February 27, 2003

A manager at this electrical utility tells database admin pilot fish that he needs the last three years' worth of data on the company's high-voltage transmission system, and he needs it fast.

"We have the data in a series of flat files on our system," says fish. "The problem is extracting and reformatting the data into a useful format."

With only a few days to complete the task, fish goes to his boss and asks for authorization to buy some off-the-shelf software. He figures he's got a good shot at it -- the package he has in mind will let him handle the task in a fraction of the time it will take to do it manually, and it costs only $200.

But the boss turns him down. The company's new budget year just started, boss tells fish, and there's no budget for this software. But I can put it in next year's budget.

"That won't be for a whole calendar year, and the data request needs to be completed in the next couple of days," fish points out.

I understand, boss says -- and then he sends fish on his way to start writing the programs to reformat the data.

"After many long hours of programming and testing, I finally finish the project on time," fish grumbles. But the manager who requested the data is happy, fish moves on to other projects, and life goes on.

For about 18 months, in fact. "Then one day the boss comes into my office with the software package that I requested for that data reformatting project," fish says.

"At first, I couldn't even remember what he was talking about. But soon the memories came flooding back. I couldn't believe that he really meant that he'd put it in the next year's budget, and now here he is with the program as promised."

"And I'm left wondering what I'm going to do with this program that I needed desperately 18 months ago, but that now is a non-issue. So I just let it sit there on my desk."

But the boss is clearly proud of being able to deliver the goods for his people. A week later, he sticks his head into fish's office and asks, "How's that program working out for you?"

February 24, 2003

Next Thursday at the Latest

Manager making a trip overseas wants to take copies of all company resources -- manuals, forms, everything available -- so the remote office can use them too. On a Friday afternoon, 12 hours before her flight, she asks pilot fish to copy the entire contents of the server to a CD. But that's over 460GB of data, fish says. Blank look, so fish tries again: It would require creating about 900 CDs. "Oh, OK," says manager. "So, by Wednesday then?" Read More

February 25, 2003

Shark Tank: Then he could have re-ignored it all over again

At this small government agency, major changes to the network must run a whole gantlet of approvals before the switch is thrown, says an IT contractor pilot fish who works there. Read More

February 26, 2003

Shark Tank: The Air Force Way

As this pilot fish sits in on the weekly staff meeting for this Air Force base, one subordinate mentions to the wing commander that there's an important luncheon coming up in a matter of days, and he's having lots of trouble informing all the people who should know about it. Read More

February 28, 2003

Shark Tank: Why security people get gray

President of this big energy company lives a few miles from the company's downtown headquarters and wants to be able to work from home, reports a sysadmin pilot fish. Read More

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