family

Credit where credit is due

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A couple of weeks ago I decided to reformat my home PC – it now gets only occasional family use, but it had had a lot of use, and things were starting to go awry.  The machine itself – a Dell Dimension 8300 purchased new in 2004 – is still going strong, although it has had a failed hard drive and a failed powersupply over the years.  I seem to recall that the hard drive went one month out of the 12 month warranty – dang. 

Anyway – I went looking for the original CDs that came with the machine.  Like many people, either the machine never came with the cds in the first place, or I have filed the CDs away in a spectacularly useless spot.

I borrowed an XP Home CD from a friend (I’m licensed, right?), installed it, but then my key wouldn’t work.  No problem – I’ll work around that – it must be possible, right?

No work-around could be found that would work, so 30 days in Windows got really antsy about not being activated, and shut itself down.  Worried about my files, I put another copy of the OS on there so I could access my files – but knew that that would give problems in 30 days.

So – I called Dell.  After 20 minutes on the phone, and being transferred from tech support to customer care to tech support to customer care, I was able to order the CDs that originally came with the machine.  At no cost, delivered to me.  Having expected to have to pay, I was a bit surprised by that.

The CDs came today, three days after I ordered them.  The bouncing around between departments wasn’t too good, but I spent virtually no time on hold so that made up for it.Credit where credit is due – Dell came through. 

Doing my PhD

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Well for a long time I’ve been fascinated by business – did my Commerce degree at UQ in 1991 – I tortured myself a fair bit by deciding to do the Honours course.  Which was nothing like I thought it would be, and was certainly the hardest year of my life (so far) work-wise. 

Graduating in 1991 was not a good time.  Today, you graduate, you get paid $40,000 minimum, and the accounting firms fall over themselves to have you work for them for 2 years before you do the London thing.  In 1991, it was quite the other way around. So I didn’t work for an accounting firm.  Or a bank.  Who, in their wisdom, had decided the world actually really didn’t need accountants.  They were protecting their profits, but probably didn’t do too much for the profession. 

I worked in private schools for 5 years before realising that I probably didn’t want to stay in the same role for another fifteen years (advice I actually received – I was ‘too young’ to be promoted any more 🙂 – try that on today!).  So I went looking somewhere where being 27 was not considered a career choice!

I did my Masters in Information Systems in 1996 (finishing in 2000), again at UQ.  I became a CPA in 1997.  That opened up the door to consulting in business systems with both Horwath and then BDO Kendalls when Horwath merged into BDO Kendalls locally.  I joined the ITM CoE in 1998, and became its chair in 2002 after Tony Hayes moved on. 

I mostly loved BDO Kendalls as a firm – of course, we had our moments, but I was there for ten years so something must have been OK.  It’s a great accounting firm, with very talented and hardworking people.  Unfortunately due to family commitments and the need for long hours, I couldn’t stay there forever so it was best I leave and strike out on my own.  That has mostly worked well, although again that’s had its moments.  It’s reaffirmed my understanding of the need for cashflow in a small business in its growth phase, particularly during that all-important startup period!

Where’s this going?

Well, as part of my new-found life, which still very much involves consulting, but not trying to juggle family responsibilities and a national firm, I’ve done a little bit of lecturing from time to time (mostly QUT).  Which has been interesting and has lead to other things.  When I left, though, the plan was to work as a part-time lecturer as a sort of base job. 

I’ve since discovered that, in reality, to do that you mostly need to either have a PhD or be doing one.  I also found out the pay-rates for academics – even in IS, academics are paid less than the tealady in a commercial firm.  When a web-designer with four years experience commands a $70K package, and an associate lecturer gets $54K, there’s an economic imperative at work.

Fortunately I’m not entirely motivated by money – I like to do new things, interesting things, relevant things. Searching out mobile phone plans for clients is not necessarily my cup of tea (not one of my banner-moments in the past!).  Im a tad more ‘big-picture’ than that.  So I approached UQ about doing my PhD, and they just happen to have a scholarship going for a PhD student to review the impact of IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) on IT audit methodologies (see here, at the top of Page 54).  It’s almost exactly what I’m interested in, involves working with the auditors-general around the country, and it’s important (that’s why it’s one of those rare things, a PhD with funding – not a lot of funding really, for what is needed, but funding nonetheless). 

Peter tells me he’s after someone ‘mature’ to do the work – so maybe I’ve shaken off those baby-faced looks from when I was too young be promoted :).  Had to happen eventually I guess.

Personally it suits me to part-time consult and work on this topic.  It’s not quite exactly what I’m interested in, but half the work of a PhD is coming up with a topic, and here it is laid out for me on a platter, with funding and research subjects on the side.  So – I’ve said I’m up for doing it

So – I’m told an office is involved, and that I’ll have to be at UQ a fair amount of the time, but that is fairly flexible and it’s really about outcomes. The picture below is of the building at UQ where I’ll be spending most of my time.  I’ll have to buy myself some suspenders and jeans now that I’m working in academia.  There is a coffee shop and it’s a wonderful location (parking is kind of poor but we’ll deal with that and how bad could it possibly be (gak! famous last words!).

For any clients reading this, please note that I’ll still be available for consulting work – for most clients, pretty much on the same basis as before.  You won’t notice the difference, I promise, and in the meantime I get to work with some great people on a big-picture topic area of interest.  In fact, it’s a topic that’s just crying out for consulting and linking with the business community.

Guess that’s why it’s a linkage grant then, huh.

Ubuntu, Ubuntu, we want you!

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I think I have expressed an overriding concern regarding Windows Vista on both my blog and through my Twitter feed.  In essence, I feel gypped.  Vista is a great way to slow down an astronomically fast machine.  Sometimes I’ll be typing away on it and it will decide to do something on its merry own, slowing down my typing speed. 

The underlying ethos seems to be that Vista will go off and do things that it thinks needs to be done, with no intervention from you.  There is probably a frustrated scriptwriter somewhere with a proposal for a new show called ‘Vista knows best’.  Generally, it gets it right.  Generally.  Unfortunately, after six months of ‘sticking with this turkey’ because Microsoft knows its best, I’d really like to be able to dump it in a nearby bin. 

Recently, I reformatted my home PC with Windows XP.  That alone was enough grief – have you ever tried finding the WinXP DVD that came with your machine when you bought it?  Oh that’s right – no software supplied, it was all on that hard drive.  The hard drive that went bung exactly twelve months and two weeks after I bought the machine from Dell.  So that caused grief, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome.

During the course of that reformatting I came to the realisation that there was a new version of AVG anti-virus.  Beaut, I thought – I’ll update the copy on my laptop.  This I proceeded to do, but unfortunately the install complained that a particular Windows Update patch was not present.  ‘No problem’, I thought (which of course would be exactly when the problems started).  I’ll go into trusty Windows Update and download the patches there.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there were several updates waiting (I have been, naively, simply trusting that Windows updates will be reliable and have the critical ones automatically installed only).  Instead of looking for and installing the specific update AVG was complaining about, I simply downloaded all of the patches that were waiting there (cue Family Feud sound effect). 

Vista decided as a result that I needed a new driver for my wireless card (check), and a new driver for the Nvidia graphics card (check).  Got a coffee, rebooted & installed.  Bang – no network, no graphics display.  It took a while to work out, though, that that was the problem – a bit difficult to troubleshoot without a screen.  Twelve hours later, after searching forums ad infinitum, I finally reconnected and downloaded the proper nvidia drivers and network card driver, but even then Vista kept switching me back to the drivers it felt I needed to have.  Eventually I was able to turn that off.

After filling my heart with soft thoughts of fairy floss and candy for Microsoft, I thought – OK, I’ll try Ubuntu, I’ve got a spare external hard drive, let’s boot off that and see how we go.  That experience was actually very positive.  Quite positive.  This is a six-month old laptop, so the hardware is fairly new, and Ubuntu 8.04’s install got most of it right.  And it is lovely to look at, and on this fast machine it’s beautiful to operate.  I even managed to install new software through the lovely package manager. 

Overall – Ubuntu 8.04 = lovely.

Still, for a complete newbie, getting Ubuntu right was a steep learning curve.  It probably took about two days to come to grips with it (finicky downloads played a part in that).  I did have difficulties with the wireless driver and the nvidia graphics – I finally got the nvidia graphics sorted, but the wireless card continued to elude me as I kept needing to manually start the network.   I’m sure there are solutions there but I had already lost two days that I couldn’t afford to lose.

At this stage, out of the box, Ubuntu seems to do most of the things most people would want from a PC.  Unfortunately, that last ten percent is still a roadblock.  I have a Blackberry hosted through Managed Exchange, so I needed to have Evolution as my mail client – Web Central doesn’t seem too keen on that, and I couldn’t get that configured, so a killer application of email is still an issue.  Also, all of my accounting software needs are met by MYOB.  Cue one for Vista. 

I also looked for blogging software, which I thought would be an easy find but it wasn’t that simple to get software as good as Windows Live Writer for my WordPress blog.  Finally, as a person who does a lot of presentations and report-writing (I’m a management consultant – it comes with the territory), I need Visio or an equivalent.  There still doesn’t seem to be a Visio equivalent.

Overall, Ubuntu 8.04, you won’t let me avoid the Microsoft hegemony just yet, but you’ve come a long way baby.  If I really, really tried hard, I think I could get it work for me.  A few niggly things (graphics, wireless card), as well as some problematic (and possibly fairly specific to me) software (Outlook, MYOB, Visio, MS Project) are stopping me making the jump.  Dual boot does not meet my needs.  Open Office 2 is great for my needs (I am very cold on Office 2007), and generally the bells and whistles Ubuntu implements automatically are pretty much the equivalent of Vista, if not better. 

I am thinking of a mini-notebook so that the lump of iron I currently cart around can be the desktop replacement it really is, and if I get that I’ll run Ubuntu on it.  For now I have to stick with Vista, but I’m not a fan of it (really, really not a fan) and neither am I a fan of Office 2007, although it generally works fine.  I’ve made an investment in Microsoft Software – I have the whole suite, dabnabbit!  Legal and everything.  I have Visio, Office 2007, and MS Project – that’s about $3000 in software.  Even so, I’m keeping an eye on Ubuntu 8.04; perhaps I need a class in it.  If Ubuntu is better, I’ll walk away from that investment.  If any OS is going to replace Vista, what I saw shows that Ubuntu is the one.  Roll on the next version of Ubuntu, perhaps?

You’ve come a long way baby – just not quite there yet. 

Blogging and job security

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As with most bloggers, I am always fascinated to read of the faux pas that bloggers can make whilst blogging.  The rampant media attention paid to this issue – often ending up in the loss of said blogger’s job – is perhaps one of the biggest reasons (sensible) people are reticent about blogging. 

On the one hand, having a good complain at the family BBQ on a Sunday about your job is a good Australian tradition, but it isn’t done in a forum where it’s likely to get back to your boss.  The recent episode of la Petite Anglaise – who seems to have lost her job as a direct result of blogging, even though on the basis of her side of the story all seems a little unfair (although blogging about a sickie is NOT perhaps the most sensible job retentions strategy one could choose) – reminds us all that, in cyberspace, everyone hears you scream, for years and years and years, if you’re not careful.  

The article is written up online at Australian IT.

It does show though that the dynamic world of the workplace is still desperately catching up with the online world of technology.  I know that there are some graduates that we have interviewed recently who go home and blog about their interviews, how it went, and which firm (not necessarily ours!) they would prefer to be offered a job by.  I think that the danger of a de-identified blog is that you feel anonymous and warm and protected – and so write accordingly.  Trouble is – it’s easy to slip up and find that you are actually identifiable. 

For the former French employer of our British blogger, the issue is highlighted in that now, it seems, a likely legal battle will ensue with the result that at the very least the firm faces legal costs and is distracted.  There are a lot of issues around blogging, and the legal issues that relate to it.  Perhaps Belinda Thompson and I will co-write an article on this one – I know she’s done some research in the area for us.

Enter the Vlogosphere

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Fascinated to stumble today across Steven ‘that Family First senator’ Fielding’s video blog on the internet today.  There’s an article in Australian IT interviewing him.

Seems canny to me to be vlogging on these political issues – canny to the extreme given I don’t think there’s much media exposure for Family First, so it helps get the message across.  Politics aside, I am singularly impressed by a politician who clearly is technically competent and understands how to use a video camera – well, at least a little bit :=).

Now I only have to point out the technical reasons why Quicktime is so much better for vlogging than WMV format…