County, Allsing, Bandersnatch

Here's what I distilled on Jim Allsing.
I will be at Bandersnatch tomorrow by
noon. Will have an 8 port hub and a couple
extra spots in a powerstrip.

Facts & Figures
---------------
Oct 1999
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/netsys/article/0,,11961_616731,00.html
  Jim Allsing is Director of Electronic Business Center
  Intranet Redesign Roughly Annual
  "Agenda Cental"
    - Completed 1998
    - Simple Workflow System
    - Unspecified Platform
    - Massive Cost Savings
  "Electronic Business Center" (EBC)
    - Completed 1999
    - Dynamic Web Pages using MSIE
    - Groupware Built On MS Outlook
    - Paul Allsing is Project Director
    - Uptime Sensitive
    - Uptime Management Investment Implies Instability
    - 30 NT Servers
    - SQL Server 6.5
    - Future is all web based.
Aug 2000
http://www.gcn.com/state/vol6_no8/snapshot/786-1.html
  Jim Allsing is Director of EBC
  11,000 Computers
  Standardized on MSIE, Exchange, and Office
  Standardization is Equated with Interoperability
Oct 2000
http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20001022bwired7.asp
  Jim is primarily concerned with cost efficiency.

Hunches & Intuition
-------------------
- Jim Likes Microsoft
Jim directed the development of EBC. He did
it on Microsoft software, has gotten phenomenal
results, and is now the Deputy CIO as a result.
Telling him, "only an idiot would use Microsoft"
will not work.
- Jim is Watching the Budget
Jim is using MS because he believes it is the
best way for him to deploy what the user needs
rapidly, for a reasonable price.
- There have been some downtime problems.
Looking at the article above from 1999, you can
see that they've made no small investment in
heartbeating, notification, and automatic reboots.
This implies to me that Jim's seen a blue screen
or two in his time.
- Standardization equals Interoperability
The big win mentioned in standardizing on MSIE,
Exchange, Outlook, and Office was interoperability.
- Jim has been indoctrinated by MS.
He directed a project with 30 NT servers, 11,000
Windows workstations, 11,000 copies of MS Office,
.asp pages with dynamic content, and customized
MS Outlook. You can't get there without having
talked with a few Microsoft reeducators.
- Jim will spout the party line.
Expect to hear all the standard lines from Jim.
We should be virtually capable of quoting the
entire letter from the Peruvian Congressman, and
should definately have all the key points down.
http://linuxtoday.com/mailprint.php3?action=pv&ltsn=2002-05-06-012-26-OS-SM-LL

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"We need commonsense judges who understand that our rights were
derived from God," - President George W. Bush, 27 June 2002
http://www.nandotimes.com/politics/story/448758p-3591873c.html
What if he had said, "our rights are derived from Vishnu?"
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