[OFFTOPIC] Finding the next lucrative niche

[Shachar Shemesh]

On 11/14/2011 11:27 PM, Etzion Bar-Noy wrote:
> Can't do anything with the servers. The funny thing is that during
> that time, two or three weeks since, the system is just sitting there,
> when the server room is being "built" around it.
My worst "time wasted" story is from way back (you can calculate just
how way back in a second). I was contacted by Channel 2 News to do some
trivial server maintenance. It was trivial that I said I'm going to have
to charge them half time for my time getting there. Obviously, we
scheduled it during the day, as they are only truly active during the
evenings unless something special comes up.

Except this turned out to be the day the Akaba agreement was signed. I
have no idea why they didn't reschedule. The place was crawling with TV
celebs, and we were constantly interrupted because the guy I was
supposed to do the maintenance for kept being called away to handle one
thing or the other.  In the end, an half hour net job took over four hours.

What's even more interesting is that these occasions have a dress code.
Technical people dress casually. News anchors dress semi-officially,
which is to say they have an official shirt on, tie and all, but casual
pants (down to the level of shorts, on some occasions). Guests dress
officially. So my client's contact was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt,
Ehud Yaari had a buttoned shirt flapping out of his Jeans, and Ahmed
Tibi had a complete suite on. Oblivious to this dress code, I dressed up
to go to a client, which meant that I got lots of looks from people who
figured that I must be a guest, but did not recognize me.

Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com

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