worst of all, the now unbearable performance of David Caruso in CSI: Miami forced me to desert programmes I have enjoyed (and collected on DVD) since they began; and the character of Director Jenny Shepard has been an increasingly grating presence in the most recent series of NCIS (another series I have collected on DVD). I love police procedurals, but this insistence on adding pointless storylines about characters’ personal lives is irritating and detracts from the purpose of the show (solve crime!).

There are a few programmes that I have enjoyed though - I tend to buy anything I like a lot on DVD for repeat viewing, and because it’s usually good value in terms of viewing time:

• Doctor Who is a perennial favourite. We can argue about the relative quality between episodes or series if we want, but it’s always been unmissable viewing for me;
• Torchwood
  Episode quality varied in the first series, and I sometimes found the endless sex-related storylines tiresome, but it definitely has promise. Hopefully, Jack will have the monkey off his back a bit in the second series, after resolving his doctor issues. Won’t be buying either of these on DVD ’til the BBC comes up with a slightly less ridiculous pricing scheme, though;
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent. A brilliant procedural drama, which focuses the attention on how the crimes are committed and solved. Just bought Series 1 on DVD - 22 lovely episodes;
• The Invisible Man. Two series were made before cancellation; I bought the first on DVD, the second is only available through other channels;
• The Professionals. A pair of cops, car chases, gun-fights and an irascible superior - these are a few of my favourite things. The first 6 episodes have been ace, though the different DVD versions are confusing, and the picture quality isn’t always great;
• Bugs. Loved it when I was a kid, love it now. Available on DVD, but I haven’t been able to re-watch the cliffhanger final episode yet;
• Supernatural. A combination of spookiness and investigative work, with very little teen angst. What’s not to like?
• Firefly Possibly the best thing I’ve seen in the last 2 years. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched this series;
• Spooks I know I said it annoys me, but there’s a sweet spot somewhere, probably in the fourth series, where it gets back into the espionage thing with gusto. Completist that I am, I’ve been buying the series one at a time, waiting ’til the inevitable annoyance fades to a level where I can persuade myself to shell out for the next box set. Oh, and I also want to be Ruth;
• Hustle. I avoided it on TV, because of the hype, then caught the last episode of the third series on repeat, and had to see the whole thing. I capriciously went off it again, sight unseen, when Mickey left. Because of above-mentioned completeness issue, I’ll probably get Series 4 on DVD;
• Biker Mice from Mars. Don’t laugh - this was my best thing when I was wee. I’m pretty sure I wanted to marry Throttle. Some lovely person has put episodes up on YouTube.

I’ve also recently got (but not watched) Stargate Atlantis and Tru Calling. Things still on my wishlist (for now) include more Professionals, The Sentinel, Once a Thief and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

1. The How-To Geek
2. SunbeltBlog
3. The Glass Is Too Big
4. Behind the Counter
5. Boing Boing
6. I Can Has Cheezburger?
7. I Guess I’m Floating
8. Scientist, Interrupted
9. Download Squad
10. SANS Internet Storm Center

I haven’t included comics - if I had, this would look pretty different. A list of all the blogs I read on a (semi-) regular basis, including comics is on del.icio.us, or as an OPML file.

I set my alarm for 6.30 every morning, on the pretence that I’m going to get up and do things, but really so I can doze in that lovely half-awake, half-asleep state for 30 minutes or so. If I’m being really lazy, I can stretch it out til about 7.30, but I usually drag myself out of bed around the radio DJ plays a daily showtune (they get stuck in my head. It is bad). Why showtunes? I have no idea, but they’re sufficient motivation to get me up, and they’re on at the same time every morning. Except this morning. I was halfway into the shower before I realised it was 6.45. Even then, the shock of being ambulant so early convinced me that someone had changed the time on my clock radio, my watch and my mobile phone, and I had to stay awake until the newsreader provided the time.

Unfortunately, I have now conditioned myself to get up when I hear the word “showtune”; this works better than an actual alarm, which I can sleep right through, but a rendition of a song from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (the most annoying thing I have subjected my ears to) brings me awake, upright and scrabbling for the volume control in about 0.2 seconds. So, hopefully, this is just a temporary aberration, and everything will be back to normal tomorrow. Just in case, I’m setting 3 alarm clocks.

I arrived at work to find an email from a manager which said, “Someone has left and someone else is going away for quite a long time. You and your colleagues are now responsible for their work (which has nothing to do with your own, but will be a valuable on-the-job training exercise). You have 3 days to pick their brains before they leave.” I wasn’t too concerned about this initially, partly because I like learning new things, but more importantly, because it isn’t going to affect me on a day-to-day basis. However, one of my colleagues (who will be directly affected) saw things differently, and circulated a terse email to the manager, several other management staff, - and intentionally or unintentionally - all of us, which basically boiled down to:

1. It’s not in our job description (I know because I helped write it);
2. We don’t get paid for it, and the staff member normally responsible gets paid better than us;
3. It’s not remotely like what we actually do, except that machinery and electricity are involved in both cases;
4. We are pretty busy already;
5. We need proper training, otherwise it won’t be long before someone either breaks something expensive or loses a finger, and we’re on holiday for the next week;
6. It’s really not a valuable or relevant skill;
7. It is SO not in our job description.

Which got me thinking. I’m not quite in the same situation as the others regarding (1) and (2), but I would definitely agree with (4) and (5). I arrived this morning to find nearly 100 of the machines I am responsible for have been upgraded to Office 2007, with no forward notice. Now, being the geek I am, I’ve been using Office for a little while at home - in fact I’m writing this in Word 2007 – but I am in no way prepared to support users on it. I only discovered the upgrade had been done because the minute I walked in the door, some guy grabbed me to ask how to crop images in PowerPoint. After about 10 seconds of brain-not-engaged, I went, holy cow, how is this guy running 2007? After 30 seconds, I went, arrrrggh, upgrade! It took ten minutes of random clicking before the guy found the Crop tool himself. We went to a training session last week which was 45 minutes of PowerPoint presentations and hands-off demos, and I haven’t had time to go through the training material yet.

Shortly afterwards I did get a phone-call from someone on the Apps team, but it was mainly about a few machines which hadn’t imaged. I ended up having to initialise the re-image on one machine manually, which took most of the morning, because it isn’t near a phone, so I had to phone, note down instructions, hang-up, complete instructions, note results, report results, repeat ad infinitum. Interestingly, I managed to send one machine into an infinite rebooting loop after adding a file containing IP information to be picked up by the imaging tool. I’m reasonably sure this was due to the file not saving correctly if it was named when created, and it worked when I created an empty file, entered the information, then saved and named it.

Several more hours were filled with various minor tasks that always have to be done post-upgrade: license authentication, checking that applications still work, figuring out which of the 5 possible boot disks actually works, and what the other ones do.

I was just about to escape to my nice, quiet afternoon shift at my second centre, when the person in whose department I am physically based caught me. Apparently a third department wants to take over one of my rooms since their usual office is going to be next to a demolition site. No indication when this will take place, exactly who will be using the room, for what, or for how long; and the memo hadn’t been sent to anyone in my department either. It’s not really a problem at the minute, but if the room is still unavailable in September when term begins, I can see it becoming a serious issue in terms of capacity. A more immediate concern, which was brought up today, is how I am going to get the large ceiling-hung sign which announces my presence (subtle!) down, and back up again in a room where the ceiling is twice as high. Not only this, but the building is swiftly becoming an almost impassable obstacle course because of the summer renovation program.

The thing is, despite all of these apparent problems, I had a great day today. It’s been so quiet recently that I’ve found myself quite bored. Today I got to solve problems, help people out, and learn some new techy things; I really enjoyed it. I thrive on having something interesting and useful to do. I hope there are a few more days like these to keep me on my toes through the summer!

Out of 39 authors, only one is woman, and she’s a co-author of one chapter.

There is some debate about whether this low number is due to relatively few women being considered as leading programmers (and therefore few being asked to contribute) or whether the problem is an overall shortage of women in the technical - and more specifically, programming - fields.

The post, and the comments that followed, made me think about my own experiences as a women in a technical field. I graduated with a Computing degree in 2005 from a good university. Six other women graduated in a class of 42. The course was focused on the Internet, rather than ‘hard’ Computer Science, but we studied the main elements of CS (Computer Architecture, Networks, DB etc.) with a strong emphasis on programming. I had previously studied Computer Science at a single-sex school; 9% (11 of 120 pupils) studied Computing at A-Level and three of us went on to a Computing-related course at university. Several others went to courses in Physics and Mathematics.

There were ten women in my university class when it began. Based on conversations I had with other students, half of the female students had no significant previous experience with Computer Science (programming, developing websites etc.). 70-80% of the male students did have previous experience, had run serious websites, personal servers and programmed outside of class. As I mentioned above, seven of the female students graduated. One failed, and two dropped out. Around half of the women who graduated with me intended to pursue a technical career; I would estimate that 80-90% of the male graduates went into technical fields or further technical study. Three of the twelve teaching staff were female, and one left after my first year. All three of the lab staff were male. In the university’s main IT department, one of the six Helpdesk staff was female.

After university, I applied for a number of graduate programmes with large companies on the computer science track. Often, I was the only female interviewee. After being unsuccessful on a number of occasions, I was lucky enough to get a job in the public sector which I really enjoy. However, I am the only woman with my job description in the organisation. The eight other members of staff with my job title (5 full-time, 3 part-time) are male. There are other female members of staff in the department.

I have taken 2 programming courses at a local college since graduating. In each, I was the only woman in a class of around a dozen. On the MCP Supporting and Troubleshooting WinXPPro course I am currently on, I am one of two women in a class of fifteen.

I often attend meetings of my local MTUG (Microsoft Technology User Group) at which I am the only female audience member. I am certainly the only regular female attendee (I have seen perhaps three other women on one or two occasions) in the course of around 20 meetings over 2 years. Two of the speakers have been women. Although I am a member of the BCS (British Computer Society), I don’t attend any of their events, which include football matches, golf tournaments and dinner dances, as I find it slightly intimidating and overwhelmingly male (call me a coward if you want!) Three of the four computer magazines I read regularly have no female writers, and going by the Letters pages and forums, an overwhelmingly male readership (occasionally with rather dubious opinions).

I have never felt particularly discriminated against, except in one particular area. Part of my job involves calling and meeting with service technicians from major computer vendors when one of our computers needs repaired. During the initial troubleshooting phone calls (always with male techs), I sometimes get the feeling that I am being patronised and talked down to. I am often required to run through a basic troubleshooting script, despite the fact that I already know the problem and the solution, where male colleagues have simply described what they need and arranged for a replacement part. On more than one occasion, I have been asked repeatedly if I’m comfortable with computer terminology, having already indicated that I’ve taken the machine apart. On two occasions, the service tech has ignored my suggested solution (having come across the same problem several times previously), resulting in repeat visits by the engineer. Speaking to the (always male) call-out engineers, I have been given over-simplified lectures on computer basics which I have mainly found amusing: “Something inside the computer isn’t working, and the start button is broken” “So, you’re saying the I/O panel’s shorted?” “Uh…. yes.” Perhaps I am just being over-sensitive, but it does seem that some people believe that women are less technically proficient, despite any evidence provided to the contrary.

Although I would be very happy to see more women in technical fields, I’m certainly not advocating a policy of positive discrimination for women. I think that introducing more women, regardless of their level of skill, would be defeating the purpose. We need to prove that women can be service engineers and technicians and programmers, and we need to do it by being good at our jobs. We need to encourage more girls to study computer science, not by making it more ‘girly’, but by encouraging those who are interested in it already and giving them the confidence and opportunities to pursue their interests.

I was actually quite impressed with Microsoft’s approach, or at least the presentation of it we were given. While I’m sure any self respecting IT professional knows all this already, it was new to me and I was interested to hear what Microsoft plans to do with application and UI virtualisation. They’re doing something quite clever with Softgrid, having acquired Softricity last year. Softgrid allows applications to be packaged up and pushed down to locked down boxes and run without any installation. The applications a user is allowed are configured in Active Directory and this paves the way for individual users to get the programs they need without allowing them unnecessary privileges on the machine. I can see this being massively useful - no more re-creating disk images for each site or user group and no more problems with software not being deployed across the whole organisation (a problem we’re beginning to encounter with MS Office 2007) – just call the Systems team, and get the particular app enabled for that one user for as long as they need it on any computer they log into. There are some considerations. Pulling down applications has a bandwidth cost, and I’m not sure what the implications would be on a large, geographically spread out network like ours, with a fairly continuous stream of people logging in and out. With Softgrid, you can cache apps to the local machine for offline use, but again, if this is per profile, it may not alleviate matters much. Of course, there’s no limitation on how much virtualisation you can do. Installing some programs locally and virtualising others could still be worthwhile, although obviously you wouldn’t get the same value.

Everyone says that 2007 is the year virtualisation is really going to take off, and I think that could be the case. It’ll help if Microsoft manages to get their new technologies out on time, and it looks like the new Virtual Server with hypervisor could be out closer to Longhorn’s release, rather than the “up to 180 days after Longhorn” that’s been reported. The work that’s being done on Terminal Services and Virtual Server, along with the continued ramping up on features from Microsoft’s competitors could be what pushes virtualisation firmly into the mainstream.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a couple of virtual machines to play with.

Everyday, we encounter dozens of acquaintances and people we don’t know; walking down the street, over the phone, in shops and at work. They may only receive a few seconds of our attention, or we may not notice them at all, but the way we engage with (almost) strangers can have a major effect on our productivity, mood and the way we are perceived by others whether we require or provide service.

1. Say thank you. Say it often and with feeling. Get into the habit of saying it whenever someone does something for you, no matter how insignificant. Say it to the person who gives you directions, the guy you’ve just ordered takeaway from, the girl who’s holding the door open for you. Smile. Say it like you mean it. I’ve worked in customer service, one way or another, for eleven years now, and nothing annoys me more than someone who doesn’t say thank you, particularly when I’ve gone out of my way to help them. That isn’t just a personal quirk. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people mutter under their breath after an encounter with someone who doesn’t say thanks. It isn’t just a matter of being polite. We remember rudeness, we remember discourtesy, and we are less likely to do you a favour next time around.
2. Say please. A companion to the above. When you say thank you you probably should have already said please. The idea is the same. You are trying to convince someone to do something for you, and to do it to the best of their ability. This is more likely to happen if you ask nicely. When you use the word please, you are triggering their subconscious impulse to comply with your request. Think of it as hacking their brain, if you want. Smile when you say it. It’s a secret signal to others. Even when you are talking on the phone, your smile can be reflected in your voice.
3. Make eye contact. Eye contact is another one of those secret signals.
4. Offer to help. Do things for others. Be gracious. Make it clear that you’re happy to help out whenever needed. Follow through. Go above and beyond. Keep others informed. Ask questions. People like to talk about themselves. When actors wear prosthetic masks, they have to exagerate their facial expressions in order for normal expressions to appear on their ‘faces’. In the same way, when your job is to help people, you need to go the extra mile. Users or customers expect you to fix their problem, or answer their question, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could prevent the problem you know they’re going to have in 10 minutes, or answer the question they’re going to ask next?
5. Read these.
   • Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service It doesn’t matter if you’re not in software development: this article sets out a beautiful model of customer service on the support side. It’s what I dream about when I’m on my seventh call to ISP hell.
   • More Stupider User Tricks: IT horror stories Redux This article is the antithesis of the attitude you need for customer service. I don’t care if you think your customers are the stupidest thing since Homer Simpson; I don’t care if they hold a mouse upside down, or can’t seem to read the “NO EXIT” signs plastered over your entrance, you cannot let this attitude come out in your interactions with them. It’s called professionalism. I could devote a whole book (or at least a novelette) to my beliefs on this, and I wrote a post about it, but it boils down to this: if the article above sums up your views about your users or customers, you’re not the best person to help them.

In the end, it boils down to this. Some people will always be difficult, discourteous or downright impossible to help. If you’re lucky, those people will be in the minority. When dealing with one of those people, you need to decide whether to step up and handle their problem or whether you’re going to spend your (valuable) time irritating them, frustrating them and multiplying their rudeness back at them. Would you rather spend 20 minutes stalling someone because they’re annoying you or send them away satisifed after 5 minutes? I know which one I’d choose.

And so time moves on. The DUP will lose more support from its traditional base, and it’s been harmed by the desertion of long-term supporters like Jim Allister MEP, but may pick up some of the UUP vote, if it can tone down the hard-line rhetoric which has characterised it in the past. If it could keep a leash on some of its representatives which have given it an image problem with the mainstream in the past few years, it might do even better. I’m afraid it has to be said that Sinn Fein often come across better than the DUP. Jeffrey Donaldson, Nigel Dodds and, at times, Ian Paisley Jnr, are reactionary, brash, and often seem one step from frothing at the mouth. Lads, it works for the Reverend, but you just can’t carry it off. Gerry Kelly and Peter Robinson could be cut from the same cloth; they both remind me of wolves. Speaking of, Sinn Fein will continue to gain in the middle classes who’ve traditionally chosen the SDLP. The Social Democrats have been on a gentle downwards slope in the past few years, and I fear that will continue as Sinn Fein become more respectable, which saddens me as I’ve always had a soft spot for them. Along with the UUP, I think they will find it difficult to persuade voters that they are still relevant as the reasonable choice on either side of the political divide. Then there’s the tiny minority of the electorate who vote Alliance, more through hope than expectation. It’d be difficult to predict how they might go; they tend to campaign very locally, and do well in areas where issues are not sectarian-related. There are vast swathes of Northern Ireland where they would never pick up votes at the moment, but devolution could lead to less polarisation and more voters moving towards the centre, which may bode well for them. That would be a long way down the road, though.

Today was a day more for novelty than anything else. It’s been achievement enough to get all of them around a table; now let’s see if they can accomplish anything while they’re there.

TCP/IP
NetBIOS
NetBIOS Over TCP/IP [Where’s the sense in that?]
NetBEUI
Burrowing Owl
Jon Kabat-Zinn [Despite the name, not a convertee to obscure/self-founded religion]
Mindfulness
Vitamin D

I got waylaid by:

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy [Sounds weird, but probably beneficial.]
Bioavailability [This is a medical thing, not a therapy thing.]
First-pass Effect [Pharmacology, not football.]
Rail Transport
Gunboat Diplomacy [See also: Big-stick, dollar. Wonder which works best?]
Anglo-Zanzibar War [Generally considered the shortest war]
Three-Hundred & Thirty-Five Years War [Possibly the longest war? They forgot to sign a peace treaty.]
War of Jenkins’ Ear [Actually was about an ear. Didn’t know that.]
Railway Signalling
Armagh Rail Disaster
Detonator (Railway)
Maroon (Rocket)
Token (Railway Signalling) [System for single tracks, still in use eg. Grivan-Stranraer.]

I read at random:

Hugh le Despencer, 1st Baron le Despencer [Stub]
Play Action Pass [Didn’t understand this]
Hen [Disambiguation]
GCI Railcar [Stub]
CSX Corporation
Joanna of Chatillon
Kit Malthouse [Biography of Living Person, flagged for neutrality issues. Reads like a CV. May have a go at it.]

Imagine you hurt your leg while playing football; when you went to the doctor, would you say, “Doctor, I have a lesion on my anterior cruciate ligament“, or “Doctor, I hurt my knee, it really hurts, ow, ow, ow!” ? You cannot be expected to diagnose your problem and express it in the correct medical language, and you must allow your users the same courtesy. This afternoon, I had an experience with a user that utterly baffled me, because she didn’t communicate her problem in a way that made sense to me. This wasn’t her fault, but I was left feeling as if she and I were speaking completely different languages.

Most of the users I deal with are studying to be, or qualified as, nurses or doctors, and whilst I am sure that they are intelligent and knowledgeable in their fields, it must be said that many are extremely novice computer users. They receive only a brief training course at the beginning of the year, and are expected to take in a large amount of unfamiliar knowledge in only an hour or two, so it’s not unusual for me to be asked for help with things most knowledgeable users would consider very simple.

Today, a user reported that she couldn’t access her network drive when trying to attach a document to an email. She had tried it on several computers, and a second user reported the same problem, so I logged it with the Helpdesk, and let the two users know that they would be notified by email when the problem was resolved, which I hoped would be shortly. Twenty minutes later, the first user came and found me again.

“It’s not working. I just got this thing, this email, all this stuff in my inbox.” I didn’t understand. Had she received an email from the Helpdesk? We previously had a problem with users being sent hundreds of copies of the same email. It had been resolved, but could it have reoccurred? After her repeating the same information several times, and me none the wiser, I thought it would be simpler just to check her computer. In her inbox was a mailer daemon “Could not be delivered” email, complete with a load of gibberish at the bottom. I asked her to clarify again what she had done. She explained that she had sent the email with the attachment, and received this back.

“Are you sure this is the right email address?” I asked.

“Well, no,” she replied. “But I sent other emails to the right address, and they didn’t work either.” I check that the second address she has tried is correct. It is. On closer inspection, the gibberish in the auto-return mail is a representation of the .wps document she has attached. A clue! We don’t use the .wps (Microsoft Works) format. She says she sent that one from home, but she has tried to send from on-site too, and is having the same problems. At this point, I decided to ask her to try sending an email again “in case it’s working now”. In fact, I wanted her to walk through exactly what she was doing; it wouldn’t be the first time that a user has been completely stumped by our email program which bears no resemblance to Hotmail, Yahoo, or any of the other webmail services they have used previously. No-one likes to look stupid, and placing the problem on the system is much better than placing it on the user (Blow the dust out of the connector - one of the tricks of Product Support).

She went through the process of writing a new email, entering the address, and then adding a new attachment. She went to browse for the document, and, “There! That’s all I can get - the email isn’t working!” A dialog had popped up, warning her that her network drive wasn’t available. Which we both knew. The problem she was experiencing was that she didn’t connect ‘network drive unavailable’ to ‘document unavailable’. As far as she was concerned, she wasn’t able to successfully send an email; that was the problem, and she didn’t know the cause. The stage where she was failing was irrelevant to her, but crucial to me when trying to diagnose her problem. It’s not that she was stupid, simply that she was operating outside her area of expertise. Her problem was easily solved by showing her how to temporarily save a document to the desktop and attach it to her email from there. She learnt that help is available when her two hours of “Beginner’s IT” fails her; and I learnt that I shouldn’t make any assumptions about what users are or aren’t doing, and that it is much simpler just to ask them to show me.

Photo by freefoto.