This post intentionally left blank

Blank pages in a book
Image via Wikimedia CommonsSo Risker pinged me on my talk page, and like these sorts of low semantic content conversations do, it veered off into other topics, notably how posts sometimes have little content... and whether "no comment" really is "no comment" or actually more like "almost no comment"... this led to "This page intentionally left blank" ... and well... I'll repeat what I said there.

IBM is famous for making a great deal of use of these pages (back when IBM published all its manuals in hardcopy form). They would carry a footer with the manual name and the page number of the manual where they belonged. I can recall inserting them into manuals on my desk, many a time. (Periodically one would receive packets of pages in the post containing fixes to manuals, which one duly inserted into the manual binders, hopefully in the right places. Sometimes some of the new pages would be blank, to replace a page that described something that had been obsoleted, and sometimes some of the new pages would be non blank, but would replace a page that had previously been blank, as they described something new which space had been reserved for in the organization of the manual) There is an apocryphal story that there was an APAR opened against the entire publication group, requesting that all pages which said "THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK" be replaced with pages which said "THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT ALMOST BLANK" on the grounds that was a more accurate statement... Needless to say if there was such an APAR, it must have been rejected, as the cost of the PTF to identify, produce and print all those (thousands of different) pages (properly numbered and with proper footers, since that is how things were done), mail them out to every manual receipient, and so forth, would have been enormous. Even for IBM.

(this is not the only apocryphal story about APARs and PTFs, remind me sometime to tell the one about the APAR against IEFBR14)

Oh, and by the way, this whole post is a way for me to NOT talk about what really has me steamed right now.... perhaps I'll, in the best IBM tradition, replace this post with what I really want to say instead.

Update:

In accordance with the recommendations made by the This page intentionally left blank project, I decided that my personal site needed one of these. So I created one.

Get Satisfaction!

Listen to your customers!
Image from Wikimedia CommonsSo I just started using Zemanta, which I intend to talk about further, as a way to enhance my blog posts. I'm sure you've noticed the logo at the bottom of some posts. No doubt you'll hear more about it elsewhere too, I think a fair few number of people are using it. (the early reactions seem good, but that's not what I am writing about... oh no... this is just a segue to something else entirely! )

I can't actually remember how I found out about Zemanta, but I soon went to their website and discovered how they plan to give support and foster community.

They're using a tool called "Get Satisfaction" ... I'm obviously behind the curve on this and there are shedfuls of people that knew about it already, I suppose, but I'm impressed. Get Satisfaction seems a pretty robust tool for support. Many companies use forums (phpBB based and the like) but this tool seems to take things a bit farther. You can watch the problems and suggestions put in by others and rate comments, help, suggestions and the like as useful. You also can sign up as someone that works for a particular company.

I've reported a few problems I've encountered with Zemanta and so far it's going well. There are a fair few popular companies and products there already (Twitter, Facebook, etc) but oddly, I didn't see IBM there... I was not going to sign up as an IBMer, probably not a good idea from a volume of activity perspective. :)

If you haven't tried Get Satisfaction, you might want to check it out.

What do you use for getting support? Or for giving it?

My secret of Travel Success

ORD... looks pretty doesn't it? Psych!
Image from Wikimedia CommonsOK, this is a bit of a ramble. Like the rest of my blog posts aren't? Grin.

Some of you know that I travel a lot. I work for IBM as a consultant (a Technical Architect, to be exact, which is a fancy title for being fairly senior, and knowing a little about a lot of products in our suite and being good with whiteboards and Microsoft Visio). My travels keep me on the road all week, unless I'm in a lull, or need a day to go to the dentist or whatever.

Some of you know I read John Scalzi's blog. He's pretty amusing for an SF writer (which is saying a lot because I find most SF writers very amusing... must be the geek in me. But I digress.), and if you haven't read "Old Man's War" you're in for a treat. Well, several posts in a row from him recently have been complaining about his travel woes. Seems he keeps getting delayed or stranded in Chicago.

Here's my secret of travel success, free of charge: Don't connect through Chicago. Avoid ORD at all costs. Simple really, but effective. ORD is the source of delays everywhere else, why would someone want to go to the source? It works pretty well for me. Don't believe that hype about it being the traveler's favourite airport 9 years in a row... that's just because so many travelers spend so much time in it, they had to spruce it up.

Secondary secret? Try not to connect through ATL either.

Hope that helps. See you out there! (and stop kicking the back of my seat!)