Oh Wyndham, How I Hate Ye!

Thanks to an ace corporate planner I am staying in a Wyndham hotel for a couple of days of meetings. This means the room is in the hotel as well as the meeting space and the meals are from the hotels crack kitchen staff. Some people would call this "jail". We call it meeting hell.

This is my third Wyndham stay and all have been bad hotels. This one is no exception. Three immediate problems:

• No kleenex in the room? You have got to be kidding me. This is a new low for inhospitable treatment. I see no signs of a place to hold kleenex - it isn't like the room ran out and they just forgot to put some in the room.
• The air conditioner is only slightly quieter than the back seat on the MD-80 I flew in on...
• And the crowning achievement? While I was unpacking I heard a noise that made me think someone was at the door. I walked over to check, found no one, and as I turned to finish unpacking saw some black crap coming up through the bathroom sink. I called the front desk more than two hours ago and they said someone would be right up. Hah!

So like I said, oh Wyndham how I hate ye!

How will Congress's Failure to Pass be Viewed?

In one of the biggest votes in Congress of my lifetime the House has voted "no" on the rescue plan. This is huge as the market is indicating.

It's not that I was thrilled with the plan - can't deny action is needed though. No, what is horrible is they put this to a vote without having secured the necessary support ahead of time. This failure further cements the feeling that the government is inept (both parties!).

Indeed the accusations that House Speaker Pelosi turned the vote into a partisan one in her speech is quite true. What was she thinking? Her job was to get this thing passed since she has stated her full support for the measure. I know politicians can't help but try to score points off the other side in every issue. But this wasn't the time. Flaming Bush could have waited a few hours and she still could have commanded a stage...

How much worse can they screw this up? We're about to find out...

This post by the chief editor of MarketWatch is a good one I think.

Downslide

Well the so-called rescue package aka bailout is nearly done. The market isn't reacting very favorably. I think because the regulators and politicians have proven themselves to be so very far behind the curve. And so lacking in leadership. The boulder could easily have been stopped at the top of the hill but is now hurling down the hill with enormous momentum...

MarkT mused on Facebook wondering when we would see simple truth and honest leadership. I fear the answer is never. But this isn't unique to the USA...

How Escalation Really Works

As you know I manage Software R&D. I thought I'd break an illusion some customers seem to have about their efforts to escalate an issue they may have with their deployment or a software product. This never happens at my employer but I've heard about it other places ;-)

Customer's conception: I escalate an issue up the Vendor's management chain and they will assign more people and better people to help resolve my issue. The more I escalate the faster my issue will go away (even if it is self-inflicted).

What really happens: Higher management sees the escalation and yawns "ah, another one" and forwards it on to the same people who have been dealing with it all along. Those people already know the situation is hot and have already assigned anyone useful even if it means taking them off of something else. Vendor agrees to provide more frequent status to customer. This means that the extra resources assigned end up briefing field support, sales, product managers and the janitors on status instead of actually making progress. Customer demands hourly updates. Vendor agrees to a daily conference call to update the progress which robs the resolution team of even more time to solve the problem. Customer resolution time takes one step backwards. Vendor higher ups want to be kept informed so internal status updates are required and daily internal conference calls are scheduled. After a day or two higher ups lose interest and no one other than the resolution team bothers to attend. Customer resolution time takes two steps backwards. Eventually the problem is fixed but only after consuming more people and taking more time than if the customer just relied on the Vendor to do their job responsibly. The over-use of time and resources means other Customer's problem resolutions start to lag so they hit the Escalate button. So the cycle goes...

Economic Disaster

I hadn't intended to include entries on the economy and finance but the present situation in the US, and indeed the world, is extraordinary. 

The Treasury wants the US taxpayers to bail out what has amounted to highroller bankers who took large risks for many years and who are now seeing those risks catch up with them. The situation amounts to thousands of bank executives and high ranking employees becoming multi-millionaires straight out of the pockets of the taxpayers. A transfer of wealth from those sweating to put food on the table of their families to people with vacation homes in the Hamptons. Those who took unreasonable risks are not the ones who will pay to bail us out of the situation. And because of the large amount of leverage they used even if the government could reclaim their salary and bonuses it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the carnage they have created. 

Dramatic action by the government is absolutely needed. But the Treasury has too many connections to these highrolling financial institutions and their proposal is too favorable to those who created this pain. Congress generally mucks things up due to its partisanship but this is one case where taxpayers have to hope and count on Congress coming up with a more reasonable plan. And curses to Congressmen/women who try to use the situation to score political points. Someone needs to make a Winston Churchill speech to cut through the crap and get everyone focused on what the "enemy" is and what victory must look like.

The government must act quickly but a few days spent in an honest effort to improve the proposal will pay huge dividends. I just don't know if we can count on politicians to put in an honest effort...

Parenting and the Internet

As a parent of a young daughter with one more on the way I've long intended to do something about protecting them from the darker side of this wonderful thing called the Internet. I had searched around for a product to install on my network of Macs at home and every time I looked over the reviews for the candidates the number of problems reported stopped me in my tracks. So far my daughter is young enough I've been able to get by with using the draconian methods that are part of Leopard (10.5). But the sweetheart is growing up and we also have older kids visiting regularly who want to use the computer so I recently took another look at options.

I had heard of OpenDNS a number of times but the only feature association in my head was it's claim to providing faster resolution times. I've never had a problem in that area so tended to always skip over any mention of the service. However in my recent search I found several blog entries on its usefulness to parents. Moving at the Speed of Creativity had one of the most direct discussions.

In my case I changed my 2Wire router to point to OpenDNS rather than using the ISP's servers. Once done I selected the Customize option to allow me to set some site filters based on a categorization of the site content. All of this setup took less than 5 minutes and has worked flawlessly. I like the fact I can customize the filters as well as "vote" on categorizations for various sites. I haven't needed to but you can block or open individual sites as well.

This scheme doesn't provide the same level of filtering and control as some commercial products but it is also less intrusive with essentially zero overhead. For my particular situation and approach to controlling Internet access this is an excellent free solution.

Note we do not allow children access to a computer in a "private" location in our home. The only one they can use is adjacent to the kitchen in full view. If this weren't the case I would probably opt for one of the more draconian commercial products.

Now They Kick Seinfeld to the Curb?

Well after a negative - and confused! - reaction to the Bill Gates+Jerry Seinfeld ad campaign Microsoft is making a 180 degree turn and giving Jerry (and presumably Bill?) a kick to the curb. Their new - and equally screwy - ad strategy is to use a look alike for the PC guy in Apple's ads. Guess Jerry is happy to walk with his money.

Get a clue MS... I know they say even bad publicity is good but in this case I think it is just ineffective. It's not like we don't already know Microsoft exists. The ads are too late to effect the back-to-school shopping, won't do anything for enterprise sales, and aren't going to sway anyone for the holiday season either. It's not like Apple is the only source of negative comments on Vista. 

Read more at TUAW.