Re: When Texting Is Wrong [Telecom]

Something I have learned. If you're not organized without a gadget, you will never be organized with one. Too many people look to that shiny new toy as their salvation from organizational chaos. Owning a saw doesn't make me a carpenter. Owning a blood pressure cuff doesn't make me a doctor. Owning the latest gadget isn't going to make me organized.

When I was in college I worked for a small phone company called AT&T. They sent me to time management school. I was all giddy because I would finally learn to manage my time like a professional and get a really cool organizer to boot. Well, the class was more sales pitch than anything else and one of the exercises we did was to decide when it made sense to fly commercial and when it made sense to use the company jet. I was in the co-op program, so I returned to school and came back to work the following quarter. They had changed time management training vendors and suddenly vendor "B" was all the rage, so I got sent to their school. No using the corporate jet examples, but again, more sales pitch.

When I started at my most recent company I again went to time management school and afterwards I felt like I just joined a cult. We didn't get any freebies, but did receive an $X off coupon to their local store. I went and learned the coupon would barely buy me a pen, yet my coworkers were showing up with $200-$300 organizer kits from the place. It was the dot-com era, we were naive. Well, they were, I didn't buy anything.

While the fad is fading I think, I'm still a believer is David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology. What I most like about it is it's free. It's a concept. Other than buying his book (which I highly recommend) what you choose to spend is up to you. A 99 cent spiral works just as well as a several hundred dollar gadget.

John

Very true.

Likewise, if your company isn't able to properly serve its customers by phone now, buying a whiz bang telephone system will not help.

If your company is a mess, computerizing it will only make for a faster bigger mess.

It's like painting over rust or rot; that's not a solution.

After 60 years of postwar technology it amazes me how many people fail to grasp these simple concepts.

In the railroad newsgroup we've been talking about automated ticket vending machines and I've pointed out that in some cases they've caused passengers to miss trains and wait a long time till the next one, or fail to have a ticket and get arrested by the ticket inspectors on 'proof of payment' systems.

My feeling is that automation must make things better for the customer than they were before. As a trolley passenger, in the old days I'd merely drop my fare in a farebox when I boarded. Now I have to arrive well in advance and go through a series of menus of a ticket machine.

If I err I get arrested. I don't consider that an improvment but apparently I'm alone in that opinion.

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:44:01 -0400, hancock4 wrote: .........

In my city a RFID based "chip" fare system for the public transport system (trams, trains and buses) is currently being rolled out (at a cost of 3+ times the original estimate and 4 years late....) and we already have draconian regulations that smash users who don't get the current system

What will occur when this new technology mixes with these already tough regulations is a worry, there could be a lot of ordinary people virtually turned into criminals because of inflexible technology combined with an inflexible ideology (expressed by these rules and regulations).

Here in the backwater of Boston, Massachusetts, our subway and bus systems (the MBTA) converted from coin boxes to the "Charlie Card", an RFID system based on the European OysterCard. The plastic card is free, you then (re)load it with $$ value with cash or debit/credit card at a touchscreen kiosk.

The same kiosks also dispense paper "Charlie Tickets", intended for occasional riders. These mag-stripe cards can also be reloaded, but tend to get used for single trips, and end up as litter in every station.

The MBTA system doesn't employ ticket-takers; you either tap your Charlie Card, or insert your Charlie Ticket at a turnstile; the appropriate fare is deducted and you proceed through. Buses and trolleys have the reader where the old coin boxes used to be, adjacent to the motorman/conductor.

Because regular commuters load up their cards, they only have to visit the kiosk when their balance is low (which is helpfully displayed as you pass through the turnstile).

My only real complaints with the system are that the kiosk GUI could be better, and occasionally it refuses to handle debit cards.

--Gene

Interestingly our state wide transit agency RIPTA rolled out a new e- fare system a couple years back. Includes magnetic card reading, cash acceptance (Up to $20), issues change card, and reads rfid cards.

Works just fine. They phased it into existence over a two or three months and it went off without a hitch.

.......

Unfortunately my state government went with an over-ambitious custom starry-eyed "Burger with the lot" system promised for an unrealistic low price despite all expert advice that a) It wasn't necessary and there were already adequate systems available to purchase at a fraction of the cost; and b) That it just could not be done at that low price.

It was supposed to happen with all the risk held by the company that won the tender, but because it is so important (sort of) the government kept pumping more and more money into it - as well as costing hundreds of millions in now keeping the old technology going way past the expected retirement date.

It is the classic IT project initiated and run by morons that makes you believe that Dilbert cartoons are a documentary as well as entertainment.....

Funny thing, the cartoonist that writes Dilbert was an engineer with Pacific Telephone. I have been in several offices that had some of his artwork in it.

-- The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2009 I Kill Spammers, inc, A Rot in Hell. Co.

Shortly after he was forced out of the ISDN lab at Pactel, Adams promised readers they would see a new character wearing suspenders, representing his old boss. Such a character _did_ appear, but in only one strip that I ever saw, so I assume that the bureaucrat in question had his lawyers make a phone call.

I met actually met Scott Adams before he started at Pactel, when he was working at a bank in California. I remember complementing him on his cartoons, which were taped to the walls of his cubicle, and suggesting that he should publish them. He told me that "a lot of people say that".

Adams actually wrote a few strips from a suggestion I made in the

I can attest to actions the company will take for articles they do not like.

Some years ago Pat published and article that I sent in; with in a few hours of the article being on the Digest, Pat had received e-mails as well as phone calls from upper level management from GTE Calif. I was threatened also, but since the articles were public and I sent them from my own computer on my own time, there was nothing they could do, thought they did try, bringing National CWA running a defense which pretty much ended the actions, but years later I met managers that were involved in it as well as seeing what was in my files.

This also caused others from within the company to send in more on this item, though Pat kept the posters names from the article including mine. I did a search of the article and found it in the archives.

I noticed that issue with the debit cards. One MBTA kiosk wouldn't take mine but the next did. And I note they still don't have kiosks here in Providence even though MBTA stretches service all the way down to Warwick, RI now or very soon now.

When I bought passes I'd just get the paper version because you can't use the RFID pass on the commuter rail as yet.

But the RIPTA system - I see discarded change cards, transfers, etc. all over the place. The system they use isn't saving them any money on printing costs. However it is convenient that the fare boxes will accept up to $20 in cash and give you a change card.

The rub is that RIPTA gets to play with the float on that remaining money.

Wow, Bill. If you'd immediately syndicated his strips, you'd have made a small but steady commission for a few decades!

I know we're drifting off subject but having been a state government employee I can tell you about how retarded some administrations are.

I got to see one administration through transition for nine months. In the prior 2.5 years I'd been there I actively campaigned for and got project management schemes built into all our projects. That did two things, it got the upper administration to sign off on what they thought was critical, and it got us breather room.

We had that, a central versioning system, used dotProject for tracking, etc.

New administration came in and took a wrecking ball to all that. Which is precisely why nine months later I just couldn't take it anymore.

I swear there should be vetting for candidates to office beyond the age limits and things like that. An IQ test might be sufficient.

Wait Dilbert cartoons aren't a documentary. Wasn't Scott Adams a PAC Bell employee?