Doors lawsuit
Things are a bit out of hand. There is a story here that says the parents of Jim Morrison are suing the current band (re-united). For God's sake. They are just grabbing at money.

Boring Work
I'm covering a co-worker's job for a couple of days while they are in Florida snorkeling (envy envy envy). I used to do this job several years ago (3) and I find now that I am absolutely lost. The work process has changed a bit and some of the rules have been modified. While I'm in the middle of dissecting a problem and tracking down possible answers, another request comes in, this time some very boring, but time consuming stuff. At first I feel a bit overwhelmed. After working on both for an hour or so, it is nice to bounce back and forth. The complicated task is broken up nicely by the mundane one.

No Phones for the Masses
One of the guys in Tpro came up with a great idea. Grunts will not have telephones. They will communicate inside the company via email and instant messaging. I'm thinking about it and it makes great loads of sense. I spend half my day sometimes on the phone fixing one problem. Meanwhile five things could have been done in the same amount of time. Of course there will be support and sales on the phone, but he grunt has no need. They are a distraction more than a help. I would like to get rid of mine right now. I know one friend of mine who would like to get rid of his home phone for the same reason.

WMD
Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq? They are in Iran and Syria and God knows where else. Sadam and his cronies said to other governments "Here is a big pile of expensive WMD material, hide my ass when the tanks come calling." The half-billion dollar gold bust recently tells me there are bunches of money clustered in Iraq and possibly other states these bad people still control. I'm listening to the BBC and they are all in a snit and want to investigate the claim about a 45 minute readiness of the WMD in Iraq before the war. Iraq had something like six months before the war that it was quite easy to tell that invasion was imminent. They had plenty of time to dismantle the system and sell it to the highest bidder, or for amnesty.

VNC
So, I got VNC working on most of my machines. VNC (Virtual Network Computing) allows a user to share a desktop with another computer. Most of the time you leave a service running in the background and tap into it when you need. That is how VNC helps IT people. At my day job we use Timbuktu, NetMeeting, Exceed (closest to VNC, it uses X), and Citrix (Citrix is pretty much the same thing as Microsoft Terminal Services) to control computers from one part of the network to another. I have managed to make VNC work through my firewall and the firewall of others. Some one once said the quickest way to make your network function is to get VNC up and running.
Microsoft touts having Desktop Sharing. They say one can use it to correct problems with other's computers without actually showing up and messing with it. The trouble is, as soon as Microsoft makes a standard people take advantage of it. The Desktop Sharing in XP has some problems in my experience. It connects through email and seems to work well on an internal network. The real challenge is surmounting firewalls and getting aunt Mini to follow a few simple instructions.
VNC Viewer is 228 K. The viewer works well on most any platform I've ever used it on. None of those other software packages support as many platforms as VNC. They all cost money. VNC is still free. I work for a big corporation. The mantality is “We can't use it if it doesn't cost us money.”