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Issue 24
It’s crunch time for the TEL Consortium, until Angie unwittingly helps to break the development deadlock. But has she made a deadly enemy in the process?
 Monday
The TEL Consortium is on the verge of collapse, and we’re getting the blame. After our virus scare two months ago, an unholy alliance of UNIX, Solaris and AS400 teams went in for the kill with a nightmare scenario involving a Trojan Horse crashing our entire network. As a result TEL development is frozen while the Consortium re-evaluates (i.e. argues about) its platform strategy, and the ‘Truckers’ (as Greg calls our operating divisions) are losing patience, with serious talk at the top level about abandoning the system, and TEL, altogether. Apparently the latest Trucker joke is ‘How many overpaid IT experts does it take to disagree about operating systems? Answer - one.’ They may think it’s funny, but for me it’s no laughing matter.
Tuesday
Mike and Greg call me in for a meeting, although it’s actually more of an arm-twisting session. Mike, ever the opportunist, has twigged that the TEL development freeze might push Phase III into a .NET timeframe, something Greg’s been after all along. He suggests that I might like to ‘review’ my decision to rule out .NET for the initial Phase III implementation, but I reply that it’s still too early to commit to .NET-based application deadlines. This earns me the usual Mike scowl, but Greg looks more thoughtful, and asks how much longer it’ll be before .NET timeframes firm up. I say around three months, and he thanks me in that ‘OK, now get lost’ way that top executives do. I escape gratefully, but with a horrible feeling that our IT Director’s got something really nasty up his sleeve.
Wednesday
With little else to do, Carl and Denny spend most of their time debating the merits of C#. They’re obviously beginning to like it, but still feel duty-bound to defend the honour of C++, so we get “explicit call-by-reference removes ambiguity” one minute, and “properties are inimical to encapsulation” the next. It gets a bit boring after a while though, and Ed’s heartfelt cry of “why don’t you two shut the hell up and learn VB like the rest of us?” gets murmurs of approval all round. After lunch I get another distraction, a call from a very worried-sounding Jurgen in Dusseldorf. He asks if I’ve heard anything about his firm threatening to withdraw from TEL unless development restarts by the end of the month. I say I haven’t, but realise that I know a man who probably has.
Thursday
I’ve barely arrived when the phone rings and I’m told to report to the boardroom immediately. Ignoring Mike’s beady stare I head for the corridors of power, and find myself facing Chief Trucker (actually Operations Director) Bill Hammond and the Managing Director himself, but - surprisingly - not Greg. My throat, desert-like already, goes even dryer, but Hammond gives me a coffee, and they begin to quiz me about TEL, Phase III and the .NET platform. Their final question - should we implement Phase III now or wait for .NET - sets alarm bells ringing like mad, but instinct tells me not to mess about with people like these, and I say we should go ahead now. Hammond’s a nice man, but his ‘thank you’ still means ‘get lost’, and I make a quick, but worried, exit.
Friday
With no TEL work to do I’m due at a Load Adjustments progress meeting in the home depot this morning, but just as I’m about to leave Greg sweeps into the office and announces the immediate restart of TEL development. Strangely, neither he nor Mike look very pleased about it, and at lunchtime I find out why. Yesterday afternoon our Big Cheeses flew to Dusseldorf for a TEL Summit Meeting, at which the Truckers told their IT directors to stop arguing and start developing, or else. Apparently Greg tried to put up a technical counter-argument, but the MD said it was nonsense and threatened to sack him if he didn’t stop playing games. Everyone else finds this hilarious, but I know who gave the MD his technical briefing. So, I imagine, does Greg, and I doubt if he’s in a forgiving mood.
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Issue 24 - Contents
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Issue 1
Issue 2
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Issue 4
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Issue 6
Issue 7
Issue 8
Issue 9
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Issue 11
Issue 12
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Issue 16
Issue 17
Issue 18
Issue 19
Issue 20
Issue 21
Issue 22
Issue 23
Issue 24
Issue 25
Issue 26
Issue 27
Issue 28
Issue 29
Issue 30
Issue 31
Issue 32
Issue 33
Issue 34
Issue 35
Issue 36
Issue 37
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