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Hoopla - Part Three

By Dean Webb
September 30, 2001

Three o'clock came around and I went into the meeting with Tinky-Winky, LaLa, Dipsy, and Po. This can get confusing, so I'll note who's who here...

Dean: That's me. I'm the dashing hero of this story because I'm writing it. Every time you see this name, cheer.

LaLa: My boss. Couldn't tell if it was a woman or a man. Very disturbing. Looked mostly like a chicken with glasses.

Tinky-Winky: LaLa's boss. Nice guy, has a tendency to ramble.

Dipsy: This guy has an interesting history. I'll note it below. He's on Tinky-Winky's level, maybe a bit higher. He's a manager in charge of something or other. He didn't have anyone working directly for him except Po. He kinda stayed at home and researched new technologies and meddled in everyone's affairs.

Po: The only guy who worked for Dipsy. He was in charge of "security". He spent a lot of time at home poring over log files.

Now, Dipsy and Po have an interesting story. They used to be managers of the network department, where I worked. One day, they both decided to leave Hoopla. The network was so badly put together, they were the only ones who knew where anything was. If they left, the company would not be able to do any business and would have to close its doors due to a complete IT shutdown. It was that bad. So, Hoopla made them a counter-offer. Dipsy and Po got to move far, far away and live in a ski resort and work from home. Dipsy got to read blurbs in tech magazines and overreact to them. Po looked at web server logs and overreacted to them. They got lots of money to do that, too. I envied them. Anyway, they would join meetings via conference call. This meant everyone would have to lean over the speakerphone to have them understand anything clearly. I think Dipsy had a hearing loss, anyway, which made those calls all the more interesting.

OK, so me and LaLa are in Tinky-Winky's office and Dipsy and Po are on the phone. It's 3PM and the meeting starts:

TINKY-WINKY: OK, We're all here. We're going to talk about the antivirus rollout. Let me just sum things up. Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (OK, long story short: we need to scan for viruses on network servers, in email, and on user desktops.) bla bla bla and Dean has some ideas about this.

DEAN: Well, we have to use the stuff from Conglomerate Assimilates because we sell their stuff, even though it's the worst in the business. (OK, so I didn't say that. I wanted to. Sadly, I didn't. I'll start over.)

DEAN: The CA product has a desktop client, an email add-in and a server module. Now, according to my plan here...

DIPSY: Oh, wait a minute. I'm still printing mine out. I just got it in email.

PO: Me too. Sorry.

DEAN wonders why the hell they can't just look at it on the computer screen. They got 19-inch monitors. And this is back in 1998, when 19" monitors were something very special...

TINKY-WINKY: OK, we'll wait. Just let us know when you're ready. Say, that reminds me of the time when bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (and so on until Dipsy and Po are ready) bla bla bla so we're ready to go now.

DEAN: OK, on my plan, we see-

DIPSY: I don't see the servers anywhere on this plan.

DEAN: They're on there, just down a ways.

DIPSY: Well, they should have top priority.

DEAN: OK, sure. I had just put this thing together today, so it's a little jumbled. Bear with me on this.

DIPSY: OK. Go on.

DEAN: OK. I figure we can either roll out the desktops all at once or by department. Now, I thi-

PO: Desktops?

DEAN: Uh, yeah, you wanted a desktop anti-virus solution.

DIPSY: You're not installing the antivirus program on any of our desktops.

LALA has a smug, "Told you so" look on its face. I restrain myself from making a surly, "Oh go sit on a tack and whistle" face.

TINKY-WINKY looks confused. He thought we were going to somehow scan the desktop machines with the Conglomerate Assimilates antivirus software.

DEAN: Why not?

DIPSY: Why not is that those desktops can't take the strain on their resources. It'll kill them.

DEAN: How do you figure? Every time I tested it, it didn't take up much.

DIPSY: But those boxes are strained enough as is. Anything more would break them.

DEAN: But I tested on boxes running the standard suite of applications. They all worked fine. Did you have different test results? I'd be interested in comparing them.

PO: Well, we didn't really run any tests, per se. We just didn't want to bog down the desktop boxes.

DIPSY: That's right. Now, if they run OK, I guess we can roll out the Conglomerate Assimilates stuff to all the desktop boxes.

DEAN cannot help but have a "Duh!" look on his face. This is unprofessional, but I can't help it. I am in shock.

TINKY-WINKY: Well, great. We can go from there.

PO: How about we test it on one machine in each department and if it works OK, have the installation program call up in the logon script and roll it out to everyone.

DIPSY: Sounds good to me.

DEAN: No arguments here. OK, now for the servers.

DIPSY: I have a problem here. I don't see anything here about protecting the Notwell servers.

DEAN: If I recall correctly, we installed the Conglomerate Assimilates stuff on them and it crashed them all, so we turned it off on them.

PO: Ohhhhhhhhhhh yeah. We can't scan the Notwell servers. That'll kill 'em.

DIPSY: Ohhhhhhhhhh yeah... we haven't gotten that resolved yet?

PO: We'd have to reinstall the Notwell servers again.

DIPSY: Oooooooooohhhh... not good... you sure there's no other way?

PO: We should take this offline...

DEAN figures the Notwell servers are the equivalent of a house built on an ancient Indian burial ground and is glad they're being taken offline...

Anyway, the rest of the plan gets approved. LaLa makes a few lame concerns, but Dipsy and Po pooh-pooh them. Tinky-Winky is glad we're all happy at the end of the meeting. Well, we're not, but he thinks we are. I now get approval to go forward and get the antivirus stuff rolled out really fast. I can test it for a week and then install it. Yay. I was glad I got to test it, even though I'd have to install it, no matter how the tests turned out...

>> Next... PART 4
- in which we all discover why Conglomerate Assimilates has such a rotten reputation!