Ramble On

I think it’s from doing software upgrades all week.

Could someone please, please, please send a bunch of emails about unsubscribing from lists or something? I need an outlet.

Otherwise, I’m going to likely pick on old-skool flickr users (though Chuq already did that better, though not as snarky) or Joe Biden, or John Edwards, or Dick Cheney, or American Idol. And quite frankly all of the latter ones are all boring and have about the same relevance to reality(*)

Dear computing users of the world, please do something stupid so I can make fun of you, followed by the realization that I do the exact same thing, whereupon I can write some hilarious self-deprecating followup.

(* wow, managed to sneak one in, without even meaning it)

No, no, I’m not talking about the “guru” part (although they did change it to “Ranger”). I’m talking about how they interact with the community. I actually have a comment from Ken Case(the CEO), on my “Urug” post, where he passes along Wim’s explanation of the “new” title

I think a better job title would be something like “systems ranger” — think old-West cowboy movie. The systems ranger roams the dusty server-room, righting misconfigurations and keeping an eye on the horizon for trouble approaching. When something goes wrong, he shows up, fixes it, and then rides off into the sunset with the cheers of the grateful townspeople (that’s us) following him. He’s an icon of trustworthiness and security and maintaining the status-quo. He helps with everything from fighting off the Black Hats to finding little Timmy’s lost puppy.

Thanks Ken and Wim. Thanks for having a great sense of humor. Thanks for getting it. From their products to their blogs, to their Pet Testimonials. What a great company.

Clearly, the ranger will need a badge:

(okay, so that’s not hitting on all that much - but that’s the limit of what I can do in OmniGraffle in 10 minutes I’m a miracle worker Systems Manager - not a graphics designer.

I did however pick “Raw Sienna” from the system color picker - that clearly is the most appropriate badge color when I couldn’t figure out how to do cross-object gradients right )

p.s. The first one of the readers that comments with “we don’t need no steenkin’ badges” gets shot on sight.