Show of hands

[amykhar]

How many of you read the Extremely Important announcement? How many of you are going to be emailing me because you didn't read the announcement and you can't connect to the site later today?

Amy

[amykhar]

Oh something else I forgot

The epinionforums domain name will not be moving with us. If that's the domain that you have bookmarked, you will be getting TOTALLY lost

Amy

[theeye]

That "Extremely Important" announcement doesn't appear in the "New Posts" search and it doesn't appear on the main forum page as the most recent post to the Getting Around forum.

You don't really expect us to click on Getting Around every few minutes or so in case an Extremely Important Announcement decides to make an appearance?

Consider this a formal protest. (Where's the "I'm pretending to be angry" smiley?)

[amykhar]

It's in every forum Eye!

Not just in getting around. :p

Amy

[theeye]

Um....uh...stutter... well.... you don't really expect me to click on forum names all the time, do you?

Somehow that doesn't have quite the same ring of righteous indignation that I was going for.

Seriously though, it would be nice if this post came up in a new posts search. Would make it easier to spot.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

I'm with theeye. I start at the epinionaddicts.com site -- no annoucement there. I click on New Posts. Since I didn't log on yesterday, there were four pages of new posts. Since I log on from work, I only checked the first two pages of new posts for interesting things. So until this post popped up, I didn't know. So there.

mj

[vania]

Oops. I didn't even notice it there.

Maybe if it were in a different color (red?) it would stand out more!

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

AND when I go to the EA Forums page(http://www.eaforums.com/index.php), there ain't no "new message" ear of corn there to alert me to open it anyway. So there.

mj

[magenta321]

Amy, you've conditioned us to ignore the first post in every forum! We see the red Announcement letters, and know its a thread we already looked at 100 times. Especially, if there is no corn next to it.

Hehehee. But I did notice this post.

[juliette]

I read it! I read it! Do I get prize? or how about we call it even-zees on the IS bet?

Frankly it is the first such important announcement I have ever read -- maybe it was that "Extremely"...

SIMON'S LAW OF SYSTEM MAINTENANCE ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The number of people who actually pay attention to a maintenance announcement is inversely proportional to the amount of effort you put into trying to tell people about it.

THE JEDIT

The Force flows through all things. We are all controlled by the flow of ones and zeroes in the Digital Age. To resist such a thing is dangerous. Those that have control over The Force are known as the JedIT. The JedIT are charged with keeping the Force flowing for all those that require its presence. Shoudlt ehy fail, all will fall into darkness, despair, and eventually downsizing.

HEED THEIR WARNINGS

I've had a few years of experience with dealing with folks blowing off announcements. I tend to call these people Idunnos, descendants of a mysterious tribe of blameless, clueless retards that still manage to persevere through today's modern educational system and constant rounds of downsizing in corporate America.

The Idunnos are absolutely brutal when it comes to attacking the will of a true JedIT. I can recall literally thousands of times where I have been paged, called, stopped in the hallway, or pulled from a critical meeting by an Idunno because somebody didn't read and comprehend a notice that was:

- Sent out in a mass e-mail
- Posted up on every entrance to the building.
- Included with their paycheck stub
- Discusses in person with that individual
- Announced in a mass phonemail message
- Announced to their manager in a staff meeting who was charged with telling them
- All of the above

My favorite incidents were when I was in the server room, in the middle of a critical operation while on the phone with a technician, and Idunnos are banging on the glass door or walking through the doorway and trying to get me to hang up. The overwhelming urge to use my handheld stunner on these people and drag their twitching bodies to the HR person for flogging was enough to cause my eyes to bulge. I can count these incidents by the number of scars on my tongue from biting it so hard. If people think I'm out of control or that I am some kind of Wild Guy, I wish to remind them that never once have I murdered, attempted to murder, incapacitated, physically assaulted, or restrained any person as a result of actions and circumstances that clearly demanded it.

Thank goodness JedIT don't have lightsabers, right?

WHAT TO DO:

1) Make the announcement clearly and as far ahead of time as possible.
2) Get approval from the highest manager or authority possible.
3) When the time comes, do the work and *only* do the work. Ignore everything else.
4) When the work is over, announce the results.
5) Assess any incidents of Idunno interference or activity.

HOW TO TRAP THE WILD IDUNNO:

Due to the 24/7 nature of many organizations, whether they truly need it or not, the systems have to have a near-perfect uptime record or the appearance of one. Perfect uptime records are not something to be found in any product built by Microsoft, running on any Microsoft operating system, or product that runs in any building where someone has heard of the Microsoft Company. So, a scheduled automatic reboot must happen at some point, and the more a system is clustered, the better. Processes can shift from one system to the other seamlessly, or commands can be queued up until such a reboot can happen.

Every announcement should contain:
- What the operation is
- Why it is necessary
- What the benefits of it are
- Why is it happening then
- If you will be available during that time
- Who to contact in case that time overlaps a mission-critical operation
- Who to have contact (manager, supervisor, executive) the contact to confirm that operation's validity. Idunnos tend to tell the truth by lying.

E-mails with return receipts are particularly handy for this kind of thing. Be as clear and concise in your announcement, make sure that the highest level of manager or executive looks at it and says "That makes perfect sense." Then when the Idunno tries to fight the JedIT with their ignorance and arrogance, the production of the return receipt can be used to block the attack. The lack of a return receipt can be used to show that the Idunno doesn't read critical announcements. The invoice from a training session or a signature in a training class can be used to show that the person should know such things.

No path of escape, no matter how small, must be allowed to the Idunno. If you are in a state that allows the one-party recording of conversations, get a digital handheld recorder and have it available at all times for any incidents or reprisals. Save e-mails and phone calls of a harassing nature. Finally, should you feel that this impacted the ability to do your job or your personal well-being, pass them on to their Supervisor, Human Resources, and Legal.

WHEN TO MOVE ON

When the Idunnos manage to convince an owner, manager, supervisor, executive or director that IT operations operate on a mystical, fantasy-world of constant uptime unlike any other object, mechanism, or process created or exploited by humans, that is the time to leave and find an operation where sheer utter stupidity is not tolerated or rewarded. Also, when an Idunno can get away with any excuse that in a court of law would be tossed out and responded with a motion of contempt for sheer stupidity or belligerence, logic and good planning become utterly useless.

Unfortunately, because more and more television-reared individuals are entering the job market and believe from sitcoms and commercials that everything runs smoothly because they've been told so by salesmen, untarnished and despoiled environments are getting harder and harder to find. Furthermore, many managers and owners are finding that because of market pressure, competition, and unreasonable demands on their resources that the Idunno philosophy is turning into a safe philosophy for them to adopt as well.

This is precisely why the JedIT are dying out. With nobody responsible for their actions anymore, without the need to plan around circumstances or maintenance, the true keeps of the flame wind up immolated by the stupidity of the careless.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Great advice, file13! I'll use some of these techniques the next time I have to take the agency database off-line.

mj

[pluckyduck]

Well, I never read announcements and I read that one because IT WAS IN ALL CAPS AND CONTAINED THE WORD "EXTREMELY".



I'm looking for brownie points. Who's got the brownies???

Andrea
looking for brownies

[amykhar]

do you know how many steps you would have to take to work off a brownie?

Behave.

Amy

[kurt_messick]

I must confess -- I hadn't noticed.

[Joubert[$]]

Not only did I read it, I noticed that you had it posted to run 11/16 through 12/17 rather than 11/17. Unless you want everyone to see it for a month.

[amykhar]

No, I was just too lazy to do it right. I will delete it when the domain name is working properly.

Amy

[foxfroggy]

I read it before I read anything else when I first saw it. Do I get a gold star?

Pat