Two years ago, I began working at a little company called Alphatech, Inc. Less than 400 people but on the rise. When I sat down on day 1 at my machine, I began poking around to see what software I would be working with. IT loaded me up with all sorts of stuff. Eudora 5.2, JBuilder 8 (despite JBuilder 9 having just been released), Together Soft, … And all of it was loaded onto my C drive. Despite the fact that my D: drive had over 30 gigs free. Then, after some persistence, I got IT to install Java 1.4.1_03.
You see, despite being a computer professional, the average user had no powers on their desktop machine. For all installs, one has to email IT. If I had an issue with Eudora, I would have to call them. Turn around time was usually a minimum of a few days for most issues. (Note: two weeks ago, I received an email from IT asking me about a help log that was never closed out. The person wanted to know if I still needed Remote Desktop set up on a certain machine. Turns out, I had finished the project that required that machine over three months ago. Also, that machine no longer existed. It was re ghosted, and renamed. Sigh).
In the years I have been working here, my machine has never been defragged. Not once. Now, Legato will attempt to backup every night. I say “attempt” because it always fails on one or two log files, which then throws up a HUGE warning. Yeah, I think I will survive if my legato.log file isn’t backed up properly. Sigh number two. Today, and for the last few weeks, my machine has been running like a 16 year old dog that had just had it’s windpipe nearly crushed by a bigger dog (True story: happened to Melissa’s aunt’s dog just the other day). I had to call in my friend who managed to eek out admin permissions on his group’s machines. So, while defrag plugs away, I’ll let you in on some other notes.
Two years later, I still have JBuilder 8, Eudora 5.2 and the old TogetherSoft. Oddly enough, the company no longer uses the Together password server because we upgraded to Architect. It took IT a week or two to install Architect, but they failed to uninstall the old TogetherSoft. Yeah, that’s a gig of worthless app on my crammed C drive. Sigh number three.
So where is everything at today? Well, JBuilder 2005 was released back in 02/2005 and Eudora 6.2.3 was released in 06/2005. Yeah, we’re a little behind the times on those upgrades. Somehow, IT realized having IE 5.05 wasn’t going to cover it, and upgraded us a few months back to IE 6.0. But then again, IE sucks.
However, do not fear. Where IT is tight fisted on spending money on software upgrades, I gladly march out and find hot Open Source products. And hey, guess what? I don’t need IT to install most Open Source software for me. Hurray!
For instance, we all know how much JBuilder 8 sucked and how tedious installation and working with it was. Luckily, Eclipse 3.1 is here to rescue me. I have no idea how I survived without this little guy. Seriously, refactoring is a breeze. It can be integrated seamlessly with both Clearcase and CVS. And best of all, I can move menus to my heart’s content. That won me over right there. How many times did I shake my fist at JBuilder 8 when I wanted to view both variable and stack information?
As for IE, I avoid it like the plague. I have been a happy Firefox user for months now. Thank god for Firefox and its plugins. You can see my write up on Firefox in the archives.
Next up for me? Thunderbird 1.0.6. I haven’t braved this yet, but I’m moving there.
One last note: while I defragged my machine, I was forced to use IE from the other login. I posted this Blog message sans spell checking. Yeap, no Firefox Spellbound plugin meant no spell checks. So now I’m editing the message and with the help of the plugin, found 2 stupid spelling mistakes. What the hell is “degrag” anyway?