Trade-Offs

Here's a problem. Assume that the place you work has an IT department. In order to get certain information from IT, you have to request it. This process can take a long time. Let's also assume that you feel fairly confident in your ability to handle and organize information. IT, frankly, would like to give you access to its inner workings so that instead of you coming around and pestering them every two weeks for something big, you would simply create it yourself.

Question: Do you take the access that IT gives you?

Answer: It depends. If IT is offering you access so that you could do the hours of work that they used to do on your behalf, then no, you reject it. The entire purpose of having an IT department is so that you don't have to do that crap yourself. The purpose of a business being split up into different departments is so that odious tasks can be distributed appropriately to specialists. If IT isn't going to volunteer to take crap of your desk, why should you volunteer to take crap off theirs?

However, if what you're asking for is the kind of stuff that you could probably put together in 15 minutes - but stuff IT doesn't want to give you because it doesn't want every Tom, Dick and Harry poking around in its databases - then, yes, you do want the access that IT gives you. You don't want to have to wait for IT to get around to doing a simple task on their clock instead of your clock. If it's just a case of IT not wanting to give you the widget you need out of some sense of territorial tresspass, then yes, you do want that access.

This is the kind of trade-off I have to deal with every now and then. Out of everyone who works in this building, I have more access to IT stuff than anyone else does. And so far, I've been able to make it work.

(* * *)

There are two things that are taking up my creative time.

First: Hallowed Halls of Fielding. If I told you how many parts I've planned for this story - and yes, that number of parts does not equal infinity - you'd shit a brick. This work is going to be novel length. So why am I writing it when I could be writing an actual novel? Madness and boredom, mostly.

Second: A timeline of future events that I might use as a sort of pre-written alternate future history. Do you have a story set in 2025 but don't want to have to generate the technological changes that correspond to 15 years from now? No problem, baby. I've got it all under of control. Only up to about 2019 so far.