Rob Eberhardt

I've been using Vista Business for about a year.  I've had it on a secondary work machine since around May, and as my primary work machine since November. Overall, it's quite nice.

But it's definitely had its quirks, mostly with waking from standby or hibernation. I put a couple hotfixes on, and they definitely helped, but it still did have an occasional strangeness. That said, in almost a year's time, I only remember needing to hard-reset it perhaps 3 times, and needing to reboot it maybe 5.

Now, I think that's great, considering these machines belong to a tweaker like me (read: not a grandma or Mac-type user who doesn't try new things).  I'd say it's comparable reliability to a current stable XP system. This is an important comparison -- XP has been maturing since 2001, but Vista started out at the same level of reliability.

As an aside, I've had several non-technical folks ask me "is Vista as bad as they say?" and I've only been able to respond "as who says?"  The only negative reviews I've seen were some journalists who must have put Vista on old hardware without current drivers.  But IT professionals I've talked to who've used Vista for a while seem to like it.

So anyway, I still didn't want that occasional quirk, so I tracked down hot-off-the-presses Service Pack 1, and applied it last night.  It took about 45 minutes, and went flawlessly.  Hooray for that, and hopefully it sails even smoother now...

In case anyone needs this, I found that this (quite batchable) command opens the XPSP2 Firewall appropriately so Symantec Management Console can push SAV licenses to workstations:

> netsh firewall set portopening TCP 2967 "Symantec AntiVirus Client Management" enable subnet


Wow, I've been out of it for a while...

I've failed to mention my new job at TQL as Web Team Supervisor (best described as "all things web").  Well, 2yrs ago isn't "new" anymore, though.  The job was both a break for me and also an experiment to try A) being not a consultant, B) working for a non-IT organization, and C) working with bigger stuff.  The break/experiments are over now -- my questions are answered and I'm back to working on Slingshot Solutions full-time (never actually stopped, but it was only for a few clients). 

Enough background.  Going into this, I wanted to start a "consultant-vs-corporate drone" comparison .  Coming back out, I do again.  So here it is.  I'll just sketch it here and fill it in as I think of it.  Consider this in progress:

Hours

Working For The Man: Regular and Separate.
But too many, and for no extra reward but sacrifice to my own quest for perfection.

Working For The Me: Free and Easy.
"Working for the man" can mean "I'm the man!"  But sometimes it's too free.  I often found/find myself working at odd hours I shouldn't.  And often my boss was a jerk -- time off doesn't pay the bills, so no vacation and no sick time.  Chalk this up to I'm just a nincompoop.

Sense of Ownership

The Man: Good-ish.
Unfortunately, a strong sense of ownership without enough discretion = lousy follow-through and perpetual frustration.  Not my bag baby.

The Me: Great.
The only limit is my own capacity.  Time tends to be the biggest limit for me (I often suspect this is more a bachelor's game).

Stress

The Man: High.
An uptight organization's expections often venture outside of performance.  Uptight sucks.

The Me: High.
Remember that bit about Ownership?  It's not all healthy.  While it's great to own your own business, it really sucks when it owns you.  (works of my own hands ... otherwise known as idolatry, I'd say).
OTOH, I noticed I smile, sing and play music, and play with my kids a lot more lately (at least when I'm not swamped).

Teamwork

The Man: Great.
It's wonderful to let HR, Accounting, DBAs and Network Admins just do their thing, so I don't have to.

The Me: Sucks.
Yes, I use good subcontractors, but everything is still ultimately my problem.

Motivation

The Man: Consistent.
There's always someone else watching (or at least the sense that there is), which keeps me on my game.

The Me: Variable.
As a lone consultant, motivation is more easily affected by other influences like mood or weather (these snow days are killing me!)

Motive

The Man: Convoluted.
When politics/red tape get in the way, it's sometimes hard to tell if I'm fighting for project's success or just my own ego.

The Me: Clear.
Simple: My customers' success is my success.

This is on Godaddy hosting now (for real), and I am onto Roadrunner.  This blog's roughly 50% uptime problems should definitely be a thing of the past.

In my quest to dejunkify my life, I'm trying to move this blog to someone else's server.  Here it is on my free Godaddy hosting (sweeet deal, btw), but does it actually work?  Only this post will tell...

"People should be ashamed when they are passed on the right"

I'm not a bumper-sticker person.  I really have never had one, and probably never will.  I guess my soapbox-ish feelings have never overcome my greater aversion to more visual pollution.  ...Except when it comes to driving considerately.  If I saw one, I'm sure I would buy and apply a bumper sticker along these lines:

Driving considerately depends on awareness.  If you're oblivious to what's going on around you, yes "mental auto-pilot" might keep you personally safe (somewhat), but it interferes with the effective flow of traffic. 

This "driving oblivion" is essentially a form of laziness.  People should be ashamed when they are passed on the right, and should feel the need to apologize somehow, perhaps by flashing their lights in acknowledgement of the inconvenience they may have just caused the passer.  But of course they'd have to notice that too... 

A similar symptom of driving oblivion is failure to indicate: just drift on over to wherever you feel like being, with no consideration for other drivers.

I guess flow and being considerate are big with me these days.

A not particularly-related frustration, but one which also breaks flow, is traffic waves.  I think I mentioned once that I'd meant to write about it as a form of compression wave, but fortunately someone beat me to it.  Traffic waves are actually not a symptom of laziness, but rather one of greediness -- never allowing enough space in front of you that someone else might be able to cut in line.  In the process, your foot ends up back-and-forth between pedals, magnifying the compression waves and actually slowing the flow.  (Imagine a sink drain that burps, back with the air, forth with the water).

(Normally I'd apologize for venting, soapboxing, etc.  But lookee there at my name up top!  Speaking freely is a blog's "why".)