Comments on: Using Amazon EC2 to Thwart Crappy Internal IT Services

By: J

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:29:53 +0000

My earlier ‘dirty rotten mother fucker’ comment was a bit glib. Let me make a few follow up comments that are more sincere. The above blog post uses a writing style where I lead the reader down a path of creative miscreant behavior that is designed to bring an emotionally negative response to security minded IT people and a jitter of humorous enlightenment to frustrated analytical cube dwellers. Both groups become engaged. The IT guy is aghast at my running fast and loose with security and policy while the business worker lives vicariously through imagining being able to watch NCAA basketball streamed live through his corp firewall. The crushendo and coup de grâce is when I call the hapless IT worker a jackass and blame him. At this point my audience is bifurcated into two groups. The first is the IT and security types who feel slapped in the face by me. They are supposed to feel mad and insulted. The other group is the frustrated user who feels vindicated and feels like some crafty, McGuyveresque guy (played by me) just did what they have always wanted to do (i.e. work around IT road blocks then call the IT guys Jackasses).

This blog post has been far better than I ever imagined at accomplishing both of the above objectives. In terms of eliciting an emotional response from readers this may be my most effective writing ever.

I’m a story teller. It’s what makes reading my crap interesting or at least a little engaging. I’m very glad that this blog post has lit an emotional fire under readers! That’s great! But please, don’t take this all too personal. The takeaway here is to empathize with users and think about unintended consequences.

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:46:32 +0000

@randy Or, you know, shake that proverbial fist at the man, ’cause the man is so terrible at his job that you have to pay Amazon out of pocket to do it for him.

By: Randy K

Randy K — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:44:23 +0000

What company employs your services these days? As an employee, not a consultant?

By: J

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:10:46 +0000

@randy. you are correct. I am, indeed, an ass. I’m also a prick and a dirty rotten mother fucker.

Hugs and kisses,

JD Long

By: Randy K

Randy K — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:57:06 +0000

What an ass. Shake that proverbial fist at the man, ’cause they don’t follow your ruleset.

By: J

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:32:47 +0000

@nik, et al: I’m reminded of John Cook’s blog post on the topic of Organizational Scar Tissue: http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/07/30/organizational-scar-tissue/

There’s another thought pattern that directly follows all this… it’s something about setting policies being like maximizing a function around a local maximum, but not a global max. I have to noodle on this, but when IT jackasses (and I mean jackasses in the most loving possible way, bless their heart) set policies to restrict users without asking “why are users wanting to do this behavior?” the whole firm loses. IT security folks maximize control yet hobble the organization. They fail to see the impacts outside of their domain. More to come. Maybe after I head over to Cal’s for lunch the magic thought fairy will drop off the clarity I need.

By: J

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:21:13 +0000

@adoran2, you are correct. In some of the Jungle Disk configs they use EC2 to perform operations on the files stored in S3. I think operations like diff can’t be done without a little help from EC2. So you pay a little bit for the EC2 time but save on the IO fees from S3. It’s a creative solution by that crafty guy, Jungle Dave.

By: Nik Sargent

Nik Sargent — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:10:14 +0000

You were lucky. Some IT departments lock down your work PC so badly that you can’t run a modern browser, let alone install other applications or connect to non-corporate services. How many companies are actually “constrained by IT”?? I dread to think… lots, i suspect.

By: Ian Nock

Ian Nock — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:42:49 +0000

In all the companies that I have worked or visited in my role as a consultant, all of their IT can be classified as the lock down type. This is because these are IT departments built on the classical model – minimise costs, not maximise productivity. In all cases people work despite the IT department, not because of it.

By: adoran2

adoran2 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:50:50 +0000

You can use JungleDisk with EC2 – this is what I am doing with my home setup. Teeny bit more expensive I believe but I assumed would be slightly faster for me as I’m in the UK.