Inside Dirt - Vol. 2
Stories from the Big Dig they don't want you to hear.
Well, here it is. The second in a series on the tax dollar sinkhole we here in the Bay State "affectionately" call the Big Dig. These posts consist of my personal observations from my years working on the Project. See these previous posts for more information:
Introduction
Volume 1
I won't promise a massive "smoking gun" with every post. In fact, some of these may seem, at first glance, to be somewhat trite and rather mundane. But at the end of it all, after you've had time to absorb all the information presented here, the resulting big picture will both amuse you and cause you to roll your eyes in disbelief. You will find that your own personal amusement level will be directly proportional to the amount of real estate between you and Massachusetts (Boston in particular), and inversely proportional to the percentage of your tax dollars that makes its way into the Bay State coffers.
Got it? Good. Now, let's move on.
Vol. 2: Riding The Wave of 80's Technology into the 21st Century
Flashback to the early 90's. The Project was starting to pick up steam, and with the accompanying increase in manpower and project expansion throughout the downtown area, project management began looking for ways to streamline some of the ways things got done.
One "innovation" of the day was a relatively new concept, known as e-mail.
The first "e-mail" program used on the project was little more than an interoffice messaging system - DOS-based, white-on-blue text messages, you get the idea. Anyway, one day I sent a friend of mine a message asking if he was going to come to a party my roommate and I were throwing.
Now, my friend here, whose language tended to run on the colorful side, had just finished reading "Trainspotting". Let's just say that some of the, um, vernacular from the book found its way into his reply - including such phrases as "let's get together later and butt heads like a couple girlies, you dos cunt".
Normally this wouldn't be an issue, just him being himself, but the geniuses who set up the e-mail program put as the default entry at the top of the address list "ALL EMPLOYEES". And, as we found out, if you accidentally hit ENTER twice when selecting the name of the addressee from the list, it selects this "ALL EMPLOYEES" default option. And if you send the message without noticing what you've done...you guessed it. Real good system [/sarcasm].
Fortunately, he was able to get the folks at the help desk to delete the message from the server, but not until someone in the AA/EEO office opened her e-mail and read what she must have determined to be the most vile hate speech she had ever encountered, triggering a sexual harassment complaint against my friend and me. We were dragged in to a big meeting with human resources personnel and our department managers (who could barely contain their laughter over how frigging stupid and over-blown the whole issue was).
The end result of all of that was that the e-mail in question didn't necessarily amount to sexual harassment, and we each received a slap on the wrist "warning" not to do it again. But that's not even what this post is about. It's only a brief introduction to set the stage for what happened next on this wave of technological advancements on the Big Dig.
A few years later, the project really got "high-tech" (yes, I'm being sarcastic again). The project upgraded all their workstations to Windows 3.1, Windows NT, and eventually Windows 95. Never mind that most of the computers were piece-of-junk 386's and 486's that had to have extra memory installed just to run Windows 95, that's a whole separate issue for another day.
The big news at the time of this supposed "upgrade" was that now our e-mail accounts were good for sending and receiving, who'd have guessed it, e-mail. The domain name bigdig.com was secured by the Project for its website and e-mail server.
Now, this was still, in Big Dig terms, a fairly new technology, so a helpful memo was distributed to help employees become familiar with using their e-mail. This memo was in the form of an FAQ sheet, with one of the questions going something like this:
"I want to give my friends my e-mail address. How do I know what it is?"
The answer then explained that one's e-mail address was your project username - at- bigdig.com. Needless to say, folks began to use their e-mail...A LOT. And this is where the story gets good.
When the Big Dig was looking for an e-mail service provider, some IDIOT, with apparently no knowledge whatsoever on the subject, awarded the contract to what MUST HAVE been the lowest (read: rock-bottom) bidder. How do I know this? Well, it wasn't long before this company started billing the Project for their services.
Lo and behold, and much like the groundwater downtown, the billings for e-mail service were through the roof. The e-mail service plan signed onto by the Big Dig was one that charged a low monthly fee (hence the low-bidder part), BUT also charged on a per message basis. And how were the message charges calculated? BY FILE SIZE.
What's that, you say? A friend of yours just sent you a funny picture? CHA-CHING!
And you thought it was so funny you had to forward it to a dozen friends and family members? CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING!
So, now, after only a short period of time, the Project was facing bills in the thousands of dollars for employees' personal e-mail - the very same e-mail messages that were sent and received using the Project's specific instructions on how to give your friends your e-mail address for just this purpose.
Corrective action taken? Bill the individual employees and actually insist that they pay for these charges. I heard from reliable sources at the time that some individuals' e-mail "bills" were in the four-digit range. Like so many things that I talk about from my days on the Dig, I WISH I was making this up.
I know that some people actually paid up. I also heard that others essentially advised the Project on what they could do with their "requests for payment". And apparently, enough people chose this second option, and the Project dropped the issue and didn't pursue any further collection efforts.
There are some records to go looking for, Attorney General Reilly. Start building your case by developing a pattern of incompetence and piss-poor decision making on the part of Project management. The information is out there, you just have to know where to look. But what do I know?
This is my story, and I'm sticking to it. Again, these posts are based on my personal experiences and observations from my time spent on the Project. If anyone wishes to call into question the accounts contained herein, the comment section below is wide open - have at it. Should any of my recollections of events prove to be inaccurate, I will be more than happy to publish a correction or retraction.
Well, kids, it's getting late and I want to get this post up before going to bed, so I'll cut it off right here. I'm not sure what I'll have up for my next installment. I may just continue this topic of the Project's information technology woes. We'll see. Good night.
Well, here it is. The second in a series on the tax dollar sinkhole we here in the Bay State "affectionately" call the Big Dig. These posts consist of my personal observations from my years working on the Project. See these previous posts for more information:
Introduction
Volume 1
I won't promise a massive "smoking gun" with every post. In fact, some of these may seem, at first glance, to be somewhat trite and rather mundane. But at the end of it all, after you've had time to absorb all the information presented here, the resulting big picture will both amuse you and cause you to roll your eyes in disbelief. You will find that your own personal amusement level will be directly proportional to the amount of real estate between you and Massachusetts (Boston in particular), and inversely proportional to the percentage of your tax dollars that makes its way into the Bay State coffers.
Got it? Good. Now, let's move on.
Vol. 2: Riding The Wave of 80's Technology into the 21st Century
Flashback to the early 90's. The Project was starting to pick up steam, and with the accompanying increase in manpower and project expansion throughout the downtown area, project management began looking for ways to streamline some of the ways things got done.
One "innovation" of the day was a relatively new concept, known as e-mail.
The first "e-mail" program used on the project was little more than an interoffice messaging system - DOS-based, white-on-blue text messages, you get the idea. Anyway, one day I sent a friend of mine a message asking if he was going to come to a party my roommate and I were throwing.
Now, my friend here, whose language tended to run on the colorful side, had just finished reading "Trainspotting". Let's just say that some of the, um, vernacular from the book found its way into his reply - including such phrases as "let's get together later and butt heads like a couple girlies, you dos cunt".
Normally this wouldn't be an issue, just him being himself, but the geniuses who set up the e-mail program put as the default entry at the top of the address list "ALL EMPLOYEES". And, as we found out, if you accidentally hit ENTER twice when selecting the name of the addressee from the list, it selects this "ALL EMPLOYEES" default option. And if you send the message without noticing what you've done...you guessed it. Real good system [/sarcasm].
Fortunately, he was able to get the folks at the help desk to delete the message from the server, but not until someone in the AA/EEO office opened her e-mail and read what she must have determined to be the most vile hate speech she had ever encountered, triggering a sexual harassment complaint against my friend and me. We were dragged in to a big meeting with human resources personnel and our department managers (who could barely contain their laughter over how frigging stupid and over-blown the whole issue was).
The end result of all of that was that the e-mail in question didn't necessarily amount to sexual harassment, and we each received a slap on the wrist "warning" not to do it again. But that's not even what this post is about. It's only a brief introduction to set the stage for what happened next on this wave of technological advancements on the Big Dig.
A few years later, the project really got "high-tech" (yes, I'm being sarcastic again). The project upgraded all their workstations to Windows 3.1, Windows NT, and eventually Windows 95. Never mind that most of the computers were piece-of-junk 386's and 486's that had to have extra memory installed just to run Windows 95, that's a whole separate issue for another day.
The big news at the time of this supposed "upgrade" was that now our e-mail accounts were good for sending and receiving, who'd have guessed it, e-mail. The domain name bigdig.com was secured by the Project for its website and e-mail server.
Now, this was still, in Big Dig terms, a fairly new technology, so a helpful memo was distributed to help employees become familiar with using their e-mail. This memo was in the form of an FAQ sheet, with one of the questions going something like this:
"I want to give my friends my e-mail address. How do I know what it is?"
The answer then explained that one's e-mail address was your project username - at- bigdig.com. Needless to say, folks began to use their e-mail...A LOT. And this is where the story gets good.
When the Big Dig was looking for an e-mail service provider, some IDIOT, with apparently no knowledge whatsoever on the subject, awarded the contract to what MUST HAVE been the lowest (read: rock-bottom) bidder. How do I know this? Well, it wasn't long before this company started billing the Project for their services.
Lo and behold, and much like the groundwater downtown, the billings for e-mail service were through the roof. The e-mail service plan signed onto by the Big Dig was one that charged a low monthly fee (hence the low-bidder part), BUT also charged on a per message basis. And how were the message charges calculated? BY FILE SIZE.
What's that, you say? A friend of yours just sent you a funny picture? CHA-CHING!
And you thought it was so funny you had to forward it to a dozen friends and family members? CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING!
So, now, after only a short period of time, the Project was facing bills in the thousands of dollars for employees' personal e-mail - the very same e-mail messages that were sent and received using the Project's specific instructions on how to give your friends your e-mail address for just this purpose.
Corrective action taken? Bill the individual employees and actually insist that they pay for these charges. I heard from reliable sources at the time that some individuals' e-mail "bills" were in the four-digit range. Like so many things that I talk about from my days on the Dig, I WISH I was making this up.
I know that some people actually paid up. I also heard that others essentially advised the Project on what they could do with their "requests for payment". And apparently, enough people chose this second option, and the Project dropped the issue and didn't pursue any further collection efforts.
There are some records to go looking for, Attorney General Reilly. Start building your case by developing a pattern of incompetence and piss-poor decision making on the part of Project management. The information is out there, you just have to know where to look. But what do I know?
This is my story, and I'm sticking to it. Again, these posts are based on my personal experiences and observations from my time spent on the Project. If anyone wishes to call into question the accounts contained herein, the comment section below is wide open - have at it. Should any of my recollections of events prove to be inaccurate, I will be more than happy to publish a correction or retraction.
Well, kids, it's getting late and I want to get this post up before going to bed, so I'll cut it off right here. I'm not sure what I'll have up for my next installment. I may just continue this topic of the Project's information technology woes. We'll see. Good night.
