Logic for the helpless

Agreeing to disagree

There is nothing I enjoy more than the buzz of logic, the challenge faced with consuming information, much of it jumbled and disparate, eliciting points that feed the process of elimination and leading you to a point of forceful affirmation of the conclusions you have drawn.

When it comes to these things, I do not enjoy being confrontational, but I need to be persuaded, having a hunch will not do, the data, the facts, the thinking and the wherewithal must be laid out for scrutiny. It could seem like a clash of egos, a joust of knowledge minds pitted against minds almost to the point of exasperation.

Trust is valuable

Much as I have wanted to entertain some earnest protestations most of today, I just was not carried along with the premise. My dashboard was informing me that things were fine, yet I was being fed contrary indicators that could not be explained. I have to be able to trust what my dashboard is telling me or have nothing to work with.

I have spent decades poring and sifting through logs to reconstruct events and activities, it is almost an art of divination. I have an open mind, sure of what I know, and ready to learn new insights, it is exhilarating. It is also understandable that others might interpret logs differently and quite outside the moorings of what they intend, that is a given.

The detailed proof

This is where an eye of the minutiae and detail comes to play. You cannot afford to miss essential information, words and jargon used, timings, relationships, and expected outcomes. I could be lazy not wanting to devote time to that because of my conviction, then, you cannot avoid it. It needs to be done painstakingly and thoroughly to debunk any assertions completely.

That is where the buzz sets in, you feel the racing neutrons coursing the channels of deliberate and considered thought. The temptation to obliterate beckons but the better nature to educate gains prominence. In the end, we are here to help, but if you want to make it my problem, speculation and escalation just asks to prove where the problem is, and how we can work together to help you solve it.

What a day it was

Stepping in

It began ominously with the threat that a few new recruits having not been following instructions to the letter would face the axe after the last warning.

I interjected with an unusual intervention that offered to implement a technical check rather than them using the unforgiving rod of strict management. I say unusual because I have on many occasions before resisted moves by management to attempt to manage their staff through technological means when what it needed was a chat between the said parties.

However, in this case, I thought it would be easier to offer a technological solution with a few logging elements that prevented the heretofore mistakes being made again.

Setting up

I went about crafting a solution and when I was satisfied with the first draft, I tested the functionality and then decided to put it through its paces in a simulated live environment.

It was at that point that I noticed one of the critical elements of my infrastructure had gone missing like disappeared without a trace. I was livid and perplexed, as I was being informed that our office move will not take account of contractors who would be expected to hot-desk.

Now, my job is not suited to hot-desking, I have many systems, some for primary usage and others for testing, along with large screens to facilitate my productivity, the whole idea was myopic in the extreme with blanket restrictions on contractual staff that the organisation needs for critical activities but are wont to treat without care or consideration.

Crying out

The first problem, however, was more serious, it meant everything I used to do to create a deliverable product was now not impossible to contemplate. When I lost one of my systems to a redeployment without being notified, I did not make a fuss but the new untrammelled Wild West activity that had crept into this setting was now unacceptably intolerable.

I fired off an email to the supposed new manager in charge of our Wild West, our Wyatt Earp of sorts and I could only heave a sigh of relief to be informed that it had only been switched off because it was not utilised. I held my cool because, as an authentication system, it did not have to be actively accessed, but it always had to be online, anyone should know that.

Sitting down

Soon afterwards, I heard that a desk had been reserved for me in the second tranche of moves, all this good news in the space of an hour. A day that seemed to be going downhill fast was suddenly snatched out of the jaws of despair.

I finished my tests, crafted an implementation notice and sent it off to all that mattered and within minutes, thanks and gratitude came flowing in. What a day that was.

Words describing an interesting week

Complicated, a simple thing made more complex for reasons you are yet to understand.

Clarity, a state of having an understanding about why.

Confidence, a state of being emboldened to do something right.

Confusion, the absence of clarity exacerbating a lack of confidence.

Chaos, when clarity, confidence and confusion are leaning in the opposite direction of everything you want to do, that is really complicated.

Calm, when you walk away.

Character, when you return to bring calm to the confusion and calm by seeking clarity and acting on that understanding with new confidence by simplifying the complicated.

Concise, writing about a long week in retrospect.