This is an actual email that I received today.

Hello Matt,
Hope you are doing good,
I got a job opening for you as a “System Administrator” in “Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO)”.  If you are available and interested please send your updated resume Imm along with the desired rate.

Job Title:     System Administrator
Duration:     1-3 Months
Location:     Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO)
Rate:     Open

Eligibility: US CITIZENS with SECRET Clearance (Active) / TOP SECRET/SCI Clearance  (Active)
Client: US Military Joint Task Force (JTF)

Skills Required:
Windows network admin experience with tape backup experience – required
Experience with Exchange messaging (email servers) – preferred
Knowledge of tape data transfer – preferred
Ability to write and execute sql queries
Experience working with data in general (file data, recovery, etc)

PROJECT:
Candidates will be required to do 2-3 hours of non-billable training – online theater training for physical location (e.g. policies, guidelines, etc.).
Accommodations: Air conditioned tents (very cold); segregated by sex; accommodations are not first class.
Contract terms will be net-60 upon receipt of invoice.
Rates will be PLUS expenses (so all expenses will be paid separately).
Actual expenses will be paid with original receipts.

Is this economy so bad that someone would consider a contract at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, living in a tent, on net-60 terms?

I felt like responding, so I told him I would accept net-60, but only at a rate of “1 gazillion dollars/hour.”

According to Kathleen Curtin, Food Historian at Plimoth Plantation via History.com….

The Pilgrims’ Menu

Jason Hiner wrote this blog post about IT’s changing role, Sanity check: Is IT no longer about technology? at TechRepublic. While I commend him for taking up the question of the changing role of IT, I don’t think Hiner quite understands Tom Austin’s suggestion that the word “social” will become a key part of the IT professional’s job description. I also don’t completely agree with Austin’s thinking on the next evolution of the IT professional. It’s more about customer service than social science or creativity, although those do play a part. More on that in a minute.

Hiner looks three segments into which he says IT will be divided over the next decade.

1.) Operations and infrastructure management

“They will be the blue collar workers of the IT industry…Austin’s argument doesn’t hold up very well in this category.”

Operations and infrastructure management surely are tasked with keeping systems running, but they also have to deal with customers from time to time and this interaction will increase in frequency over the next decade. Virtualization and cloud computing have (and will continue to) shorten deployment times and require less middle men. This will put the Ops teams in closer touch with customers and require them to be more socially adept and more customer service oriented.

I also don’t completely agree with the assessment of operations staff as “blue collar.” That belief is certainly prevalent in large corporations, and it is so to their detriment. Hard working, customer service oriented workers can be hired for operations work, and it shouldn’t be a dead end. The best data center operators are up-and-comers. Professional development and technical training can make data centers incubators for technical talent. Put another way, if we accept that data centers have high staff turnover, why use that churn to the company’s advantage? Use cross-training and customer service development as platforms to reverse brain drain.

2.) Solutions and project management

“Today’s developers and software engineers will morph into this category.”

To that I’d say, “Those who can write code, do. Those who cannot are project managers.” Look, there are developers and there are non-developers. There is a temperament to software engineers that makes them good at what they do. Most will tell you they don’t want to morph into social scientists. That’s ok. The best change that can happen in this category is for IT line managers to become responsible for customer service. Make customer service part of their goals and deliverables. To some extent, that means driving home the point to their directs, but mostly it means creating The Development Abstraction Layer. As Spolsky points out, “Software is a conversation, between the software developer and the user.” I can’t do Spolsky’s article justice by quoting further so go read it when you’re done reading this post (only 274 more words to go).

3.) End user management

“In the future, the role of this part of the IT department will diminish, although not entirely disappear.”

The role of end user management will actually increase, not decrease over the next decade. More systems will create more users. Sure, physical systems will become virtual and so on, but the future IT professional needs to be thinking in terms of instances, not physical boxes. More instances equals more users, in one way or another.

“IT will need to relax some of its standards in order to allow more users to easily collaborate and share data and documents.”

The solution isn’t relaxed standards. The solution is writing and enforcing standards and policies that make sense to your organization and business model. There’s no point in enforcing arbitrary standards from another organization (or a past incarnation of your organization).

The IT Customer Service Equation

Like it or not, IT has customers, internal and external, and we have a duty to provide them with both technical and customer service excellence. When IT’s customers are satisfied and can do their jobs more effectively, IT gets a better reputation and isn’t so close to the chopping block at budget time (just one benefit, by the way). See Three Major Myths about IT Professionals for more on that.

IT is not going away, but IT is no longer special. Business models and organizational structures continue to change and IT needs to change with them…and do it with a smile. As the more users appear on the IT radar, the need for customer service excellence, as well as continued technical excellence, increases.

Triangle Stories #2 is now available. This episode features an interview with Wayne Sutton of MyNC.com

Comments to mattfrye at gmail dot com. The permanent feed for this podcast is http://mattfrye.net/ts.xml.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a woman in Missouri asking me to confirm my participation in some lawyer event (as a vendor). Of course, I had no idea what she was talking about and we exchanged a few emails where I tried to convince her of as much while she tried to convince me otherwise. Once she figured out that I wasn’t the Matt Frye she was looking for, I realized that “Matt Frye” isn’t as unique a name as I had thought.  Anyway, we got it sorted out and Matt Frye of Kansas City, MO and I had a nice converstaion on the phone.

It’s hard to describe the feeling I have at learning this. It’s humbling, yet liberating. And I also feel a strange sense of fraternity toward these other Matt Fryes, regardless of having not actually met any of them.  So I present to you as many Matt Fryes as I could gather.  They are artists, athletes, bosses and regular guys, young and less young.  But they’re all Matt Frye.

Matt Frye, the photographer, of Kansas City, MO (one exhibit, another)

Matt Frye, a blogger, of Medina, OH

Matt Frye, the folk singer, of Brooklyn, NY

Matt(hew) Frye, the painter, of La Mesa, CA

The Matt Frye Show (YouTube)

Matt Frye of the Greater Flint Prosthetic Center (press release)

Matt Frye, the public radio listener, of New Hampshire

Matt Frye, the MMA Fighter, (profile1, profile 2) 0-1-0

Matt Frye, the appraiser, of Ada, OK

Matt Frye, the metal head, of Braselton, GA

Matt Frye, the track and field athlete, of Montrose, NY

Matt Frye, the motocross rider, of Montgomery, MA

A great deal of an IT consultant’s job is being a soft-skills consultant.  Once you move from keyboard jockey to senior architect, you end up being more of a technical adviser, sometimes project manager.  But the urge to jump in and solve a problem, however minor, often doesn’t go away, and sometimes that ends up  hampering a project.  In a blog post over at TechRepublic, Shannon Kalvar explains how this happens…and in the end, what to do to avoid it.

The first edition of my new podcast, Triangle Stories.  It features an interview with Brian Russell of Carrboro Coworking.

Comments to mattfrye at gmail dot com. The permanent feed for this podcast, which has been submitted to iTunes, etc is http://mattfrye.net/ts.xml.

I’ve been mulling over New Year resolutions with all of the alacrity of a three toed sloth. When I look at last year’s goals and their less-than-awesome outcomes, I just can’t get excited about trying to convince myself to lose x lbs or run/walk y miles. So I’ve decided to focus on attainable mini-goals – low hanging fruit, as they say. Of course, I have more important personal goals – be a better Dad/Husband, and so on, but I’m only talking about my non-personal goals here:

1) Continue to increase attendance at TriLUG meetings – We’ve done a pretty good job of bringing in the masses with great speakers, dynamic meetings, and quality sponsorships. We may have to move back to a more central location, e.g. RTP, to bring our friends from Durham and Chapel Hill, but when we find the right venue, it will be worth it.

2) Get my General class Ham Radio license before Field Day (June 28 & 29) – Yes, that’s a bit more specific. The General Class license offers a giant step up in operating privileges. The high-power HF privileges granted to General licensees allow for cross-country and worldwide communication.

3) Write more, and more consistently – I’ve used boredom and lack of creativity as an excuse this year and my readership has suffered for it. I’m working my way back up and I’ve found a couple of resources to help me keep on track:

Jeremy Hogan’s Create in ‘08 post at Centerline
Copyblogger
I Should Be Writing

4) Learn another programming language – ‘07 was the year of the Python. I’ll be looking for something geeky. Maybe Erlang. Suggestions?

5) Start an original podcast – more details on this later.

That’s about it. Better to not make this list too long.

For my 33rd birthday, I decided to subject myself to 3 1/2 hours of tattooing. The result…

Yes, there is some back story to this tiger, but you’ll have to ask me in person to get that.   And if you like the awesome shading work in this tattoo, pay a visit to Jerry LaVelle at Warlock’s in Raleigh.  Jerry worked with might and skill from the hand-drawn original on my arm to the muscle tone and green eyes.  Thanks, Jerry!

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Auditory : 60%
Visual : 40%
Left : 72%
Right : 27%

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