Mountains
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Modernize THIS!
I have spent an inordinate amount of time getting my computer to be useful at my new position. This is a surprising revelation, given that a central part of my role is to develop new software and employ new approaches to science, collaboration, data analysis, and automation. These are all things I'm really excited about. I sort of assumed that "open research environment" meant that researchers could, within reason, configure their computers how they see fit.
This is, of course, simply too much to expect from a federal organization.
IT, and the freaking huge agency that my huge agency is a part of considers computers as boxes that deliver email, intranet forms (via lotus), and run various microsoft products to bureaucrats so they can move money between accounts and sign forms. As a result, a massive list of changes to the default windows installation is applied to every box, be it windows, mac, or linux, under the guidelines described by the FDCC (Federal Desktop Core Configuration). This list generally makes the computers more secure, moves account control to active directory, and enforces a strong deliniation between user and administrative actions on each computer. (something that windows 2000 and XP did not do well out of the box). The upshot of this is that computers do not go down very much due to people downloading virii with their Lady Gaga mp3s, because they can't install file sharing apps, and they are relatively immune to easy infection vectors.
The downside is that researchers, programmers, and engineers are effectively nerfed from their computers. Given the number of actual research scientists in a nominally scientifically oriented organization, you would think there would be a coherent policy on this, but that is not the case. There are numerous exceptions that can be granted via a maze of signitures and paperwork.
I do not think IT has any idea of what engineers and scientists do. I have nagging fear that people on the outside have vague thoughts of test tubes and slide rules.
Thus, I have to beg and plead for administrative access to my machines. This makes it very hard to try new things to see if they help solve problems better than the old things. Explaining to a helpdesk person what Mendeley, Zotero, or Simion is and "why it is needed" is a major waste of time.
My heart hit the floor when i called the helpdesk to ask them to install Labview. "What is labview?" the tech asked, incredulously. Labview must sound like a webcam program. I have had a lot of explaining to do just to be able to start to work.
The paperwork has been filed for administrative access to my desktop. Hopefully, this will lubricate the rails a bit.
It's a brave new world, kids.
This is, of course, simply too much to expect from a federal organization.
IT, and the freaking huge agency that my huge agency is a part of considers computers as boxes that deliver email, intranet forms (via lotus), and run various microsoft products to bureaucrats so they can move money between accounts and sign forms. As a result, a massive list of changes to the default windows installation is applied to every box, be it windows, mac, or linux, under the guidelines described by the FDCC (Federal Desktop Core Configuration). This list generally makes the computers more secure, moves account control to active directory, and enforces a strong deliniation between user and administrative actions on each computer. (something that windows 2000 and XP did not do well out of the box). The upshot of this is that computers do not go down very much due to people downloading virii with their Lady Gaga mp3s, because they can't install file sharing apps, and they are relatively immune to easy infection vectors.
The downside is that researchers, programmers, and engineers are effectively nerfed from their computers. Given the number of actual research scientists in a nominally scientifically oriented organization, you would think there would be a coherent policy on this, but that is not the case. There are numerous exceptions that can be granted via a maze of signitures and paperwork.
I do not think IT has any idea of what engineers and scientists do. I have nagging fear that people on the outside have vague thoughts of test tubes and slide rules.
Thus, I have to beg and plead for administrative access to my machines. This makes it very hard to try new things to see if they help solve problems better than the old things. Explaining to a helpdesk person what Mendeley, Zotero, or Simion is and "why it is needed" is a major waste of time.
My heart hit the floor when i called the helpdesk to ask them to install Labview. "What is labview?" the tech asked, incredulously. Labview must sound like a webcam program. I have had a lot of explaining to do just to be able to start to work.
The paperwork has been filed for administrative access to my desktop. Hopefully, this will lubricate the rails a bit.
It's a brave new world, kids.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
My Life, Preserved in Formaldehyde
There is no way to mince words: New Mexico Tech ate my alumni account.
It will soon disappear down the gullet of the bureaucracy in an attempt to prevent litigation by various copyright holders and to attempt to preserve the schools stunted cash flow.
Last night I deployed a strategic rsync command and saved everything to my hard drive, and burnt a copy to CD. I hope to bring it back to life somewhere else. But the time for that is not now. I debated about interim solutions for several weeks, until the last minute, really. I ultimately settled on using blogger until I can get my web hosting situation ironed out. While I would really prefer VM or dedicated hosting solution, the transition to work from grad school has decimated our finances.
Things may be here for some time, unfortunately.
It is so bland, with it's cutesy AJAX editor neatly beaming every character off into some abyss even as a type this. It feels like every other blog out there. I really don't like that.
I like emacs, and perl, and the security of knowing every little bit of what it does.
It will soon disappear down the gullet of the bureaucracy in an attempt to prevent litigation by various copyright holders and to attempt to preserve the schools stunted cash flow.
Last night I deployed a strategic rsync command and saved everything to my hard drive, and burnt a copy to CD. I hope to bring it back to life somewhere else. But the time for that is not now. I debated about interim solutions for several weeks, until the last minute, really. I ultimately settled on using blogger until I can get my web hosting situation ironed out. While I would really prefer VM or dedicated hosting solution, the transition to work from grad school has decimated our finances.
Things may be here for some time, unfortunately.
It is so bland, with it's cutesy AJAX editor neatly beaming every character off into some abyss even as a type this. It feels like every other blog out there. I really don't like that.
I like emacs, and perl, and the security of knowing every little bit of what it does.
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