Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Let’s Get Asynchronous!

To the tune of Redfoo’s
Let’s Get Ridiculous!

Yo!

Lets Phreak!
Lets Phreak!

Yo, yo, yo, let’s go!

We’re dialed-in, the signal’s strong,
packets ready, time to switch the network on
The queue is up, meticulous,
c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous!

C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)

Wired, linked, signals on the brink. Let’s get-
Wired, linked, signals on the brink. Let’s get-
Wired, linked, signals on the brink.
Networked people! Let’s get asynchronous!

Networked people know the place to be (Hey!),
where the wires bring the two-phase beat
Let’s tap into the web’s heartbeat,
so sit down log in and send a tweet (Yeeah!)
This is how we chat (Hey!),
text, no vocals, characters,
So be a phreak in binary
and when we drop the bits we’re global travelers

And I love to text,
asynchronous is the best jam
Send a tweet, yeah take a chance,
and if ya can’t rock the keys then Instagram
Wanna know a lil something ’bout queues? (Hey!)
They were made for messaging you
A modern form of web voodoo,
they’re fresh, they’re slick, and standardized too

We’re dialed-in, the signal’s strong,
packets ready, time to switch the network on
The queue is up, meticulous,
c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous!

C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)

Wired, linked, signals on the brink. Let’s get-
Wired, linked, signals on the brink. Let’s get-
Wired, linked, signals on the brink.
Networked people! Let’s get asynchronous!

All the time I am reading you online
And you so fine I just have to share the lines
You blow my mind, all the crazy tweets you do
I see that you wanna two-phase too,
so baby, lets get asynchronous!

We’re dialed-in, the signal’s strong,
packets ready, time to switch the network on
The queue is up, meticulous,
c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous!

C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon baby, let’s get asynchronous (oh-ohh-oh!)

For Some Procurement Departments, Every Day Is Halloween!

A week from tomorrow is Halloween. While until recently meant to celebrate All Hallows’ Day, it’s common observance today is to provide an opportunity for kids to trck-or-treat, high school and college students to throw parties, and adults who miss their childhood an opportunity to play dress-up once again.

As part of this festival of tricks and treats, celebrants (regardless of religion), will carve pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns, light bonfires, bob for apples, attempt to divine (and contact the dead), play pranks, purposefully visited haunted attractions (whether supposed to be fake or real), tell scary stories, and even watch horror films.

But for some Procurement departments, this is every day. Every day they are beaten up by the CFO and feel like they are being carved up like jack-o’-lanterns as their performance is dissected with biology lab precision. (Performance that’s not as good as it should be since the CFO won’t let them buy the best tools.)

Stakeholders, who bring (new) requirements, are constantly lighting fires under the team at the last minute, not realizing that great results takes great planning, and that doesn’t happen overnight. That sometimes strategic acquisitions take 3 to 6 months of hard work to find and unlock the hidden value, and that one cannot expect miracles when Procurement, already at 100%, is asked to (re)source a category 30 days before contract termination (and the date was known 1065 days in advance when the last contract was signed without Procurement involvement.

Senior buyers are constantly bobbing for new opportunities, checking out random whims because they don’t have a modern spend analysis system to help them identify the best possibilities for savings. At some point they will get so desperate they will go to gypsy diviners in their quest to identify savings opportunities, and even ask to speak to dead business gurus of ages past.

They will feel like they are constantly being pranked by sales people as they won’t have the insight to build true-cost models, the IT dungeons they have to go to for help normalizing market data from the free feeds they have access to will feel like haunted houses, every new request made from them is a scary request, and their entire
existence feels like a horror movie.

And the scariest part of this story, is that it’s not just a few departments, it’s a sizeable number of Procurement departments. Remember, 40% don’t have modern Supply Management tools, and of those that do, the majority have major holes in the Source to Pay to Delivery Cycle.

So, CFO, this Halloween, only you can change Procurement’s existence by giving them a treat — the budget to acquire new systems next fiscal year. Trust me, Procurement needs them.

Finally … A Good Use for Drones!

A recent article on Yahoo! Finance indicated that MIT researchers use drone fleets to track warehouse inventory specifically to help employees find particular items faster.

But the best use is regular inventory checks and fraud prevention. If the warehouse is lined with RFID readers and every inch is covered, then a system can be designed to flag when a palette is dropped at the wrong location, or when a signal expected to be there is not. But what a system can’t do is double check that a RFID chip is actually there. Once the palette has been read at the right location, and the inventory recorded, who’s to say the system will note when the inventory has been moved and used if a refresh is not performed on a regular basis or that
a hack has not been performed that can trick the system into believing the palette is still there when it has been moved.

In other words, the drone can make up for the inefficiencies in the non-mobile system. It can be programmed to traverse the entire warehouse every night and identify the errors in the system, which can immediately be investigated and corrected. While there is no sure way to prevent hacks that can lead to theft, any thefts would be identified much more quickly, which could increase the chance of recovery and, if the theft is for restricted / hazardous materials or technology, allow for responsible reporting that would keep the organization out of lawsuits and the CXOs out of handcuffs.

It’s a good use for drones. And one even the doctor can get behind.

Fifty Years Ago Today …

Sweden entered the modern age of transportation when Dagen H occurred and traffic changed from driving on the left to driving on the right … literally overnight! (Those Swedes are masters of efficiency.)

Now if only the UK (and it’s former colony now known as Australia) could get with the times and join the rest of the world. However, given how long it took them to accept the modern calendar, it will probably be another hundred years. But it would make the creation of true global routing software so much easier …

Two Hundred and Sixty Five Years ago today …

Great Britain finally adopts the Gregorian Calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe, and begins its entry into the modern age. Considering the influence of Britain, and the number of colonies (now CommonWealth countries) it had by 1752, by 1852, and by 1952, could you imagine if it, and its (former) colonies, were still on the Julian calendar.

We (and especially we Canadians) all know the importance of standardized time (especially since it it typically credited to Sir Sandford Fleming, a Canadian who eventually settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia that attracts great Canadian minds even to this day) when trying to do global business, but imagine if we didn’t even have standardized dates! Two o’clock on the 7th would be different days! And if Great Britain didn’t come in line when it did, Sir Sandford Fleming would have had a much harder time …