Graham Chastney

Yesterday Alexander – The Chief Happiness Officer – made an offer of 100 free copies of his book in PDF. I was online at the time and now the proud owner of a PDF version of Happy Hour is 9 to 5.

Wishing you all a joyous Christmas and a peaceful New Year. I’m not likely to post anything on this blog for a while, but the break normally does my more creative writing the world of good.

(If you want to know why there’s a wart hog on our Christmas tree you need to read this.)

You’ve probably all picked this up already, but I thought I would highlight it anyway.

If you put northpole@live.com as a contact in Windows Live Messenger you can talk to Santa.

Emily spent half an hour talking to him this morning. It seems that Santa has too many Elves to count, it’s cold in the North Pole and Rudolph is eager to get going. He wasn’t giving anything away though when she started quizzing him about her presents. It’s a relief to know that you can rely on Santa to be discreet.

Can’t wait to see live pictures of Santa from NORAD as he progresses towards us from the East.

Ideation:

“the process of forming ideas or images.”

You’ve probably used it loads of times, but it was a new one on me today. All I need to do now is work out how it would be said here in Lancashire .

Back in August I came back from my holidays thinking about my brain, and in particular the increasing need for people who are right-brain focussed.

I did some online tests (here, here) and discovered that I my brain is quite well balanced between the left and the right. I also decided that balance wasn’t the only issue – brain fitness was the real issue:

• What type of brain do I need to be happy?
• What type of brain do I need to remain employable?
• How ‘strong’ is my brain?
• Is it possible to change your brain orientation?
• Is it possible to ‘train’ your brain?

This lead to a short diversion into considering the link between hand orientation (left or right handed) and brain orientation. The conclusion – it’s more complicated than that.

I decided that I need to set myself a goal and chose – remembering names. It’s always been something I struggle with. But I didn’t want to just create a technique for remembering I wanted to use it as a test for brain health. At the time I was assuming that brain health was a valid concept. Having read Making a Good Brain Great by Daniel Amen I concluded that it was indeed possible to make a brain “better“.

From this point I have changed a few things in my daily routine:

• I’ve cut right down on caffeine. I really like the taste of coffee so I’ve switched to decaff.
• I’ve created a quite place routine. It doesn’t happen every day but it happen regularly enough.
• I’m doing more exercise. Most days I do something, even if it’s just a 30 minute walk. I try to get to the gym three times a week and manage it most weeks.
• I’ve been eating more fruit. The main way I do this is to have some fruit in my cereal at breakfast, but I’m also drinking more smoothies.

Each of these things has made a contribution to a definite feeling that I’m clearer headed than I was before. I’m also more motivated to get things done. My tolerance to trivia has also become resurgent.

As for my test, I have no proof, but I think I’m getting better at remembering names.

The plan for next year is to deal with some of the things in my life that cause anxiety because stress isn’t good for brain health. I feel better placed to deal with them now. I think my next reading may well be the Chief Happiness Officers new book and workbook. I’ve also decided that I need to find room in my schedule for a creative outlet that doesn’t involve a computer – I quite fancy wood sculpture for some reason (my great grandfather was a carpenter so perhaps it’s in the genes). My fitness routine is OK but it also needs a goal so I think I’m going to try and plan in between 5 and 10 Saturdays when I’m going to walk up a mountain I’ve never walked up before.

These are not resolutions, I’m just thinking aloud. Resolutions only work if you plan the small steps that get you to the goal and I haven’t done that with any of these yet.

I’ve grouped most of these posts under the “My Brain” category.

There’s no new news here, I’m just bringing together a number of pieces of information that I’m not sure many people have put together.

Microsoft released it’s Software Assurance licensing programme some time ago now. Many customers looked at it, but struggled to see the benefit in it. There perception was that it worked for people who were going to adopt every release of Microsoft software as soon as it came out, but that was about it. The thing is that many customers don’t upgrade quickly, nor do they take every release. Many enterprise customers skip versions of Office, taking every other one, many did the same with Windows, skipping Windows 2000 and moving straight from NT or 98 to Windows XP.

Microsoft is steadily changing the landscape on Software Assurance though. A number of recent announcements have increased the pressure on customers to take Software Assurance, or made it more valuable, depending on your point of view.

Desktop Optimisation Kit

Microsoft have made the Desktop Optimisation Pack available to Software Assurance Customers. This kit includes four interesting components:

• Microsoft SoftGrid – formerly Softricity SoftGrid
• Microsoft Asset Inventory – formerly AssetMetrix
• Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset – formerly Winternals IT Admin Pack
• Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management – formerly Desktop Standard GPOVault

As you can see, this is a bundling of recent acquisitions – and only available to Software Assurance customers. These products will be available for a period as separate products with perpetual licenses, but eventually the plan is that they will only be available to Software Assurance customers (source: Gartner).

Yes, that’s right, if you want these capabilities you need to have Software Assurance.

These products are the type of products around which you build a whole process, you don’t just deploy them for some added value. In other words, they are the type of products which you get locked in to.

If you have spent a load of money packaging and deploying applications via SoftGrid you aren’t going to change to anything else easily.

If you have invested a lot in getting a GPO management process which relies upon the capabilities a AGPM then you aren’t going to replace it easily.

The Desktop Optimisation Kit now puts a cost on exit from Software Assurance.

Vista Enterprise

There will be one edition of Vista which will only be available to Software Assurance or Enterprise Agreement Customers – Vista Enterprise.

The primary benefit of Vista Enterprise is the availability of BitLocker without all of the cost of Vista Ultimate. If you are an enterprise customer you probably don’t want all of the Media Center capabilities that Ultimate anyway, nor do you want the heavier hardware footprint that it brings because that just pushes cost up. As an enterprise customer you probably do want desktop hard disk encryption.

The need for a licensing agreement to use Enterprise Edition puts another cost on the exit from the agreement. How many customers would want to deploy clients as Enterprise Edition, to then downgrade to Business Edition. If you’ve made extensive use of BitLocker it’s going to be very expensive to change.

Conclusion

These two activities provide a benefit to Software Assurance customers, which will mean that it’s preferable to more customers, but it will also add a cost of exit from the agreement which will make them more cautious.

(I’ve also learnt that writing a complicated post while blowing into a tissue every 2 minutes is hard work . So if you saw an unfinished version of this post – sorry. If this post doesn’t make much sense – sorry.)