I draw/create a lot of diagrams – logical architectures, network diagrams, flowcharts, process workflows and a huge number of exposition diagrams designed to explain complicated concepts in visual form (I am currently particularly proud of my ISO17799 exploded framework diagram).

To create these diagrams I have become a Visio master. Now unlike most of the other Office products becoming a guru in Visio is a lot harder than it looks. Visio is Office’s little lost cousin. It was acquired in 2000 from Visio (formally Shareware and before that Axon and founded by a crew of ex-Aldus people) and thrown into the Business Products Division and then ‘integrated’ with Office. Whilst generally it behaves like a good Windows/Office application – uses the right shortcuts for Print/Save/Open etc – it also has quite a few quirks (bad habits) that date from its previous owners. It has also not always been the world’s most stable application. It is certainly not easy or intuitive to learn to use and trying to get it to do some seemingly basic things can be most troublesome. Indeed the general process of constructing diagrams can be time-consuming and painful. In summary, Visio mostly looks like other Office products, smells kinda like other Office products but occasionally leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Then I bought a Powerbook and it came with a trial version of OmniGraffle – the Mac equivalent of Visio. Now I had no desire to learn a new product but last week on short notice I had to produce a logical architecture and only had my Powerbook with me. So I opened up OmniGraffle and started to work. Thirty minutes later I had my architecture. It was quick and easy and unlike almost every Visio diagram I’ve ever drawn it actually looked good without me needing to spend hours tuning colours and layout. I was quietly stunned. Simple, intuitive and generates great diagrams. I have since gone out and purchased a full license for the Pro version (which allows the import and export of Visio diagrams) and consider it money well spent. It sadly doesn’t run under Windows.

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I was going to refrain from posting anything about the death of Private Jake Kovco – too saddened by the whole thing and the waste of it all – but this morning’s news that the wrong body was returned from Iraq was too much. I am horrified. I don’t really have the words for how terribly badly the death of an Australian serviceman has been handled. Not only the wrong body returned but the Minister making contradictory statements about the manner of his death. His poor family – a loss like this compounded by such incompetence is unforgivable. The Defence Department should be ashamed.

I was pointed to this earlier today as an example of how the US Marine Corp handle casualty notification. I firmly recommend the Defence Department and Minister read it.

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One of my favourite topics is security mythology – that’s where a security concept has become ‘common sense’ or a de facto standard without any real understanding of why this has occurred. This also tends to result in the implementation of these mythological concepts without any real thought. One of the best examples of this is the concept of resetting passwords on a monthly basis. It originates from mainframe days at the DoD when password cracking was an issue. These days it’s blindly implemented and followed by most organisations without any understanding of the implications. This excellent article summarises the issues around periodical password resetting.

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There are a whole bunch of people with their knickers in a knot about how the Internet is not a nice place. And then a whole bunch on the other side going ‘we’re being funny and people shouldn’t be so stressed’. The other refrain was ‘it was better in the olden days’. Oh for fuck’s sake. Having actually been around in the olden’ days when there was no goddamn web and simply Usenet, mailing lists, and the occasional gopher site any rose-coloured rememberences are a joke. The Usenet was a vicious, dangerous, take no prisoners place. A foot wrong and you could be buried in invective. Where does everyone think ‘playing the Hitler card’ comes from? Thankfully with Usenet I had a kill file. God I wish I had a kill file for some comments now.

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Das Book II – Pro Nagios – has been released. So now its weeks of nerves about reviews and hoping people like it. It’s pre-selling very well at Amazon which is great. Seemingly better than the first book. But it’s very hard to get a feel for sales with only Amazon Sales Rank to go by (that’s even if you can work out Amazon Sales Rank and translate that into units moved).

Still don’t know what I want to do about a 2nd Edition of the first book. The thought of fixing and expanding the previous work is pretty exciting – I have a lot of ideas about how to go about that. But I am nervous about the time commitment. It’s an incredibly time consuming process – nearly a million words written over the last two years – and I need to work out whether I can achieve a better work/life balance and not end up a little nuts like I did last time. And I guess there were other factors involved in writing and putting in the time previously too. Guess some thinking and talking needs to be done.

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So R and I vegged in front of the TV for an evening. Neither of us gets a lot of time off so we did a take-away (Vietnamese – very nice) and watch crap television vegetative evening. So the crap TV chosen (by R mind you) was Fox 8’s Australia’s Next Top Model marathon. Oh my god were those girls a) dumb, b) bitchy, c) egotistical and self-centered. I just wanted to maim some of them – one girl virtually narrated every episode and I wanted to break every bone in her body as she was so incredibly annoying. And the winner? What a neurotic, psychotic nut-job. Not exactly Ms Stable Personality. There were exceptions. There was a slightly dull but seemingly very nice girl from Adelaide and a very funny, vivacious (*coughs* gorgeous) girl from Perth who was to quote a phrase favoured by one of R’s colleagues – ‘the business’. Thankfully I managed to wrest the remote control from R after the first season and was thus saved the agony of being forced to watch the bitchy, skanky host and another contingent of evil bitches act like spoiled manipulative cows all over again.

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So both R and I had a day off yesterday for some stupid Christian holiday. Yah for Jesus getting nailed up! Oh – on the topic of Christians – I am so going to open a new restaurant called WWJDHB – “What would Jesus Do? He’d BBQ!”. The restaurant would be BBQ – spare ribs etc etc. You could get BBQ on a crucifix, Spanish Inquisition Hot Sauce, Torquemada Fiery Fries (available with extra chilli), Martin Luther Margaritas and on Fridays the Loaves and Fishes Special – beer battered fish burger with a glass on red wine for an amazing low price. I am so the marketing genius.

Hmmm – Cathar Curly Fries, Witch on a Stick – cooked at your table… must stop now.

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Hanging around waiting to start new job. Yes I know – ‘hanging around’ in other people’s worlds = holiday. In mine it equals wondering what to do until I can do work again. New job is back in the banking world – no more consulting. Which is very good. In the last job I very quickly started to remember why I hated consulting. I hate coming up with the ideas and having dim witted people then not understand said ideas and have to explain it them and then eventually dumb it down for them. So my brilliant bit of thinking is wasted. I only did two jobs where I was actually working with people who ‘got it’ first time. And one of those I suspect was considering offering me a job. But they were in the sticks – far, far away – and I had no desire to travel that far. Also not sure of the ethics of that – absconding from one job to a job with a client. Might have been problematic. New job is a little vague right now – Security Architect doing things with IDS/IPS/event correlation seems to be the general gist. Will know more after I start but I think it’ll be a better fit than the last one. Fingers crossed anyways.

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This is actually a really fascinating article on Bill Gates’ work habits. Written by the man himself. I am not a Microsoft fan – being an Apple Powerbook owner and an open source author with a perchant for Linux-like things – but it is interesting to see how Gates uses the tools Microsoft has developed – especially SharePoint and Outlook.