walking the dog

Where I live, it is still small enough that many people with dogs get out with them in the morning and evening and walk them. This is good for the people and for the dogs and, in general I don't have a problem with it.

I do, however, take issue with the portion that don't clean up after the dogs. You see, in our area, there is no law or ordinance requiring the owner of the dog(s) to clean up the poop. I actually don't have a problem with that either. We have enough laws already. There are those, that would walk their dog on public property and not clean up after it. I do have a huge problem with this.

You're probably thinking that I contradicted myself. However, I did not. You see, there is an assumption, among self absorbed idiots, that if there is no law prohibiting an act, that it is ok to do it. This kind of thinking results in more laws. The person walking the dog assumes that its ok to leave the dog's crap there because there is no law that prohibiting the action.

So, let me help the self absorbed idiots of the world understand something about the rest of us. No law is going to stop us from running over you in a vehicle! Surprising? The law does not stop us from putting a foot up your a$$, either. More surprising? What then, you may ask, does stop us from doing these things? --We actually recognize that these things are not the right things to do, even though they might help you understand the error of your idiot ways.

For those of you who walk your dogs in public and clean up after them, because it is the right thing to do, I salute and earnestly thank you.

For those of you who don't clean up after your dogs, get a bigger freakin' yard and walk your dog there, there is nothing, short of incredible self restraint, actually stopping us from removing you from this world. That dog and all that it excrements is your responsibility!

Small Business and IT Consulting

Many small offices in my area (and I can only assume, across the country) spend good money after bad yearly due to misconceptions. I have done consulting work for small business' for years and the most common mistake made is failing to make the distinction between recommendations, quotes, and consultation.

Recommendations

We'll start with recommendations. Recommendations are what you get from your guy (you know your guy, everyone has a guy.) You can get them from the local Staples/Office Depot/Circuit City customer representative. You can even get recommendations from your parents. Recommendations can be helpful when you are searching for simple solutions to simple problems. This includes computer problems, such as which digital camera to buy or what photo printer you should purchase to replace the one that just died. Recommendations are a great tool in the small business' arsenal, not because of it's effectiveness, but for it's price. Recommendations are usually free, but this is no way to solve a complex problem or issue.

Quotes

Quotes are, for some reason beyond my comprehension, somewhat tricky. You get a quote, when you know what you need. Now, you might think you know what you need. But, do you really? Do you know what you need, or do you just know what you need to do? The truth is that many small business' don't actually know what they need. They do however, know what they need to do. Think of quotes as an online store cart, you have to know what you need before you can add it to the cart. Quotes are an excellent way to keep costs down. However, this only works when you already know what you need as well as what you need to do.

Consultation

Consultation is a necessity when a small business knows what it needs to do, but not what is necessary to do it. Consultation is often confused with requesting quotes. I cannot count how many times I was asked to provide a quote for equipment for a small business and the business didn't have the details of what was to be quoted. In fact, in one particular instance a potential client got quite bent out of shape when I failed to provide a quote for that very reason. The small business wanted several workstations with software and a server-based network. The workstation and server specifications were layed out like a multiple choice test. The server OS was not even chosen ahead of time. Furthermore, it was expected that all make and model numbers of individual parts that made up the workstations and server were to be provided as well. A quote, in this instance, is clearly not what was being requested. This small business needed consultation before requesting quotes.

So, what does it all mean, Basil? (obscure Austin Power's quote)

When you choose the wrong approach to solve a problem you, in general, waste time and resources that could have been better spent elsewhere. Don't expect quotes to solve complex issues for your small business. Come to think of it, don't lay it on a customer representative or your parents, either. If you do, you're likely to be, not only, disappointed, but much poorer in the end. Take advantage of the consultation services of information technology specialists. Many consultants, myself included, are perfectly willing to consult, provide the necessary information and education, and help the client through the quotation process without actually bidding on the quote itself. This helps keep the consultant somewhat impartial.

Does this mean you should call a consultant every time you need to replace a workstation? Of course, not! However, if you're replacing your server and/or several workstations or considering a change of software/OS platform, it is probably a good call to make. Because you are paying for a service, the consultant will take to time to help identify your needs, educate you, and find software and hardware to satisfy those needs. This kind of "hand-holding" can reap great results, in saved time and money.

national sales tax

I believe that taxes are both necessary and ridiculous. In a free-market system that is consumer driven, an income tax is not only the single biggest economy buster, it is the most complex and inefficient way of collecting taxes.

I don't believe that we should tax the rich because they have lots of money. I want to have lots of money one day, and when I do, I don't want to be taxed more because I do. But, something that most people don't think about when it comes to taxes and the rich, is that the rich already have the money. Income tax doesn't tax you on the money you already have! It does, however, tax you on the money you earn. So, lets think about this -- if you are poor or middle-class, you likely don't have alot of savings, so you get taxed on a larger percentage of your money, because a larger percentage of your money is recently earned. In fact, if you have no savings at all, you get taxed on 100% of your money (not taking into account deductions and credits, which rich people get more of anyway.) That sounds fair, doesn't it! The truth of the matter is that the rich will always pay more monetary taxes than the remainder of the population, and will always pay taxes on a lower percentage of the money they have. I would much rather pay a national sales tax, exclusively.

In a scenario where I only pay sales tax, I can better save. I can, for instance, decide to delay purchasing a new car. By doing so, I not only save the tax, but I also potentially make interest on the money I didn't spend. The rich buy nice cars, far more expensive than I the vehicles I purchase. They will be paying more taxes than I do. However, that will be their choice. In a national sales tax scenario, do you really think that Jay Leno is going to buy a Yugo because it will save him on taxes? Really?

There is the corporate area to consider, as well. You know, those big, greedy, evil corporations that get all those tax breaks! Guess what, when expenses (including taxes) go up for a corporation, so does the product price. The consumer pays all corporate expenses, including taxes, or the corporation goes out of business. So, even if the consumer prices don't go down (directly due to tax liability being lifted), they will more than likely stay at the current level longer than they would have otherwise.

What about illegal aliens? They are not just people, they are consumers. Even those who work for cash, would pay through the national sales tax. What about the seedy underbelly of our society, most (if not all) of which deal in cash only. They too would contribute through a national sales tax.

Folks, a national sales tax, at worst, would only be as bad as what we already have. It couldn't possibly be worse. Furthermore, in a consumer-based society such as ours, the national sales tax is likely to cut-back on government spending (90% of IRS employees can go to the private sector), lower individual tax payouts (you decide how much tax you pay, by your spending habits), and raise the federal tax collections (due to fewer, if any, loopholes and the entire population contributing.)

I fail to see how what we have to loose and there seems to be so much to gain!

email and stupid signatures

Heh... So I get to work one mourning (not morning) and check my email. Well I find, yet another email intended for some organization in Atlanta. My employer nor my office are in Atlanta, but the server name for the organization in question is very close to ours. In fact, they are identical, but the 2 adjacent, transposed letters. I have been receiving a good number of emails intended for this organization, over the past few months. I had been, simply notifying both parties, the intended and the sender. This message, however, was different. It had one of those notices at the bottom. You know the type with "legalese" that says you must digitally fold, spindle, mutilate and otherwise erase the email, if you are not the intended recipient.

--Of course, I was not the intended recipient, in this case.

So, I thought about the situation. Here I am, a guy running a server for an organization. The server is receiving, through no fault of it's/my own, email after email intended for a different server altogether. I have been nicely notifying both parties as to the problem, in each instance. Out of the blue I get an email with, what would appear to be, confidential information attached and a note in the body telling any and all unintended recipients what they should, must, can, or cannot do.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight... I don't think so. I have seen these types email signatures before and chuckled each time. Lets look at a scenario. Shall we?

the case:

So, here's the deal... You call your accountant, and say -- "Accountant! I need those W2s!" The accountant says -- "We just finished them (cough) and we'll mail them out to you." "No good," you say. "I need them now. Email them."

the problem:

You, the customer, need information from the accountant. This information is both sensitive and confidential. The accountant has to email this information to you. Email is not secure and, without some sort of protection, is no way to transport such information.

reasons the information will go out the wrong way:

• The accountant won't spend the time to do it right. (lazy and stupid)
• The accountant won't spend the money to do it right. (tight and stupid)
• The IT guy says that it's not worthy of his time. (lazy, pompous, and stupid)
• The lawyer says, "Just put 'THIS' at the end of the email." (just plain stupid)
  

the problem with this type of notice in an email:

• Legal language of this nature at the end of a message does not actually protect the information.
• Legal language of this nature at the end of a message doesn't have "a snowball's chance in hell" of being enforceable.
• Legal language at the beginning of a message only has "a snowball's chance in hell" of being enforceable.
• Sensitive information is about to be placed on to the internet's equivalent of a FREAKIN' POSTCARD!

real solutions:

• Get compression software that has encryption capabilities and use it!
• Get Adobe Acrobat and use the password/encryption features.
  
• Double check your recipient email addresses before letting them fly.

Placing a notice in the email IS NOT A SOLUTION! If your lawyer gave you one and said it would be fine, fire him and get a new one! (stupid advice is dangerous)


And so, we come to my canned response to mis-addressed emails that contain warnings about what I can and cannot do with the information therein.

"Sending an unencrypted email is like sending a postcard through the USPS, it can be read at any point during the journey. You wouldn't put confidential information on a postcard with a note at the end stating that the information, that was just read, is only intended for the recipient and that any use or dissemination of the information is prohibited. So, don’t do it with an email. When you send confidential information, without password protection or encryption, you are telling the recipient that it wasn’t important enough to protect. If the information isn’t worth protecting with a password or encryption, then it’s certainly not worth the bother of unenforceable language, of any quantity or quality. If your IT people cannot help you secure your information for email transport, then fire them and find people that can. If your lawyers told you that a disclaimer at the bottom of the email was enough, fire them and hire new lawyers, preferably lawyers that won’t lie to you."

-- Copyright 2006 by Jamie Forbes, who reserves all rights to the quoted material.

Welcome to my world...

My hope is -- to fill this blog with information and thoughts that might help, guide, and even make people think. Feel free to browse and glean what you can from my ramblings.

The Asylum

Congratulations! You have just left the it... the asylum, that is. Be forewarned! If you choose to leave this little digital isle of sanity, you re-enter the asylum.

Should you actually need a reminder of why you left the asylum in the first place, just think about this quote:

"It seemed to me that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane."

- Wonko The Sane
(So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish)