Large information rich systems

In my new job I’m currently learning to use a large information-rich business-critical system.

The known software bugs are not documented, I’m learning about them through other people and as I run into them. I could cry. It would be a lot easier if they ever do decide to fix them if they were already documented.

The system could also be made a lot more user friendly. Some of the theories of usability has obviously never reached its stately mass.

Some things can only be done in one way because the system talks to other companys software. But honestly I’d study and document it for free if I was let, so that they can fix that problem.

Its frustrating looking at it, I was trainined in updating legacy systems in college and I do understand why these systems don’t get updated till they have to be (cost, their are critical, it works somewhat so why fix it) but I am damn tempted to write the business case for why they should at least document it and rewrite parts of it to make it easier to update.

Maybe somewhere it is documented and somewhere they are doing this, but dear gods tell me so I can stop dispairing over it.

Vista support training

We were trained in vista support today. I have home premium on my home machine so I’m already comforable with it. Still the structured course was good. I would have liked to have done more practical exercises thought.

Hp learning class

HP does free classes in a whole bunch of different subjects. Currently I’m going through the backup classes. I know a good bit about backing up but I want to flesh it out and get more comfortable with it. Usually I was carrying on someone elses backup policy. How do I pick a solution for a new business?

Finished lesson one, lesson two.

Update: Finished the other four lessons and got a certificate of hp for it. Interesting. I enjoyed reading around the topic too.

Dell is going to provide linux

The second largest computer maker in the world said it had chosen to offer Linux in response to customer demand.

Dell gives the go-ahead for Linux

Cool. It would have been nice to have a linux option.

Why did they stop doing that?

 one of the main points of trying to become a max-level Wizard on a MUD was to be allowed to create your own worlds and monsters. Talking to the game execs

Why cant you make monsters and areas any more? Wonder if they will start letting people do this on xbox live and sony home? That would be very cool.

Free stuff

Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions

I’m downloading visual web developer at the moment to check it out.

MediaWiki

Just downloaded mediawiki, to play around with it. MediaWiki is the software wikipedia runs on.

Its part of my plan of learning new software and programming techniques.