Who's Your Data?

The State of Virginia is doing a great thing. They are pushing one of the nation’s most comprehensive telecommuting policies. I read their complete report from my home high above the city of Denver, Colorado, with a beautiful view of the Rocky Mountains out my window. A small plate of gruyere cheese and crackers was on the desk and a smooth glass of Sauvignon Blanc was nearby. The wine offered just a hint of the wild grasses of France. My smoking jacket was on the settee. As I finished the report I noticed it was time to take a break and enjoy the Cohiba given to me by a friend from a recent visit to Cuba. Not bad for 10 a.m. on a Wednesday morning.

The subject of work habits came up last week while we were taping a show on WFED Radio for airing in April. One of the panel members said that engineers east of the Mississippi were more productive than their western counterparts (people like me). I have been telecommuting since…a long time. Wine and cheese aside, my new math calculations tell me that I work on average about 40% more than you do. Let me show you the way…

6:30 a.m.
(Me) The alarm goes off. I walk down the hall, wake my youngest son, walk back across the hall and fire up the old HP Pavilion dv1000.
(You) No chance.

8:30 a.m.
(Me) I take my first break for coffee. Two minutes.
(You) Howard Stern talking smut on satellite radio in the car. You are still about 15 minutes from your old fashioned and very quaint office. If there is no traffic or late season storm.

12:30 p.m.
(Me) Lunch. Soup and a sandwich at the desk.
(You) Waiting in line at the sushi den.

3:00 p.m.
(Me) Break for a pleasant walk around the neighborhood or a brisk run around the park.
(You) The most productive part of your day. A grueling two hour stretch.

4:00 p.m.
(Me) Back at the desk. Work until dinner.

4:59 p.m.
(You) Outta there!

7:00 p.m.
(Me) Off to coach the kid’s basketball team.
(You) Second cocktail. Take out Chinese. Cursing the day.

10:00 p.m.
(Me) After watching Jack Bauer save the world I answer a few late night e-mails from other telecommuters and crawl in a warm bed with a good book.
(You) Passed out. Pissed off. Ready to do it all again tomorrow.

If Virginia is successful in pushing telecommuting they will have the nation’s most productive work force in ten years. Of course, by that time I will have been retired for five years. Now, as I write this it is getting late in the afternoon, I should go change out of my PJ’s. Enjoy your day.

Posted by Matt Hamilton at 02:39 PM | | Permalink | Comments (2)

Avid readers of this blog (thanks Mom) know that I think the whole Y2K thing was a bit hyped. However, the real deal is upon us. In one of those late night top secret sessions that Congress is famous for, they had the audacity to move up the date for daylight savings time. They did this without consulting the geek patrol. Next Sunday night, March 11 we will experience what can go awry when mere computer programmers are allowed to manipulate the very future of the planet.

DSTY07 will be upon us. Some well meaning person proposed a change in Daylight Savings Time without thoroughly consulting the IT industry. The implications of changing the date of DST are enormous for the computer industry and for the world. It was done in the name of energy savings, when all reputable scientists know that there are so many calcified dinosaur bones that we have an almost unlimited supply of oil and gas. Sure, it will cost bazillions to extract, but we love our SUV’s.

And there is nothing we can do about DSTY07. It will infect all date and time data, the OS and network servers. The only remote possibility is for the President to declare a national emergency and dedicate unlimited resources and dollars to this project! It would be like President Kennedy declaring “we will land on the moon in this duh-cade” and then actually doing it in a week.

I can’t believe you are taking the time to read this! I can’t believe I am taking the time to write this! What will it look like?

Imagine this scenario…you come into work Monday morning March 12, believing it to be 8:00 a.m. Your computer indicates that it is 9:00 a.m. (is it Spring back, Fall behind or Spring ahead, Fall back?). In Japan, the financial markets fail to open on time. This causes a ripple effect in the Middle East. In London, the PM declares a state of emergency. In Colorado, 12 inches of snow fall within a 24 hour period (just like the week before and the week before that). From the ranch, Number 43 announces a worldwide ban on all timekeeping devices. Citizens are ordered at gunpoint to surrender their watches.

At an undisclosed location, the Vice President and Bill Gates are launched into space to colonize a secret planet discovered years ago to be habitable by up to two sentient beings. They will populate a New Earth. The mating part has not been worked out, but Bill will figure it out. The only remaining pocket of sanity on Old Earth is in Arizona where they had the great and good common sense to never adopt DST to begin with.

Beware the Ides of March!

Posted by Matt Hamilton at 09:08 AM | | Permalink | Comments (5)