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A New Way to Think About… IT

January 24, 2011 By Leif Hurst 5 Comments

 

Being in IT is a funny job. I often get told I don’t have the personality of an “IT guy” whatever that means. I don’t know if those words are synonumous with “mouth breathing basement dweller” but I see myself more as the personable sales type than the nerdy tech-monkey that I get to play on TV (in my head). 

Along with this basement dweller persona, you also get a very different attitude. Much like “Nick Burns – Your Company’s Computer Guy” from SNL, the IT guy is usually the gatekeeper of what goes and doesn’t go in an organization. No youtube at work… his fault. No bandwidth for Final Four… his fault. Facebook… his fault, but his terminal will definitly work, for testing of course. 

It’s easy to fall into this trap as well as an admin too. I’ve caught myself doing it several times. On one side we have users who we percieve as troublesome kids that keep putting their fingers in electrical sockets (so tape up all the electrical sockets) and on the other side, we need to progress as organization to be more profitable and effecient. What I’m getting at is our users are sometimes limited by our ourselves, the IT department. 

This realization came to me a few months ago while listening to some podcasts and reading a book called Drive. What I’ve finally come up with is this… I want to work on the cool stuff. The things that challenge me as a professional and as a person. Locking down ports and traffic, checking productivity monitors, and figuring out a way to lock the cookies on the top shelf is not the best, or most fun, use of my time. I want to end everyday asking and answering “yes” to “was I better today than I was yesterday?” To me that means did I empower more people to do more things with IT or was I a hinderence today?

I would actually argue that if you find yourself spending too much time setting up controls, your company is not hiring the right kind of people. A company today needs to be a playground filled with the right kind of kids that are encouraged to explore. Set up the fences (expectations) and let them go. You will be pleasantly surprised to find what they can do when you hire the right people with the right motivators.

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Blackberry Enterprise Server 5.0 = FAIL

November 27, 2010 By Leif Hurst 3 Comments

I have ran across some difficult software in my life… teaching myself photoshop & SQL, learning autoCAD at a previous job, or even working with the Crestron proprietary automation software for my home. These are all “Elmo Learns to Read” compared to Blackberry’s latest bastard, BES 5.0.

In a world where most every other mobile device manufacturer has adopted activesync, making most admin’s life easier, Blackberry in their infinite wisdom has stuck with their own method of connecting to RIM devices.

Now I know what you’re saying, activesync can’t do what BES can, and you are right. You can’t lock down the camera, you can’t “brick” the device (wipe yes, but brick, no), you can’t scale your own policy to have the phone to do exactly what you need it to do. But for a non-government, non-research corporation like the one I work for, these features are useless. If it’s not easy to use and easy to administer, people aren’t going to use it. It’s no wonder RIM is losing marketshare to both apple and google-enabled phones at a dramatic rate.

So in our environment of 40 users, I have seen RIM devices fall from 15 total users back in 2008 to 5 in 2010 and now 4 as of this week. The majority of our employees favor both Apple and Android devices and from an administration perspective, make my life much easier. With Exchange 2010 I can manage my wireless users and their company data from the Exchange System Manager (ESM) much like we could with BES 4.x. With the move to Win2008 and Exchange 2010 I had to move our BES to the new 5.0 interface. This has been hell to say the least. In what takes 5 minutes to setup an activesync policy it took nearly 14 hours, 4 installs, and several calls to RIM to setup BES 5.0. This is without getting into the usual steps of BESAdmin Policy Permissions as much of that migrated forward from the previous Exchange2003/BES 4.x environment.

By no means am I a fanboy either. I personally use an iPhone 4 but it’s not God’s phone by any means either. I’m impressed the most the latest Android based phones and love the EVO and the Galaxy S. I advocate what is easy for the user to use, reliably works, and can be folded into our network with ease.

At the end of all of it, I have declared our office a non-RIM zone. We will continue to support our few RIM users remaining but we will no longer add any additional or replacement devices until RIM makes their products easier to use from both the user and the administrator side. Goodbye syncing issues, goodbye resending service books, goodbye goofy ‘sendas’ permissions, goodbye having to wipe a device to re-setup enterprise activation, and finally goodbye terrible trackball devices.

Image courtesy of zazzle

Filed Under: Advice, Computer, Random Thoughts, Server Tagged With: , , , ,

Everything In Life Takes 20 Minutes

October 6, 2010 By Leif Hurst 1 Comment

…at least according to me.

I don’t know what this particular disorder is classified as but anytime I am in the midst of a project and Tiffany asks, “how long/much longer will this take” my response is always, “20 minutes!” A lie… possibly. But I sleep better at night thinking it’s a misinterpretation of what 20 minutes really means. 20 minutes to me is a vague representation of time. Sure it’s precise, as we’re talking about EXACTLY 20 minutes, but it’s also just long enough that she can get wrapped up into something else and forget entirely about the time limit. It’s also just short enough that she’s most likely to say “ok” without much further thought.

How long to finish my Home Theater that I’ve been working on for 18 months… “20 minutes.”

How long to mow our yard (4/10ths an acre)… “20 more minutes.”

How long am I going to be on an unexpected phone call from one of my execs… “20 minutes.”

Reboot a server… Well, you get the point.

I don’t know if continuing this game is some sub-conscious impulse now or if I just enjoy watching her eye’s roll at my inevitable, unoriginal response. It’s almost become our little joke that I tend to find way funnier. Then again the only thing we ever fight about is the dreaded questions of “what’s for dinner?”

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How to buy a TV… and not look like an idiot.

September 7, 2010 By Leif Hurst 6 Comments

That will be enough TV's.

If there is one question I get asked the most from friends, family, readers of this blog, and just people being weird when I’m at the big box electronic store it’s, “Can you recommend me a TV?” The question alone is a double edged sword as it’s sometimes not a request for help or that “I value your opinion” but sometimes more of a “I have something in mind and I want you to confirm it” type of question. Either way, read this and if you still have questions, feel free to comment and I’ll post back with recommendations or additional answers.

There are currently a handful of TV technologies out there so we’ll skim over them quickly:

Plasma Poor plasma… you’ve gotten such a bruised and tattered wrap over the last few years. We still have love for plasma here at the Stuff That Plugs In Blog though so here are a few things to know about plasma. Plasma TV is still the hands down end all be all of TV’s when it comes to picture quality. Even the most expensive LED LCD panels are no match for Plasma’s ability to damn near go total black when needed on the screen (contrast). Image burn-in was a thing of concern but no longer seems to be an issue on modern day plasma televisions. Burn-in was a phenomenon that occurred when an image sat too long in the same spot and left a residual image on the TV. You saw this a lot in airports are the screens hardly cycled so a turned off set or a broken set you could still see an image of what was once displayed. We still have a bit of image retention, meaning the image may stick around for a few minutes after turning off, but I haven’t seen a plasma suffer from image burn-in in quite some time. Plasmas are still not “power hogs” over LCD. The difference in the technologies make that the plasma pulls different wattages depending on what’s being displayed (brighter scenes more power, darker scenes less power) whereas LCD is “always on” and always pulling a constant stream of wattage from the wall.

LCD (and LED) LCD TV has been out just as long as plasma and is the same technology used in most cell phones and computer monitors. It has an image produced on a Liquid Crystal Display and then lit with a cathode-ray tube alone the edges of the screen. While the image is good, it’s not great as darks just cannot get near as dark as plasma since the bulb is always on and when the LCD is showing “black” we’re really getting “kinda dark grey.”

LCD TV just couldn’t stay on par with the image quality of Plasma so manufacturers started to develop LCD backlight LCD TV’s (lit by tiny little lights instead of a bulb on the edges). There are currently two types of LED TV’s out now: Edge Lit and Local Dimming. You want Local Dimming. This means the LED lights are behind the screen in a grid and can turn on, off, or dim as needed to display the most plasma like image as possible. Local Dimming LED sets are not going to be as paper thin as their Edge Lit LED counterparts but seriously… who needs a 3mm TV set (not you).

Rear Projection One of my personal favs in situations where hanging on the wall is not necessary as well as this particular type of TV heads up the “bang for the buck” department. Rear projection is a technology that uses a DLP (psst… it’s in the mirrors) chip to bounce light off of and into a color wheel which then projects the image from behind the screen. Since this process needs some room (to get a big enough picture) these TV’s typically tend to be anywhere from 9-21 inches deep depending on the make/model/size. Bulbs will need to be replaced (a good thing in my mind since you don’t have to throw it away) every 6,000-10,000 hours unless otherwise noted. Most mid-sized DLP TV’s have been phased out as LCD prices came down for the 50″ range but you’ll still find 65, 70, and 80 inch variants still on sale from Mitsubishi and Samsung for nearly a 1/4 or more of what their similar sized LCD or Plasma counterparts sell for. If you want a big screen go Rear Pro… if you want bigger than that, go front projection (like my theater) but that’s another topic.

Tips for buying a TV

  • DO read reviews on particular sets from popular sources like cnet or consumer reports
  • DO look at your room before looking at TV’s. Rooms with lots of windows or lots of sunshine coming in will be better served with an LCD or a Rear Projection TV instead of plasma due to the glare produced from the screen since plasma screen’s are more reflective. Also look at your room when you’re most likely going to watch TV the most. If it’s relatively dark, look at a Plasma.
  • DO buy your cables online from places like monoprice (cables have a 2100% profit for the retailer so they’re going to lie to you about quality differences with their cables…)
  • DO shop online to get a competitive price on a TV. Retailers like Amazon are now using third party vendors to allow for competition. Most of time you can get prices from a 100 different vendors through amazon and they’ll show the cheapest price available. (You can visit amazon through this link as they’re a site sponsor)
  • DO feel free to return a TV because you don’t like it. A TV should last you easily 7 or more years so this is something you’re going to be living with for quite some time. Do not settle. A bad picture will always be a bad picture.
  • DO hang your flat screen on the wall. It’s a quick and easy process that looks super clean and can be done in less than an hour by a novice. Buying a flatscreen and putting it on a console or a tabletop is like buying a Monet and putting it in a closet.
  • DO NOT look at TV’s and think… “That has a good picture.” You’re not in an ideal environment, like your living room, to make that kind of judgment since the lighting in a retail store is extremely poor or it’s setup to make them all look good. You also need to know that TV’s come shipped in a settings called “Torch Mode” which is unrealistic color reproduction to make them “look” good (or at least better than the one next to it) on the sales room floor by amping up the brightness and certain color hues. There actually is a standard that all TV’s should be set to but if they did that, they’d all look the same. I wonder why manufacturers wouldn’t want to do that… hrmmm… By the way when you get home with your new TV turn it to “Cinema” mode and off of Torch Mode. Watching in Torch Mode would probably give you a migraine after 30 minutes of viewing due to the brightness.
  • DO NOT buy into marketing specs on the TV’s hot sheet. Settings like 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio is impossible (they’re really measuring about 1,200:1 ANSI) to achieve and they’re really using tricks to get to numbers like this just so the consumer sees one set at 500,000:1 and one at 1,000,000:1 and immediately thinks the latter is the better set.
  • DO NOT listen to the monkeys at the big box retail stores and what they have to say. They’re trained to not sell you the best TV but to sell you the most profitable TV (sometimes being a house brand that they make twice to triple the profit)
  • DO NOT let anyone talk you into the false notion that cables make a difference. Digital cables transmit 1′s and 0′s. It either works or it doesn’t. My entire house uses 4 and 6 dollar HDMI cables from monoprice.com. This has been proven time and time and time again.
  • DO NOT buy the biggest TV that you can afford. Buy the TV that fits your room. A TV should be 65″ at 10′ from where you sit according to SMTPE specifications. Any larger and it you’ll be watching a Tennis match every time you turn on the TV as your eyes will scan across the TV. Any smaller and you’ll squint. You can find a calculator here for other distances
  • DO NOT buy into the 3D gimmick that’s out right now. The technology has not been finalized and is due to change making your purchase obsolete. Additional glasses range from 100-150 dollars a piece, are easily breakable, lack true content (currently only 5 movies available in 3D) and cannot be used on different TV brands (you can’t take your Samsung glasses to a friend’s house and watch a Panasonic 3D TV)

Note: The greatest compliment you can give me is to share this with a friend, facebook, twitter, or submit to Digg or Reddit. Thanks for reading!

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