Archive for the ‘technology’ Category
The Downside of Free Internet Software
When I got back from Indonesia, I created a private site on Ning for those who had been on my tour. Using the site, we email each other, exchange photos and organize our volunteer efforts to support Orangutan Foundation International. Our discussions are organized around such topics as recruiting for the Communications Officer, organizing the next tour, and fundraising, fundraising, fundraising.
On September 3rd, the Ning messaging server crashed. I remained calm throughout the episode, being well-accustomed to server crashes. But I was rather surprised when the server came back up minus two days of our group’s email. I sent an email to the Ning help desk inquiring as to the status of our emails. Here is the reply I received:
From: Ning Help Center [mailto:helpcenter@ning.com]
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 7:00 PM
To: Susan Labandibar
Subject: re: After your messaging server crashed, our group lost all of i.. [ ref:00D8cCLt.50048U0MV:ref ]
Hey There!
Unfortunately, do to the way in which messaging went down we weren’t able to grab these messages. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We’ve since put some things in place to mitigate this from happening in the future.
Please let me know if there’s anything else.
Best,
Alex
As an English major, I take umbrage at this email. First, there is the question of tone. You have just lost my email. Do NOT begin your email with the salutation: “Hey there!”
Second, I would have appreciated it if “Mr. Alex” could have at least formulated a grammatical sentence to inform me of the bad news. Of the three sentences in his main paragraph, two are egregiously wrong. “Unfortunately, do to the way in which messaging went down we weren’t able to grab these messages.” May I suggest, Mr. Alex, that you meant to say “due to the way in which messaging went down?” By the way, I love the way you write of a server going down, and the failure to “grab” the messages. It’s as though the server was literally falling through space and the Ning staff was helplessly trying to nab these messages as they fluttered away. Perhaps, instead of reaching out to grab the messages, you should have backed them up prior to the server crash?
I would also like to point out that, in the next sentence you promise that you will “mitigate this from happening in the future.” Well, Alex, that’s just swell. I hope you can mitigate yourself from being on unemployment, because that’s where I would put you if you ever worked on my help desk.
Sincerely,
Susan Labandibar
P.S. I just checked my mailbox and the emails are back! Guess those butterfly nets that they used to grab the messages worked after all!
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If you like this then please subscribe to the Jason Morris jolts Madison Park high school students with a demo on computer power use
Students at Madison Park’s Information Support Services and Networking program were surprised to learn that the computers in their new computer lab were more power efficient than the old ones. Jason Morris, our Sustainable IT Coordinator, conducted a program at the school last week to familiarize the students with the basics of green computing. The highlight of the program was when students used watt meters to measure equipment around the lab. Instructors David Case and Jack Casey, along with Joe Chard from the Boston Private Industry Council, were there as well.
Call 1-800-GOT-JUNK?
Printers are the poster child for e-waste, aren’t they? Especially those cheapo inkjets that don’t even come with a full cartridge.
I have a Lexmark X2650 printer that was priced so low it cost less to buy the unit than to purchase the replacement cartridges–which are practically impossible to find. Nor can you refill the original ones. On the other hand, the printer cartridges for my trusty Canon S330 cost as little as $1.50 each. The secret? You don’t replace the print head with every cartridge.
Now, imagine that your cheap printer stops working. How strong is your motivation to spend money fixing it? I have seen plenty of people throw out printers simply because they stopped working and they were reluctant to take the first troubleshooting step, which is to replace the cartridge. In case replacing the cartridge didn’t fix the problem, they would then be stuck with an expensive new cartridge as well as a non-working printer. Read the rest of this entry »
Ghandi, Business Values, and Green IT
I attended (and spoke at) the Eleventh Annual Symposium on Spirituality and Business yesterday. I am not a religious person. But it was a great opportunity to step back and reflect. The highlight of the day was listening to Kevin Lynch, Executive Director of Rebuild Resources. He reminds himself daily of all of the advantages that he was born with that he has not earned. That he has suffered from drug and alcohol addiction, like those he serves. The people Kevin works with are not clients, but fellow human beings.
This is the concept of the servant leader that I spoke of earlier in the day. My speech was called: Satyagraha for the Business Leader:
Greening IT in the Hotel Industry
Last week I gave a presentation on Sustainable IT in the hotel industry. It’s surprising how much IT equipment goes into building the IT infrastructure of a larger hotel. There is the server that handles the reservations, another to handle programming the room keys. There are the restaurant servers, the gift shop servers, and the rooms management servers. There’s even a server to handle the in-room movies!
There are computers in the office, computers in the business center, and–in some hotels–computers in the rooms. There are displays in the hallways guiding guests to their conference rooms, computers at the front desk, and in the kitchens. Not to mention the wireless Internet access that is available throughout the hotel.
Server consolidation, server virtualization, and enabling power management are the three fastest ways to reduce IT-related energy consumption in the hotel industry.