… and We Created 'Eugene Speaks IT' on our Floating Holiday

Symantec offers its customers a number of different online forums and blogs where they can interact with each other, as well as with Symantec. The Symantec Technology Network, with its genesis as the Veritas Architecture Network, has given customers an opportunity to exchange ideas with each other and with Symantec technologists, seek answers on how to configure or troubleshoot products, and much more for more than five years.

 With the "Eugene Speaks IT" blog, we're..."

Nearly all of these are very serious communication channels. With the "Eugene Speaks IT" blog we’re seeking to have some fun while also touching on challenges and problems facing our customers and the ways in which Symantec technology can help to address them.

Eugene is a composite of some of the thoughts, rants, ramblings, and would-be confessions often heard among IT professionals. With the creation of “Eugene,” we are reminded of the M.A.S.H episode from its first season in 1973 when “Hawkeye” Pierce (Alan Alda) and “Trapper” McIntyre (Wayne Rogers) concoct a fictitious character named Captain Tuttle. When Hawkeye delivers his eulogy (Captain Tuttle is “killed” when he jumps from a helicopter without his parachute to attend to injured troops at the front), he notes “there is a little bit of Captain Tuttle in all of us.” Indeed, there may be a little of “Eugene” in all of us as well.

Eugene is a fast-rising IT manager at a large enterprise, leading a team that includes some of the idiosyncratic personalities found throughout the IT world.  His blog is a parody, a venue where he can pour himself out unselfconsciously, showing a side of himself he can’t show at work.

Eugene loves technology.  He’s solved problems well at every level on his way up.  He’s known for calm under fire, a good analytical mind, and wisdom beyond his years.  But having risen so fast, in a tumultuous environment, he can barely believe how he and a few people on his team can keep it all working.

He is presumptuous and intense, having been in the IT business all of seven years.  But he also is a sharp observer and extremely talented.

Eugene has watched each of the movies in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy 10 times and read the book at least as many times. He is so passionate about the book and movie trilogy that his office is filled with various “Lord of the Rings” action figures and toys, and he frequently lapses into using language and names from the movies and book in his blog.

On that note, as you get to know Eugene’s world, you’ll meet characters and terms like the following. 

Smack Talk Dictionary:

Archive Jitterbug: The situation that occurs when an e-discovery request is logged.

Brainal Attack: Thinking and analysis that, however seemingly good intentioned, actually sends the team backwards.

Budgie (No Budge): The nickname for the CFO, who is always seemingly more than happy to find ways to fund the “Warlord’s” forays but always—at least seems—to make the rest of the IT team pay.  Hence, Eugene also has another name for her: “Madame No”.

Cats: The nickname for high-end storage systems such as EMC Symmetrix DMX, HP StorageWorks, or Hitachi 9900 Lightning, which Eugene believes resemble the Caterpillar tractors and dozers on his parents’ farm.

Chunk IT:The nickname for the head of product marketing who simply tells IT to “chunk” another server into production to accommodate new applications and expanded business requirements.

Clustermania: What happens when everyone goes overboard and does 1:1 clustering on every application imaginable.

The “D” Word: A word Eugene and his staff do not like to utter. “Downtime”—or the “D” word—is unplanned downtime, which normally unleashes the forces of the “Dark Side” upon all segments of the IT organization at once.

Death by a Thousand Small Cuts: The experience of manually rebuilding a failed server.

Dolores, Queen DBA: Goddess of OLTP, who leads a team of database administrators.

Fiddle Diddle: Eugene is a clean-cut kid from the Midwest. He thus normally abstains from using profanity, though he has a number of substitutes. “Fiddle Diddle” is one of them and is normally employed to express extreme dissatisfaction or frustration.

Hysterical Critical: The view of many business owners regarding the business-critical—or lack thereof—of their applications.

Later: Eugene typically concludes every email and blog with his signature “later”.

Nuke: Robotic tape libraries remind Eugene of the reactor chamber in nuclear plants.

Prickly Patch: An affectionate name for the server farm reminiscent of the pleasures of patching.

Roll Black: The procedure for applying a change, the attempt to roll back, and then the “D” Word—downtime.

Secret Decoder Ring: When Eugene hits the wall and isn’t able to solve a problem, he pulls this relic of his youth from his drawer and finds that it works like worry beads.

Siloman: A peer who likes to deploy silo-based solutions from technology vendors; in his little silo, the “Siloman” feels safe.

TapeTwister: The ordeal of finding and remounting a particular tape hoping to restore data under duress.

Tunnels: The go-to guy for the hardest troubleshooting problems who is named for soldiers in Vietnam who’d crawl into Vietcong tunnels to clear them with nothing but a pistol in their hands and a flashlight in their mouths.

Warlord: Nickname for a CEO who leads the company into acquisitions like a warlord in ancient Japan, moving in on his destiny of being Shogun.

Weenieheads: Those who offer small minded opposition to right-minded plans.

Whacky Dacky: Another one of the substitute profanities Eugene employs on occasion. See “Fiddle Diddle” for more detail.

Message Edited by Eugene the IT guy on 02-24-2008 11:02 PM