Areas of Unrest

4 April 2001 - I Just Don't Understand

QOTD: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei (from Evan via John)

Reading: Ed McBain, Nocturne

Listening to: nothing right now since it is past my bedtime. No, wait, there is some jerk blasting a car stereo inches from my apartment...

I don't understand how I can read a 300 page book in one night at home, but I can't manage to get through a 25 page document at work in three days.

I don't understand why my secretary bothers to make our travel request forms list hotel preferences in order when she lets the travel agent book my 6th choice hotel without checking whether any of the five above it are available.

I don't understand why the same facilities people at work who insist it's a horrible security breach if anybody leaves their office door open when they go to use the bathroom could possibly send out an email telling us all to leave our office doors open overnight so the floors could be cleaned.

I really really just don't understand why I feel so compelled to whine about all of the above to anyone who chances to read this.

One of the more amusing mysterious going on at work involves our new internet filters to prevent "non-work related" usage. The official explanation is that these sort of sites use up bandwidth that needs to be available for official work. The first set of filters were obvious enough:

• Anonymizers/Translator
• Cults/Occult
• Extreme/Obscene/Violence
• Gambling
• Games
• Hate Speech
• Mature
• MP3 sites
• Nudity
• Sex
• Webmail

For the most part, I'd have to say I agree that it's not appropriate to look at these from work, though I have qualms about a few issues. For example, we have contractors who use webmail for work purposes because it can be faster than going through some of the convoluted paths that official mail can take. I'm not entirely sure about what they mean by translators. I've used web services to translate file formats of conference papers, for example, and I'd call that a translator, but I suspect they just are concerned with anonymous net forwarding and the like. And, while I agree that cults and the occult are not appropriate subjects for web surfing at work, how do you distinguish between a cult and a legitimate religion? I've done things like looking up a calendar of Jewish holidays so I can determine my availability for a meeting, for example. Why should I be able to do that and a Wiccan not be able to do something similar?

But now we have a new group of verboten sites and the categories are:

• Personal Pages
• Chat
• Criminal Skills
• Humor
• Investing
• Dating
• Drugs
• Lifestyles
• Sports
• Entertainment

So far I have run into the blocks twice. The first insidious act I committed was trying to use an on-line phone directory, which they classified as "personal." Silly me for wanting to call somebody at home to tell them that a meeting at a contractor an hour away had been postponed. Fortunately, I could just as easily get the phone number I needed from switchboard.com, which isn't blocked.

But the amusing part is the second block I ran into. Hubble space telescope photos are classified as "entertainment." Now, I do admit that this particular time I didn't have any urgent work-related need to see what Hubble saw. But I work with astronomical data all the time. Every now and then I need to give a briefing to people who can understand obscure subjects like astrometry better if they have a picture or three. There are forms I can fill out to get it unblocked, but I have another path (via a corporate server on a different, non-government network) which is easier. It will be interesting to see how much our usage of the alternative server goes up with these new restrictions in place.

I am also annoyed that Major League Baseball has taken over the Red Sox page. Not that I could look at redsox.com at work anyway. They'd probably categorize it as "sports" but we all know it really belongs under "cults."

While I'm on that subject, Hideo Nomo has just become the third sexiest man in the known universe. (He's behind Robert and behind Nomar Garciaparra, wrist surgery and all.) Pitching a no-hitter for the Sox just does that to a guy.