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Advent Calendar For Geeks 65

bLanark writes "Well, as children and adults all over the world begin their day with chocolate, with the traditional Advent calendar, I'd like to remind you that there's an alternative for geeks. The Perl Advent calendar will give you a new Perl tip every day right up to Christmas."

Comment what's the point? (Score 1) 301

What you're really asking is what is the value to the business of IT Operations "keeping the business running".
What's the point of IT Ops?
What revenue do those systems bring in? How are people not able to do their jobs when something's broken?

Talk to people and find out the cost basis for lost hours of any application being offline, including the hourly financial cost to the company when x number of executives are sitting on their thumbs when your mail server is offline.
Or, talk about how much money the company made because you kept the systems running.

Figure out any and all cost savings measures you've put in place, such as aggregating support contracts to save money.
Find out how many hours of staff time you saved by preventing that last virus outbreak.
Figure out how long it takes to get a laptop replaced and how you've improved that over time.
Figure out a few basic ideas for one-time spends that have 3 year cost returns, like replacing all those CRTs with LCDs.

Other than high level stats, 'did you know we run this many servers?' which are interesting but don't really mean anything, most of the statistics we IT geeks would come up with are just going to come across as confusing or self-gloating.
The only numbers that really do matter are the ones you can map back to the company earning more dollars over time and the staff hours saved (which should map to a salary/hour cost).
Money and time.

Then do a half-hour presentation of all those numbers over the past year, call it a 'Year in Review'.
Then, put on your teflon jacket and ask for advice on how IT can provide better service and keep the business running.

Comment Balance (Score 1) 468

I'm doing my part by eating cows, pigs, and chickens while I drink all that beer I've been brewing.

I mean, just like yeast, those guys are nothing more than methane-fuming CO2 producing beasts slowly deteriorating the planet.

They must be destroyed! Mostly in a saucepan on my zero-carbon footprint inductive stovetop!

Also, all that tasty meat and alcohol should help end my life early, thus saving the planet that much more.

Clearly, nothing destroys the earth faster than a vegetarian.

Especially one with a yeast infection.

Comment Lying liars (Score 2, Informative) 232

I've never used RBS Worldpay, but was notified several weeks ago that my financial records for the past 20 years, as well as SSN, were compromised.

What's incredibly distressing is that RBS Worldpay (part of Citizens Financial Group) shares data with other affiliates. I just have a basic checking account in one of their banks, that's it--no credit cards, no gift cards, no payroll cards.

However, they didn't go public with the news or notify any customers until the day before Xmas eve in December 2008: http://news.prnewswire.com/ViewContent.aspx?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/12-23-2008/0004946566&EDATE=

Even more distressing was that when I called them during the first week of January to get information on why my data was exposed even though I don't use RBS Worldpay services, I was told it was just them being careful and 20-30 cards were the sum total of illicitly accessed information to date--clearly a lie.

And it gets even worse--the compromise was identified and recognized by them in June/July 2008!

In other words, they didn't give a shit about exposing their customer data until they lost some large money.

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