Politics.NET

First, I am typing this on the Cr-48 running Google OS . I signed up for the pilot program a couple of months ago and didn't give it any further thought. After all, what are the chances of them actually giving me a unit? Well, guess what was waiting for me when I arrived home this evening? Yep! A brand new laptop (more like netbook) with Google OS installed. These are my initial reactions: when I first heard about Google OS being based upon the chrome browser, my first thought was how will they deal with the *claustrophobia* that some people (ok me) will experience at being confined to a single window? Well they didn't deal with the issue. So that was the first thing I noticed. It just feels like I am being confined to a single browser instance What do you mean "everything is in the cloud"? Literally, everything is in the cloud! There's no file system. Personally, I think it's a mistake that Google didn't even create an abstraction to replace the file s...

I wrote the bulk of this post in November last year. Since then, I have indeed left Aquilent and now work at NIH . How do you keep employees happy? I am sure most people will immediately think of money when asked this question. To me, it's never been about money. Sure, everyone wants to be adequately compensated and certainly I wouldn't volunteer for a pay cut. But it takes more than money to keep a good employee happy. I am careful to qualify that with "good employee" because a bad employee will stick around and take the money. I think a key aspect of what keeps employees happy is how good the daily work experience is (from the employee's perspective). If your employees hate coming to work each day, you can be bet no amount of money will make them happy or keep them from leaving. Why am I talking about this? Well it occurred to me while riding the Metro to DC (where I am working on a SharePoint implementation project...feel free to Google that..I'll wa...

I know that sounds like an obvious observation but until you really think about, you may not realize how big the federal govt really is. I just started working at the National Institutes of Health (which is 1 of 12 operating divisions under the D epartment of Health and Human Services ). HHS itself is 1 of 15 federal executive departments in the United States. With me so far? So at orientation, I found out that NIH employs over 27,000 employees! NIH is the largest consumer of electricity in Montgomery County! 27,000 employees in an agency within the 10th largest (of 15) department in the US. According to wikipedia.org, as of 2007 the federal government employed 4.2 million people! Wow! That makes them by far the largest employer in the country. For comparison, the largest private employer in the US is Walmart with 1.8 million employees. That means the federal govt employs more than twice as many employees as the largest private employer. That's some serious clout.

So I just got a new job and along with that comes the task of setting up a new PC from scratch. First thing I did was install CCleaner and check out all the programs that have been set to run on start up (i.e. programs that run every time you start your computer) Since these programs are configured to run on start up, you would think they ought to be very critical components of your computer. So why is it that every self-important software company seem to think their programs belong in this category. For example, if Adobe Reader doesn't start every single time I boot my computer, is that really a big deal? So why the heck does Adobe think they need not 1, not 2 but 3 programs starting up every time I boot up? Why does Sun (Oracle) think I need to update Java (a program almost no one uses except for server applications)? Why does Apple think Quicktime needs to be started along with the computer? For one thing, the idea of having Quicktime is like appendix in humans i.e. absolutely ...