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.

Hugs and kisses,

JD Long

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.