Geeks vs. Management: "dialog" when something is broken.

When a geek notices something wrong and reports it, the geek is not interested in a "dialog", or hearing the conversation that is about to occur called a "dialog", or especially "opening up a dialog". As far as the geek is concerned, there are approximately four parts to this discussion, although some of them are expandable and/or not the geek's own personal problem.

1. What, specifically, is wrong, which is sometimes not the geek's responsibility to track down as long as they're reporting the symptoms accurately.
2. How they know it (or something) is wrong, which can be expanded to include
   • The symptoms they have observed
   • The person to talk to about diagnosing these things
   • How urgent this issue is
3. How it should be fixed, which can be expanded to include some items, but is sometimes not within the geek's realm of knowledge or responsibility.
   • The technical details involved in fixing it (note that for some things there can be several possible ways, all of equal or similar merit)
   • The person who will know the technical details involved in fixing it
   • The skill set describing a person who will know the technical details involved in fixing it
4. How it will behave when it is fixed, which is sometimes merely "Not broken!"

Everything else in a possible "dialog", including the phrase "opening up a dialog" is probably marketing babble, and not considered relevant to getting the bloody problem fixed.

This can extend to social issues, which makes things even more fun when there's no clear technical solution.

Tweets for 2008-08-17

In the last 24 hours, I posted the following to Twitter:

• Saturday, 0724: @FailBlog Pretty much the entirety of the usual gang in my usual IRC channel adores the stuff you find.
• Saturday, 0727: @afuna pointed me to nsfw toilet signs. Because a vague disclaimer is no one's friend. http://tinyurl.com/5nq6us
• Saturday, 0758: OkCupid is weird.
• Saturday, 0759: It makes me a little sorrowful to see where the blank line isn't between Buck and Mills. Berry is supposed to be there. (Accelerate.)
• Saturday, 0817: "Submarine" is a game of "spot the reference". So far I've heard at least three, probably more; I wasn't counting.
• Saturday, 0856: @choobs I had to see your tweet to make sure I was reading @semanticist's use of "VM" right as I could not think of another definition. Jam.
• Saturday, 0949: Exceeded minimum post count comfortably, despite the half-hour "team meeting" (pizza party) starting the day.

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