The Undercover IT Correspondent

GOOD GUY AND BAD GUY TECHNOLOGIES

IT technology change is usually driven by organizational politics

After the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, journalists fantasized about mining colonies on the moon (never mind the monotonous scenery and the terrible economics of transporting coal across a quarter million miles). Well, similar fantasies occur within IT every time a new technology appears. Like the moon colonies, there is always a hype cycle that starts with a selling proposition that’s just too good to be true – often fuelled by journalistic flights of fancy – followed a few years later by a reality check. The script, as predictable as a Hollywood movie, runs something like this:

·         Selling proposition: New ‘good guy’ technology appears, which is invariably sexier, simpler and so much better than the old, ‘bad guy’ technology.

·         Reality check: New technology doesn’t take over the world after all, and the old technology sticks around for a long time still because: (i) the new technology has yet to acquire the economics of usage and the reliability of the old technology (ii) we wrongly assume that the old technology is standing still and not getting any better or cheaper.

A 19^th century economist of no uncertain notoriety once drafted a manifesto whose opening words were: ‘The history of all past society is the history of the struggle between classes’. Well, if this person were around today and applied his observations to the world of IT, all he’d have to do is change a few words and he’d have a new manifesto which this time round he’d have gotten right, and for which he’d get full Marx: ‘The history of all IT innovation is the history of the struggle between classes’.

Most IT innovations are of the ‘revolutionary’ kind, often accompanied by ‘holy wars’, in which a new technology is embraced as much for reasons of organizational politics as for addressing actual business requirements. There is invariably a struggle between some parts of the organization, or between some vendors. Fuelled by a passion generated by some ongoing conflict, one of these classes seizes upon a new technology to advance its particular organizational aims (eg decentralization) or commercial aims (eg crushing a competitor). It then raises high the banner emblazoned with the new technology, and basically tells some other class, as Woody Allen so eloquently put it, to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ – though not in those words. This enables a lot of people to make money publishing magazines, newspapers and books to cater to the faithful and play the various groups against each other, as we shall now see.

MAINFRAMES – THE GREAT DICTATOR

When mainframes first appeared in the fifties, their size, weight and floor space were so impressive that science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov actually predicted that most of their bulk would eventually have to be placed in space (otherwise where on earth would you put it?). Mainframes were therefore associated with a technical caste of high priests who spoke in terms of bits, bytes, MIPS and FLOPS, and saw themselves as the enlightened pioneers of a new age which only they could really understand. They consequently favored heavy-handed central control of both the technical and business environments. By the sixties therefore, the bubble was ready to burst and the time was ripe for a revolt, which came in the form of the minicomputer.

MINICOMPUTERS – GOING IT ALONE

By the mid-sixties, a new company called DEC (Decentralized Entry-level Computers) had firmly established itself as the leader in a new class of machines called minicomputers. The ascent of this new class of machine had as much to do with organizational politics as with technology (it boasted technological improvements like transistors instead of vacuum tubes –  and a novelty called a video monitor).

When decentralized business units analyzed their internal allocations or charge-backs to central IT, they found that they compared very favorably with the price of low-cost minicomputers from DEC. On a purely hardware purchase-price basis therefore, they found they could easily justify the creation of their own IT departments, which began to spring up left, right and center. Minicomputers thus ushered in a new information age, suitably ‘liberated’ from the yoke of central IT, whose mainframe-based monopoly began to crumble.

Over time, however, the decentralized IT departments running minicomputers became victims of their success. Though they rightly viewed themselves as far more responsive to the business than the original mainframe dictatorships, they also found it difficult to cope with the huge increase in demand for their services.  Financial reality also caught up with them, as it gradually became clear that computing costs went far beyond the initial price tag on the hardware. So even the decentralized computer departments found themselves suffering a fate similar to that of their previous central masters, albeit on a much smaller scale.

So by the mid-seventies, another bubble was ready to burst. The time was ripe for yet another revolt, which came with the arrival of the microcomputer or PC.

MICROCOMPUTERS – RAISING THE MIDDLE FINGER

In 1976 Apple was created in a garage –  thereby ensuring for posterity the mythical status of the garage as a great place to start a business. And when it brought out its first microcomputers in the mid-seventies, users for the first time in history were able to use computers on a purely individual basis. And once microcomputers could be networked together, the stage was set for another round of ‘liberation’ from the IT Department ‘oppressors’.

When IBM itself eventually joined the fray in 1981 with its PC, the momentum snowballed.  Dealers took orders for 250,000 units on the first day, whereas IBM had expected to sell 275,000 units over the product’s entire lifetime of five years – talk about giving forecasting a bad name.

Whereas the previous minicomputer revolution was pure organizational politics between centralized and decentralized cultures, the new microcomputer revolution went further and added an ideological dimension. It was not enough to want better computing services in the enterprise; one also had to take a stance in favor of the individualism and freedom that microcomputers supposedly embodied. This implied the overthrow of the central IT dictatorships with their mainframes and minicomputers, symbolized by the oppressive Darth Vader and his evil empire, a.k.a. IBM. One newspaper even proclaimed itself ‘The Voice of Personal Computing in the Enterprise’, and in 1991 its editor-in-chief went as far as predicting that the last mainframe would be unplugged in 1995! This prediction was all the more misplaced given that around this time, both Microsoft and Apple were using very large IBM minicomputers to run their own businesses, and showed absolutely no signs of wanting to unplug them!

Apple had the GUI field to itself for six whole years, from 1984 to 1990, which gave Bill Gates every reason to be mad at Steve Jobs for threatening his dreams of world domination. Bill’s take on this was ‘don’t get mad, get Steven’, so he quietly went away and prepared his revenge. When Microsoft came out with a workable version of Windows in 1990, Apple’s fate was sealed as far as corporate IT was concerned. It also lost the ill-conceived lawsuit against Microsoft for copying its GUI, since Apple itself had copied the idea from Xerox (itself a copier company…).

WEB 2.0  - HERE WE GO AGAIN?

It would be nice to think that the organizational ‘holy wars’ and ‘class struggles’ ended with the mainframe-mini-micro technology battles above, but this was not to be the case. Organizational politics by technology proxy continued with NCs (that’s Network Computers for the newbies) vs PCs, Navigator vs Explorer, client/server vs host computing and OS/2 vs NT. All of these battles were always about more than just technology; they were also about ‘good guys’ vs ‘bad guys’. Adopting them would not just enable you to better resolve your business or technical problems; they would also ‘liberate’ you from some ‘undesirable’ part of the organization, or from some ‘undesirable’ vendor.

And with Web 2.0 we’re coming full circle again. Many articles on this new wave of computing are already evoking the apparent inability of the traditional IT department to come to grips with it. Now throw in some ‘digital generation’ stuff for good measure, and one part of the organization will soon be seeking 2.0 ‘liberation’ and telling some other part of the organization to go ‘be fruitful and multiply’ – though not in those words. MG

TITLES AND DEPARTMENTS WE COULD DO WITHOUT

Bring back the good old days, when the longest job title was ‘Director of Operations’

Ever wonder why it is that when you choose software product ABC for your local organization, you’re just a project manager working in the IT department, but if you do the very same job on an international scale, you’re suddenly the Director of Transnational Systems in the Department for Global Technology Deployment and Systems Optimization ?

Here are some tongue-in-cheek examples of outrageous job titles and departments that make us hark back to the good old days when the longest job title was ‘Director of Operations.’

·         Strategic ‘anything’ Director: a politically acceptable staging post for executives with no real work to do, or for those whose posts have been rationalized during the recent merger.

·         Director of X-wide Systems: a person whose mandate it is to put in as many ‘standard’ systems as possible in geographical area X, whether or not they have a business case or actually correspond to country requirements.

·         Infrastructure and Planning Department: what you call an infrastructure department to ensure credibility and an annual budget.

·         Global ‘anything’ Department: a group whose mandate is unclear and whose existence is more or less ignored by subsidiaries around the world.

·         Global Products and Technology Department: a body of technical weenies whose job it is to spend vast amounts of time and money defining ‘strategic’ technical standards from a market of ‘me-too’ products. Their toughest mission to date? Choosing between Navigator and Explorer as the worldwide browser standard.

·         Virtually Integrated Planning Committee: runs the whole shooting match. Staffed by dignified 40-something execs with awesome-sounding titles, this body inspires security, confidence and vision. It can get the CEO to write million-dollar cheques for strategic projects without batting an eyelid. Known in inner circles as the VIP-committee.

·         Macro Business and Management Analyst: IT’s concession to user representation. Usually an ex-user whose ability with technology personifies the saying ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ Work procedures known in inner circles as MBMA (Management by Magazine Article).

·         Area/Regional: options available for ‘line extension’ to existing director positions when the market for such posts is saturated. Instructions for use: simply append level identifier to original title, as in ‘Area Director for …’

·         Director of Enterprise Process Strategy: a new post created when all line extension options have been exhausted (see above), and a company can no longer create any more Strategic Director positions without raising suspicion.

·         VP for Global Best Practices: head of a department that unilaterally decides which practices are ‘best’ for subsidiaries without their consent and without identifying any ‘worst’ practices.

·         VP for Technology Deployment and Systems Optimization: post reserved for someone who can work the words ‘strategy,’ ‘process’ and ‘architecture’ into the same sentence and manage to keep a straight face.

·         Strategic Director of Advanced Technology: head of a department of one. Post reserved since the dawn of computing for nerds with beards who are best left alone to explore solutions-in-search-of-a-problem.

·         IT Project Manager: what kind of job title is that? Somebody get that weirdo outta here!MG

Copyright 1996 by Computerworld Inc., One Speen Street, Framingham, Mass. 01701.  Reprinted by permission of Computerworld.  All rights reserved.

BEHIND THE SCENES IN IT AFTER A MERGER 

Just watch the Delta and Northwest IT staff slug it out behind the scenes!

With the Delta  and Northwest mega-merger now imminent, journalists have already conducted in-depth analyses of what it’s going to mean from a business perspective. But what’s it going to mean from an IT perspective? Nobody talks about that – and yet, this where a lot of organizational battles, turf wars and power plays are going to take place, as frightened IT staff wonder whose systems will win out, and whose will be relegated to oblivion.

What happens to IT departments after a merger offers a fantastic insight into organizational politics. But first, let’s start out by saying that in reality there are no mergers, only acquisitions. Even in the very rare case of a ‘merger of equals’ (ha!), with complementary products or services contributing to a better overall portfolio, there will still be a dominant player calling the shots: one of the parties must have a greater ‘need’ to be acquired than the other. So merger is really a politically correct term which is bandied about for press consumption to placate employees and shareholders.  For example, have you ever heard of Scopus? You haven’t? Well, you’ve just dated yourself as an IT rookie – they ‘merged’ with Siebel in 1998 (at least Larry Ellison had the good grace to call Peoplesoft  an acquisition).  Daimler-Chrysler 10 years ago might have been a ‘merger of equals’, but is was clear to everyone in Detroit that merger was spelled a-c-q-u-i-s-i-t-i-o-n.

So what awaits the new CIO after a merger? Well, to start with, both companies will in all probability have different infrastructures, architectures and technical standards. They will also be running different types of applications in terms of ERP, CRM, billing, etc, and probably using different vendors such as SAP, Oracle, etc. The term driving a square peg into a round hole does not even begin to describe the complexity of the task at hand. And this already tall order must in addition be accomplished without disruption to existing operations, and without upsetting any customers.

With this firmly in mind, let’s try and answer the following question: ‘ which of the following criteria should be used when deciding which systems to keep and which to phase out? ’

(a)   cost-effectiveness

(b)   customer satisfaction

(c)    total cost of ownership

(d)   reliability

(e)    scalability

(f)     ease of integration

(g)   process effectiveness

(h)   level of ROI to date

(i)     some of the above

(j)     all of the above

(k)   none of the above.

The correct answer is of course (k) – none of the above.

After the official merger announcement, a photo op of the two CEOs back-slapping and high-fiving in front of the cameras appears on CNN and in the press, and great care is taken to achieve a politically acceptable balance at board level, for employee and shareholder reasons. However, there is no such requirement for IT – who the new CIO is and which company’s architecture and systems are going to dominate is of absolutely no interest to CNN and the Wall Street Journal. Which essentially means that the rules of engagement are not very different from those of the animal kingdom, ie the instinct for survival and protection of the herd decides the outcome.

So what should in reality be a fairly complex process of identifying the ‘best’ systems based on a set of rational and objective criteria actually turns out to  be fairly straightforward. The dominant company puts its key people in place, makes some token concessions, then  essentially tells its team to take what they think is useful from the other side and phase out the rest. Period. It’s as simple as that. Oh sure, some mega-mergers put on a show of actually going through an objective selection and consolidation process, but the end result is rarely in doubt. Which is just as well, because it is questionable whether a consultative, democratic and rational approach could ever work. After all, a systems manager from company A is hardly going to tell his counterpart from company B, ‘You know Jim, your CRM system and underlying architecture are really much better than ours. We should definitely standardize on yours. I therefore agree to trash our system and phase myself out of existence.’

Objectively merging the IT departments of two large companies is an impossible task, from a technological, organizational, political and cultural perspective. Key people will understandably seek survival by protecting the herd that constitutes their power base, and that power base comes with a number of systems attached. So by definition there’s going to be a painful transition period in which you’re going to have to phase out both people and systems, and you want to try and keep that period as short as possible. And in a perverse way, this pre-historic approach is probably the best answer amongst a host of bad choices. MG

The SDLC (SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LAUGHTER CYCLE)

IT’s a serious business folks – so don’t laugh…

We’re a strange bunch in IT. For the past 50 years we’ve been working to a methodology based on the construction industry, with a strict linear approach from analysis, development and testing through to implementation and operations, with each phase performed by different teams of specialists. Even though the success rate of this approach is the pits, we still take it quite seriously – which when you come to think of it is actually quite funny.  Which is why SDLC might as well stand for Systems Development Laughter Cycle.

REQUIREMENTS – ANALYZE THIS!

The first phase in the SDLC is requirements analysis, which is traditionally conducted by analysts (you want to be careful how you pronounce the first syllable …). Analysts sit down with users in an attempt to understand their business problem – then produce a thick ‘requirements’ document that no one really understands.

Once this so-called ‘statement of requirements’ (SoR) has been duly ‘signed off’ by the business, IT will then try to build a system to meet those requirements. Now the requirements might be incorrect, incomplete, or might even have changed since. But that doesn’t matter, because if (when…) the documented requirements that IT delivers on don’t correspond to actual requirements, it can use the signed-off SoR as a ‘get out of jail free’ card in Monopoly, and not be penalized.

DEVELOPMENT – MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

Once analysts have tricked the business into signing off on the SoR, they toss it over the wall to the development team. This group now has the unenviable task of programming useful deliverables out of what is ultimately a mix of real requirements, perceived requirements, wish list and pure fantasy. Usually the things you hear from developers when they read the SoR are things like ‘This is impossible! We can’t do this!’.

So developers sometimes find that they have to develop a system in three months that allows the business to ‘analyze customer behavior based on any combination of profiling information, order history, billing patterns and customer service interactions, using user-friendly point-and-click technology which gives graphical results on a real-time basis’ – something that can take one to five years, if at all possible. As you have probably gathered by now, developers and analysts have a love-hate relationship, and don’t exactly hang out together after work.

DOCUMENTATION – SOME LIKE IT NOT

In theory, developers are supposed to document their systems so that others can work on it later. In reality of course, this is rarely done.  Any token documentation that does emerge will in all likelihood be inaccurate, incomplete and difficult to understand.

There is no economic incentive to spend any serious time on system documentation because, unlike user documentation, it is not part of customer deliverables.  So it is eternally put off, or given to an intern or a junior hire who will spend a challenging few weeks producing a set of documents that no one will bother to check for quality, for the simple reason that probably nobody will read it. So it ends up as shelf ware or server ware – except when IT needs something to show the auditors: ‘See, we have documentation. We are good people. Now go away and leave us alone !’

At the end of the day system documentation is like an insurance policy. You don’t know what’s in it until you’re in trouble, and then you discover you’re not covered for much.

TESTING – PASSING THE BUCK

In the manufacturing industries, testing is basically ‘just in case’ testing, ie you’re almost sure you got it right but you’re just checking. You’re therefore happy when you don’t find any defects. In IT, however, it’s the other way round. You’re sure you didn’t get it right, and you’re damn well going to prove it! You therefore expect to find defects, and if you don’t, then you’ve got a real problem! In fact, there’s a truism in IT which says that a good test is one that finds a defect!

There are four categories of testing: unit testing, system testing, integration testing and User Acceptance Testing (UAT):

·         Unit testing:  This first phase of testing, which is done by the developer who coded the programme, usually uncovers the most bugs. By the time he’s finished, he knows there’s still a lot more to be found, but he’s pretty fed up with testing by now.  So he hands it over to another developer, who tackles it from a different angle, and finds yet more bugs. Once they’ve fixed these bugs they announce the completion of the unit testing phase, not because there are no more bugs to be found, but because they don’t know where to find them – and in any case they want to get back to some real work. So they pass the buck down the line to the system testers.

·         System testing :  System testing ensures that all the different parts function together as a whole. So if you enter a test order for two widgets and a packet of nails in the order entry programme, and the invoicing programme prints an invoice for two nails and a packet of widgets, then you know you’ve got a problem. System testing usually ends when they run out of time, definitely not when they’ve found and fixed all the bugs, which they never will. And in any case, they know they can pass the buck down the line to the users…

·         User Acceptance Testing (UAT): The buck stops here! After IT has finished its part and hopefully delivers something workable, the users do a final round of testing, which is as real as it gets before going into production. UAT is like trial by jury. When the users are done, they go away to deliberate, leaving IT to wait an agonizing week before knowing its fate. When they finally emerge, they either proclaim the application good enough to be put into production (ie reasonable bugs), or they charge IT as guilty (ie beyond reasonable bugs).

The final phase of testing, the real one that discovers the remaining bugs, is called production.

OPERATIONS – THE REVENGE OF THE NERDS

Ops run production systems. This is probably the most technical and procedures-oriented part of the IT organization, because it manages the complex hardware, software and networking infrastructure that runs the core applications of the enterprise. Now there’s a thin line between being procedures-oriented and being bureaucratic, which explains why Ops staff are often negatively viewed by both users and their colleagues in IT, as illustrated by the following question: ‘How many Ops staff does it take to change a light bulb?’. ‘We can change the bulb in five-to-ten working days. If you have a valid work request number and you submit your application before 5pm, we can get it changed within 24 hrs. And don’t forget to put your name and cost centre code in the upper right hand corner of the light bulb application form.’

Which is all a bit unfair, because if the company’s core operations were impacted (orders, billing, finance, etc), then these same users and the rest of IT would be the first to press for better procedures.

One of Operations key tasks is seeing to backups. No other industry is so obsessed with avoiding information loss; having your PC crash and not having a backup can be a very traumatic experience. It sits right up there with other personal tragedies like having your car stolen or getting audited by the IRS, which require counseling and time off. We’ve all seen such people at work (‘you don’t want to go near Joe this week. He’s in a foul mood because his PC crashed and he’s got no backup.’

 So Ops instructs users to back up their work onto the server every day. But that’s not enough. Modern servers operate at only 99.9999% reliability, so we clearly can’t take any chances here. We therefore make a backup of the backup. And if we’re really paranoid, we’ll make two copies and put them in different safes in different buildings – maybe even in different parts of the country! And the amazing thing is that even with all these precautions, people still find themselves at least once or twice in their lives suffering this particular form of personal tragedy. I guess it’s like seatbelts – you could probably pass a law (‘Backup – it’s the law!’) but you’d still find people who forget to make backups.

So it doesn’t really matter what people think about Ops; as long as they can provide users with their latest backup, they’ll always be forgiven their bureaucratic side. MG

WI-FI ON AIRPLANES? ENOUGH ALREADY!

The techno-marketers have got it all wrong! Airborne wi-fi ain’t gonna fly!

The quest to stay connected to the office seems never-ending: answering machines, beepers, pagers, car phones, mobile phones, laptops, PDAs. No moment seems private enough not to be interrupted by your boss and fellow-workers. The most recent addition to the catalogue of electronic leashes for the road warrior is wi-fi on airplanes for internet and mobile phone calls. Understandably, people have strong views on the subject. Here are some samples, “Wi-fi in trains, planes and automobiles: public irritation?” from a CIO.com blogger,  “Hello, I’m on the plane …”  from the Daily Telegraph, and one from a frequent flyer passenger who’s actually created a website against mobiles on planes, called www.mobilefreeplanes.com . 

Let’s see what segment of passengers we’re targeting here: jet-lagged managers and corp execs, weary from sleepless nights and day-long meetings in different time zones. And we’ve somehow figured out that instead of having a quick dinner, maybe unwinding with a movie, then going to sleep, what these folks really want to do at midnight at 30,000ft above the Atlantic is check their email and place some calls! And I can’t even begin to make a case for the people in the rear traveling in cattle class.

Yes, folks, despite these troubled times, techno-marketers have apparently convinced the airlines to fork out millions of dollars to equip their aircraft with wi-fi. The primary culprits are the aircraft manufacturers, Airbus and Boeing, who lured their customers into believing there’s money to be made from airborne internet (I’d just love to see the supporting studies), and if one manufacturer starts wiring its planes, then the other has no choice but to follow. Then there are the marketers within the airline industry itself, who are so out of touch with reality (after all, they fly for free…) that they actually believe that airborne wi-fi will provide competitive differentiation. Yeah right, like I’m going to let that influence my decision whether to fly airline A or airline B.  

You’d think they would have learned their lesson from air phones in the backs of passenger seats, that other expensive airborne initiative that bombed. Not surprisingly, given the outrageous price of a call and the spectre of talking in a very confined space.  And working through the numbers really makes you wonder what controlled substances these folks were on when they dreamed up the concept of air phones. On a flight of say 200 people, if 20% of passengers make a five minute phone call at $5/min, that gives us 40 x 5 x 5 = $1 000 of revenue. Like wow! Hardly the type of stuff that makes the bean counters jump for joy. Talk about forgetting what your core business is. 

So now they want to take another chance with airborne wi-fi? Good luck! And what about support? Will this be one more job for flight attendants? On-board support is unlikely, however, because flight attendants are already understaffed and overworked. So the airlines would probably outsource this function to some ground-based support centre. And this is where all those unused air phones could come in handy. ‘Hello and welcome to Sky Support! If you’re in first class, please press 1 ; if you’re in business class, please press 2 ; if you’re in economy, please have your credit card ready … To talk to a Sky Support engineer, please enter the reference number on the top right-hand corner of your boarding pass, followed by the pound sign…’ 

So, I say to all you airline techno-marketers, you’ve got it all wrong. Here’s some free advice from a real passenger that can save you millions of dollars -  and maybe your career as well: 

• We’re stressed and overworked. So once we’re on board the chances are we’re going to take a break. Seat back to the reclining position, a whisky and some airline food. Then perhaps see a movie we recently missed, or read a novel. If we do open our laptops, it’s because we need to work offline, catch up on email or finish a presentation. We don’t need to be online! We can easily find an internet connection at the airport – it doesn’t have to follow us on board! As for mobile calls, the vast majority of passengers are against it anyway, and the potential for “air rage” in response to inconsiderate mobile phone addicts is very high. You don’t need a PhD in behavioral psychology to know that the last thing cabin crew need at 30,000ft is dealing with airborne conflict pitting passengers against each other.
• Being in an airplane halfway above the Atlantic is the only politically acceptable place not to be connected. It’s the perfect excuse! Anything else just doesn’t cut the ice. Not even your most private and, er, intimate moments at home are valid excuses (‘I’m sorry Dave, I don’t want to know about it. We can’t let your private life interfere with your work…’). However, being in a plane, well, that’s something entirely different: ‘oh, you were on your way to London? Well, that’s OK then, no problem, you’re covered!’ This last acceptable refuge from the demands of the office should be preserved at all costs!
• Mobile phones and internet connections are not a positive differentiator between airlines. Flight schedules and costs are; everything else is secondary. In most cases we’re locked into a particular airline anyway, via our frequent-flyer miles, or through company travel policy. So whether you have the gadgets or not is hardly going to boost your revenues. And as for thinking it can become a profit centre – well, dream on. Finally, in these days of a backlash against mobile phones in public places, it is entirely possible for an airline to get great mileage by proclaiming itself an ‘air phone and internet-free’ airline (‘We value your on-board privacy …!)’.

 So for all you airlines who are actually considering equipping your planes with wi-fi based on bogus market research, I say fugheddaboutit! Disband those suspect focus groups comprised of non-representative people. Put on your common-sense hats, talk to some real travelers, and then scrap this silly idea. Go hire some more flight attendants instead, and give the rest of them a pay rise. They deserve it, given the cranky passengers they have to deal with.  Just look at me! MG.