How many FLOPPIES do I need for 16 MILLION image files?
How many FLOPPIES do I need for 16 MILLION image files?
Don’t fret, I might still have a Zip disk knocking about
Howls of protest sound across the La Manche as I write this. I’ve been hired by a media company in London to help with the managed migration of its incomprehensible volumes of data from one multi-intercontinental, instant-access media library system to another.
The protest isn’t a response to my hiring, understandable though that would be.
No, my role is insignificant and comes at the end of the project after the real men and women have done the real work – which is how I like it. No, that wailing and gnashing of teeth is the inevitable response from users who have been told that their key business tools are about to change yet again.
It will be so good once the process is over. I keep telling them “I do it so good” but this just makes them flinch and back away for some reason. Of course, we know – and they strongly suspect – that we are all in for six months of hell.
The wailing is tiresome, but the “gnashing of teeth” is splendid compensation.
It’s impossible to witness someone “gnash” without it raising the spirits – assuming they are not recently bereaved or suffering from rabies. If you don’t believe me, try “gnashing” in front of a mirror. Just say “gnash” a couple of times out loud. Do it now while you’re reading this, preferably pronouncing the “g” even though you shouldn’t.
Gnash. Gnash.
Infantile but fun, isn’t it?
Signs of tension from users were evident from the start. Line managers are issuing impotent ultimata. Utterly dispensable staff with inexplicably inflated egos are rehearsing how to say “we don’t work like that” to the trainers. Every brief delay in the rollout for the purpose of pruning bugs is described by the ignorant masses as a “monumental cock-up” on our part.
“Why do we have to keep changing what we do?” they wail. “Why can’t we stick with what works?” they cry. “Gnaaaaash!” they gnash.
These are the same kind of people who enjoy switching their mobbafers every 18 months. Evidently, they don’t do irony.
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